#fire and blood speculation

[sansacherie]

having pondered the matter, i've decided it makes better sense for viserra targaryen to be motivated by wanting to escape the fates of her mother and sisters through a marriage to the widowed baelon rather than dreams of queenship.

even though viserra was alysanne's tenth child, she wasn't the last. while she was too young to be cognizant of the physical toll birthing valerion & gaemon had on her mother, (with alysanne being bedridden half a year after the birth) she was old enough to be aware of the concerns made about alysanne's age during her pregnancy with gael.

alongside alysanne's reproductive abuse by jaehaerys is what happened to viserra's sisters. both alyssa and daella died in childbed quite recently. to viserra, delicate daella might have been more predictable than someone like alyssa who'd already successfully given birth twice before.

why on earth would that be appealing to viserra? to anyone?

that's why she tries to "seduce" baelon. (air quotes because she was FIFTEEN). it's not because she sees him as a path to queenship, it's because she knows baelon, knows that he's devoted to his two sons, and isn't interested in having more which is part of the reason he doesn't remarry after alyssa. with that, viserra is less likely to become a similar victim to her mother & sisters. would she be taking a gamble? sure, but viserra probably preferred to try her luck with someone she knew rather than some stranger who been widowed 3 times!!!

im not trying to refute her vanity or that she wouldn't have preferred being queen, but like- baelon wasn't even heir to the throne at the time? aemon was still around, he could father a son, and he had rhaenys. baelon wasn't guaranteed anything. as far as anyone knew the throne was not in his future. that's what makes alysanne's comments so nonsensical to me. waving aside the queenship thing, what else did they except with their family's glorification of incest? the targaryens being held up as closer to gods? no wonder the vain viserra who agreed with the squire who called her one thought baelon a worthier match for her than a manderly lord far away from court.

[sunderwight]

Headcanon/Theory/Concept/Etc Concerning Dragons in the World of Ice and Fire:

The ancient Valyrian blood magic system for taming dragons does increase the general affinity of those of Valyrian descent for dragons. In this case, the general affinity is non-specific. Because Valyria was a slave empire and most menial tasks were handled by members of the lower classes, a lot of dragon handling and care (feeding, cleaning the pits, assisting in training, etc) like what we see the servants of the Dragon Pits in canon doing, would have still been handled by slaves and servants in Valyria itself. If you don't want to be constantly replacing staff all the time, and losing experienced/skilled personnel to random fits of dragon temper, it's best if all if your people have some affinity for dragon handling regardless of rank. So whatever the Valyrian blood mages did, they did it to the whole populace.

But then, how to ensure that only your upper classes are actually taming and riding dragons? After all, you're a slave owning prick who doesn't want your staff stealing dragon eggs to raise in secret and use as part of some violent uprising against you. You'll want some kind of security measure to make that less feasible.

Enter the weird and (in the future) inscrutable "dragon affinity" system. The blood mages find a way to basically encode certain types of dragons so that they will strongly favor specific bloodlines. This system, in turn, is passed among the dragons themselves via their bloodlines. Which basically binds certain lineages of dragons to certain lineages of Valyrian houses. Like say you have Ancient Targaryens living in their Valyrian holdings, and they have Balerion's grandma in their dragon stables. They want to make sure that none of their slaves can steal any of her eggs and eventually become a dragon rider. There's no 100% foolproof method of doing that, since dragons are still somewhat inscrutable. But, you can drastically decrease the odds of success by making Targaryen blood significantly more appealing to Dragon Meemaw and her offspring. As a bonus, this also makes it less likely for the rival dragon riding houses to claim another house's dragons, too.

But there's a bit of a flaw in this system (which is probably the only solution that can be deployed by use of blood-related magics): noble houses tend to intermarry. Obviously, there are a distinct lack of political advantages to marrying commoners, so the Valyrian dragon riding houses would have preferred to marry among themselves and/or powerful foreign rulers. But this means that after a certain point, everyone is related. The magic doesn't care about surnames or paperwork, it cares about blood. So let's say you're Ancient Dragon Lord Targaryen and you marry one of your younger kids off to a different dragon rider house. Their kids are, genetically, still as Targaryen as your direct heir's kids.

So after a while you're still locking out the slaves and servants from being able to tame dragons, but you're not locking out your rival houses. You're losing that perk. Which may not seem all that important at first, but as we witnessed with the Dance, civil wars between dragon riders can get extremely messy, and a lot of it can often come down to posturing about who has the most and/or strongest dragons. So it probably wouldn't take long before various dragon riding houses were wanting to ensure that their dragons were restricted to their actual house, and that their rivals couldn't sneak in and reduce their dragon numbers by claiming dragons from their stock. (You'd think containing the dragons might solve that, but dragons are a bit hard to contain, really.)

Hence, the rise of inbreeding. You try and make sure your house's main lines especially have a higher percentage of "Targaryen" blood, and that none of your rivals have any of it either. The downsides of incest are perhaps mitigated by the same blood mages who have been influencing things from the beginning, perhaps magically tweaking your genetics to reduce the odds of complications, and researching more ways to refine this blood-based system of locking others out of ever accessing your power.

But I imagine that the system required maintaining. There are still going to be times when it's more advantageous to form alliances than to keep your dragons strictly controlled, after all, not to mention limits to how much inbreeding you can do even with magical intervention before shit's getting very Habsburg on you. Not to mention the dragons themselves can be tricky to control, and are less liable to understand the political motivations for not mixing their bloodlines with the perfectly attractive dragons several caves over, who belong to your rivals. Luckily, with Valyrian blood mages still around, you probably just need to pay through the nose to get someone to swing by every few generations and update the blood-based security codes. So to speak. Renew the magic binding your people to your dragons to account for all the drifting genetic nuances. So you don't necessarily need to be wedding siblings to one another every generation.

Except, after the Doom, all those blood mages are gone.

So on the one hand, the Targaryens no longer need to worry about rival dragon riders. Because they're (mostly) all dead. But on the other hand, there's no way to update the bloodline passwords on your dragons now. With each passing generation, you're going to lose some of your advantages for controlling them, unless you're inbreeding at a level that is going to severely limit your ability to make alliances and is going to, you know, completely fuck with your family dynamics for all foreseeable generations. Plus, since you're not a blood mage and this situation is kind of unprecedented, you probably don't really know how long the magic will be able to hold out against the variables of increased genetic diversity over the years. If you "thin" your bloodline too much, how long before you've got basically zero advantages in taming dragons compared to everyone else? Conversely, if the magic is really strong and remains true even through dozens of generations, does that mean you're granting the same advantages to every house you marry your extraneous kids out to over the years? Does a Baratheon have the exact same capacity to tame a dragon as a Targaryen?

So your choices are basically to let it go, to try and retain control over the dragons via culture and influence and knowledge instead of blood purity and incest, or, double down and prioritize power and control above all else and retain whatever you can from the old blood magics by committing to an unhinged level of inbreeding. And then just tell everyone else that it's totally normal for Valyrians and you're an exception to all the usual rules against marrying your siblings, it's a cultural thing, and totally sell that because 1) it's kind of true and 2) anybody with the authority to call you out on exaggerating has just met a mysterious-yet-fiery end via the Doom.

Basically, you consign your descendants to generations of dysfunction and insularity that is guaranteed to alienate them from any of the nearby cultures they might assimilate into, in exchange for increased (but not total!) control over all hypothetical future dragons. Then you destroy a lot of information about dragons so that it can never be stolen, so that no one else can ever learn that taming dragons without your blood is still entirely possible, just harder and more dangerous. (Then you spend the Century of Blood embroiled in a civil war where you kill off most of your dragons, but uh that part wasn't planned, probably.)

Anyway that's why I think the Targaryens are Like That, and why the dragons of the Dance get tamed in the way that they do. Seasmoke likes Addam because he's kin to Laenor, even without the Targaryen blood, there's enough Velaryon blood in the current Targaryens to make him familiar regardless. Sheepstealer and Nettles (should that happen at all like it did in Fire and Blood) just bonded the normal way, without the blood magic advantage. Generations later, Targaryen blood still yields an edge in interacting with Dany's dragons, but it's just that -- an advantage, not a requirement.

[beware-of-pity]

I need people who would die on the hill of "Fire and Blood is completely unreliable, therefore we cannot trust anything that's written in it" to open their eyes and read a book that is similar to the structure that Fire and Blood uses to realize how wrong of a statement that is. I know that this will probably be received as a very hot take but I do not believe that everything needs to be analyzed or has to have a deeper meaning behind it. The curtain can be blue and there doesn't have to be a reason for the curtain to be blue other than the fact that it's just blue (hope someone gets the reference). Ryan Condall obviously disagrees with that, because in his quest to recreate his own 'magnum opus' of a 'Shakespearian tragedy', as he always likes to refer to it as, he has instead created the equivalent of a dumpster on fire next to the other bigger dumpster on fire that was Game of thrones.

Bland, whitewashed characters with little to no turmoil or agency going on are revered as complex and nuantical on Twitter. And if you even dare to disagree, you're immediately sentenced to the stake. Characters like Alicent and Rhaenyra could literally not even be in the episode and nothing would change. Rhaenyra was in episode 4 for not even 5 minutes and with everything going on in it you wouldn't even have noticed that. She should have been there, leading the council as Cole marched on rook's rest, her only available connection to the mainland in the crownlands, apart from Claw Isle, after duskendale fell to the greens and instead her only scene in such climactic episode is her walk of shame returning home and her, rightfully, getting scolded by her son for thinking that she could still sue for peace with Alicent, the mother of her son's murderer. The show makes the decision to have Rhaenys volunteer instead of having Rhaenyra send her there so that later when Rhaenys dies Rhaenyra cannot be blamed for it. The fundamental changes of characters like Alicent don't work because the writers are not able to sustain such changes from the source material they are deriving the story from. Going from leading the council that would place Aegon on the throne, to never even being in on the plan to usurp Rhaenyra, that her father created, is such a letdown for such a political savy character like book Alicent.

Aging her down, to Rhaenyra's age, and making these two childhood best friends, was a mistake.

What is very evident is that the showrunners have no clue, so far, what to do with a character like show Alicent. If she's not going to lead the council when Aegon is bedridden and Aemond is off to fight in the Riverlands, why doesn't she just leave?

Going from an active participant in a usurpation from somebody who needs to miss-hear or misunderstand her dying husband for her to get in on the plan, only so there is an excuse to get her on the war council is bad writing.

Making people believe that Rhaenyra was usurped because of a misunderstanding, and not only because she was a woman, is bad writing. And going to the extremes, of having these two 'betray' each other in order to have a reason to make Rhaenyra look bad in the eyes of her rivals is bad writing. Rhaenyra could have been the perfect heir, and even only because she was a woman, Otto and Alicent would have usurped her either way.

Going back to the point of this post; Timelines, ages, events, who got married to who, how many kids they had, things that you can quantify are not something that can be made up, used as rumors or form of propaganda in a history book. What you make up as a rumor is sexual escapades and a young girl seducing her sworn shield who has watched over her since she was seven. Things that can make a person look bad to glorify or uphold the good of someone else alongside all the other stuff that happens behind closed doors and makes you question where the information is coming from.

I find it so odd that the aggressive marketing team for the second season was all about choosing your side. Lol, what is there to even choose? Choose between the overly sanctified Rhaenyra, who god forbid is still searching for the peace that has already been thrown over the cliff long ago, and is not allowed yet to make a mistake. Or, Alicent, the pathetic hypocrite who made her bed and is not willing to admit it. Anything interesting about these two women is completely being cut so that Ryan Condall and Co. can continue to spread the "men are bad and violent, women are the gentle peacemakers that don't want war." which is leaning a little too heavy for my taste into gender essentialism which would make every choice they have ever made about these two characters more misogynistic than any of the action of the actual misogynistic characters in this story. Taking away the very little agency these characters had and constantly making them the perpetual victims of the patriarchy and completely sidelining any sort of character traits that they may actually develop through their actions had they actually been taking any, doesn't work for me.

This show was a mistake.

[triangular-static]

okay this is one of those things that i imagine people who read journal 3 a while ago already knew but i'm just reading it now so.

static when a dimension is destroyed that's fun huh :] when the cause is a dimensional rule being broken :] i wonder if the same kind of rule would apply to whatever bill did trying to show a 3d reality to a 2d world :]

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

HotD seems a bit kinder to Ser Otto and Queen Alicent and now even Ser Gwayne. Granted the Hightowers we meet in the main story are only just briefly mentioned by other characters, but what do hear of them like Leyton or Lynesse aren't that great. The Lannister get a lot of (not undeserved) flack from within the fandom, but are under-the-radar terrible as Houses like the Lannisters or even the Freys or Boltons?

I wouldn't say HOTD is kinder to the Hightowers, as much as it allows them to be real people and not just historical caricatures or empty shells. (The biggest failure of F&B's history book conceit, more than any of the other problems with that book.)

For example, Gwayne in the book gets assigned to the Gold Cloaks to keep an eye on them in case some are still loyal to Daemon, and then during the Fall of King's Landing gets murked by his own men because indeed they are still loyal to Daemon. That's it, that's all there is to him, there's no there there. (Although the "You turncloaks!" "Daemon gave us these cloaks and they're gold no matter how you turn them." is a great line, and I hope it's kept even if Gwayne may not be involved.)

Gwayne in the show, however, is a prissy classist racist aristocrat, who is still brave in battle and protective of his sister and caring for his nephew; he's a knight who helps depict GRRM's knighthood themes with Criston; he's an actual person, both good and bad as a GRRM character should be. I have hopes that Gwayne takes the Ser Hobert Hightower role for the Caltrops and Second Tumbleton, that would be a great ending (especially considering his relationship with Daeron) for an excellent actor.

Re the main story Hightowers -- well, generally GRRM goes by Tolstoy's principle of "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Or as he put it, "happy families are boring." Not everyone always gets along in real families, and even the most beloved king and queen can be real assholes to their daughters. I imagine that when we actually meet Leyton in TWOW and find out exactly how complicated his family is -- four wives and ten children, you know there's friction there -- we'll see something imperfect, but different from the Lannisters, Freys, or Boltons. Maybe more dysfunctional the way Cregan Stark's family was dysfunctional or the Tyrells are dysfunctional. (If you think they're a perfectly happy family, then you entirely missed Olenna's relationship with Mace, Mace's relationship with Willas and Loras, Mace's relationship with Margaery, Olenna's relationship with Alerie, and so on and so forth.)

I can see Leyton as a patriarch who became increasingly distant as he got more into esoteric research (he hasn't come down from the top of the Hightower in more than a decade), leaving the eldest son Baelor to manage everything practical in the absence of his father. Was Leyton already half-distant the year before he stopped leaving the Hightower, and that's why he let his youngest daughter (only 16 or 17 years old) marry a newly knighted 35-year-old poor-ass lord from the back of beyond just because he did well in a tourney? How did the rest of the family react to that? The people of Oldtown don't think much of Lynesse now, but how did they feel when their young golden lady was taken away by a bear? These kinds of complicated relationships are the sort of detail GRRM loves to sink his teeth into, and is one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to Sam's Oldtown chapters almost more than anything in TWOW.

[sihtryggr]

one source: no more Cregan for the rest of the season!

another source: Cregan is going to make a re-appearance to lead the winter wolves to the twins!

me:

pretending not to care so I’m pleasantly surprised if he does show up again but not disappointed if he doesn’t (I will be disappointed if he doesn’t show up again)

[witchthewriter]

Spoilers for S2 Ep5 of House of the Dragon:

𝑹𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈: 𝟺/𝟷𝟶. 𝑉𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑢𝑝𝑠𝑒𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑠𝑜𝑑𝑒. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑡 𝑑𝑖𝑑𝑛'𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑡'𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠.

Rest in Peace for The Queen Who Never Was... Rhaenys you WILL be missed. You were backing Rhaenyra left right and centre. You gave her support.

Rest in Peace To Our Red Queen...Meleys, you were a beautiful dragon and what they did to you ... baby you deserve better. You will always be remembered.

CRISTON COLE YOU ARE AN IDIOT. YOU ARE BRINGING HOUSE TARGARYEN DOWN WITH YOUR PARADING. Take your hand necklace off and be a MAN. THINK. THINK. I feel like he's scared of Aemond a bit lol....

Um I'm also confused ... so Aegon is alive. A bit burnt from flying around ... SUNFYRE BABY WHERE ARE YOU. ARE YOU OKAY? SEND A RAVEN BABY I'LL COME GET YOU.

Alicent who do you think you are?? Litte Miss Regency Era?? THAT'S THE WHOLE SUCCESSION PROBLEM BITCH?!

I love the relationship between Mysaria and Rhaenyra; it's brilliant. Power Duo.

(yes this is aegon in a box lol) Like ... wow ooh I wonder who is in that big human sized box... we haven't seen the King .. wonder where he is ... oh the box is going to the King's chambers ... huh how weird.

Alicent is most highly pissed that Cole, her secret lover, incel misogynistic liar didn't choose her, a woman to sit on the throne for the regency...

Daemon... his storyline is confusing me! Yes I understand Harrenhall is haunted, Alys is tormenting Daemon, but ... ITS CONFUSING ME GIRLS. Are we playing Jack from The Shining right now? I'm not in the mood for Redrum. Geezus. AND HIS MOTHER. WE ALL THOUGHT IT WAS AEMMA, WE THOUGHT IN THE PAST HE HAD AN AFFAIR WITH AEMMA. BUT NO. IT'S HIS MOTHHEERRRRRRR.

Oh my god I need a cigarette (i don't even smoke).

Because they are EVICERATING Daemon's character for me.

He always came off as brash and daring and violent. But he had positive qualities - like caring for his family. Keeping the Targaryen name in power. He would never do the things that he's doing this season, let alone this episode!?

And so the idea of the Dragonseeds are born and soon random people will be claiming our beautiful dragons - people we do not know are going to be given nuclear weapons and we just ... hope they're on Team Black? Okay.

All in all - Baela carried this episode.

She was an absolute power house. Bethany was stunning in all her scenes and not only her appearance was spectacular but she really is nailing the character of Baela. She's truly bringing her to life.

gif credit: @kissoflifes, @rhcenyra, @userparamore.

[chilly-weirdo-in-a-tomb]

Alecto Prediction #11

We’ve seen through Corona that when people from the Houses join Blood of Eden, they receive a new Edenite name. We aren’t told who gave her the name Crown Him with Many Crowns in NTN, but I believe that we will find out that it was Pash. It makes sense if we think about which biblical figure Pash correlates to: John the Baptist. In baptism, a person is christened with a name, just like Corona was christened Crown. But John the Baptist is called the Baptist not just for baptizing the average Tom, Dick, and Harry. He also baptized Jesus. And we have a perfectly good lesbian Jesus ready in the wings to ask to be baptized.

This is why I believe that Gideon/Kiriona will join BoE and Pash will give her a new name.

[greenqueenhightower]

Quick question if you perhaps know, after the Alicole sex scene leaks (real or not) I saw the rumour going around that this would happen during b&c. Do you know where this rumour comes from? I saw it mentioned in one of the asks you received.

Personally the sex scene I would be fine with, but to place it during b&c would not make sense to me, especially since this is one of the few mentions of Alicent during this period in f&b as having been present for b&c. I do feel being present for that would shape her character a lot more than having guilt over having sex when she wasn't there. It would make more sense if these scenes were not connected and I would dislike it if they were. What's your opinion?

Yes, I saw the rumor that Alicent and Criston will have sex while B&C happens, and then feel terribly penitent for it. As far as I could tell, it came from a TikToker who saw the episode. I do not have TikTok though, so if anyone does find where that leak came from, please share.

Placing the sex scene during B&C is an abomination because it would condescendingly downplay the significance of the events. First of all, Alicent, as you said, was present and saw with her own eyes what B&C did to her daughter and grandbabies. The shock she suffers witnessing that moment cannot be equated to that of only posthumously learning about it.

Then think about paralleling the scenes in the editing to depict the synchronous acts. It is horrible and coarsely offputting and it would be a disgrace in my eyes.

[sansacherie]

time will prove me wrong if i am wrong lol but if they decides to deviate and have jaehaera survive not only the dance but well into her and aegon iii's adulthood (so basically she's the mother of baelor, daeron, daena, elaena, and rhaena) i have strong suspicions that it will be because of rhaencient

i can imagine them seeing the appeal of the tragedy of these two women being forced apart and how it's echoed in their kids years later being forced to be together. but in the end they serve as foils because while jaehaera and aegon end up building something, alicent and rhaenyra never really had a chance because the cards were stacked against them.

as for daenaera velaryon, like im sorry but the show has clearly demonstrated that it's comfortable making changes to characters/merging characters when it wants. see rhaena & nettles if they go through on it, their attempts to cut out maelor and daeron, changing vaemond velaryon to a brother of corlys..... like sorry but the precedent is there.

and furthermore its viserys ii line that continues anyway, its his line that the following targs are a direct descendant of.

i have strong criticisms about this ship but if i turn out to be right about this ill be cackling and drinking up that nasty lot tears. because y'all 100% would deserve it

[your-gracelyn]

Spoilers for HOTD, Fire & Bood, and potential leaks.

I was a bit confused about the show going super hard on the Daemon-is-going-for-the-throne-for-himself, rather than for Rhaenyra in S2 (so far). From what I know of the book (and in S1) it seemed like he was supportive of Rhaenyra and did everything he did for her. But, I just had a thought that this could be because of Nettles potentially being removed from the show. I thought it could be a result of the fight they had last time they spoke and he’s just being temporarily spiteful in saying he’s the king. Or it’s a manifestation of the weird stuff going on at Harrenhall that’s making him seem to turn on Rhaenyra. But, now I’m not so sure…

I’ve seen leaks/spoilers suggesting Rhaena will take the place of Nettles and claim Sheepstealer in the Vale. If this is true, it doesn’t make sense that Rhaenyra would suspect Daemon was having an affair with Rhaena and order her to be killed and not trust Daemon anymore. Unless she suspects that Daemon is going to take the throne for himself, and thinks Rhaena is helping him.

I suppose it’s not totally unreasonable to think he’s wants the throne for himself over Rhaenyra, but it seemed a bit sudden. Maybe I’m just being biased because I’m more team Rhaenyra adjacent and I wanted her to have someone to rely on.

I think it’s strange they might removed Nettles, at first I thought it would be due to time constraints and having too many characters. I thought they’d blend Alyn and Addam together, but they haven’t, and we’ve had a few scenes now with other dragon seeds. So why only remove Nettles?

[selkiewife]

WHAT IF. The wild dragon of the Vale is Sunfyre?

JEYNE: Rumor of it began shortly after the war. Ranging more broadly for food… my maesters surmise. It is large and formidable, but alas, wild.

They made it sound like Sunfyre was in the process of dying or already dead in the show:

CRISTON: I left a meager garrison behind to protect it and the King's dragon. Sunfyre was long in the dying.

A show only viewer will assume that the dragon died at Rook's Rest. But of course book readers know he is not dead. The same thing happened in the books. Sunfyre was left with guards and was thought to be in the process of dying but of course he did not.

They keep setting up Rhaena to claim the wild dragon (who has never been named as "Sheepstealer." There was plenty of opportunity for Jeyne to say the dragon was Sheepstealer too. For example. "Ranging more broadly for food... the shepherds have taken to calling him Sheepstealer.")

The show keeps alluding to the multiple attempts of Rhaena to claim a dragon- mentioning how she almost died in several of these attempts. It seems obvious that they are alluding to these failed attempts in order to set up the eventual triumph of claiming a dragon in the Vale. But... what if it is a misdirection?

Maybe the last moment of her arc ends with her tracking and finally coming upon the dragon. We think we are going to see another claiming. The camera is on Rhaena's determined face and then we see recognition. "Sunfyre," she says in dismay and then there is a wide shot of Sunfyre, badly beaten, but alive. And that's the last shot of them, ending her arc on a cliffhanger.

This would be funny because then the fandom would have two years to collectively lose their minds over "OH MY GOD THEY ARE GIVING SUNFYRE TO TEAM BLACK. THEY GIVE TEAM BLACK EVERYTHINGGGGG" but then in Season 3, Sunfyre will return to Aegon (as he does in the books) and Rhaena will seek shelter again with Lady Jeyne to eventually hatch Morning- just as she does in the books (and abandoning the children to seek out the dragon explains why she remains in the Vale instead of going to Pentos with the children) after everyone made up a million scenarios in their heads to be outraged about for two years.

Don't worry this is not the reason I have for why I think Nettles is still coming. This was just a thought. "A mad thought" if you will. Probably complete fanfiction... unless? lol.

[wolfienation]

fire&blood spoilers below so read at your own risk

between aegon telling alicent in ep 2 "you wished her life to be spared" and alicent relenting to rhaenyra's demand of aegon's head in ep 8, im going to assume alicent will in fact be present at dragonstone in the distant future

it ties in well with the "come with me" in that when rhaenyra flees KL with aegon iii, she will probably pose that same request to alicent and alicent will accept because at this point, what is left for her in KL? her children dead or presumed dead, her father dead, her brother dead. all there is left is jaehaera and alicent will probably grab that girl and run in an effort to get away

and aegon will be waiting for them, no doubt furious that his mother traded his life away and alicent will probably beg for rhaenyra's life and aegon will do what he no doubt thinks he should have done in the first place.

"you've picked her over me for the last time, mother."

[72crowe89]

Daemon: Well, I’ve already fantasized about sleeping with my mother. It can’t get any worse

Writers: We’re fusing your lover from the book with your daughter

Daemon: Oh dear gods

[ride-thedragon]

Something I've found interesting is in the potential of Nettles not being there how many characters people have managed to stick into the hole she leaves in the narrative. That's a big reason why I personally don't buy into the replacement rumours. I do think she'll be different but not so dismilar that we can't recognise her. With that being said, it's simply impressive the wound she leaves. We have

1.Rhaena on her dragon.

2. Daeron as a narrative question of whether Targaryens alone can ride dragons

3. Baela at the Gullet.

4. Alys and Rhaena in Maidenpool.

5. Addam as the betrayer who fights and gets away.

6. Addam with questionable parentage.

7. Mysaria as Daemon's redemption and so on.

I think people question her importance to the narrative, but this doesn't cover the burned men and the soldiers she kills in the Vale. These characters also just don't fill her place no matter how you try. The only one that comes reasonably close is Mysaria. All this to say, don't lose hope just yet.

[cateyesinlove]

if Rhaenyra flies to harrrenhall to save Daemon from the torment of his visions and helps him deal with them I might think about giving this season a 2 out of 5 stars.

Hot take: I actually hate this show and my partner asks me every Sunday why I put me and him through these hate watches. I am only here for the good parts and to double hate the bad ones.

GRRM really fucked up by selling the rights of his books, I know my dude would have done so much better but he isn't here and it's his fault