#post/meta? but i'll tag it that way for blacklisting purposes

[sixstepsaway]

changing alicent's backstory so drastically was such a horrible decision to make from a writing perspective

book!alicent is power hungry and wants her family on the throne. she's working with otto, she seduces viserys, she tries to deal with the problem of rhaenyra by marrying a teenage girl to her 2 year old son. she manipulates and schemes because she wants everything

rhaenyra and alicent are both intelligent, powerful, power-hungry women fighting within the bounds of patriarchy and misogyny to try and get what they want, and alicent goes one way (knocking anyone out of the way and putting her male child on the throne) and rhaenyra the other (ignoring the patriarchy as if it means nothing and sitting on the throne herself).

in the show, alicent has been split into two characters shoved into one body. you have the book alicent who has to put her son on the throne, who wants power and glory and hates rhaenyra for what she represents, and you have the teenage show alicent who never wanted any of this at all, and was groomed and manipulated by otto into seducing an adult man for otto's goals.

all the way through the show it's otto pulling the strings, otto fighting for power, otto who wants the hightowers on the throne, not alicent. alicent reaches out to rhaenyra again and again because half of her character is the teenager who was best friends with her, but they kept in the other half, the cruel half that judges rhaenyra's choices and destroys her life at every turn

it's ridiculously jarring to watch alicent argue over the truth about rhaenyra's children, knowing that she knows that if that truth came out, rhaenyra and her children might just be put to death for their crimes (rhaenyra for having bastards, her children for being them), and then argue a few episodes later that killing rhaenyra in the chase for her own power is Bad, Actually

it's jarring to watch the young version of alicent in all the scenes where she's miserable and clearly showing all the signs of having been abused and hurt and forced, while in other scenes she seems fine and happy and reaches for viserys and seems to care very much for him

(to be clear, I do know that victims of abuse can be that way, that they can care for their abuser, and have mixed feelings when that abuser dies, but i don't trust the writers of this show to pull that one off, and they don't put enough energy into making it clear it is that way. not to mention that you don't see viserys himself abuse alicent aside from one sex scene where he checks on her and she reassures him that he should continue (i think? i'm pretty sure?). in the context of the world, alicent was old enough to get married and have children, much as rhaenrya was (although she waited until she was older because she was sifting through the options for her own suitor as a way of putting it off), and it was otto who groomed and abused her into being with viserys, pretending (?) to care for him and love him and want him. the only implication of anything untoward is when viserys asks alicent not to tell rhaenyra about their talks because "she wouldnt understand", which is a deliberate (? i think?) decision to make viserys sound like a child groomer, but it feels completely out of place when set against how viserys is portrayed the rest of the time and against the fact alicent was sent to him, he didn't seek her out or even know otto was setting them up)

I genuinely think the problem for me is that alicent feels like two different people, as i said. they made the decision to completely change her roots and motivations, but then while adapting the books kept big chunks of her actions and decisions in. it would have made more sense if she'd been secretly a black and otto was the one pulling all the strings, threatening her children and manipulating her, rather than somehow continuing to keep her being on the other side from rhaenyra and failing to balance that against her motivations

in fact, I don't... know alicent's motivations? viserys mutters something about wanting aegon on the throne, in her eyes, and...okay? and otto swears rhaenyra will kill alicent's children and she believes him? but also reaches out to her in 1x08 despite this?

alicent's motivations aren't power, she doesn't want power. she doesn't seem to want power for aegon either (she hates him, from what i can tell, and certainly doesn't trust him as far as she can throw him), all she really wants is for her children to be okay? why she married aegon and helaena to one another I have no idea? I know why the targaryens do it (to keep the bloodlines strong, give them more claim to the throne, keep the distinctive silver hair etc) but why did alicent do it, when she didn't even expect aegon to be on the throne?

up until the end of 1x08, she's anticipating queen rhaenyra? it's only when viserys hallucinates and dies that she thinks the plan has to change?

i also hate that everyone was scheming behind her back to put aegon on the throne. like, come on. the woman has absolutely no agency, both as a character and as a person

(to clarify what i mean by this: to take a character's agency away is a writing maneuver. choosing to turn alicent from personally power-hungry and making decisions based on that desire for power (seducing viserys, isolating rhaenyra, putting aegon on the throne) to someone who is simply bobbed about by the men in her life making decisions for her and scheming behind her back takes away the agency of the character.

to take a person's agency away is decisions made by otto and co to not tell her their plans. she was inconsequential. they forced a marriage on her, they forced children on her, she was used as a pawn and nothing more.

compare to rhaenyra, whose agency is taken away by viserys making her marry laenor as penance for what she did with daemon. her character still has agency: she chooses to pursue a relationship with harwin, she names (most of) her children, she makes her own decisions.

alicent the character nor the woman has any agency at all, and she should)

every time i think, "Oh no, I hate Alicent?" they switch flip her back to the other character and I go "oh no, I love Alicent" and then they flip her back. they gave her weird purity culture christian slut shamery as a reason to hate rhaenyra, then dropped it right after it reached its peak in 1x08 and had her reach out to rhaenyra despite nothing having changed (and how disgusted she was by the fact she was (allegedly) fucking daemon originally)

I love Alicent, I fucking adore her, but the lack of consistency keeps jarring me so bad I'm never sure if I love Alicent, the idea of Alicent, the young Alicent, the older Alicent or the book Alicent, because they're all so very different

i'm hoping maybe in s2 she'll be more consistent? but the decision to make a huge thing of her best friendship with rhaenyra has completely shredded most of the plot beats from the book, so they're going to have to change so much to make it work, i think?

also the idea that aemond could kill luke and then things could be okay again between rhaenyra and alicent is fucking laughable, not only because what the fuck alicent's son killed rhaenyra's son but also because alicent tried to murder rhaenyra when luke took an eye from aemond, so the idea that alicent might be like "hey, i'm sure this murder of your beloved son is forgivable <3" is so fucking funny to even consider

the girls would need a lot of fucking therapy and alicent would need to offer aemond's hands in penance at least for rhaenyra to even consider forgiveness

anyway they were so busy thinking "hey we could tell a cute lil first love semi-wlw sad little teen love story with this character and rhaenyra to make it hurt more" they never wondered if they fucking should

(and honestly, I think at least a chunk of this decision was rooted in racism. they decided to be outwardly anti-racist by making the velaryons black, which is gorgeous and i love that they did that, but then doubled down on being really racist (in my opinion!) by almost removing baela and rhaena from the plot entirely (and deleting all their scenes with their father), and by changing laena's everything so drastically and so cruelly.

they took away the fact she and rhaenyra were friends, that even when she and daemon were married, rhaenyra was often at her side, was there when she was pregnant, was there to support her, was possibly even lovers with her (replacing her with alicent in the show), and then changed her death from tragic and so very sad where she died from consequences of childbirth with her husband and her best friend by her side, sitting vigil over her, to... suicide by dragon when her child might have survived had she not had them both crispy fried? that's such a baffling and gross change of the plot and i hate it. justice for the real laena (in personality, not appearance - i love her casting so much and I wish we'd seen more of the actresses that played her))