one of the most regressive things in grrm’s work is making magical bloodlines real, and the fandom exacerbates that by arguing endlessly about characters’ magical blood quantum, often in a way that is more intense than the fantasy feudal aristocrats. so i like how the show’s approach is not to determine whether someone objectively has whatever “blood” in them - an impossible proposition - but instead focuses on the social construction of bloodline. everyone here THINKS you need a certain heritage to ride a dragon, and that’s what matters, the way people socially construct this ideal and what it materially allows access to - ie, focusing on bastardry and lack of legitimate birth and class in this episode as the center of the social transgression of the dragonseeds claiming the dragons of house targaryen.
they might have valyrian blood or they might not, but in the end this matters less than the fact they aren’t a part of the patriarchal sanctioned line of descent connected to property rights and this act threatens class boundaries and royal prerogative. it’s about socially constructed boundaries related to bloodline, and bloodline for the people making sense of this is fundamentally a justification for relations of power regardless considering the doubt that can’t be erased. although it’s fantasy and i think to engage honestly with it you do just have to accept magical bloodline as real to a degree, even if it’s troubling, i also think it’s best to minimize the idea of it as an objective real truth as much as possible because it makes you sound like a nazi. so jace’s intense anxiety for what a lowborn bastard claiming a dragon means for his legitimacy as a future king - when his family’s power in general and the exculpation for his own bastardy in specific is built around an ideal of exclusivity - being centered is a lot more compelling than either “only valyrians can ride dragons and this has been certifiably proved” OR its counterpart in “this dragonrider proves that the connection to blood is fake: see, we’ve certified the PURITY of this character’s non-valyrian bloodline, not a single drop, but PROGRESSIVELY this time.”

















