talking strictly about hbo hotd rhaenyra right now when i say this but that 14 year old girl has such amazing restraint after watching her father slowly destroy her mother with each failed pregnancy until it killed her, which then propelled him into a grief that left him emotionally unavailable for months while rhaenyra was left to mourn on her own, grappling with the pride/fear/anger of being named heir ONLY after her father seemingly realized he would never have a promised male heir and she was all that was left, only for him to then MARRY HER best friend without a WORD of warning or conversation about it, which then put her said best friend through the same cycle of pushing out heirs and putting rhaenyra's own position as heir (which HE put on HER shoulders and she did NOT ask for) at risk...and this all happened without rhaenyra killing someone.
i am so serious about that. this is an emotionally devastated and betrayed FOURTEEN year old girl with a LARGE fire breathing dragon at her disposal.
do you know how fast and furiously i, at 14, would have blown up kings landing if i found out my shit ass father was marrying my best friend? actually, scratch that, do you wanna know how fast i would have turned the red keep to ruins after learning my father finally managed to kill my mother in his pursuit of another child???? aemma's body wouldn't even be cold by the time i had hopped on syrax and massacred half the goddamn city
honestly good on rhaenyra for somehow managing to keep all of her shit together and, at most, being petty and passive aggressive and not going down a path of maegor-esque destruction because she very much had the power to do so if she really wanted to














