#it was so weird to spend an entire season of rhaenyra just rolling around in her reputation only to throw it out in this one (1) scene

[atopvisenyashill]

looking back i DO wish i whacked rhaenyra more in that one ask i got about “it’s just kind of stupid for rhaenyra to execute one of her siblings right” i got really focused on that show moment from alicent’s perspective because…shamefully i will admit………….as an aligon shipper i was like how dARE THEY DO THIS TO ME like i’m still heated tbh i know how they wanted that scene to hit and i did NOT feel it on the alicent/aegon end.

but like that’s the point i’m always on about, is the kinslaying thing is SERIOUS and there’s simply no way for rhaenyra to recover politically from publicly executing or being explicitly linked to aegon’s death when she’s ALREADY facing maegor allegations!! and rhaenyra knows this it’s why she’s so angry at daemon. optics are simply so much more important for her & if she’s trying to take the throne while she’s a woman and she’s got these fucking andal/first men looking kids, she can’t just DO SHIT LIKE THAT. and how do i know she can’t recover politically? it’s bc she doesn’t lmao helaena is the precursor the city needs to explode in part because of the kinslaying taboo!!! nyra’s a woman clearly aware of the optics, she talks about how she’s perceived constantly when she tries to emulate visenya, when she does her ding dong ditch routine with aemond, when she slaps whatshisface and talks about fear, even if she’s colossally bad at judging how her actions will look, she knows how shes SUPPOSED to be looking. so it was like rhaenyra. that’s a dumb ultimatum and you KNOW it’s dumb, there's NO WAY these people will forgive you for executing YOUR OWN BROTHER after your party (regardless of who is to blame, again, something she KNOWS) just murdered his child while he was sleeping in bed.

so that was why that convo annoyed me to the level it did. i didn’t love the sept scene for example but at least the general conversation they were having fit the characters - the stubborn rhaenyra “we need to sue for peace” vs the frustrated alicent “we live in reality not your head” IS a common argument w those two, so i do Get what they’re going for on a character level. but the finale scene didn’t feel like an argument between two people who have known each other their whole lives, there simply weren’t enough low blows. i think rhaenyra could get away with out and out killing aemond bc of the luke death but literally anyone else named targaryen looks just soooo bad so it was frustrating not only for rhaenyra to stupidly suggest this but then alicent crumbling immediately made me gasp at my screen i was so mad.

[atopvisenyashill]

write the au you want to see in the world okay is this show or book canon well i like to do book canon timelines and pepper in show personalities here and there for seasonings-

they spend a while after driftmark writing secret letters and hashing out a big speech to give viserys together first, so he’s on their side when they go to the small council

rhaenyra has a few sticking points that aegon is more than ready to roll over for but both of them know alicent & otto won’t. the first succession/inheritance - rhaenyra insists not only will succession stay the same (ie, the line still descends from her) but their children will be married to jace & baela’s.

otto & alicent couldn’t care less about that. they lock eyes when rhaenyra says it immediately and silently communicate “we’ll agree now and deal with that shit later right? right, moving on” and tyland makes a note to ask them what that was about at their secret meetings later

the second sticking point is “what is aegon’s title?” rhaenyra is willing to give up “protector of the realm” to aegon, but insists he be called “prince consort” as does viserys. the thing is otto & alicent DO NOT WANT THAT AT ALL. i can see otto even being willing to say they can both have ruling power, but aegon has to be called KING.

anyways, i imagine they spend the entire mourning period arguing these points.

next wrinkle is babies - if rhaenyra has a son, she’s fucked so she makes maester mellos do a blood pact secret promise to help her have regular access to moon tea. at the same time, if they wait to have a child too long, people are going to talk, especially as aegon gets older.

and like - he’s 14 (so she’s 24) (why did i think she was 12 years older. did i really convince myself all this time she was 12 when her mom died and she was 10??? jfc) when they marry, and they have to consummate, but after that, rhaenyra essentially treats him exactly like one of her kids. calls him sweetling. free with compliments. starts teaching him valyrian more properly, goes dragon riding regularly. there’s a sexual undercurrent here that is very obvious but she’s not technically acting on it, largely bc she’s trying not to get pregnant, and letting him come to her.

he probably has a bastard when he’s like 16/17 though, and then it becomes “okay you gotta sleep in my bed regularly at least so people don’t gossip” and then she shifts into something a little more charged, and more sexual - does she realize she’s patterning their relationship off her relationship with daemon? i think yes but she’s fully repressing that reality bc she doesn’t want to think about it even a little.

she’s also actively pitting them against each other. initially, she assumed aegon would clash most with her kids but as it turns out, he mostly likes jace, he doesn’t mind joffrey. he gets weird with luke which makes sense except at some point she realizes it’s partially bc she also calls luke sweetling so to make sure aegon & luke don’t get deranged around each other, she just starts manipulating things so aegon gets deranged around daemon instead. 

daemon is having a really normal one about all this btw. definitely doesn’t move himself and the twins back into the capital so he can grump about the rhaegon marriage.

(i feel like. he has to be doing something weird here but i’m unsure what. he’s not siding with the greens, but once again rhaenyra has married someone else so even tho he’s mellowed out bc their kids are marrying, i still think he’s being weird here. and tbf, rhaenyra is also going to be having a weird time about it lmao, and she’s actively making it weirder for all three of them).

i imagined rhaenyra as having moved back to the capital for this, but i do think after several years she’s once again going to want to leave. there’s going to be a lot of gossiping about a baby and what it’ll look like and when it’s coming and all that, + I think even though it’s still verboten on calling her kids bastards, the greens next move is “how do we put her oldest three aside” and that is going to leak out into court gossip. aegon is already a very suggestible person so if she even vaguely hints at “this shit SUCKS i want to go back home” i think he would jump on the chance to have some privacy.

now the thing is…vaemond still exists. corlys still gets sick, and vaemond may still come forward to say he should get driftmark. but vaemond was very likely emboldened to try that because there was open war between the two sides brewing. this is a wildly different political field.

i am thinking about an au where aegon approaches rhaenyra at laenor’s funeral and is like “hey we should get married because i’ve been obsessing and i think it’s the only way we can avoid a succession crisis” and rhaenyra agrees and spends the next several years mommying the FUCK out of aegon, has him crown her when viserys dies, then shows up to the first small council meeting with her boy toy husband and is like “actually otto, lannisters, get FUCKED” and chases them out