#it's also that book daemon is a lot less power hungry than his show counterpart

[navree]

Do you think in the book that Daemon loved Rhaenyra genuinely or he just wanted power?

This is kind of a tough one for me just because I don't really ship Daemyra so I'm not someone who's going to be actively looking for the good sides of the ship. But I think, just looking at it objectively, it was a mixture of both.

Daemon is someone who is capable of feeling love, first and foremost. There are people who say he's a narcissist so the only person he can really love is himself, but I do think he loved Laena, I do think he felt some kind of way towards Nettles, especially considering what he was willing to do to help her escape, and I do think a part of him loved Rhaenyra. He was clearly sexually attracted to her, he clearly doted on her as a niece (and bad Targaryen boundaries/incest habits along with the way Westerosi society views women and their maturity), and they were very close in his time between coming back from the Stepstones and his marriage to Laena/exile in Essos. He spent time with her actually doing stuff, doing activities like hawking and just hanging out and talking about his life. He also did support Rhaenyra's claim during the Dance, when it might have even been more beneficial to him personally to support Aegon's side and the legal precedent of "male children above female children", especially considering the whole thing started due to him being displaced for Rhaenyra. But he stayed to support her, he fought for her, and even when Rhaenyra demanded that Nettles be killed, he was said to have responded sadly, not with his usual quick temper. There's also the fact that the consort of a monarch doesn't necessarily have a lot of power, and Daemon's role if Rhaenyra had actually reigned would have likely been that of "extra special Queensguard who's allowed to fuck the Queen" more than anything.

But there likely was a desire for power too. Rhaenyra could be molded by him to follow his way of thinking once she was in power, and Westerosi gender roles likely would have allowed him more influence than a queen consort would have to a male monarch. And with Rhaenyra as queen, and if anything Should Befall the Strongs I mean Velaryons, then it's his sons, his bloodline, that are in line for the throne, it's his line that continues House Targaryen. And of course, even without Daemon in King's Landing, it's still Daemon's people who had a lot of influence on Rhaenyra's queenship, like Mysaria, Daemon's former lover.

Ultimately, Daemon is written to be a person, not a black and white cartoon, and like most people, there are likely multiple motivations, often intertwined, for why he does the things that he does. I think it's not out of the question that part of his marriage and relationship with Rhaenyra was borne of genuine love, but while also thinking about what it could offer him and how it could advance his own power.