#c ; aegon targaryen

[ladystoneboobs]

idt we talk enough about how a song of ice and fire is also the song of incest and cannibalism. i mean, sure, obviously both of those subjects are noted as present, but the saga feels much more known for its incest, which idt is fair or accurate to the later materiel. iirc, jaime fucking cersei next to their dead firstborn is the last instance of onpage incest happening in present tl, and after that it's all about the cannibals, baby.

(disclaimer: cw/tw sa, cw/tw rape, and i'm not counting cousincest as that's normal in-world even for non-targaryens and also still legal in many places in our world today, nor counting the faux-incestuous freudian mess that is littlefinger/alayne(sansa)/sweetrobin, nor any dark humor jokes and/or unfulfilled threats wrt forced cannibalism)

in fact pretty much all the active incest during the present tl happens in those first 3 books:

the twincest as a major plot point ofc, kicking action off when bran saw them fucking in a tower

and viserys creeping on dany and twisting her nipple

tyrion relating his backstory to bronn wherein he and tysha were both raped by proxy by his father, tywin (tho tyrion does not use that terminology)

craster still being alive to rape and impregnate his own daughters (resulting in dozens of forced incestuous relationships)

and theon unknowingly groping his own sister while she (knowingly) groped him in return

jaime's early pov recalled how he shut up cersei with kissing when they fought after bran refused to die

bella of stoney sept trying and failing to seduce gendry who is (unbeknownst to them both) her half-brother as both were sired by robert baratheon (only example in these 3 books where incest was averted before any sexual activity or incestuous contact occurred)

the aforementioned sept twincest next to joffrey's corpse

tyrion learning from oberyn about cersei twisting his penis when he was a baby

cersei's failed attempt to seduce jaime in wst, pulling out his dick for either a bj or hj until her talk of tyrion's death made him lose his boner

while incest is not exactly absent from the text after that, it seems to exist in the feastdance only in hypotheticals or past memories:

aeron's trauma flashbacks of his (implied only in published text) csa by euron

jaime still feeling lust when seeing cersei nude

and her fond reminiscing about them fucking behind robert's back/brief dream of them as a married couple before her walk of shame

victarion misinterpreting asha's offer of partnership as a marriage proposal and suddenly looking at his niece in a new way with "his manhood beginning to stiffen"

jaime's recollection of fucking cersei at darry next to robert as he was passed out drunk before cersei sent him to hunt arya (which would have happened back in agot and the point of this scene is more his failed hunt for a child just to make cersei happy)

arianne's "uneasy" memory of a past fantasy about being seduced by a man whose description is suspiciously similar to her late uncle oberyn

the aborted marital match of aegon/young griff to his purported aunt dany

illyrio saying (the now dead) viserys tried to rape dany the night before her wedding to drogo (another event from agot concerning a guy we already knew was into incest)

and tyrion once saying he wanted to rape as well as murder cersei

conversely, the cannibalism in the earlier books is most often only unproven hypotheticals alluded to as possible cannibalism:

old nan saying the others fed their dead servants the flesh of human children (which we have not yet seen with any wights so far, whether or not one counts walking undead eating human flesh as straight-up cannibalism)

the mystery meat in flea bottom's bowls o' brown which may or may not contain symon silver tongue after tyrion had him killed

renly's recollection that cressen kept stannis from catapulting their old master-at-arms by saying they may need to eat him later (which did not come to pass thanks to davos)

joffrey telling his people to eat their own dead (with no way of knowing if any actually did)

lady hornwood eating her own fingers (though bran's pov only notes them being chewed on, not swallowed. it's only in adwd that people talk of her eating the fingers.)

the mentions of the ice river clans being the cannibals beyond the wall (who are def not among the free folk jon snow gets to know onpage, making it just background detail)

bran's (possibly mythical) story of the rat cook

and biter chewing on people he attacked and other corpses (which seems to be just a side hobby connected to his killing method moreso constituting a snack than a full meal from a person butchered for meat. this tendancy of his is just background detail in acok, with biter chewing a corpse in the background after the weasel soup operation, and the hindsight implication that it could well have been him rather than dogs or wolves who had "been at" the corpses after the skirmish where yoren was killed)

while the feastdance feels much more in your face with cannibalism, having not only more total mentions of the practice but also more actual cannibalism (as opposed to the ambiguity of each and every bowl o' brown), for those who know how to look at the evidence:

jaime learned that his father's mad dog aka the mountain fed parts of vargo hoat to all his prisoners (including vargo himself) after recapturing harrenhal

and euron bragged about pulling a similar trick with the warlocks he captured (the only twist being that the warlocks knew what they were being forced to eat, which vargo hoat and wylis manderly etc at harrenhal likely didn't)

the elder brother of the quiet isle told of biter eating all of a woman's breasts at saltpans after she'd been raped and killed (prob the largest amount of flesh biter's confirmed to have eaten from one corpse)

bran and co. ate "pig" supplied by coldhands which had to be long pig aka human meat

brienne felt her face being eaten by biter in her own pov (which is so much worse than him chewing others in the background of the weasel soup scene)

theon was told that two ironmen at moat cailin were found eating their dead comrades

the astapori were said to eat their own dead while under siege by the yunkishmen

and then were said to do so again in refugee camps outside meereen

khrazz the pit fighter cut the hearts from his defeated foes to eat them

cotter pyke's last letter to jon snow said the wildlings were eating their own dead at hardhome

4 of stannis's men were executed by burning for butchering and eating other men (with asha wondering how many others had done so without being caught)

and ofc the frey pies with wyman manderly having his 3 former guests killed and serving their meat to their own kin and the other guests at ramsay's wedding while eating some himself too

two of these examples (involving gregor clegane and euron greyjoy) must have actually happened during the course of asos, but grrm chose to give us the gruesome details in affc, which was brand new information about men we already knew were villains but did not know were into that fucked-up shit specifically, unlike being reminded that agot-era jaime and viserys wanted to fuck their sisters. (and not unlike how adwd has the clarification of multiple characters saying lady hornwood ate her own fingers as opposed to bran's acok pov just saying she chewed on them.) it's as if after craster was killed and jc effectively broke up grrm decided cannibalism was the taboo subject matter he would fill the later books with, so we'd really feel the increasing danger of starvation-induced cannibalism with winter's arrival (and have no trouble believing rickon's new home of skagos really is a cannibal island). however, in-universe it feels like there's some sort of environmental balance connection so that the decrease in one formerly common behaviorial abomination just allows another such abomination to fill in the gap with a sharp increase in activity, like deer overpopulation resulting from lack of predators as if all the active incest somehow stopped more people from eating themselves or other people.

[bietrofastimoff23]

Okay, it's funny how Aemond calls his uncle a challenge, but the only person Daemon is talking about is Aegon-Aegon-Aegon-Aegon-

so real hate triangle: Aemond thinks about Daemon, Daemon thinks about Aegon, Aegon doesn't think about any of them lol.

[mejcinta]

Look how they massacred our Dowager Queen :(

When I catch you, Sara Hess and Ryan Condal!!!

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

2.02 — clare kilner described her original idea of filming the B&C funeral procession that had to be synchronized with aegon hitting blood, so each blow was meant to cut to each beat of the drum, showcasing helaena's panic attack and aegon's anger.

[urdeftonesgrrrl]

me scrolling through the "anti team black" tag just to like every post I see

[gojuo]

so this is how blood & cheese should have went down if hotd had actual good writers: the plotline starts with rhaenyra wailing and sobbing over luke's death on dragonstone. daemon tries to console her as much as he can stand to do so. she tells him that she wants them dead, every single last one of those traitors. daemon grins of course, because this is how he raised her to be: a vengeful, spoiled, hateful, vindictive monster (he has been grooming her since she was 8 years old to hate her half-siblings after all). the next scene in this plotline would have us see to daemon and mysaria in bed together in harrenhal, where he painstakingly details out what he wants her to do exactly. he gives not just mysaria, but us, the viewers, word for word the sequence of events that he wants to happen on the night of the assassination. we the viewers are deeply horrified by his orders, because what he orders is monstrous. book readers would be kept on their toes, because surely the show would change this event in some ways, right? daemon describing it exactly as it was in the book has to be a red herring right?, is what they would be thinking. and show-only watchers would be on the edge of their seats wondering throughout the entirety of the episode if something so horrific would actually take place on screen. both book readers and show watchers would be left with the question of, is this seriously what's going to happen? no fucking way..., when watching the episode unfold. the next scenes concerning the plotline would be mysaria hiring blood and cheese, a scene or two establishing their characters, them getting intel on where helaena and the kids will be, talking about how difficult it would be to break into maegor's holdfast bc of all the guards so the only option is the tower of the hand ... and then eventually night falls over king's landing and we are in the red keep. we'll be near the end of the episode, like the last 15 minutes, and we follow cheese as he leads blood through the tunnels to the tower of the hand where alicent's room is. earlier in the ep we learned helaena always takes the kiddos there to say goodnight to grandma. they sneak into the room where they strangle her maid, kill the guards in front of the door quietly, and beat alicent until she's knocked out and they tie her up and gag her so she cannot be heard. then cheese goes to stand next to the door in preparation for helaena's arrival, while blood sits on a sofa facing the door. the next scenes would be focused on helaena as she gathers the kiddos to go from maegor's holdfast to the tower of the hand, and we are getting eerie, dark gothic grunge vibes from the camera shots as she gets these weird premonitions, shivers crawling up her spine. but she still goes to the tower of the hand, while the viewers would be screaming and yelling and crying and sobbing at the tv begging her not to go there. but helaena goes anyway because this is a canon event baby. i told you in the beginning of the episode what was going to happen :^) and then it happens exactly as described in both f&b and earlier in the ep by daemon. the beheading would of course not be shown but i would have jaehaerys' blood spray all over helaena and alicent while she does the ellaria scream and alicent is crying unable to do anything bc her hands are bound behind her back and she has a gag in her mouth. the final few shots of the episode would be in slow motion (all the while you hear helaena's screams) as the entire red keep hears this harrowed shrieking and so the guards and the maids and the servants all run to alicent's rooms and we see the pools of blood underneath everyone's feet as they go in and out of the room then finally we come to the last shot of the episode which is aegon's frightened face as he slowly walks through the chaos, puts his hand on the slightly closed door, pushes it open (all the while we hear helaena's unending screams), and he quietly says, "jaehaerys?" roll credits.

that's how you write and adapt a fucking book scene @ ryan condal & co you pieces of worthless shit.

[i-am-traveling-the-multifandom]

Blood and Cheese

Warnings: S2 E1 spoilers, mentions of SA, mentions of gore and blood

So, you are telling me that HBO made b&c an accident. It was supposed to be Aemond. And they made Heleana run while Jaehaerys was being killed and her daughter safe and sound. And Alicent and Maelor wasn't even there. What the hell??!!

They turned one of the best, in fact the only well written part of the book and turned it into this piece of crap

Aemond was never involved. Daemon wanted to kill a child when Luke died because he didn't have the guts to fight Aemond. Aemond might have been the reason the dance of the dragons began but he was never the cause of b&c.

Heleana begged blood and cheese to take her life instead of her children and in the show, she offers her necklace. The entire point of blood and cheese is to show a distraught mother trying to protect her children and being forced to choose which one of her children die. And they made her simply point at her son. Book!Heleana would never. Book!Heleana had to hold the lifeless body of her eldest child that didn't even have his head. She couldn't see his last expressions, was there fear on his young face or was it pain? She would never know until these ruthless killers were found. She would rather lose her life and her sanity than her own children. And in the end, she lost them all. And that is the tragedy of Heleana the Dreamer. That is the tragedy of a mother and a queen.

Jaehaera is sleeping soundly and isn't even harmed while in the books she was a traumatized kid. She was threatened with rape by a man when she was 6 years old. She watched her twin get killed in a helpless position and could do nothing to protect him. That possibly was a driving reason of her suicide.

Maelor was present there at the time of b&c and he wasn't even born in the show. He was two years old; he was a child who saw such a brutal murder. Heleana in her mind made the right decision by offering Maelor instead of the heir to the throne but imagine how much that would have mentally and emotionally scarred him, if it wasn't for his untimely death. He was a victim of 'the greater good'. But it was never him and if he had grown up enough to even form words they would have been of pain and sorrow.

Alicent was in her room having sex with Criston Cole while in the book she had to wait knowing that her daughter and grandchildren would enter any minute and be harmed. She was helpless in those moments, and God knows what went through the mind of this woman who loved her children so much. Her trauma is undermined. She saw her bed maiden killed knowing this might be the fate of her beloved children and it was for Jaehaerys. She had to take care of Jaehaera and Maelor while her own daughter sank into a deep and dark pit of madness. She saw her daughter commit suicide because of this. Do any of us ever stop and wonder if she blamed herself for all this?

Blood and Cheese was one of the most traumatic events in the entire history of Targaryens and I will murder those who say otherwise. Not because I am team green but because I have sympathy. Sympathy for two young children forced to witness such cruelty, sympathy for a child who was inflicted with such early death, sympathy for two helpless mothers who blamed themselves for their children's doom.

And the show destroyed it. HBO destroyed everything, from the cruelty and from the trauma. And those who have never read the book will never know. Never know the cruelty of team black. Blood and cheese wasn't revenge, it wasn't a son for a son. It was pure cruelty and malice. It was the murder of a child who had never done anything wrong, and the show erased it. They never showed what extents team black could go in the name of war and revenge.

And I despise HBO for what they did. Once again, they show that team black can do no wrong, that Daemon Targaryen's actions are justifiable because he did it for his 'family'. But he didn't, like always he did this for the sake of violence, and forever will.

This season is ruined from the beginning. HBO can do nothing to make it better.

[rynnthefangirl]

Aegon, allegedly: “my sister is the heir, not me. What kind of brother steals his sister’s birthright?”

Aegon, five minutes later: my sister is a traitor and I want her dead NOW. Oh, her son had been murdered while acting as a diplomatic envoy? Well done brother, what an excellent start! Let’s throw a feast to celebrate!

[daemon-is-perfectly-unhinged]

Jon: I’m sorry! It was a knee-jerk response!

Aegon: WHO THROWS A DAGGER AS A KNEE-JERK REACTION?!

[binniesunderworld]

About a year ago (early 2023 or so), we had leaks confirming that Queen Helaena was pregnant with Maelor and these scenes showed Aegon deciding to leave a meeting with the council to go check on her, because he mistakenly believed she was ill. I don't know if this is reliable information, but considering it was leaked along with Alys' audition, it seems to me that it is. If that's the case, the Aegon in this picture most likely got the news that his queen is pregnant.

The next time we see him is in a tavern. While it's a popular belief in the fandom that Aegon was there when b&c happened, I think he was there celebrating Hel's pregnancy (which makes it that much more tragic).

While it's obvious that this photo is after b&c, I'm sure we see the maid from Aegon's perspective. He's just returned drunk from a tavern after celebrating one son, only to find he's lost another. And we'll probably have a scene of him running all over the castle to make sure everything is okay, only to find Helaena holding Jaehaerys' body while Alicent hugs Jaehaera.

And then we see Aegon feeling guilty, thinking: "Why wasn't I here to protect my family? I am a King, untouchable, but I failed my wife, my children and my mother."

Maybe people will think I'm on some kind of strong drug after reading this, but the truth is I just based it on what you see in the trailer, some leaks we had about a year ago and my unreliable addiction to tragedy.

[mmelolabelle]

Is Alicent throwing Aemond and Aegon head first under a bus? Yes.

But there is something terrible and profound about Alicent Hightower - a woman who toils “in service to men” and who has spent her life in a system that only values men and treats women and girls as lesser, as expendable - stopping in the middle of a war that is at its core about patriarchy and misogyny and saying “Fuck this” and prioritising the lives of her daughter and granddaughter over her would-be-king sons.

Girls in the asoiaf universe are so often second-thoughts (if they are thought of at all), tied entirely to the fates of their husbands, fathers, brothers, or house regardless of their own desires and are sacrificed at whim to serve their needs. A wife cut open and left to bleed to death so that her husband may have a son. A girl sold off for her father’s political advantage. Another woman murdered so that her husband can marry someone else. Another woman set aside so that some other male relative can sit a throne he has no desire nor aptitude for. It’s expected. As Rhaenys says in 1x02 “That is the order of things.”

Alicent loves her sons, you can see it, but not enough to risk Helaena in an attempt to save them. It’s awful and heartbreaking, but there is something powerful nonetheless in Alicent finally deciding that if someone is going to be sacrificed it won’t be Helaena. Protecting her daughter at last. ‘A son for a son’ is a bargain she’s prepared to make, rather than risk Helaena’s life for Aemond (kinslayer and mass-murderer) or Aegon’s (rapist) survival. She loves her sons, but she loves her daughter too.

[2rats1gogh]

Nah cause? Imagine Tyland Lannister being the last one to find out prince Jaehaerys was just murdered. So when everyone comes to the council the morning after, and Aegon obviously doesn’t bring his son with him, Tyland is just like:

“So I guess prince Jaehaerys won’t be attending council today, huh? Good, he was kinda getting on my nerves lmaoo🤣🤣🤪🤪”

And everyone just looks at him like:

[witchering10123]

blood and cheese

ok, so for me this one's about fifty-fifty

i do think that we need to bear in mind that this needs to actually be filmed and give the child actors as little trauma as possible, so the psychological trauma of the children??? yeah, glad they didn't go down that route tbh

while maelor was an important part of b&c in the book, that would again have required a LOT from the child actors and I very much appreciate that they didn't traumatised the child actors

the change they made to make helaena choose between her son and daughter would have been just as emotionally torturous as making her choose between her two sons, and i thought that the actors did that really well

I did like that rhaenyra told daemon that she wanted aemond specifically, and he then went forward and added the whole "if you can't find him kill jaehaerys", it really adds to him grasping for more and more power and acting against rhaenyra's interests, it's going to make the rest of the season incredibly interesting

I also like how they're showing the bad and the good on both team black and green (after all the trouble to divide the fanbase lmao)

I think we should have gotten more scenes with jaehaerys and jaehaera - I thought that b&c was going to happen like next episode and it would build up the children and their relationship with helaena and aegon a bit more so we could be really gut punched during b&c. while it was horrific... we didn't get the chance to meet the family

i thought that cheese not knowing how to get to the upper levels and that they accidentally happened upon them was... not very good writing. the whole point was that b&c knew exactly what they were doing and they were very effective at what they did. it added to the horror that people could use the red keep against its inhabitants and do such an atrocity as b&c

this could be attributed to shock on helaena's part but I feel it was more a bad writing decision that they changed helaena offering her life to helaena offering her necklace??? like idk, obviously she has grasped the situation and maybe she did think that she could persuade them with money but surely when that failed she could have offered her life - obvi not wanting helaena dead I love her to pieces but it would have made the situation seem so much more horrible if helaena had been pleading for them to kill her instead only for them to wait for her to choose between her children

helaena walking in on alicent and criston felt like it was for shock value, and the fact that alicent and criston had sex earlier in the episode completely cancelled out the shock imo. I think it would have been far more effective to find aegon (as jaehaerys' father), aemond (as the initial target), or ser arryk (because I'm sorry where exactly were all the guards??? how the everlasting fuck did b&c walk through the castle without using the tunnels and only encounter a handmaiden???)

soooo on the whole, it was good??? the aftermath of b&c is really what's going to make it either be brilliant or not

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

tom glynn-carney talking how the director clare kilner give him space for second episode of season two.

[thesunfyre4446]

so aegon never celebrated luke's death in the show. curious to see what BS excuse TB will come up with to justify baby jaehaerys's murder.

[mejcinta]

My introduction to adult Aegon would go something like this:

He returns drunk to his chambers after his revels to find Helaena and the kids there. As she glares at him, the twins, who had been waiting to see him, attack him with a hug, oblivious to the rift simmering between their parents.

That way, Aegon is still painted as a not so good family guy or husband but the scene still manages to convey his complicated relationship with his family; as well as introduce his kids and Helaena, whose violation by B&C in s2 EPISODE 1 push him to war.