#hell yeah Helaena POV!

[emilykaldwen]

The Maiden and the Drowning Boy Rating: Explicit Chapters: 20 (give or take) Ships: Aegon II Targaryen x Abrogail Strong, Aemond Targaryen x Helaena Targaryen, Eventual Jacaerys Velaryon x Helaena Targaryen Summary: As the kingdom teeters on the edge of chaos, Alicent Hightower swaps the pieces on the board: Aegon will marry Abrogail Strong, Larys’ younger sister and heir to Harrenhal. Caught in the web of intrigue and political machinations, the pair must figure out where their loyalties lie, and what they mean to one another.

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CHAPTER FOUR- Solace In Being Heard

Her fingers tugged at the loose braid, curls and frizz coming out of it like the frills along Dreamfyre’s neck. Now that her dragon was settled with her clutch, Helaena's restlessness over the previous week had eased. She felt more in the present than pulled elsewhere, as it always was when these things happened; it was as if a haze went over everything, and Helaena felt wrapped in cotton wool, her senses focused on the smell of brimstone and the low glow of the dark nests inside the dragon pit. Of the need to protect, of the need to be in herself, but not herself. Helaena could only describe it as if she leant Dreamfyre her strength during these times. Like she could lend her senses to her soulmate to ensure she felt safe when giving birth. She’d never spoken a word of it to Aegon in their years together, for Sunfyre did not lay eggs or roost with any other dragon in such a way, and Vhagar didn’t seem to lay eggs either. Helaena supposed she could ask Aemond about it, for he had read far more about dragons than she, but Helaena didn’t. There were some things that could not be learned from books. There were things one instinctively knew and Helaena knew, somewhere, that her dragon’s strength was her own, and her own was her dragon’s.

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[sansacherie]

Was Alicent being a bad mother this episode in your opinion ?

look, alicent fits the "parents as people" trope.

but honestly i wanted to point out certain moments imo in this episode that get lost because people are either mocking or salivating over her failure to comfort a crying aegon (even though a, he didn't see her actually and b, this was preceded by a scene where otto rejected alicent reaching out for his comfort so yeah....)

she is devastated by the cruelty inflicted on helaena and blames herself for it- "bad" mothers would be indifferent to their children's pain.

as above alicent's eyes are filled with pain while looking at aegon while he breaks down during their emergency small council. "a bad mother". she is clearly disgusted by otto's plan and tries to protest it. we see her internally agonize over it, and finally break down before convincing aegon that perhaps his grandfather the lord hand is right. from alicent's pov, this is clearly motivated by her desire to protect her children. the only way to protect her children is to keep aegon on the throne and therefore causing damage to rhaenyra's reputation is necessary. it is an ugly situation but the situation was already ugly with the senseless murder of a child.

instead of simply telling helaena that she has no choice about going, she tries empathizing with her and at least explains why they have to go. a simply "bad mother" would straight up not care about explaining difficult things to their child.

she is very likely the reason why it wasnt worse for helaena during that funeral scene. helaena is almost having a panic attack, and she tries climbing into alicent's lap to feel safe. could you imagine if otto had decided that helaena alone should have the "honor" (using quotes here as helaena did not wish to be in such a public manner) of riding alone as the queen and mother of the once heir to the throne? i think it's safe to say that alicent would have been HELL NO to helaena going by herself even if it meant alicent also having to be a "spectacle". alicent's instinct has always been to protect helaena, hence why helaena goes straight to her mother's chambers after fleeing blood and cheese.

she does not blame aemond for blood and cheese even though a "bad mother" might have been tempted to shift blame somewhere else for such a horrific thing, whether those feelings of guilt are justified or not.

[ladymorghul]

"The characters that I immediately wanted to get into are the characters that we didn't get to spend a ton of time with at the end of the season because of the needing to move through 20 years of narrative," Condal explains. "We did not get to spend a lot of time with Aemond, Helaena, Jace, Baela, or Rhaena. Those characters are so immediately connected to Rhaenyra, Alicent, Daemon [Matt Smith], Viserys, and Otto that we wanted to immediately shine the spotlight on them and get into their internal lives and what they make of all of this."

That Ryan quite hurts my soul, he is such a dirty liar, he can't keep getting away with it. Where was the spotlight on children? Only Aegon got decent screentime and maybe Jace. He even named Aemond first as if he cared about his development the entire season and didn't leave him off screen for the whole first half (GREEN half btw) of the season! We don't see his "internal life", we don't hear his thoughts, we don't get his point of view, he was the bogeyman of Westeros. I hate Ryan.

the only internal life we got with aemond was his time with sylvie and imo that was so badly wasted on bringing back luke. ewan has to say off screen that aemond felt bad his nephew got to pay the price and i feel like this is insane. how do you address luke from aemond's pov on screen but not one of the worst crimes that happened during the dance era that was directly related to aemond.

but yeah... i felt like they didn't do enough for the kids and even when they did show scenes, some of them were wasted imo. if you have 8 episodes to show the story, you better put in really important bits that develops your characters. i didn't like how helaena spent most of her scenes with alicent. hell, personally i would have even liked to see her in a scene with criston where he expressed some sort of grief after what she had endured, especially because the show made the bias move of making this his fault too.

we needed to see aemond and helaena post b&c, to explore that guilt and grief more. aemond and aegon. hell even the three of them together in one room would have been amazing.

i can't speak much for baela and rhaena, but it's kind of crazy they spent time on rhaena running around but didn't show the scene of her claiming sheepstealer (she claimed him, right?! idek). or how baela had some action but really spent a lot of the time hovering around rhaenyra.

idk man, it just sucks.

[goddessofroyalty]

So in bfb lucerys and aemond don't sleep outside of heat till he returns from war and luke is surprised by that do they ever talk about it? Does luke think he's attracted to him or aemond is still just doing his duty? Luke is over all way too meek when it comes to his interactions to aemond, I loved it when in the chapter he put aemond in his place before taking laenor to his first flight

Luke definitively tries to talk to Aemond about it once the dust settles from the battle and life starts to return to what has become their normal. But I don't know if Aemond really takes part in the conversation because I don't know if he's ready at that point to actually acknowledge even himself his feelings.

Their relationship in the fic develops in kind of a series of catalyst moments of them going from "this is purely duty" to contentment. And that moment is definitively one of those moments but it is not the final. Viserys is still alive so the succession matter is far from settled and that definitively loomed in a very unhelpful way over their relationship in those days. They've only had one kid and Aemond is struggling a bit in that he's coming to realise how useless he is in the relationship (winning the battle is his "aha! I have something I can do here!" moment that turns into his... conquering habits). He's still working through the fact that actually he's attracted to Luke (the bastard who took his eye who is proving more competent than a lot of alpha lords Aemond's met and who is easily raising their child as Targaryen).

Yeah, it is one of the Known Problems with how I've written that fic - it being scenes jumping all over the chronology (and often moments of intensity) and not a consistent follow-through plot (maybe one point I'll write the scene where he made Aemond beg for him to allow Helaena and the kids to stay with them despite Luke having already come to the same conclusion and maybe one point I'll write the actual domestic easiness). And also a lot of the moments being within the family where a) Aemond can get away with a bit more b) Aemond's actual thoughts/temperament are a bit more well known by the other POV characters (to use the scene from the latest chapter where he was glaring at the Lord Luke was dealing with - from the Lord's POV that looked 100% like Big Scary Alpha Targ Backing Up His Mate And Lord While Said Lord Leads The Negotiations - Aemond is basically reduced to Luke's Personal Knight something that socially makes sense for a Lord (especially an omega Lord) to have when out in the open. Daemon is doing the exact same thing with Rhaenyra.).

But it's also because I don't think Luke bothers to argue down Aemond much and that's where he shows his power because he doesn't need to he's the one ultimately in charge. If Aemond makes a good point then sure Luke will take it on board but all decisions are ultimately his not Aemonds. Aemond has to convince him not the other way around. Aemond is seen as an extension of Luke and Luke's authority not the other way around.

Plus there's a level of intersocial power of Luke having all this power to make Aemond's (and Helaena's and the kids) lives hell but, unlike what would have happened if that power dynamic was reversed, he doesn't past what the situation actually demands.

[lemonhemlock]

i don't like the children to be aemond's because I'm a low key hater of his characterisation in the show lol.

dude is visenya 2.0, hell he even gets her dragon. and Ryan and co. make him this dutiful guy that is supposed to be walmart daeron? nah, miss me with that shit, if he was like book!aemond it would make more sense in my head. aemond in the books is way more reckless than show!aemond IMHO.

and it's not even about helaena, she can fuck whoever she wants, you go girl!!!! but I believe that my girl would be smarter than that? tbf, I think all characters besides rhaenyra wouldn't be that dumb. (i know the kids would look the same, but still having v*serys as a father, after seeing how he treated aemond losing his eye, I personally wouldn't risk it)

fuck aemond, don't fuck aemond i personally don't care...i just don't think he deserves to have children with helaena after he abandons his family to stay in harrenhal, crash and burn walmart!daeron.

i have to say that you're not the first anon who's disgruntled that, out of aegon & aemond, they chose aemond as the character to make more sympathetic. i think you are right in that aemond was given some of daeron's traits; it is very likely that they did not intend to include daeron at all, so they preferred to mesh these two characters as a compromise. in any case, they must have fought over it; perhaps it is one of the reasons miguel sapochnik left - grrm even gave a public declaration that daeron WILL be included and when the time came to design the intro, they DID include 4 rivulets of blood streaming out of alicent to signify her 4 children, as they did with helaegon's 3 children, even though only the twins appear in S1.

so, yeah, it's fair to say mewmond came about as a result of a compromise. that being said, i'd be lying if i said i didn't love what they did with his character. i'd even go so far as to say that it was the right decision to make commercially as well, because he became vv popular with v little screen time. even team black stans keep trying to steal him from us. i don't have a problem with making characters more sympathetic - team black included - what bothers me is the ridiculous bias. generally-speaking, i always like it a lot more when they make the characters out to be more human and understandable, even when they're antagonistic.

there is also the fact that, from a geographical POV, they couldn't really focus on daeron in S1 either, bc he's canonically in oldtown and they couldn't have brought him to KL without performing significant changes to the plot and complicating themselves. SO, taking into account the whitewashing of team black as it is, if they would have made aemond less sympathetic, the two sides would have ended up even more imbalanced.

anyway, what i actually wanted to say is that the characterization they did give aemond makes a lot of sense even in book-context. the maester writing FB is clearly not interested in fleshing out aemond as a person, this is a history textbook, but it is believable to me that aemond would have incurred a lot of psychological and physical damage as a result of his eye being slashed out. and idk it's just more interesting to lean into that side instead of making him a terrorist child from the get-go. this absolutely does not contradict any of the fucked up shit he'll do later on in the series, it's more about progression and descent into madness

[consistentsquash]

HOTD Fridays - Detailed Fic Rec - Coda

Link - Coda

Length - 25000 words. Rated M.

TL;DR - Ossuarium's Coda. This fic is straight up a coda. It's a lookback at the beautiful lore, characterizations, relationships and the spectacular plot that we got to read and fall in love with.

We get 13 POVs corresponding to the 13 people Daemon loses. Really a subversion on the hero's journey recipe. Antihero's journey? Also feels like Major Arcana? Maybe? Don't quote me on that though.

Alysanne. The Guide. - She is intense and formidable. We get to see how she connects with Daemon and essentially teaches him everything about their family/dragons. Later on, when Daemon is teaching Rhaenyra or Baela we can see a lot of her influence in him.

None of Alysanne's children had tolerated Dragonstone well. Her grandchildren; Rhaenys and Daemon took to the sorcery-warped hold as if they too were fused of blood and black stone by spells of fire.

2. Baelon. The Father. He is totally lost after Alyssa's death and kind of hopeless at raising his kids. But he wants to be there for them. He tries! The type of father Daemon becomes is essentially following Baelon's example.

Baelon woke in the nights with terrible visions of Balerion taking Viserys to hell as he had taken Aerea, and of Daemon dying with a bolt in his throat while Caraxes munched on goats.

3. Jaehaerys. The King. He is trying his best to fix things in the realm but that has a big cost because he loses his children + wife's love. He has 13 kids. The 13 wounds Daemon ends up with is essentially a callback to the 13 kids Jaehaerys loses. Their relationship is messy peak family drama but with Love in capitals.

They said that Jaehaerys loved his grandchildren more than he had loved his children. His grandchildren were what remained of Alysanne; he loved them in guilt and remorse and regret.

4. Aemma. The Sister. Daemon had a sister. It was Aemma. They both love Viserys. They both love Rhaenyra. They are on the same wavelength. It's what Aemond and Helaena can be if they weren't like in the middle of a war with some crazy parents. This is the saddest POV, IMO. But it's also the most character revealing.

She was Dim Daella's daughter. Daella had been married in the Sept of Dragonstone because she could not bear the sounds of crowds. There had been no bedding ceremony, because Daella could not have borne the shame of it. Grandmother had suggested that for Aemma's wedding, but Grandfather had refused her flatly. The realm must celebrate, he had said.

5. Rhea. The Wife. She is doing her best to save her household/herself from Daemon's mood swings and general awfulness. Because it's not like he's a good husband or anything. But they have a pretty decent working partnership. They actually care for each other in their own weird way. Rhea's rune knife is Daemon's last weapon in Ossuarium and we get to see them bonding over it. It's really bittersweet.

In a long wedlock, one counted what one had. Oh, she would be bitter and resentful soon, and she would meet his cruel words with her own, but right then, for a brief spell, there was peace and quiet.

6. Laena. The Lover. Honestly Ossuarium's Laena is the best. Rhaenyra loves her. Daemon loves her. It is perfect compersion/Book!Laena dynamics with Rhaenyra. I really love her POV because Rhaenyra was capable of making good female friends outside Alicent. Also because Rhaenyra and Daemon are more than just their relationship with each other. Laena POV in the coda finally does justice to Daemon's Viserys trauma about his brother holding a dagger to his neck. Which. Yeah. A classic case of Targ family bonding.

Her husband's head was on her lap and she kissed him in glad lust. Vhagar was exasperated and amused and bubbling with affection.

7. Viserys. The Husband. Ossuarium's Viserys/Daemon is the trainwreck you can't look away from. Because it's that bad and that good. They are intense and Viserys goes 100% Targ when it is about Daemon. Also they love each other. With peak stupidity. Maximum Targ. While Ossuarium doesn't really have an OTP as such Viserys/Daemon is the heartbeat of the series because of how much collateral damage they end up creating. We get the extraordinary, special and intensely beautiful Viserys POV one last time.

His gaze was heavy and grieving as he watched the rot and ruin of you that he had caused. Of his making. It was all of his making. They leeched you. The fattest prey there was. That there had been. You were emaciated and alone. Ten years. He had returned to Dragonstone and wed Rhaenyra. He visited you dutifully and frequently, but between you lay a gulf of old and unforgivable grief.

8. Luke. The Son. Luke being a really good boy. With a really crazy uncle with zero impulse control on top of a dragon with negative impulse control. He has 100% confidence that his Dad will avenge him.

"My father knows where I am."

9. Rhaenys. The Queen. Ossuarium is essentially a story about Alysanne's legacy and her four grandchildren. Rhaenys was Alysanne's chosen Queen. We have Daemon finally accepting that. Because it should have been Rhaenys. The relationship between Rhaenys and Daemon is one of the most fascinating dynamics in Ossuarium because they love the same people, they value the same things, but they have totally opposite ways of showing it. IMO, Rhaenys is the literal heart of Ossuarium. She is brilliant in her POV in the coda.

In the Dragonmont's shadow, the last of Alysanne's grandchildren embraced each other upon the ossuarium of their house. Each bore the other's favour. The remains of them they clung to in fierce hoard-hold.

10. Jace. The Heir. Ossuarium's Jace is fantastic. His resentment about being a bastard and getting mocked about it, his love for Baela, his confusion about how Daemon sees him, his support for Rhaenyra without missing her weaknesses, his need to get validated by Rhaenys, his protectiveness for his sibs, his search for a father figure, his willingness to do anything to protect his family. We get to see everything in his Coda POV. Including a great serving of the tense relationship he has with Daemon. He opposes Daemon knowing that Daemon will forgive him. Because that's what a father does.

Jace should not speak of the matter again, but he wanted to hear that he had been right. Mother had told him that he was in the right. Grandfather had told him. He wished that Father would affirm him too.

11. Viserys II. The Prince. Literally. He comes up on top because he is clever, plucky, endlessly optimistic, manipulative when he needs to be and has 100% faith in his family. He is probably the best King Westeros lost out on. We get to see it here. Whatever his situation he figures out what to do. He is the best GOT player of their family. Also he does everything to get back to his family. Everything from his relationship with Daemon and Rhaenyra to his love for brothers/sisters to his really special attachment to Aegon is 100% a mirror of Daemon himself.

He parted himself in thirds, for brother and wife and the light that came.

12. Rhaenyra. The Twine/The Yoke. Because she is Daemon's everything including the weirdest passionate umbilical connection ever. The twine he chose/the yoke it gradually changed into. There is nobody else who can make him fall so low and rise so high. He screwed her life up big time. Also saved her. Also screwed her life up again. Rhaenyra is the biggest tragedy in this story. It's messy/passionate/horrible/frightening/beautiful/intense. This is a love for the ages. But it is the type of love that nobody really wants because it's scary and a million ego deaths. Like you can't consciously decouple from this. There is no going back.

He did not speak her name. He sang it as if it were a hymn. Perhaps that was why he could not harden himself against her. What man could erect a carapace to protect himself when he spoke a name as hymn?

13. Caraxes. The Heart. Because. This is Ossuarium. This is the greatest sacrifice in Ossuarium and it's also the most willing one. Because Daemon was everything to Caraxes just like Caraxes was everything to Daemon. They are fire made flesh. They belong to each other. Caraxes is the 13th/final wound and the one that ends up saving Daemon. Plot spoilers so I won't go into more detail. But how absolutely spectacular to have the Caraxes POV as the closer because the Caraxes POV opened Ossuarium.

Their once-home was a place of fourteen flames. They are what remains of it in misshapen heart and warped wyrm-wings. Their troth is what remains of it. They burn as the fourteen once burned, unto ossuarium. Peregrine things, the lonely elm and the vine that sought it so that they might be peregrine no more, for the vine's home is the elm, and the elm's home the vine that hoard-holds it.

Like a lot of things about Ossuarium, the devil is in the details and the layers. Caraxes keeps the agendered present tense POV. Viserys keeps his unreliable 2nd person POV. The others remain in the past tense. Because Caraxes is the one who ensures Daemon's future and Viserys is the one we don't know if Daemon ever recovered from.

But. Read the coda. Read it for Caraxes because this is essentially a story about a boy and his dragon. With lots of meditations about masculinity and gender. With a lot of questions about where exiles/others belong in a society. Also Targs being Targs 100%.

[ladymorghul]

Aegon was drunk when he raped Dyana and considering the "except sometimes when he's drunk" part from Helaena I really think the writers tried to make the point, that he's truly uncontrollable when drinking too much and yes, forces himself on women (and no, being drunk does NOT excuse his sexual crimes at all), including Helaena when he's in their chambers and not out there in Flea Bottom or with some unfortunate maid in the castle. Although I think he does the same to other women when he's sober, but in that case he mostly ignores Helaena considering his comments about her before the marriage. I doubt he had a change of heart about her in the meantime and is now having romantic feelings about his wife.

Back to that line, honestly what woman would want to have sex with their drunk husband? To allow allow a drunk husband to force himself on them? No one and I don't get the people who think the toast was the way she tried to express her disappointment in him ignoring her or similar interpretations. The subtext is way too obvious IMHO: he neglects her when sober and has sex with her (or rather, forces himself) when drunk, but maybe it's like you said and nothing bad happens. Other than that I don't think there's been any other indication of potential abuse in their relationship, like physical abuse. And by the way, Viserys wasn't physically abusive towards Alicent either but this doesn't change the fact it was marital rape (judging by our standards since marital rape is not a thing in Westeros) which we should call out and condemn, that Alicent was obviously unwilling to sleep and have children with him so from this point of view I think some Greens are intentionally pretending not to see the fact Helaena and Aegon's marriage is pretty much the same like most arranged marriages in Westeros and not some loving thing where both spouses love each other and want to make love with each other: no, they both have to do their duty and have sex against their will to produce heirs and have no choice but to do so and accept it (well obv Aegon, unlike her, has the privilege of being a male and is choosing to cheat with several other women but this is different matter).

hmmm

viserys and aegon are not in the same position considering that viserys consciously chose alicent hightower, his daughter's 14 year old best friend whom he knew since she was a child (and who was still a child at that time), to wed and bed her vs aegon who was betrothed to helaena when he was 13.

like yes aegon sleeping with an unwilling helaena is marital rape but ultimately, like you said, this is probably like at least half of the forced marriages.

and while we don't have helaena's pov on aegon pre feast, i too don't think the writers' goal were to imply helaena wants aegon's attention. i could be wrong tho.

but yeah, aegon, as a man, does have privilage over her and they are judged differently by their society.

i'm trying to keep some hope alive that what transpired or hasn't between them goes as far as aegon attempting in his drunken state to sleep with helaena and helaena being like fuck off.

in any case im currently beating aegon behind a denny's just for good measure. whether my hope ir real or not. im just thinking that it would be horrible for helaena to endure this on top of everything headed her way. and i want her magically safe from it. but im not denying that aegon is a pos w women especially.

to me the reaction in the room was a little weird ngl. no shot directly on otto or aemond or even hell, rhaenyra, for some negative reaction. daemon giggles. alicent looks confused, otto cheers on helaena at the end, viserys is like myeah whatever, music please?