#like girl this is already the penace religion

[cats2019forthenintendoswitch]

protestantism is so stupid how do you look at catholicism and conclude the problem is that it's too fun

[horizon-verizon]

This is what lemonhemlock said in their last reblog to a black stan about Alicent taking down the Valyrian decorations:

Her husband's religion.... you mean the Faith of the Seven? The religion that anointed him as king and within which he officialized his marriages? The religion that if he were to renounce.... it would mean open rebellion and literal war? Her husband's culture... slavery and human sacrifice? 😐

You mean to say Rhaenyra or Viserys wouldn't have changed 1 item of furniture or decoration in 10 years? Is that what you're basing your argument on?

The original post has its reblogs turned off because green stans seemed to really test OP’s patience.

lemonhemlock acts like all Alicent is doing is making the Red Keep her home or something.

However:

No one said one word about Viserys renouncing anything or forcing anyone to forgo their religion. Viserys and his forefathers/mothers already took in the Faith after years of contention. 

Viserys and Rhaenyra would redecorate, but they wouldn’t redecorate by erasing every Valyrian or erotic image. They are proud to be Targs, proud of their heritage and house. Why would they do as lemonhemlock is trying to suggest they do?

Alicent only starts redecorating after she gets back from Dragonstone where she tries to stab out Lucerys’ eye and cuts Rhaenyra, which is a whole 12-14 years after she marries Viserys. Why does she wait until then to start just normal “redecorating”?

In her early years married to Viserys and in episode 4, we see her read the red and black of House Targaryen, but she stops when she learns that Rhaenyra.....lies to her to protect herself from Alicent definitely going to tell Viserys? for sleeping with Criston Cole? For not sufferring like a “good girl” and trying to get some bodily autonomy? With any of these reasons, Alicent is not acting out of goodness or wnating to be a better person but out of spite, jealousy, and/or hate.

Going back to episode 7, the showrunners/writers/actors all said in the post-show interviews that Alicent is trying to perform public penace for her actions in episode 7 and the “redecorating” is a part of that. So, yeah, not as about house or culture pride as lemonhemlock thinks, but more about shame for acting un-Queenly and “unwomanly”. In front of many witnesses at that.

Viserys, never at any point, showed that he actually and truly believed in the Seven and their existence, but he DID accept that he’d have to practice the customs as his forefathers already set him up to do. Acceptance does not equal belief. Does this person actually think that every child who goes to church with their parents believe or continue to believe in that god? So why with Viserys?

Also, while Viserys accepts the practice of the religion, Alicent (as just the Queen Consort and his subject) by law and by custom still has to obey his orders and declarations because that’s feudalism. King/monarch decides all, and no one is going to disobey the Monarch if they were to say to take down this deco and that one. Royal Consorts do not overrule their Monarch spouses.Unless they are very weak or otherwise debilitated, and then others can disobey them either without them knowing about it or with them knowing but unable to do anything about it.

Which goes into my next point: Viserys was literally decaying and when we get to episode 8, we see him delirious and barely able to make full sentences. Is it not funny how Alicent replaces the deco as he is in this state? Also, even the showrunner/writers/actors tell us in the post-show interviews that this episode has the greens take over the court and run the show, basically. Of course Alicent takes this chance to “redecorate”! Viserys can’t do shit if he wanted to, or it would take a lot of energy to do so. He’d have to go about with people around him seeking  to overturn his decision to have Rhaenyra as his heir: Otto. Who seems to be walking around pretty well for a guy his age.

Alicent has been the one to press for Viserys to announce Rhaenyra’s kids as illegitimate, but this is why Viserys won ever and never did do that. Alicent has been the one to press for real punishment and danger on the undeserving. 

So if anything, Alicent has been the one to try to enforce herself and her discriminatory and oppressive ideas and desires onto others.

And as if the Westerosi/Andal religion and culture is any better for not having legal and official slavery:

first cousin-marriage being allowed

right of the first night

male primogeniture and worse misogyny/patriarchy that is more intense than Valyrian by the suggestions of Jaenaera Belaerys, Visenya and Rhaenys, Aegon I having to marry Visenya before anyone else

blood purity through thinking bastards are naturally “treacherous” (as the same religion Alicent follows teaches will later teach after Daemon Blackfyre when it already teaches fidelity between man and wife but leaves men to act freely and sire bastards due to politics)

the First Men slaughtering the CotF or those who sing the song of earth, destroying their places of worship, and sending them so far up North so long ago, so well that many present Westerosi don’t even believe they were ever real

the Andals believing that Westeros was their “promised land” and also killing the First Men for power, land and resources

...both groups similar enough to how European Pilgrims and Puritans sailed to N. America for entitled religious, economic, discriminatory, holier-than-thou reasons which lead to the cataclysmic cultural losses for the people they and their descendants like Andrew Jackson (Trail of Tears) targeted and ruined many indigenous groups’ lives and societies...and then their descendants believed themselves to be the “native” American population. Ha!

Oh please!