#viserys i's death

[horizon-verizon]

Timeline #1

Viserys' death (52 yrs old)

("A Question of Succession" -- F&B)

("The Blacks and the Greens" -- F&B)

the third day of the third moon of 129 AC

03/03/129 A.C. [let's pretend it's March]

Aegon's Coronation Day

("The Blacks and the Greens" -- F&B)

the tenth day of the third moon of 129 AC

03/10/129 A.C.

Rhaenyra's Labors Begin

("The Blacks and the Greens" -- F&B)

tidings from KL had driven the princess into a black fury, and her rage seemed to bring on the birth

AND

in her third day of labor

So if Rhaenyra is reacting to the coronation, which would have taken, at most, maybe 5 days to travel to Dragonstone:

c.03/10 to 3/15/129 A.C.

First Black Council

("The Blacks and the Greens" -- F&B)

the next day [...] And so the Dance began

c.3/15 to 3/20/129 A.C.

*After Jaehaerys' Death, Cole advised to send Arryk Cargyll after Rhaenrya & her sons, Cole also leads attacks against Lord Staunton's Rook's Rest. Specific Dates Unknown*

Rhaenys' Death (55 yrs old)

("The Red Dragon and the Gold" -- F&B)

for we know that nine days after Lord Staunton dispatched his plea for help, the sound of leathern wings was heard across the sea, and the dragon Meleys appeared above Rook’s Rest. The Red Queen, she was called, for the scarlet scales that covered her. The membranes of her wings were pink, her crest, horns, and claws bright as copper. And on her back, in steel and copper armor that flashed in the sun, rode Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was.

and the semi-official wiki for the Battle at Rook's Rest is "late 126"

*Specific Date, still, Unknown...BUT I'd guess Rook's Rest was--if we rely on the semi official site, knowing that a Westerosi year has 12 months and depending on what "late" constitutes...

c.10/1/129 - 12/?/129 A.C.*

Aegon and Viserys Prepared for Pentos

("The Red Dragon and the Gold" -- F&B)

In the waning days of 129 AC, the young princes boarded the cog Gay Abandon—Aegon with Stormcloud, Viserys clutching his egg—to set sail for Essos.

*again, depends on what you'd consider "late"; I'd guess: c.12/25/129-12/30/129 A.C.*

Jacaerys' Death/Battle of the Gullet

("The Red Dragon and the Gold" -- F&B)

In the early morning hours of the fifth day of the 130th year since Aegon’s Conquest, battle was joined.

01/01/130 A.C.

Rhaenyra & Daemon Take KL

("The Red Dragon and the Gold" -- F&B)

The queen would have none of it, however. Only the gods truly know the hearts of men, and women are full as strange. Broken by the loss of one son, Rhaenyra Targaryen seemed to find new strength after the loss of a second. Jace’s death hardened her, burning away her fears, leaving only her anger and her hatred. Still possessed of more dragons than her half- brother, Her Grace now resolved to use them, no matter the cost.

Again, no specific date, so I'd guess this happened at most a week or two after Jacaerys' death:

c. 01/04/130 A.C. - 01/18/130 A.C.

[tweedfrog]

The maester propaganda thing has gone too far let it go I beg you because why the hell did I just see a video that claimed Maegor actually was loyal to his family and all the bad things written about him were lies by biased maesters

[radicalstrawberry]

i bring a “viserys was at least partially at fault for luke’s death as instead of comforting a now newly disabled aemond he berated his mother and brother over rumours ensuring the feeling of injustice in aemond and leaving an open wound which festered for the next like 6 years, eventually culminating in luke’s demise” vibe people don’t like.

[nonbinarylesbianherb]

this would’ve been Alicent when she was 14. (same age she was married off to Viserys.)

don’t mind me im just crying and screaming and throwing up!!!

[hylialeia]

you don't get it. she loved him once. she didn't have a maester, she had a brother. he sold their mother's crown to keep them fed. he said Dany, please. she loved him, once.

[prideprejudce]

Even if Viserys hadn’t married, Rhaenyra’s reign would be contested anyway, because she is a woman, and Westeros is a patriarchal state, and has been so for centuries. The only possible way Viserys could’ve avoided war was by putting on a lot of work to cement Rhaenyra’s place from the very moment he named her heir, and mentoring her as hard as he could to be PERFECT. He needed to put in the head of his headstrong teenage daughter that she couldn’t afford to do a single mistake, or else other houses would use that against her (and that included having affairs, but Viserys definitely didn’t help by betrothing her to a man notoriously uninterested in women). He also should’ve put her in every council meeting from then on, have her be an active participant of his reign, send her on diplomatic missions to other parts of the kingdom, even pay some singers to compose heroic songs about her, to elevate the lore of Rhaneyra’s kindness and wisdom. Whenever there as an issue on any part of the kingdom, such as famines or illness, any financial or food aid should be taken there by Rhaenyra in her dragon, so her arrival would be constantly associated with assistance. Viserys needed to make sure people loved her, noble or smallfolk. Perhaps remarrying wouldn’t be bad, as long as he had clearly in mind that any son he had would be married to Rhaenyra as soon he was old enough and would rule with her, and not above her (and said son would have to be raised by Viserys and close to Rhaenyra, so he would have some fondness and loyalty for them, instead of resentment), although that would be a bit risky.

you won't hear any disagreement from me anon, I think that viserys dropped the ball in almost every single way when it came to securing rhaenyra's line and safety. I agree that even if he hadn't remarried she still would have faced at least some opposition, but he pretty much sealed her fate as soon as he had another son from a different wife. And when he was sick in bed for the last ten years of his life, instead of calling rhaenyra back to partially rule the realm in his name, he let's the greens pretty much take over and rule for him

everything about this civil war comes back to viserys and his negligence. the writers this season want him to be remembered as a noble king who "didn't choose his burden of ruling," but in reality he absolutely sucked as a king. people praise him because his rule was peaceful but he literally just got lucky that the war for the stepstones or any other conflict never got bad enough to come to his doorstep.....because he would have sucked at handling that too. overall he doomed rhaenyra to death with his negligence just as he doomed aemma to her death with his half assed dreams of having a male heir "born with a crown on its head"

[targaryensource]

RHAENYRA’S CORONATION // DAENERYS’ “CORONATION” ↳ suggested by @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly

[bowl-of-fruit-loops]

I think they should lock alicent and rhaenyra in a room together. I don’t think it’d help anything and one of them might end up dead but at least they’d get to make out a lil

[alienoryva]

—HEIRESS TO THE IRON THRONE—

🪻Aerea Targaryen (42 AC-56 AC)

Daughter of Prince Aegon the uncrowned & Rhaena Targaryen the Queen in the West and east also twins sister of Rhaella the first septa-princess.

Because King Maegor I had no children, he made Aerea his step-daughter and grandniece as his heirs but did not officially hold the title of Princess of dragonstone,she was heir to the Iron Throne for two years (47-48 AC) before her uncle became king and her niece/nephew become the next official heir.

Aerea died in 56 AC at the age of 14 after disappearing with balerion the black dread and a severe and painful fever that burned and brought out the wyrm from her skin.

🪻Rhaenyra Targaryen (97-130 AC)

Daughter and second child of King Viserys i Targaryen & Queen Aemma Arryn.

Rhaenyra was the official female heiress who had a coronation as the princess of dragonstone. She was heir to the iron throne for 24 years until her father's death in 129 AC. Became a queen who had not been officially crowned for half a year,Her two sons become the official prince of dragonstone (Jacaerys & Joffrey Velaryon).

Rhaenyra died in 130 AC after being burned and eaten by her half-brother dragon who also claims to be king (aegon ii). After her half-brother died, Rhaenyra's surviving sons from her second husband (Prince Daemon) became king (aegon iii & Viserys ii) and carried on the blood of the dragon.

🪻Aelora Targaryen (?-221 AC)

Eldest Daughter of Prince Rhaegel Targaryen & Lady Alys Arryn also twins/sister-wife of Prince Aelor Targaryen and Sister of Princess Daenora Targaryen.

She became the heir to her uncle (king Aerys i Targaryen) after her twin brother-husband died In a terrible accident caused by her accidentally in 217 AC.

Some time later, three men known as the Rat, the Hawk, and the Pig attacked Aelora at a masked ball. She committed suicide soon afterward (221 AC).

.

cr art: @riotarttherite <3

[synkverv]

i'm the reason you don't trust i'm the reason you don't feel right i tore you apart and i still sleep just fine  

[tell-them-the-north-remembers]

Just dropped in to say that The Unequal Marriage by Vasili Pukirev just screams Alicent and Viserys. If we got their wedding scene this would be what came to my mind.

The sorrowful resignation on Alicent's face here and the bride's face in the painting are literally the same. They are both fully aware that they will never be afforded the luxury of being married to someone that they love, someone their age, someone who won't look down on them. Instead they are being married to men older than them, more powerful, a husband who they will always have to crane their neck up to look at.

[horizon-verizon]

Does Viserys ignore the children he had with Alicent in the book? Although in the series, it's clearly more Viserys' illness that's the cause of less time with the kids, rather than him disliking them and willfully ignoring them.

*EDITED POST* (4/9/24)

House of the Dragon’s Viserys

Viserys obviously favored Rhaenyra (politically). But I feel it is tied to how Show!him had a real romantic connection with Aemma yet killed her without her knowledge or consent so he could have a son who didn’t live long anyway.

Adding to that, from the trauma of losing several of his pre-kids/kids to miscarriages and stillbirths and his wife probably almost dying in some of those pregnancies--a daughter is still better than having no  kids at all because he genuinely wanted kids, and because this is a feudal world where inheritance and lineage leads to pride, identity,  security and power--Viserys would also care for or favor Rhaenyra even more. Rhaenrya s his first child of a series of children who all died; she is kinda his "miracle child as well as the child that officially made him a father.

Like how you hear and read fathers value their child after their mother died giving birth to them, Viserys would see this daughter as his only connection to Aemma as well as try to “make it up” to her by making their only daughter successful.

So he is more attached to Rhaenyra other than her being the only child Aemma ever could bring into being successfully.

(This does not mean that Viserys’ pain matters or is more than Aemma’s emotional and physical pain. The betrayal she would have felt when she realized Viserys was cosigning her final moments to pain--without her knowledge or permission. Because it doesn’t--he is still accountable and I dislike him and people like him. I’m saying that before he did this to Aemma, he did experience lost hopes for an heir as well as pain from having his children die before they could ever be.)

It also doesn’t mean that he doesn’t value Rhaenyra as his progeny or offspring. 

He didn’t fully value her as his potential heir, or as a true, politically autonomous agent in her own right.

In the show, however, I also think that a combination of:

his rotting

Alicent's constant protests against Rhaenyra and her children/his accepted grandkids

his finding out about Otto’s hand in pushing Alicent and Viserys having to even pursue this after Young Rhaenyra told him that Otto overstepped his bounds as someone not even a part of the royal family and having her followed without royal permission and Viseys’ added guilt or confliction about that moment where he did a fuck up himself and tried to go at Rhaenyra, when he was so shortsighted himslef

all comes to him choosing to be more hands off towards his green kids and let Alicent and Rhaenyra's rivalry foment until major events happened.

His determination to keep Rhaenyra in her position that all comes across as him just “loving” Rhaenyra to an extreme to some people watching the show.

In the Book Fire and Blood and by Original Canon Lore 

He had complications with his weight. Over time, he experienced more chest tightness and gout that get worse until he finally dies. Stress would have exacerbated it--his worries with his wife and daughter duking it out constantly, the tension at court, his worries over the succession, etc.

There was no literal decay. And there isn't a solid, or direct indication or quote that shows us he actively favored Rhaenyra more than his other kids.

There is also no indication that he would or did kill Aemma for Baelon (dead son) in the book.

However, we can read between the lines and reason that he valued Rhaenyra differently then his other kids for the same reasons I listed about Show!Viserys, even if Aemma had just died on her own. For being his only child by Book!Aemma, who still dies trying to birth him an heir. Doesn't mean that he didn't love them, in the book, we see he spends time with Helaena and her kids, one of those moment sjust hours before his death When he's telling them stories about past Targ generations ("A Question of Succession"):

Why Viserys Protects Rhaenyra’s Position in Both the Show and the Book/Canon Lore

Other than what I already said about the sort of love he has for her...

1)

Politics: public image and house reputation and what we can hide and manipulate to maintain control. 

If Rhaenyra is revealed to have bastard kids, then the house cannot deny the shame (objectively it is not shameful for a woman to have kids out of wedlock no more than it is for a man to do similar. Shameful in terms of cheating on your spouse if you two did not agree to an nonexclusive arrangement beforehand. But otherwise, not shameful. In the context of medieval politics and patriarchy, it becomes shameful to have this out in the open...and even then, it depends on the political climate of the persons).

But if it is kept hidden, then the reputation doesn’t completely falter, the line of succession goes throuhg Rhaenyra, and the whole house doesn’t face censure.

lt and the people can still work under an image. 

If you don't like this, blame politics and patriarchy.

This is what @the-king-andthe-lionheart says in a reblog:

“With regard to royal children, the only consideration more important than their kingly blood was the monarch’s self-interest.  Many kings acknowledged children they knew had been fathered by someone else. Often, kings did not want to cast doubt on the paternity of older children they knew to be their own.  In the case where the king could not father children, sometimes court factions heartily desired the queen to bear bastards in order to stabilize the throne and cement their own interests.

Fortunately, the queen’s complete and utter disillusionment with her husband usually set in after the birth of the heir.  And so it was not deemed worthwhile to lose international prestige, throw the nation into tumult, and question the paternity of all royal children, simply to deny the one cuckoo in the robin’s nest.  In the early nineteenth century, the last son of King John VI and Queen Carlota Joaquina of Portugal was extremely good-looking and slender - unlike either of his parents - and happened to be the spitting image of the handsome gardener at the queen’s country retreat.  Other than a few snickers behind painted fans, no one said a word.”  (Sex With The Queen by Eleanor Herman)

and

“It was never adultery alone that did in a queen, or the fact that she did not resemble the Virgin Mary, or that she had polluted the royal bloodline.  It was politics.

If the queen followed the traditional pattern of bearing children, embroidering altar cloths, and interceding for the poor - pious duties that the Virgin Mary would likely have approved of - even if she took a lover she was usually left in peace.  There was rarely reason to shoot down a political nonentity at court.  But an intelligent ambitious woman who spoke her mind and built up a faction was always open to the accusation of adultery by her political rivals, whether the accusation was true or fabricated.

Adultery charges offered the accuser many benefits.  The very mention of adultery suddenly cast doubt upon the legitimacy of the offspring of a suspected queen, possibly rendering them unfit for the throne and opening the door to other ambitious candidates - usually the accusers themselves [...] (Sex With The Queen by Eleanor Herman)”

Plus he had already named Rhaenyra heir long ago.

While you are the monarch and can change the heir while the previous is still alive, to change the heir would have come across as revealing or “admitting” Rhaenyra’s not having trueborn sons. 

Defeating the entire purpose of protecting her and going against the need and cultural compulsion to uphold his and his house’s own public image/reputation.

So Viserys wanted to make sure the throne kept his feudal dignity. 

Feudalist power and monarchy.....you know, the thing the Greens canonically wanted just for itself in the first place?

2)

The other reason why Rhaenyra is allowed to get way with her sons’ illegitimacy is because Viserys wants to keep her and the grandsons he accepts as his grandsons alive. Because he loves them.

Viserys is not a good father, but he is not Tywin Lannister--one of the most evil fathers to exist in Westerosi history.

I doubt a father/grandfather who has some real caring for their child/granfchild, no matter their position, would allow his child and grandchild’s lives to be forfeit.

If Rhaenyra is publicly revealed with inscrutable evidence that he can’t just ignore and deny or hide (Vaemond wasn’t enough) to have had illegitimate children, then her kids could die, could be exiled, or face total ruination to the point they can’t live in Westeros without facing worldwide hatred for being illegitmate.

3)

Which, by the way, comes from a bogus Faith belief.  The same religion rules that children who are born out of wedlock (parents who weren’t married to each other) are inherently untrustworthy. The logic is that because these people are born from “lust, lies, and weakness, and as such, they are said to be wanton and treacherous by nature”.

This is blood purity, anon. That one would actually believe that a person is inherently evil, dangerous and lesser than another because their birth didn’t happen within a marriage is to say that people can have inherently traits that define their entire being and value in society forever and ever.

So not only do we had the risk of women all over Westeros losing even more ability to use political power, we also have the seeds of racism/outright classicism and discrimination.

Which affects every single person in a society and would make them define their entire worth according to external, socially-constructed ideology. Creating a divide between those "deserving" and those not.

[dirtytransmasc]

saw someone say they're we're happy Alicent's and Otto's deaths forced them "realize what they had done" and like...

Otto's one thing, I get the animosity. but Alicent? your getting hot and bothered over her realizing she failed, she failed to save her children, she failed to protect them, to them alive? that she tried so hard, so fucking hard, making every hard decision, trying to get between her children and the fate they were damned to by Viserys and Rhaenyra? that she damned her kids, who were already damned to die to begin with, and had to suffer the guilt of them dying to her own hand? that she's going to drive herself mad with grief over her children, her grandchildren?

like... it's not satisfying (especially for show Alicent) watching a woman go so mad with grief it literally kills her because she fought with everything she had to save her children only for them to die anyway. ever since her father's exile, when Rhaenyra's lies took Viserys's favor, when Viserys ignored the Rhaenyra's sons bastardhood at the risk of the whole house, or when Luke took Aemond's eye and Viserys demanded good will; she knew her children's lives were forfeit. then Daemon killed Vaemond and her children's coffins were built, catching cobweb's all the while. she knew and she fought it desperately, taking risk after risk, living in fear until her moment came, she could out Aegon on the thrown, she could protect her kids, maybe, just fucking maybe they'd be safe... only for it to lead to a war that would kill her entire family.

her death, slow and tragic as it was, is heartbreaking. she didn't deserve it, she deserved to feel safe, to feel as though she could allow her past friend take the thrown without her children being at risk to feel as though she and her children weren't being circled by wolves and picked at by vulture's. she didn't deserve to live alone and die alone. she didn't deserve to have her hands coated in her children's blood.

[alicentsgf]

Let's talk in depth about book Alicent. because even though i read the book 3 years ago I didn't engage online about it until the show's release and um. wow. some people have a very different interpretation of her to me. and also... some of those interpretations show a fundamental misunderstanding of the text, a tendency toward indulging the misogyny present in Fire and Blood, or both.

People are saying the writers changed Alicent's story to 'make her a victim'... they didn't. It was always possible to read the book and perceive that she was in many ways a victim. Honestly the biggest thing they changed was her age, probably to assist the interpretation they'd chosen, but the larger elements all stay the same; in both versions she's worked in service of the crown since she was young (as a type of companion either to Jaehaerys or Rhaenyra) and she and Rhaenyra initially have a good relationship (according to one source in F&B - this supposedly changes when Aegon was born and not named heir). So making it Rhaenyra we see her close with just makes the emotional tethers that might have been there anyway more visible. After all, Rhaenyra Does spare Alicent's life in F&B, and whilst she says it's for Viserys sake, Alicent at that point had been at the very least complicit in the deaths of most of Rhaenyra's children. Rhaenyra having such a strong former bond with Alicent is going to give this event in the show a lot more weight. It's not hard to see why they made this change, because it adds to the existing tragedy of the story.

The fact is everything we see of Alicent in F&B is up for debate to some extent. Like, for example, did she seduce Viserys? of course certain sources tell us yes, but Fire and Blood is brimming with asoiaf-typical misogyny; it all reminds me somewhat of the story of Anne Boleyn, her story molded into something unrecognisable by history in order to make her the instigator. In truth, we have no way of knowing if Alicent wanted Viserys or not, but we do know she probably didn't have to seduce him. She was widely regarded as being the most beautiful woman - it wouldn't have taken a lot for Viserys to notice her. People, characters and readers alike, assume that because she wasn't the best political match he must have been persuaded, but Viserys was a selfish man, (that is indisputable, we see it in many of his provable actions), so it fits with his character to choose a slightly unsuitable wife on the basis of his own lust. The age gap in the show only serves to demonstrate visually the power imbalance that was at least somewhat present in the book anyway. And yes, this like most things in the book is up for interpretation, but I will say this: I seriously do not respect people calling her 'evil'.

The text never presents Alicent as evil. Even in the worst of her actions she is never legitimately shown to revel in the pain and suffering of others. At most you could argue she was ambitious, but I don't even believe that on the basis of one specific thing: it was her, not Otto, who asked Viserys to betroth Aegon to Rhaenyra. This was not a crazy suggestion in the book, as it was presented in the show; they were only a decade apart, and it was the Valyrian custom that the eldest son would marry his eldest sister, as Aegon the conqueror married Visenya. Alicent wanted this without stipulating the expectation that Aegon would rule instead of Rhaenyra. Viserys reportedly dismissed Alicent on the basis of believing she only wanted Aegon a step closer to the throne, and it can be read that way, but personally I don't think so. I think she was exhausting options to try to protect him after she realised Viserys was never going to name him heir.

Ultimately, Alicent would have been stupid to ignore that her children's lives were at stake. Especially in Fire and Blood where she was much less familiar with Rhaenyra. Nothing in Rhaenyra's actions suggested she wouldn't be capable. She reportedly had no affection for her brothers where she was kid enough to Helaena, suggesting she already saw them as threats. She had demonstrated herself willing to accept physical harm to them in favour of her own sons. She was later thought to be at least complicit in the death of her husband Laenor, who had by all accounts been a good, kind husband to her… and then she married Daemon. Even before this he had been an obvious threat to Alicent's children; a violent man who'd always lusted after power, with a known hatred for Hightowers and who'd never been kind to his nephews by Alicent. Even if Alicent didn't believe Rhaenyra capable of murdering her sons, she would have been stupid not to believe Daemon able.

The truth is even in the book this crisis was set in motion by Viserys. Once he'd refused to marry Aegon to Rhaenyra the bomb was built and ticking away, it was only a matter of time. Even if Rhaenyra's heirs had been indisputably trueborn, Aegon and his brothers and any descendants they had would have been symbols for those who wanted to oppose the Crown to rally behind as soon as Rhaenyra or Jacaerys disappointed them, no matter if Alicent's sons had personally bent the knee. The situation only became more dire when it was clear that Rhaenyra's heir was not trueborn.

Fire and Blood isn't even really quiet about Rhaenyra's first three sons being bastards. To me it read like Rhaenys' Baratheon blood allowed those who wanted to believe otherwise to delude themselves, as Viserys does in both versions. After all, in the book Laenor being gay is an open secret. But the thing is… it doesn't even really matter if they were or not. With so many people believing they were bastards, they were pretty much as good as. Eventually, and most definitely after Rhaenyra's death, there would have been some form of conflict. Because if Jace, an assumed bastard, ascended the throne it would throw into question the claims of almost every lord in Westeros, many of whom would have older bastard brothers. and if a bastard who didn't even look targaryen could sit the highest seat in the realm over a trueborn silver-haired son of a king like Aegon, what's to stop the bastard brothers of any lord from laying claim to their seat? Aegon would have become a rallying point for that dispute whether he liked it or not, and Jace would have been forced to dispose of him if he wanted to maintain power.

In light of this, it's really no wonder Alicent repeatedly voices her animosity over Rhaenyra's sons questionable births. It's very telling that in F&B every cruel comment she reportedly makes about or to Rhaenyra references it. and I say "reportedly" because one of the worst of her quotes, her saying 'mayhaps the whore will die in childbirth' about Rhaenyra, people quote as fact… if you do this I will laugh in your face and ask if you read the book. because Alicent did not say that. or rather, if she did, Fire and Blood would not be able to tell us either way because the quote is attributed to her by Mushroom, one of Rhaenyra's supporters who (apart from being a famed liar) was with Rhaenyra on Dragonstone at the time.

The other two quotes used to argue her supposed evilness are from slightly less questionable sources, and honestly, yeah, it does seem likely to me Alicent implied to Rhaenyra her bastard sons' blood was worth less than that of her own trueborn sons'… but at that point, with the horror she'd experienced on account of Viserys upholding Rhaenyra and her sons' questionable claims, her reacting in this way is perhaps cruel and prejudiced, but not evil. And almost justifiably cruel in my opinon; for all she knows the woman she's talking to directly ordered for her six-year-old grandson to be brutally murdered in front of her, her daughter, and her other grandchildren, directly leading to her daughter's madness and later suicide. Was she going to be respectful? Is it fair to expect that from her? This focus on the term 'bastard blood' overshadows the rest of the quote: “Bastard blood shed at war. My son’s sons were innocent boys, cruelly murdered. How many more must die to slake your thirst for vengeance?” Why is Alicent being a bit of a bitch treated as a worse sin than Rhaenyra ordering the brutal murder of a toddler, or at the very least excusing it.

The last quote mentioned to back up claims of alicent's 'evilness' is her telling her granddaughter Jaehaera she should slit the throat of her husband Aegon III in his sleep. By this point it seemed to me Alicent was no doubt consumed by bitterness and would have attacked Aegon herself given the chance, but even without condoning her words or actions we can see how she became like that; all of Alicent's sons are dead and she wants all of Rhaenyra's gone too. Wasn't it "an eye for an eye, a son for a son"? - Rhaenyra's side set the precedent - the idea that it is justifiable to take one innocent life in exchange for another, no matter if its the life of a child who just happens to have been born on the other side of a war.

Alicent by the end of her life had certainly been driven to cruelty in her grief, twisted into something ugly by the world and locked away to rot.

And yet her final words weren't steeped in bitterness or violence. When the fever sets in she accepts death, even welcomes it. She speaks of seeing her children again, and King Jaehaerys. So doesn't that say she was never driven by hatred at all? That there was never any kind of innate evil nature? At least that's my interpretation. This is the same girl who spent her youth reading to a dying king for no clear reward, and felt such affection for him that she mentioned him at the end of her own life, perhaps pining for the time before her marriage. (No doubt in the show she will mention Rhaenyra instead). This is the woman whose daughter and grandchildren visited her with such reliable frequency her grandson's killers knew to wait in her rooms for them.

So what was so evil about her? That she quite understandably saw Rhaenyra and her sons as a threat, and preemptively acted to protect her own? As much as people like to project ideologies onto these characters, neither Alicent nor Rhaenyra's motivations were ideological, that much as clear.

I may have many reservations about House of the Dragon's execution of it, but the decision to present Alicent as a victim of the world she inhabits was not only the right choice, but also kind of the only choice. HotD is presented as objective truth, where F&B is a collection of biased accounts dripping in the misogyny of the men relating them, and so HotD had to be a critique of its own source material. I admit to having my own bias, and my analysis is at least slightly skewed in Alicent's favour because I'm responding to the most negative interpretations of her. And they are all just interpretations. But in my opinion, those adapting the text looked at Alicent and asked "what if this woman is misunderstood?", "what if this woman had no real choice?", "what if the men of this world just chose to ignore her complexity, because she was a woman?" and those were absoutely the questions to ask.

[rhaenyrastormborn]

Only among the Targaryens could the phrase “you sound like my father” be considered flirting

[mailka]

No, but that Alicent/Rhaenyra scene is so stupid no matter how you look at it? That choice is not a choice and it never was, Alicent's sons were always going to die with Rhaenyra in power, we established that in s1. So it doesn't matter what Alicent says, it's never going to change that fact. So why the fuck she's surprised when Rhaenyra says that? What the fuck did she expect? "She didn't plan on killing her son", but what about Aemond and Daeron??? They are not disabled and have dragons and armies??? Alicent comes to Rhaenyra and is like "this war must end" but Aegon's head doesn't end the war??? "It gives her a chance to save Helaena and Jaehaera", does it? The premise of this whole deal that the war ends and Rhaenyra takes the throne but the war will not end with Aegon's death??? So pretty much all three of them are gonna to be held hostages until Rhaenyra deals with Aemond, Daeron and the rest of TG??? And that means that pretty much anything can happen during that time, especially with Daemon in proximity and Rhaenyra's religious zeal???

Alicent gets nothing from this deal. So where's that "Sophie's choice"? Aegon, Aemond and Daeron potential fates don't change, Helaena's and Jaehaera's potential fates don't change, the war is still going to continue for an unknown amount of time, so what was the point of it all? What was Aegon's coronation for if Alicent jumps the ship as soon as trouble arises?

This whole thing is so unbelievably stupid it's not even funny.