#fire and blood misogyny

[horizon-verizon]

What were the extent of Alys' powers in your opinion? Some argue that since she was a witch, she could have done anything to Aemond if she wanted to, so she wasn't really a victim, let alone rape. Which is ridiculous. We have no idea how she practices magic, or her type of gifts. If it is, she only had visions. Some are also obsessed with the idea that Alys is bad/crazy? Do they realize they're just validating the maesters and narrator's misogynistic view of her?

*EDITED POST* (12/7/23)

Let's get one thing straight (this is not specifically at you, anon): Alys Rivers was a war prize “proving” Aemond’s power and military prowess.

Ian Plate writes this in his article:

The treatment of women as objects, used to mark male prestige, appears in our earliest extant Greek literature, Homer's Iliad. Here, women are valued as prizes in competition between men, awarded to acknowledge relative male prowess.

If you are taken as a war prize, you are an object, a literal reward or prize. You cannot even give consent because your other option is violence/death. Aemond arrives the day after Criston Cole & his army get to Harrenhal, & he almost immediately takes Alys as his war prize...BEFORE he hears about King's Landing. So there was, assumingly, only a few days between his arrival & his claiming Alys. not enough time at all for there to be a deep emotional relationship. Unless we claim that theirs was a love-at-first-sight, true-love romance.

Therefore, yes Aemond intended to perform sexual violence against her...After he killed all the male persons of her unknown Strong father’s house (adult and children), the house went extinct, its women and female children were lost, and Alys was completely vulnerable. When before she at least worked in Harrenhal as a wet nurse (even though wet nursing was considered more demeaning than other jobs women performed) and wasn’t raped and in likely less uncertain of how her life would end.

She was better off without him. Whether or not she had powers, it was clear that Aemond sought her out as a war prize and ultimately as a sex slave and she was under his power. If she had magic, it wasn’t strong enough or a particular type to avoid Aemond or she held back so the other women and children or some other occupants of Harrenhal could at least have Aemond preventing other lords and errant bandits from hurting them while they lived at Harrenhal (I’m talking servants, cooks, porters, etc). Neither shows consent. That’s my headcanon, *shrug*.

IF Alys had prophetic visions, and she told him to go out and meet Daemon at the Gods Eye, she would have seen him die. Daemon wasted no time flying to Aemond and thrusting Dark Sister into Aemond’s remaining eye, the battle would not have lasted long for Aemond to do somethings. Alys would have seen all this...so why didn’t she then warn Aemond? She seemed to be a better person, willing, and brave enough to stop him from harming another person for no other reason but to save them:

The loss of King’s Landing and the Iron Throne had enraged him, and when word of the Fishfeed reached Harrenhal, the Lord Protector had almost strangled the squire who delivered the news. Only the intercession of his bedmate Alys Rivers had saved the boy’s life.

(Fire and Blood; Rhaenyra Triumphant)

Unfortunately, Gyldayn doesn’t seem to bother to consider or try to collect evidence of how Alys Rivers thought or felt during her time under Aemond.

Now to answer the last question. Since they do not think themselves as misogynist or do not think that their thoughts are misogynist, no they do not think that they are validating the Gyldayn and Westerosi societal misogyny when they think of her as an evil or a threatening agent just because she may have had magic.

Now to answer the prime question

The extent of Alys’ powers, I think are those just prophetic visions and senses. Otherwise, she is a fantastic enough actor and manipulator. (Or she was good and Aemond was simply too dumb and underestimated her.)

The Kingsguard messenger who died days after the confrontation with Alys could have just been poisoned slowly:

The next day, a thirty-third made his appearance. Having been captured with a dozen others, he had been forced to watch them die by torture one by one before being turned loose to deliver a warning. “I’m to tell you what she said,” he gasped, “but you can’t laugh. The widow put a curse on me. Any man o’ you laughs, I die.” When Ser Damon assured him that no one was going to laugh at him, the messenger said, “Don’t come again unless you mean to bend your knees, she says. Any man who comes near her walls will die. There’s power in them stones, and the widow’s woken it. Seven save us all, she has a dragon. I seen it.”

The name of the messenger is lost to us, along with the name of the man who laughed. But someone did, one of Lord Darry’s men. The messenger looked at him, stricken, then clutched at his throat and began to wheeze. Unable to draw breath, he was dead in moments. Supposedly the imprints of a woman’s fingers could be seen upon his skin, as if she had been in the room, choking him.

(Fire and Blood; “The Hooded Hand”)

Alys, to me, was using the rumors of her witchery and prepared Harrenhal against would-be attackers. Many women in medieval Europe and beyond dealt with tinctures and created mixtures to alleviate pain, inflammation, etc. from natural herbs and other plants.

If Alys took care of herself well -- was not as frequently ill as others -- even just showed self-confidence in her medicinal abilities, AND she looked really young for her age, then it wouldn't take much for rumors of her witchery to form and spread. Especially since she is still a scion from the main family and thus could have gotten more benefits, thus inspiring envy from some servants. Coupled with her visions making her seem “out” (we don’t even know what her visions were like smh), then she’d be marked out as “strange” and people would be warier. IF those visions existed. The only account of her using such tinctures comes from Mushroom (who wasn’t there at Harrenhal), but again, Westerosi women with reputations of being witches could have just been women with a good head for common medicine.

So it's actually very possible she was avoided by most in the Strong household (again, wet nurses aren't in a great, respected position), but once again we'll need proof of actual abuse.

[alicentflorent]

Condal, Hess and Co really missed the point of the books misogynistic fatphobic comments on Rhaenyra’s weight. The problem is historians compare Alicent and Rhaenyra’s body types as if it is at all relevant to them as people or relevant to their rivalry. The problem is they sexualise young Rhaenyra and her teenage body more than her adult body which naturally changed as she grew into womanhood and had six children. Her not losing the baby weight shouldn’t matter but much like tabloids in our culture, the historians felt the need to point out her weight gain and body changes while simultaneously pointing out that Alicent remained slim and had the same body type that she did at 18 even after giving birth to four children.

Rhaenyra being curvy or fat is not a moral failing, it didn’t make her less desirable to her lovers nor did it make her bitter or envious both Rhaenyra and Helaena seemed happy and content with with their larger body types. The point isn’t that her gaining weight was an exaggeration or a lie made up by the anti Rhaenyra sources like condal and Hess have suggested, it’s not her mentioned boy type that’s the problem here, it’s the way she and other bigger women throughout history are talked about by these male sources that is both misogynistic and fatphobic. Quite frankly, erasing her natural weight gain and body changes after she grows older and has six babies is fatphobic and misogynistic in itself.

[rhaenin-time]

Hot take that was a cold take before HotD but one of the main reasons behind emphasizing Daemon as "morally grey" is so when Aegon, Aemond, and Daeron far surpass him in atrocities you can comfortably say, "Oh. These are the baddies."

[nyracel]

the complete and utter irony of aegon waging war against a woman to be the ruling monarch, along with the only two battles he fought in being against women (well, one woman and a child); then being left with just a little girl as his heir at the end of it all, unable to produce any more sons and refusing to name his daughter as his successor. every decision he made, from agreeing to usurp the throne to murdering rhaenyra, concludes with her son being declared king, and his life ending due to a woman’s weapon. poetic justice if i do say so myself.

[thevillainsfangirl]

"We need more female villains"

You musty bitches couldn't handle Harley Quinn or Alicent Hightower! 🙄 The writers victimized them and warped them into completely different characters, and y'all applauded it. (And with HQ, that shit was done specifically because of you dumbasses who didn't even like her!)

SIT THE FUCK DOWN.

[lupuslikethewolf]

something something daemon was sixteen when alyssane made him marry something something he was uprooted from his home and forced to live in an entirely new kingdom with someone he hated and who hated him back something something every time he did something that viserys didn't like he was kicked out of the only home he had and sent away something something daemon fought for viserys but viserys never fought for daemon something something daemon has targaryen daughter syndrome

[la-pheacienne]

Okay nobody asked for this but I have some thoughts about Anna Karenina. I read that book in highschool and it was a pain in the ass but still a rewarding experience. I remember liking it, but at the end feeling like "okay, an adulterous unstable woman, at the time when it was written I suppose it was really ground-breaking, it doesn't seem that relevant anymore, who would condemn Anna today for wanting to leave her miserable cucumber of a husband for a hot blond horse rider with BDE, relatable, no one would stone her alive for that today, that was then".

Wrong. So Wrong.

It was obvious to me that Anna was unfairly punished by society for being human and the author intended to present it that way. Apparently, it is not so obvious to a big part of the readers. The discourse I saw online is extremely disturbing:

"I felt like she chose her lover over her son? To me she just seemed extremely selfish. She has a loving and rich husband".

"yes, she did ultimately choose her lover over her son. It's terrible that she lived in a culture that forced her to make that choice, but that's the choice she made. Her own happiness was more important to her than her child's. That's not a choice most parents would make".

"She is not even a good mother she hated her daughter when her daughter Anya was sick only thing that was important to her was that Vronsky didn't came home at the time so she started using opium".

"I don’t like her. She made a poor decision that left a child without a mother and a husband without a wife. Any woman who puts their own selfish desires over their family is not to be liked".

"I can not abide women who let themselves be pushed around so much by society and the moralists of the day; I keep wanting to give them a good shaking and say "Stand up for yourself, girl!"

"One of the reason that Anna is so hard to like is that she only defines herself in relation to other people. Wife to a husband. Mother to a son. Lover to Vronsky. Who was Anna? What did she like? What were her passions (besides men)"?

"Vronsky said that while Anna seemed only to have him to care for, he had many friends and many interests and responsibilities. Adults usually do. Anna was an eternal child, wanting gratification, indulgence, entertainment". 

The first observation is of course, how completely off the mark these takes are considering the particular female experience in 19th century Russia. Especially the comments about her not acting like an adult or her being boy-crazy are laughable, as if a woman in that time period could just "stand up for herself" or even define her life and choose her course of action indepentently of men in any fundamental way. As if she would have ever comitted suicide if she could do any of those things. If she could still keep the boyfriend and her son, if she could decide to have a divorce whenever she wanted to, if she could be allowed to simply exist on her own, she wouldn't have committed suicide. A person who commits suicide is a person who doesn't have a way out. She didn't. And it is pretty obviously stated in the text.

The second remark is that in this story we have a (female) character that is so appallingly victimized and crushed, entirely at the mercy of other men, circumstances or even pure chance, while at the same time keeping her personality, desires, and agency intact. This is why this story is so great and this is why these people do not get it. Tolstoy, consciously or not (probably consciously) really outdid himself precisely because he told the story of a victimized woman who was also kind of a bitch, to put it bluntly. She was both. You can't talk about Anna just by focusing on gender inequality. Being a victim of patriarchy is not all Anna was. Anna was selfish yes, she was irrational and obsessive and ruthless and she wanted it all and she wanted it now. It wasn't enough for her just to have an extramarital relationship, tolerated by social norms, allowing her to keep her son and her lover. No, that was not enough, she wanted to live with her lover freely, she wanted to make the rules and she didn't understand why she just couldn't. She felt terribly guilty for abandoning her son, yet she didn't give a single fuck about the kid she had after, the one kid she could actually take care of. Horrendous. Her husband offers divorce, she doesn't want it. He later refuses the divorce, now she wants it. She is not ready to travel and wants to wait, and when her lover tells her they have to wait one day because he wants to see his mother, she suddently wants to leave now. She is strongly advised not to go to the opera because that would bring herself and everyone around her misery, she goes to the opera. She does exactly the opposite of what she was supposed to do at any given circumstance. What she wanted was bigger than what life could give her, and she killed herself.

Now that may be Tolstoy just showcasing what happens to lusty restless adulterous women. Tolstoy, after all, had the misogynistic factory settings of his time. He was also a genius. I don't believe there is anything about this thrilling, vibrant, catastrophic portrait of a woman that came by chance. The inequality, the unfairness of it all is so palpable everywhere in the book, her absolute lack of freedom constrasting with the freedom of her husband lover and brother. All of these men can do whatever they want, they can fuck, cheat, dominate, determine their life and other's without any criticism or consequences whatsoever, and she can't even leave the house without it being a major scandal. She doesn't control anything in her life, she is completely ostracized. She is considered an actual criminal, a pariah, for having human desires.

And yet, despite all that, she has the audacity to want for herself. In her ultimate victimhood, seemingly at the loss of all agency she still does not let others define her inner world one bit. She absolutely defines her life, she makes autonomous decisions, she even defines her own demise by suicide. She chose this, she could have chosen differently, but she didn't want to. The social setting was horrible for women, but if she was slightly more reasonable she could have had a better outcome. She didn't want that. Crazy right?

And that's why modern readers cannot get this book. We are used to media that convey a "message", ready to consume on a plate with a pink ribbon. We are used to passively watching women reacting to horrors imposed on them, and feeling sorry for them. We are used to a Handmaid's tale type of social discourse. We are used to dystopias. We are used to good guy - bad guy dichotomies. We empathize with female characters getting killed, tortured, physically and sexually abused, because they are the victims. But a woman who dares to leave her kid and go away with her lover? Abhorrent. Inconceivable. It is so extremely difficult to empathize with a female character that is just palpably human, it is confusing, she is not victimized enough to deserve empathy from the modern audience. A victim is a symbol, it is an abstraction. Give a victim a mind of her own and human desires, and she is suddenly a whore.

Tolstoy in all his moralizing puritanical 19th century glory, gave us an actually "complex" (as much as I have come to hate the word) female character, and by "complex female character" I mean a fictional woman that maintains her spiritual autonomy while seemingly being entirely determined by other people or circumstances. I cannot say the same for the vast majority of "strong female character" models of contemporary media.

[princesssszzzz]

House of the dragon fans when there’s drama and violence in a show and world meant to portray drama and violence.

I was just talking about this in a recent post 😂 people pearl clutching at Baela and attempting to nit pick at her while cheering on “badass” violent male characters. Imagine if people called Arya evil and malicious for doing the same thing everyone else is doing. Can’t make that shit up! And there’s people who are absolutely salty that Rhaena isn’t miserable after the dance. Even with all her daddy issues, dragon problems, and losing almost everyone she’s living a princess fantasy compared to everyone else and people desperately want to vilify that 😂 People are going to be recycling their old misogynistic language that was used against Sansa and Arya. Calling Baela a whore and being dead serious like…..

“She’s boring and useless because she doesn’t fight”

“She’s a bad person because she dared to be involved in a fight”

These taking points will always contradict themselves because they’re used against two characters who are INTENTIONALLY written like this

*yawn* Say it with me children, fake outrage!

[lizzie-queenofmeigas]

Something something the Dance showing how much harm can a loud minority cause something something the Green stans being a loud minority sprouting misogynistic retoric.

[addamvelaryon]

Queen Alicent had reluctantly agreed to the betrothal of her granddaughter to Rhaenyra’s son, but she had done so without the king’s consent. Aegon II had other ideas. He wished to marry Cassandra Baratheon at once, for “she will give me strong sons, worthy of the Iron Throne.”

— Fire & Blood, The Dying of the Dragons

It’s actually so sad that despite already losing two children, Aegon was so willing to have his last child passed over as his heir. He just can’t fathom the idea of having his daughter be his successor (whether in her own right or through a marriage to Aegon III). He would much rather create new heirs through his anticipated marriage to his betrothed, Cassandra. Those new heirs in question of course being sons.

I can’t even imagine how Jaehaera must’ve felt about her own father essentially wanting to replace her.

[darklinaforever]

So... something I absolutely need to talk about ; It's all the “ASOIAF” / “Fire and Blood” fans complaining about misogyny (especially for Laena, Nettles, or even Sansa, or Alicent from what I saw), but conveniently calling Rhaenyra by her nickname “Maegor with teats”, in the first degree.

A name, which I remind you, was given to it by the people, solely because it increased taxes. And why did she increase taxes ? Because the Greens have emptied all the coffers, leaving nothing behind. And being in the middle of a war, Rhaenyra had to find a solution to have money.

You're not telling me that this is comparable to all the atrocities that Maegor has committed ? If ?!

Even in terms of war crimes, the Greens did worse than the Blacks team. There was no equality between the two during that war !

This nickname simply reflects the fact that people will naturally be quicker to judge a sovereign woman, much more severely, than a male counterpart. So the existence of this nickname itself stems from misogyny.

So by using / endorsing this nickname, you are validating the misogyny done to the character of Rhaenyra. Quite simply.

Which is hypocritical, and that irritates me.

Even more so when these same people try to make people believe that the war / story of the dance is about Rhaenyra and Aegon II being two people who are not worthy of the throne and made a mess to still get it...

But no.

It's about Rhaenyra having her throne stolen, something plotted against her as soon as she was named heir as a child of 7 / 8 years old, simply because she is a woman !

I'm tired of people spitting on my queen for saying stupid things.

Obviously there are imbeciles who attack the characters of the books that I cited with misogynistic remarks, but Rhaenyra is also, sometimes moreover by the fans of these same characters who ironically complain of misogyny. And that's what annoys me.

You can't complain about misogyny towards the female characters you like, then denigrate a female character you don't like with misogynistic remarks or call her by a nickname that refers to the misogyny that this character is a victim of.

[horizon-verizon]

I love when people say the maesters lied and made Alicent look evil in the book. The maesters, founded and sponsored by the Hightowers, and located in Oldtown ???? Also isn't it the point ? It's from the maesters’ POV so describing Alicent as an agent of patriarchy, traditionalist misogynist, and religious fanatic is actually them honoring her. They consider her an example of how a woman should be.

Yes. From how many times Gyldayn sought to write and include how fat and unattractive Rhaenyra was at least 2x -- once with Eustace saying she ate a lot of lamprey pie as if somehow that matters & once saying that she would have hated Alicent just for their contrasting body shapes; the Shepherd’s suspicious background; all the times the sources and Gyldayn spend way too much time and focus on Rhaenyra’s sexual activities in comparison to any other woman in the Keep (her and Daemon, her and Criston, her and Mushroom, her and Laenor/Qarl Correy or Harwin); how Gyldayn allows the emphasis of how Aegon II’s terms to Rhaenyra fair with no contestation of Rhaenyra’s perspective and just her words (what, Gerardys’s words weren’t available? Where are his diary entries, notes, books, or whatever?!).

As the born royal and heir, Rhaenyra would be scrutinized, but the level of scrutiny she receives can’t be separated from how her gender makes other perceive her as undeserving or inappropriate for the throne. And who does that benefit the most? Alicent/the greens then, and the present Hightowers and their overall image now.

While there are two quick mentions of Alicent’s trouble with female chastity -- one where there was court speculation of her virginity being intact before marrying Viserys, and the other the rumors of the Brothel Queens -- they’re also quickly made to be irrelevant in comparison to Rhaenyra. 

Alicent’s daughter, Helaena is objectified and her death is used as a weapon while also gaining a bogus sense of sexual and moral purity to use against Rhaenyra (the Shepherd) with little contest from people around Rhaenyra or reported by Gyldayn, then or now.

We remember that historical medieval writers especially wrote misogynistically often and would do much speculation than fair reasoning  (by poorshadowspaintedqueens).

*EDIT* (8/21/23):

THIS is a great post by @mononijikayu about medieval queens, female rulers, the history of how women in leadership positions were made and seen as threats to the very structure of social "order", and contextualizing Rhaenyra thru Empress Matilda. I didn't even know about Matilda's husband being comparable to Rhaneyra's Daemon! PLZ READ!!!!

Excerpt:

just as much, along with these fictitious portrayals, more lies are depicted. these women are considered vixens that cause havoc to men by shifting them into desires and danger. through the written word, we see how women are cast in roles of villains in men’s lives. it is because by their conclusive thoughts, women are the only creatures that are able to turn ‘good honorable men’ into despicable creatures who do shameful, deplorable acts for the sake of women’s pleasures.  it is within this narrative that ancient chroniclers declare that women were in fact the doom of men. if they were not able to control the dangers posed by the wiles of women, then the foundations of the mighty society they had built would be up in flames.  [...] as i mentioned, these factors of community are written down and preserved. and with that, the example of the ancients were the foundations by which medieval society built itself. the same concepts continued to cause the same issue within society and that was the exclusion of women from participating in the bigger picture of community and state, much so with governing states in their own right—without judgment or disapproval. 

[kittenfangirl20]

It is so laughable that Team Green act like they are not misogynists and Team Black are the true misogynists for being critical of Alicent when they call Rhaenyra things like whore queen and bitch. People like that have no right to tell me what is and isn’t misogynistic.

[rhaenin-time]

It's not sexist to claim that Alicent was probably the most responsible for the Dance of the Dragons out of any individual it's actually sexist to claim that it's sexist to claim that.

[nyracel]

ngl the sowing of the dragon seeds was so stupid in the show. ‘spread the word to king’s landing-ers (what is the term for them) targaryen bastards to claim dragons’ as if dragonstone didn’t hold all of the bastards who attempted bookwise, but i guess that plays into the lack of world or infrastructure building. it also wasn’t a free for all buffet for vermithor, only one person tried at a time; until eventually addam, hugh, ulf, and NETTLES succeeded.

dragonstone has villages and its own network of civilians! rhaenyra did not go on a wild goose chase through mysaria to find any random person with silver hair! jace took advantage of this being the targaryens ancestral seat to recruit those with valyrian descent because their side NEEDED dragons, especially after rhaenys/meleys are killed. it was jace’s idea solely, since rhaenyra was out of the picture on account of her dealing with debilitating grief. the general gist is there but the execution and overall understanding is terrible and opens up several more plot holes, including but not limited to further vilifying rhaenyra (in an attempt to pave the way for ‘mad queen daenerys’ most likely, along with justifying her descent into ‘tyrany’ AND denying how misogyny is what ultimately kills her, not whatever made up war crimes they’re continuously pinning on her instead of her mass murdering brothers) and to remove key tactical decisions jace made as prince of dragonstone, which is what keeps relegating him to the sidelines rather than right in the action like he should be.

[thevillainsfangirl]

I want to write an essay on "benevolent misogyny" in media and fandom.

I was going to mainly reference Harley Quinn and Alicent Hightower (and Cheryl Blossom a bit), but I realized it goes past UWUifying female villains and antagonists. This is done to any kind of female character.

A perfect example is Dinah from Starlight Express. I'll save it for the essay, but I have an entire tag of rants on my StEx blog explaining my frustration with this to give you an idea.

If you have any other examples (villain or not), please suggest them, and I may mention them in the essay.