#pro helaena targaryen

[coffeebooksrain18]

oh yeah sure, maelor is not ''important enough'' to be in the show according to tb and these fuckass writers but we definitely needed 100 different scenes of rhaenyra's babies to show how great of a mother she is. this show and the fandom its created is such a circus i swear😒

Exactly! Also we got no scenes of Alicent being a mom besides her children screaming and crying. We got not one but two labor scenes for Rhaenyra, but not ONE for Alicent or Helaena? And TB thinks the show has the same sympathy for the characters? Interesting.

[greenqueenhightower]

Alicole was underwhelming, but B&C takes the cake as the worst adaptation of a single asoiaf/f&b event so far:

It was so rushed and whitewashed and did not focus on Helaena at all. Where is Helaena pleading for her son's life and offering up her own life instead? Where is Maelor whom Helaena was coerced to offer up as a sacrifice and does not bear to look at? Where is Heleana being forced to make a decision that haunts her entire life? She is obviously traumatized by what happened, but having her just say "they killed the boy" does not do her character and her grief justice. I really hope we get to see more of Helaena in episode 2 because it would be really upsetting if the show just brushes her off.

Not to mention Alicent's absence from the events of B&C. Alicent was really there, worried for her daughter's and grandchildren's lives, and was the first person to offer Helaena some comfort and consolation. The more I think about it the more mad I get because we got robbed of what could have been a truly harrowing and distressing scene that would do the events and the characters justice. Book!B&C was about two mothers and their shared agony, pain, and grief. It could have been powerful and shocking from an acting perspective alone if they had followed the events of the book.

[amaltheas-garden]

"Helaena does not ride. She has no taste for it". That one line summarizes so many issues with the writing of Helaena (and even Alicent) this season. Women in this show who get in Rhaenyra's way are not allowed to want ANYTHING! Rhaenyra has been presented as the just, equal, rightful ruler so of course they can't risk her looking bad by maybe presenting us the perspective of another woman, a dragonrider who claimed the mount of a previous Targaryen queen, who tragically lost a son because of the war, who was a beloved queen by the smallfolk, whose council was listened to by her husband the king, and, most importantly, never suggested (in the book) that Aegon back down from his claim, only that he should pursue a peaceful resolution before going to war. Queen Helaena's death sparked the uprising of Kings Landing that would lead to Rhaenyra's own downfall and death. Helaena baby you deserved so so so much better than this. She deserved a proper coronation, she deserved to grieve her son, she deserved to ride her beloved Dreamfyre, and we should have seen her struggles and triumphs of being queen in a time of war. Aegon even declared that only his mother and wife be honored and recognized as the two legitimate queens during the dance 😭 This show did her so dirty and i will never forgive them 💚💙🩵💛

[radicalsansa]

The lead up to the Erryk/Arryk fight scene pissed me off so much.

We kept being shown Rhaenyra at her most vulnerable, in her night clothes, getting ready for bed, no one with her but her handmaid's. And then all this commotion happens and Ser Arryk moves to kill her... but nothing happens. She doesn't die. She doesn't see any of her family die either.

But do you know who did watch a member of her family die? Helaena. But instead of this cut up montage of Blood and Cheese creeping in through the castle and Helaena being alone and vulnerable saying goodnight to her children, we get comic relief. And that fucking dog

[spacerockfloater]

Daily reminder that Sunfyre and Aegon won three battles against three dragons and survived them all. They were literally undefeated.

Say whatever you want about Aegon but that man dived head first into battle even if he was at the brink of death and emerged triumphant every single time.

Fire cannot kill a dragon and all that, I guess. Isn’t that right Targ stans?

[fictonrantsworld]

Bro my queen helaena has no respect for viserys legit look at these cut scenes from bts of hotd ep 8 of viserys coming in to the dining room...😭

My girl has no respect for her neglectful father like..🤣😂😅 she immediately sat after one sec.

Say whatever about aegon and helaenas relationship but, girl fr prioritized examining and toying with aegons insect gift that he got for her, than her dying father, like girlie...

Bro even aegon stood for a while like...

Aegons look of anger at his father, when he said he loves them all, and helaenas look at viseryss face like...oh yeah...I'm supposed to feel bad for your lost eye but when aemond looses an eye it's nothing huh.

[sunfyredefender77]

the blue dress effect.

[sugutoad]

No matter how hard the writers try to make me hate them, they could never make me 😌

[the-daily-dreamer]

Well well well… GRRM confirmed team 💚? ✔️✅✔️✅

GRRM SAID HELAENA THE BELOVED & RHAENYRA THE REVILED

I DONT WANT TO HEAR ANYMORE MAESTER THEORY. GRRM HIMSELF CONFIRMED RHAENYRA WAS HATED AND ITS NOT HISTORY WRITTEN BY THE WINNERS OR BY ANTI-TARG MAESTERS.

GRRM wrote this story to show that both sides were capable of evil and corruption, both sides had innocents who paid the price, and BOTH sides had a reason to fight. The reduction and changes by the writers to preserve the image of team black has even disappointed the creator of this universe! Because important character traits and plot lines have been destroyed and lost their impact and for what?

To push a “feminist” narrative of a toothless heroine in Rhaenyra. As opposed to a real story about the cost of power and war.

[targaryen-madness]

“Queen Helaena, a sweet and gentle soul, is much beloved by the smallfolk of King’s Landing. 

Rhaenyra was not.”

-George R. R. Martin

[coffeebooksrain18]

The way TB must have been having the tantrum of their life when GrrM said.

"Helaena was loved by the small folk., and Rhaenyra was not"

Like sorry that you upset, but the Author said what he said, you can't be upset, it's his story he knows how it goes.

[greenqueenhightower]

This image shocks me immensely because of:

a) the horror and determination engraved on Alicent’s face

b) Heleana watching her mother defending (and holding onto) Aemond in the background.

I think that the incident at Driftmark had a different potency on each of Alicent’s kids, but especially upon Heleana it must have impressed the idea that “a mother fights for her child no matter what” and that she doesn’t stay silent.

I can only imagine how Heleana feels after B&C, but the sense of being unable to protect and stand up for her son must be devastating.

And further than that, Heleana must be repelled by the idea of being coerced and finally having chosen to sacrifice one of her own kids. She probably feels that she has failed as a mother. That unlike Alicent, she has no right to demand justice for Jaehaerys’ murder because she herself chose him over Maelor. Maybe she blames herself for not doing enough to save him (even if she offered up her own life instead of her children’s), and possibly compares her efforts to defend her children with Alicent’s defense of Aemond. In essence, she probably tragically feels that she offered up one of her children herself instead.

In any case, this is such a heartbreaking and unsettling position to be in and it makes the emotional and psychological toll she consequently suffered all the more unbearable, because even if she drew courage and strength from and tried to imitate her mother’s actions, nothing could have ever prepared her for this.

[amaltheas-garden]

So you're telling me the woman who crowned her only daughter with her own crown, who kissed her cheeks, knelt before her, and called her "my Queen" in front of all the smallfolk of Kings Landing, would go groveling back to the woman who traumatized her precious daughter and granddaughter and murdered her grandson, to beg for mercy and to promise to force Helaena to offer up her crown and position as queen? Because no other woman in this show is allowed to want to be queen, or be viewed as worthy of the position besides Rhaenyra. No "Queen Alicent, beloved of the smallfolk", no "Helaena had been loved, Rhaenyra was hated" no no no. Helaena being loved by the smallfolk and Aegon listening to her council for the war effort was biAsEd MaEsteR pRoPAgAnDa. According to HotD, Rhaenyra was the only woman who ever wanted to be queen/had a right to be queen/was worthy of being queen/was good at being queen.

[peachysunrize]

Mysaria had more screen time than Helaena🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪

[spacerockfloater]

hi! i noticed you learnt about what ryan condal said regarding blood and cheese. it was…something. i would like to know your thoughts on the matter. though it would be completely understandable if you need sometime to gather them together or if you would rather not at all! thank you and bye!

Hello beloved, thank you so much for asking me! I’d love to share my opinion!

If anyone’s wondering, @rhaenelle is referring to this interview where Ryan Condal essentially says he believes that Blood & Cheese’s brutality and heinousness was exaggerated by the Greens in a propagandistic attempt to convince their subjects that Rhaenyra and Daemon are the worst villains ever born, hence why he toned the event down; to show us what he thinks is the accurate version of Jaehaerys’ murder.

Now, I am aware that Condal had already warned us that HOTD was going to be a feminist retelling of the events of F&B, which practically means that his plan has always been to whitewash the everlasting fuck out of Rhaenyra. So what do I think about this?

Well, for starters, I think that Ryan Condal is an excellent businessman. He knows what kind of tropes are going to make the audience engage with his show. He understands that people need a hero to cheer for and a villain to hate, therefore he removed the moral ambiguity from all of the characters and divided them into two categories: the Blacks, enlightened revolutionaries full of passion, deserving of admiration and correct in everything they do, and the Greens, pious fools with a moral superiority complex who are stack in the ways of the past and commit despicable crimes. The average viewer does not possess the intelligence to comprehend that both parties have their good and bad moments, and that they’re both correct in fighting for what each believes is rightfully theirs. Simultaneously, he benefits from the modern trends that want women in media to take revenge when they are wronged and emerge as triumphant girlbosses, because of course a white upper class woman’s suffering in a western world (or Westeros) society has everything to do with her gender and nothing to do with her personality or decisions (even if this works solely for Rhaenyra, because Alicent seems to be held accountable for every single one of her actions). Finally, it is obvious that Condal is trying to appease disgruntled Daenerys fans, so he has rebuilt Rhaenyra into this tortured martyr that wishes to change the world for the better in an attempt to make her resemble her great granddaughter six times removed.

For all of these reasons, I find it very logical that he is going out of his way to minimise the tragedy the Greens experience. It just doesn’t make Rhaenyra look good and honestly, who wants that? The producers saw how unhappy Danny’s stans were when they made her lose her shit; they’re not going to make the same mistake twice. They don’t want their show to tank like the last season of GOT did, so they’ll do everything in their power to keep the audience happy. And it’s working! What’s the last thing Condal says in this clip? “You kinda start rooting for [Blood and Cheese]!” and boy oh boy, the TB stans sure do! Literally hundreds of memes that rejoiced at Jaehaerys’ death were posted on X this week, with tens of thousands of likes. But when Lucerys died, it was presented as the most foul thing to ever happen in the ASOIAF universe. It is the TB supporters that dictate which child murder is good and which is bad, and that decision usually depends on which child came out Rhaenyra’s womb, not let’s say, the fact that one kid was a toddler that could barely walk, while the other was a teenager that laughed at the disabled person he mutilated himself.

It’s all just marketing

That being said, I want to clarify that I understand why Condal and the HOTD producers do what they do, but being a good entrepreneur does not necessarily make you a literary genius. Now, I’m not gonna explain why stripping Rhaenyra off of every character trait that made her interesting is a bad decision and that in their attempt to remove the blame from her so that they can elevate her as this righteous patron of feminism, they’re accidentally removing all of her agency and turning her simply into a victim, because I have a whole blog dedicated to that. But let’s just say that presenting Rhaenyra as this sexually liberated idol that’s incapable of evil, when in fact she’s an entitled aristocrat who’s completely at the mercy of men around her, from her father to her husbuncle, is the most performative activism move ever pulled in recent TV history, as well as pushing the narrative that Alicent suffers from internalised misogyny because duh, a woman can only be good and a feminist if she supports Rhaenyra, not when she pursues her own interests.

Ultimately, I think we just have to accept that this show is not meant for TG fans. We are not going to find any satisfaction in it. Everything that was unique and admirable about the Greens in the book has vanished. Their family dynamic is fucked up, Alicent’s children hate her, Aegon and Halaena cannot stand one another, Alicent is constantly a victim and never someone that chases her own ambitions, Halaena is very vague, Aemond appears to be more angsty than angry, Aegon is a stupid rapist, Jaehaerys’ death was turned into a mockery, Alicole was weaponised in order to make us shit on Alicent and Criston even more and so on. This show barely caters to us because we’re not making them any money.

The reason that there are more TB than TG stans is because (I’m gonna get so much fucking hate for this) most people who watch TV are fucking morons. I swear, when F&B came out 6 years ago, no one gave a flying fuck about Rhaenyra, because we all understood that everyone involved in the Dance of the Dragons was fucked up in their own way and that the message of this story, just like the general message of ASOIAF, is that nobody deserves to sit on that fucking throne. We were all in agreement about that. But then this fucking show came along and all the oblivious simpletons that swallowed whatever the producers shoved down their throats, grabbed the book and decided that “Woah, this book is obviously a critique on patriarchy and Rhaenyra is obviously the victim of the story”! As if GRRM, the man who said that he doesn’t sit down and think “Oh, I’m going to write a woman now” but instead he believes women to be people just like men, with complex personalities, would ever do that. And they just can’t believe that it is possible for book!Rhaenyra to be an evil racist classist full of entitlement! Surely it must be because the Greens are rewriting history! There’s no way GRRM, the man that created Cersei fucking Lannister, would ever make a female character that’s vicious and crazy just because she feels like it! Y’all need to sit down for a moment. I say this as a radical feminist that supports the 4B movement: you’re projecting your own ideas onto George’s work. Not all the media we consume has to reflect our ideologies, but if you think that it has to, then this book isn’t the anti misogynistic masterpiece you wish it was.

Like, when it comes to F&B, I am firmly anti Targaryen and did not wish for any side to win. I wanted them all wiped out to be honest. But when it comes to HOTD, I’m TG basically out of spite at this point.

All in all, I just think that things are going to go downhill for us from this point on. They’ll just keep glorifying the Blacks until the very end.

[fictonrantsworld]

I just find it funny, that alicent,the epitome of duty and graciousness, probably likes it for people, especially her children, to behave in an orderly conduct befitting their station, to then have a daughter that casually leans and basically folds herself 90 degrees over the table to make sure otto sees the details in her beetle (that aegon got for her-this is the alleged rumours of the script im not 100% sure myself).

Like i imagine as a personal headcanon, back when they were still friends, rhaenyra was the tomboy princess, that was always reminded by a half japing young alicent to act like a proper lady, then years later u have helaena like:

u can clearly see helaena even putting her legs up to push her body forward, so her favourite peepaw can look at her beetle.

While rewatching this scene and putting my volume up in my headphones,im pretty sure i heard her distinctively say 'look at it' to otto.

Another thing, its just hilarious to me that aegon and aemond noticed viserys coming in and started going to their seats while helaena didnt even bother😭😂.(she probably didnt notice lol)

Also the last pic, I can't, like what were rhaenyra and daemon thinking when she did that lol. I need the script for this whole episode