#why is this actually alicent hightower

[millionsnaives]

please leave me alone ty

[navree]

"rhaenys could have ended the war by dracarysing all the greens right there" yes because a distant relation to the throne deciding to barbecue an anointed and publicly positively hailed king and his entire family who is well loved within the city and in multiple other parts of the country for the sake of the succession of a far-away princess no one was ever on board with who hasn't been seen by the populace in literal years, her psycho husband, her three obvious bastards, and two toddlers from the psycho husband would go over super well with westeros and especially in king's landing where scores of the still-cheering population were killed for no reason by that same dragon who would do the barbecuing, because when targaryens act unilaterally without thinking of how the people would react there's never any problem, which is why the storming of the dragonpit and robert's rebellion were actually just collective delusions dreamed up by readers who hate rhaenyra and not key parts of the story and house targaryen's history that directly contributed to their demise and are intrinsic to the plot

truly team black stans are made up of only the most genius and media literate amongst us

[tweedfrog]

I think the core issue that causes such surface level takes when people analyse relationships in HOTD (romantic, platonic, sibling, parental whatever) is that lots of people think that you can't love someone and hurt them or treat them badly at the same time.

You see a lot of "oh Alicent never cared about Helaena!!! Look at how she regularly touches Helaena even though she is obviously uncomfortable with it" like idk guys I don't think the former 15 year old who's father pimped her out to a 30 year old while wearing her own mothers dress is really going to understand respecting the physical boundaries of her neurodivergent daughter in a 2024 therapyspeak kinda way?

[judasalicent]

my prediction right now is that a conversation between alicent and mysaria will occur in late s3 and have a similar function in the story as elizabeth bennet and lady catherine's conversation at the end of pride and prejudice lol.

in early s3, the relationship between alicent and rhaenyra will be strained because rhaenyra will believe alicent lied about aegon. but, as we move through s3, alicent will face no consequences for her "betrayal" besides being (very comfortably) imprisoned. in other words, alicent will suspect (though probably not consciously acknowledge) that rhaenyra still cares for her enough not to torture/execute her despite the perceived betrayal.

i believe this will inevitably climax with a private conversation between alicent and mysaria, who rhaenyra will be closest to during the beginning of s3. even at the top of s3, mysaria will be suspicious of rhaenyra's relationship to alicent due to the sept meeting, rhaenyra trusting alicent's plan to take the city, rhaenyra refusing to torture/execute alicent, etc.

as s3 progresses, rhaenyra and mysaria will grow to be more at odds as the interests of the nobles (with rhaenyra as representative) and the smallfolk (with mysaria as representative) begin to clash. this will culiminate in rhaenyra rejecting mysaria (for alicent) in some capacity mid-season, inspiring mysaria to confront alicent herself. up to this point, alicent may suspect rhaneyra's feelings, but her conversation with mysaria will make them explicitly known. alicent will realize that rhaenyra's love has kept her alive and well during her imprisonment.

the major consequence of this conversation will be that alicent, even if given the opportunity to leave king's landing in late s3/early s4, likely will not take it. knowing that rhaenyra's love is still there, alicent will seek it out. so just like elizabeth bennet realizes that mr. darcy still loves her after lady catherine reveals he intended to propose, alicent will realize that rhaneyra still loves her after mysaria reveals that rhaenyra is actively protecting her.

and to go even further, rhaneyra and alicent will potentially be given the opportunity to acknowledge their love for one another at the end of s3/beginning of s4 after rhaenyra turns away from the smallfolk after first tumbleton. in the same way that elizabeth and mr. darcy could confront their love for one another after lady catherine visits longbourn.

[salvatoreren]

so many people are justifying luke and jace's death for the fact that they are bastards and hate rhaenyra for getting mad at it, like i'm sorry? They're her sons? She carried them for nine months? They're her blood?

that's why rhaenyra was mad when alicent said bastard blood, shed at war, because up till then alicent gave no respect for her sons' death, she didn't see them as innocents losing their lives, a casualty in the war, no she saw them as bastards still. The least she could do was feel sorry since she herself was a mother and wouldn't want her children to be brutally murdered as well.

like it's okay to murder children because they're bastards but not mine?

ryan condal implying that there is still hope between rhaenyra and alicent even after luke's death, like do you know how stupid that sounds? Your son was murdered by her son, by then, any sort of friendship or love you may feel for them is supposed to die.

"But her son's actions aren't hers?!!!" well she's certainly has a part in it, alicent's actions in crowning aegon was the reason why luke was murdered in the first place, did we watch the same series?

alicent heard what she wanted to hear because she knows how sick viserys is in the first place, that man has constantly been hallucinating for all we know, like they are many aegons in the family...

you can't also say that alicent didn't know or she didn't want it in the first place, like is that all the argument you can say? That alicent really has no form of agency? that her character has always been moved by the plot and never by herself? That she had no part in this? When she does, right from the moment she wore green, she waged war so you can't tell me she didn't know or wanted this because of that.

[marybeatriceofmodena]

I can't fucking believe yall were up Rings of Power's ass when HotD decided to have Our Lady of Sorrows of Westeros cause a civil war because she forgot her own trashbag of a son was named after Aegon the Conqueror and she took a dying man's rambling about some pretty fundamental history as him designating him as heir. Like, I'm supposed to think this lady is smart. What even.

And if any Alicent stans want to come for me I want you to seriously sit down. And think about how your fave is written. How she reacts to things. How she processes information. Like, this is someone who's been in court for 20+ years and still doesn't get the basics. I hate Philippa Gregory's books with a passion but Mary Boleyn was a smarter bitch than this. This is a writers' problem.

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

When I see stuff like this I kinda want to bash my head into a wall:

To start off, I’m not sure whether this person was commenting on book or show Cersei, but honestly, it doesn’t even matter because she’s so much more than the ‘ambitious villain’ or the ‘murderous girlboss’ tropes in both the book and show.

(Of course, I do have my issues with the way Cersei was written in the show like most people but this is simply a rant post so I’m not going to go through the differences of Show vs Book Cersei)

Cersei is a female character who was shaped by her environment, who’s insecurities were created by her environment, and she’s a woman who’s idiotic mistakes can be traced back to how her environment shaped her. She’s much more than a murderous girlboss, she’s both a victim of the system and also a beneficiary of it, while also acting as an agent of it to keep the status quo while also desiring what the system denied her.

Cersei is NUANCED and complicated and even now people hate that about her and want her to have been a purely evil woman handcrafted in a vacuum, ignoring the context of her life because readers would rather not engage with Cersei’s victimhood and nuances because that ruins their idea of: She Was The Problem and Always The Problem. (People would rather say that she deserved her walk of shame instead of interacting meaningfully with the theme of systematic gender-based violence that is so prevalent in Cersei’s story. The exploration of patriarchal violence in Show Alicent’s story is done so horribly in comparison.)

And what really pissed me off about these tags is that this person has clearly decided that they don’t care to interact with the nuance of Cersei and are fine with flattening her, and yet they shit on others for not liking Alicent.

Because of the way Alicent is written in this show, she almost always has a ‘woe is me I can do no wrong’ attitude, which of course drives people away from the character (woe is me I deserve to take a child’s eye 🥺). However, what actually annoys me is how she’s made out to be stupid, foolish, ignorant, and inconsistent due to the horrible writing of this show, all of which are deviations from her book characterization. Also, I despise it when people want me to support writing decisions and changes made in adaptations that are downright misogynistic and are meant to attract the male gaze.

But what pisses many people, including myself, off is how the changes made negatively impacted many other characters. Alicent’s terrible characterization is like a black hole that distorts and warps the whole story! It’s annoying af!

So when people like this say: ‘She’s nuanced and people just can’t handle it 🙄;’ I say: No. She’s horribly written and a different character from the book and people have a right to be critical about these changes that stripped a female character of 1) her agency and 2) her intelligence!

And the thing is, there was little reason for the writers to have made all these changes to Alicent’s characterization! In the book she is an interesting character with clear motives and understandable reactions. She’s cunning and ambitious and acts the way a noble lady who became queen would. And despite her clear ambitions and dislike of Rhaenyra, she still makes a comment wondering about who would protect the Princess from Ser Criston, and yet she then takes Cole into her service after his falling out with Rhaenyra. That’s a perfect example of nuance! Show Alicent could never compare to book Alicent’s clear moral values and consistent disregard of said moral values in pursuit of power.

And because of this, Book Alicent isn’t easy to stomach. It’s hard for most people to come to terms with a character like her and it’s even harder for people to feel sympathetic for her at the end when she went mad with grief.

On the other hand, Show Alicent was designed in a way to garner pity, and when the writers felt like her current arc wouldn’t be enough to garner the specific reaction they wanted they would then throw in a time skip and suddenly she’s completely different and yet still Thee victim. She’s designed to be as sympathetic as fucking possible! The camera angles, the background music, and the lighting is set up in a way to make sure you the viewer feels pity or sympathy for her! Cause that’s her role in this series! She’s thee Ultimate Victim!

But too bad for the writers as many people are fed up with this kind of inconsistent writing. Even when the writers created a whole new challenge for Alicent where she’s shitted on by the green council and forced to face the beast she helped to raise, I and many others could never feel any satisfaction as it was clear that once again Alicent was being made to be Thee Ultimate Victim who was just led astray by the patriarchy and was a victim of it and was only just realizing it so don’t you pity her don’t you feel sad for her and now she’s trying to do the right thing so pls pls pls pity her 🥺~ So it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are annoyed by these eNLiGhtEnEd changes that have led to a complete deviation from the source material.

To summarize: Cersei is an excellent fucking character who’s by no means easy to stomach, and because she’s not easy to stomach she’s often reduced to annoying ass tropes by dumbasses who are reading above their comprehension level. But when you actually try to understand her, you can easily see why she turned out the way she did and you can feel sympathy for her while understanding that she’s both victim and perpetrator! On the other hand, Show Alicent is a mess and HOTD is trying to make her serve a different narrative role than she did in the books so ofc people are going to be unhappy with the changes as book readers are once again faced with the annoying reality that the writers don’t give a fuck about the source material.

[mmelolabelle]

I sometimes like to fantasize about how much Corlys Velaryon would have fucked shit up if Alicent had actually managed to injure Luke in 1x07.

That man had a fleet, access to two full grown dragons with battle experience, money to burn and a pre-existing grudge against Viserys and the Hightowers. He wanted that smoke since the Great Council. And he clearly loved Luke.

It would have gotten very messy, very quickly.

[enobariasteeth]

Helaena is actually Alicent and Rhaenyra's love child... Rhaenyra literally told me herself

[celestialscarlet]

Alicent misunderstanding Viserys…. Aemond not meaning to kill Lucerys…. Daemon not actually telling B&C to go after Helena and the kids….

[paldogangsaan]

the most frustrating part abt the scene with alicent and rhaenyra (other than it being ridiculous) is the attempt at portraying alicent as a passive victim with zero agency (TO BE CLEAR she's a victim of both otto and viserys, that's not a question, she had no choice there. she did, however, have a choice in other moments and those are what i'm talking abt in this post). the writers essentially made her go "oh i thought he was talking about MY aegon. well, it's too late. i am a tragic figure who never wanted war. oh no" like ?? some of us have eyes and can see that alicent has been actively trying to gain power, undermine rhaenyra, and divide the family even before the time skip. she shows up to rhaenyra's wedding late and wearing green, she sows discord between their kids, spreads rumors of rhaenyra's children being bastards despite knowing it could get them killed (+ in the book the only ppl yapping abt them being bastards were alicent and criston cole bc the point of spreading rumors was to undermine and hurt both them and rhaenyra, if it was true or not was irrelevant), and she literally hits aegon and insists that rhaenyra will kill him to cement her claim to the throne even when there's been no indication that she would. alicent did not have to do any of those things, she actively chose to

and rhaenyra was willing to leave all that in the past by marrying helaena and jace thus ending the (then metaphorical) war between their sides of the family, but alicent refused bc she wanted power and for rhaenyra to not have any, so she made active choices to ensure that, and didn't care for the consequences. now her son is the king, she never prepared him for it so he's shit at it, she can't control him, she has no power, and the only person surprised is her (and otto). but again, these are choices SHE made or helped make. making an enemy of rhaenyra, and everything that came bc of that, was a choice. she would've helped put aegon on the throne whether viserys quoted the prophecy to her or not, be it usurpation (which it was) or not. that was a choice alicent made. stop portraying her as a passive victim of the dance when that role belongs to helaena

[pookiebearhelaena]

“schoolboy crush” she will NEVERRR match your freak🤣

[sevensinswithin]

working on the outline for the alicent & laenor lavender marriage au and holy shit i didn't realize that i spent over 4 hours working on it

[alicentsgf]

yeah alicent does come across "worse" in fire and blood. but idk why people get so angsty about the show giving alicent a sympathetic edit specifically, as if literally almost every other central character isnt also getting a more sympathetic edit... they didnt single alicent out in this. rhaenyra is worse in the book. daemon is worse in the book. aemond is worse in the book. (aegon is literally the only one who got done dirty tbh.) and even then alicent wasnt that bad in the book, like, comparatively, she was ranking pretty low on the 'evil deeds' leaderboard. she didnt get to actively commit even one atrocity. honestly these characters being more 'sympathetic' in hotd is just a natural symptom of them being written as entire, conflicted human beings rather than the cardboard cut outs with no inner lives gyldayn presents us with in fire and blood.

like you're allowed to have an issue with how they crafted that complexity, without pretending that the flat version of a character that existed in the "historical" account would be at all workable for an intimate portrayal

[gojuo]

Proshippers be funny af. GoT opening sequence is nothing like hotd so that comparison they pulled up is false and desperate.

me: i want helaegon to be the deconstruction of targaryen incest that examines the psychological horror of a forced marriage to one's own sibling in which the full family is already hanging by a thread in a treacherous situation since there is no other targ couple in the entirety of canon perfectly situated to explore and dissect this horrific aspect of targaryen culture

#them: i want an incestuous love triangle (that is not canon) because incestuous love triangles is interesting writing or something

[katrantsasoiaf]

I don’t know why people are confused by gwayne’s age. freddie fox is five years older than olivia cooke.

we have no reason to assume gwayne’s age in either the book or the show, as the only information we ever had about him was that he was youngest of otto’s unnamed other sons. so alicent has other older brothers. she is the baby of the family.

alicent is fourteen in the first episode. if gwayne and alicent have the same age difference as their actors, than he’s nineteen in the first episode. or he could be as young as fifteen (although that’s unlikely because that would mean he broke maegor’s record and was the youngest knight in westerosi history until daemon blackfyre, but that’s neither here nor there). he is anywhere between 15-19 which makes sense to me.

that would make him 36-40 (which admittedly is older than freddie is, and he looks too young to be forty, but they also wanted you to believe that ewan mitchell is sixteen and that olivia cooke is his mother, so)

i thought everyone understood that stunt doubles and body doubles don’t canonically matter. That they don’t determine anything about actual characters until actual actors are casted to play them.