#helaena prettiness

[sidraofthewildflowers]

𝐻𝑒𝓁𝒶𝑒𝓃𝒶 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒹𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓂𝑒𝓇

[lemonhemlock]

the reason why i don't think blood & cheese works without maelor is because it undermines the gravity of helaena's choice

in the books, as we all know, she has to choose which son to sacrifice. blood & cheese are going to kill one either way, so, whatever happens, if you want to get cynical about it, aegon will still be left with a male heir of his body. no, the horribleness of the choice lies not really in dynastic matters, but in basic humanity: which of your children are you willing to condemn to death? and helaena truly does try to make the best out of a bad situation, she picks not because she loves jaehaerys more, but because maelor is so tiny that she hopes he won't understand what's going to happen to him.

and she absolutely has to choose, because b&c threaten to rape her daughter if she doesn't. it's psychological torture. b&c just want to fuck her up in the head as much as possible and helaena tries her goddamnest to minimize the harm done to her family. to further compound on the tragedy, b&c kill the opposite child, so now she has to live out the rest of her days knowing that the son left alive is the son SHE herself marked for the axe. which is what understandably drives her to lose her mind

now, in the show, the "problem" blood & cheese have doesn't exist at all: that they can't supposedly tell the twins apart. but (as awful as it sounds, since it involves sexual assault) they could very easily check which child has male genitalia and be done with it. it's a "problem" that takes literal seconds to solve. they don't need helaena at all! it becomes irrelevant which child she points towards - b&c can always just check! she can't save jaehaerys in this situation no matter what she does, because b&c were never interested in jaehaera in the first place. in the books, she has the ability to save one child and this exact horrible "agency" bestowed on her torments her for the rest of her days. in the show, even had she pointed towards jaehaera, it would have been a narrative plot hole for the writers to have killed her without checking

likewise, in the books, she begs them to kill her instead, but, in the show, she offers them a necklace? you can't deny that the dramatic stakes are lowered substantially by making that change. which one of these options would have been more filled with pathos? personally, it just feels like this was phia's moment to shine and, while she did a good job with what she had, every narrative choice was somehow made to subdue this horrible event and left her only crumbs to work with. cinematically-speaking, this scene (as it was executed) does not even come close to the iconic moments that cemented GoT into the collective consciousness, which is very strange, as the subject matter is anything but mediocre

and that's not even getting into the rest of the plot holes that others have already pointed out, like:

- why are there no guards at helaena's door or anywhere else for that matter? not just on that hallway, but on many other hallways, she has to run quite a lot to get to alicent's chambers

- why is her room unlocked at the very least

- why is ALICENT's room unlocked, for that matter? she is having secret guilty sex with criston and she forgets to lock her door in a castle full of spies? anyone could have walked in

- not even getting into this whole thing just being one huge misunderstanding + minimizing daemon's and mysaria's roles :))

- NOT EVEN mentioning removing the trauma of alicent witnessing all of this, gagged and bound on her own bed, not being able to help or intervene in any way

i can understand the likelihood of these elements happening sometimes (maybe someone does forget to lock their door from time to time, maybe a guard does shirk their duties from time to time), but you can't write all of them at once without it turning all looney tunes. if you introduce too many aspects that defy logic in your story, it ceases to be believable and just becomes bad writing

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also, "they killed <the boy>"? not "my son" or "jaehaerys"? it sounds so removed, don't you think? helaena out there on her mother's floor dropping exposition for the audience 🥲

[sunfyredefender77]

are we seeing the same person orrr????

her face card is lethal

[vharax]

When I drew these two a year ago, they had no clue what was coming for them in the second season...

[lilycatttt]

Team black in another universe

[littlemissmoodswings]

made a "what if rhaenyra had daughters instead of sons" fancast – so now i feel it is only justice to do a "what if alicent had daughters instead of sons" edition.

[ elle fanning as alyssa targaryen. feel like some of her work in the great is very much a fem!aegon vibe. also obligatorily named after vizzy t's mama ]

[ freya allan/hunter schafer as aemma targaryen. viserys is BOUND to name a kid aemma if he had more daughters, i'm convinced. aemma would believe herself visenya reborn.

where freya has the environment/resources to suit a fem aemond, hunter schafer has the looks 1000% ]

[ anya taylor joy as daenaera targaryen. no notes, just felt like daeron had to be looped in here as the 3rd son ]

[nxpthys]

Helaena: We may not listen to you sometimes.

Aemond: Or respect you, as our eldest.

Daeron: And sure, we like making fun of you.

Aegon: ... But?

Aemond: There is no ‘but’, that’s it.

[dob-the-destroyer]

who else up thinking about how alicent clings to her friendship with (and feelings for) rhaenyra because it’s the only relationship in her life that was actually her choice to make

[kjwaikiki]

Funny HOTD idea:

I just had this very funny idea that when Rhaenyra and her family come to Kingslanding to defend Lucerys claim and the Greens see their nephews and sister after so many years it is season two Jacaerys with the curls that they see.

The reason for this is that I want everyone to see Jacaerys and be shocked at how pretty he is. Particularly I want Helaena to see this and immediately be angry at her mother. Here is an incredibly attractive, noble, kind young man who she could have been married to.

Helaena knows that there were talks of a betrothal but that her mother pushed for her to wed Aegon. She made her peace with it and it helped that last time she saw Jace he was a child. Helaena does not want to be married to Aegon but she also does not want to be married to a child.

But Jace is back now and he is gorgeous and kind and dances with her. I just have this hilarious image in my head of Helaena just blue screening when she sees Jace and then looking at her mother all offended like: I could have married that!!!!! And instead you married me to that!!!! (Cue a drunk Aegon who is sweaty and smells like Flea Bottom).

I just want to see Helaena go off on her mother. “Not only did you put in motion the Dance of the Dragons where pretty much everyone in our family will die and the dragons will go extinct leading to our house being almost eradicated BUT you also married me to a drunken rapist when I could have married JACAERYS!!!! Do you HATE me!!!!!”

I just get such a kick out of imagining kind, docile Helaena going full Targaryen on her mother over her nephew. She is so indignant that she did not get to marry pretty, noble Jacaerys and now because of her mother Baela gets to. Although Aegon the Conqueror did have two wives…

[mmelolabelle]

Aemond killed a nephew and deep-fried his own brother and king, at this point the only way he’s flying anywhere with Helaena and Dreamfyre is over Alicent’s dead body.

[sidraofthewildflowers]

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“𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝒶 𝒷𝑒𝒶𝓈𝓉 𝒷𝑒𝓃𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒷𝑜𝒶𝓇𝒹𝓈…” - 𝐻𝑒𝓁𝒶𝑒𝓃𝒶 𝒯𝒶𝓇𝑔𝒶𝓇𝓎𝑒𝓃

[livinces]

Gatekeeping my faves until you fake-fan bitches learn how to play with them right.

[comradekarin]

“she’s getting desperate. and now she expects us to ignore her transgressions and for me to marry my only daughter to one of her…. plain featured sons” aside from the obvious fact that jace marrying helaena would actually be extremely beneficial for the hightowers (though, it’s not really about what nyra will DO but just nyra herself they rebuke)…. let’s get one thing straight. alicent…. say what you will about nyra’s kids ok…. but calling them UGLY ain’t one of them honey. not when her so called plain featured son out mogs 95% of the show chile just look at the material

[um-weird-flex-but-ok]

If they didn't want me to become obsessed with Aegon then they shouldn't have made him greasy and pathetic

“but he does so many awful things—” his victims are fictional and I lack self-preservation instincts, try again

[sunnysideaeggs]

Before GRRM's blog I saw so many TB fans viral tweets about how smallfolk loving Helaena and Alicent was Maesters/Greens propaganda 🤭

omg this 😭 i saw a tiktok about how the smallfolk liking alicent and helaena was ‘propaganda’ because they didn’t pass any laws like alysanne or rhaenys the conqueror did. did they forget the 20 years of alicent being queen in times of peace? the people of king’s landing see the royals and create opinions about them, they know helaena is kind and gentle and alicent is wise and pious. the smallfolk of king’s landing celebrated helaena’s birth, wedding and children for sure, they know her, and knowing about someone’s life for years makes them dear.