glimpse at madess

i like stuff mostly asoiaf

[crushingthebroken]

Ryan Condal and Sara Hess are complete fucking hack ring-pieces

"The show involves Team Black who are the good wholesome family who want to bring enlightened progressivism to Westeros under Queen Rhaenyra, who is a progressive gay ally socialist queen, against Team Green who are literally all either rapists, attempted rapists or now, given this weeks' episode and the director's comments, Nazis."

The show is about as subtle as a punch to the face.

[rhaenicentdaily]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON | Season 3, Episode 3 "Rhaenyra Triumphant"

[crushingthebroken]

holy fuck I mean Rhaenyra aegon is alicent's son, you have 5 of your own come on - no matter how she might view them as "irredeemable" that's still her first child she gave birth to after your father the cryptkeeper nutted him into existence

[kenna-the-cosmic]

i would very much like to see daemon go to asshai or sothoryos and see how he fares

on a side note, it’s really funny how all the books and shows pretty much revolve around the iron throne, meanwhile lovecraftian horrors are going on in the background. like wtf happened to aerea targaryen? and with yeen?

[crushingthebroken]

would love to see him dying a horrible death shitting out of every orifice since sothoryos is like, 50000 mega diseases all over the place

[gameofgreen]

Hotd writers workbook each season:

-Sexually humiliate team green for shock value by inventing non-f&b scenes.

-Turn a civil war into a psychosexual lesbian story between one bad (victim) woman who needs to be constantly punished and one good (victim) woman who is constantly restrained by her gender.

-Glaze girlbossified victim rhaenyra, her feminist sex-trafficker advisor and to an extent her pdf daddy husband (ironically even GRRM was not up their bottoms as much as ryan condal and his writers are rn).

-Humble alicent through SA by framing her as constant victim of her own side to 1) justify her supporting rhaenyra over her kids 2) for #them to go > she deserves it for daring to support her son against queen rhaenyra, the greens are SO horrible, this is what inventing patriarchy does!

-For the gazillionth time, show how immoral criston cole is.

-Repeatedly depict all of tg as deviant evil misogynists and all tb as goody two shoes feminists by adding more non-book scenes, nuance be damned.

-Milk daenerys and asoiaf prophecy as reserved quota.

-Give most tg screentime to alicent who isnt even tg anymore but another rhaenyra stan.

-Add plagiarized dialogues to show how simultaneously girlbossy and victimised all hotd women are, particularly rhaenyra.

-Allude how every medieval woman against rhaenyra MUST be a pick-me hypocrite woman for trump and every woman for rhaenyra is the most perfect badass feminist ever lived, there is no inbetween.

-Only and only rhaenyra is allowed to love, cry, feel for her children in this show.

-Bare minimum characterization for the velaryons. Their portion of tb screentime is given to rhaenyra, daemon and mysaria.

-Make the greens weaker, more divided and pitiful for #their gratuitous gooning.

-Remove all f&b nuance that GRRM wrote and reiterated in his blog to turn the story of the entire dance into tb best, tg worst propaganda for fave self-inserts.

*Best Show Ever!*

[frizox]

tom glynn-carney saying aegon can't move on from jaeherys's assassination and blames it fully on rhaenyra.........i'm glad there's at least one character who still remembers that kid being butchered 😭😭

[crushingthebroken]

his grandmother & mother clearly don't

[crushingthebroken]

i dont know what the holy fuck these "writers" were on when they made Alicent Hightower decide to sell her family out for the sake of her lesbian situationship but holy christ

imagine being a child bride to a man three times your age and having to bear his children that he r*pes into you one after the other - and even though their father is the most powerful man in the kingdom, he gives them nothing. no titles. no names. no land. no love or respect or affection. your son, your aegon, the one you had when you were 14 or 15 - is the first firstborn son denied the right to inherit his father's title and lands. what's worse is that your husband doesn't care to even sit down with your son and explain why.

so now you have to be mother and father to these kids when you barely know how, but your ex best friend and daughter in law is now married to your brother in law who is a known scumbag and monster who as far as you know killed your daughter in law's first husband to marry her.

your children - being the trueborn sons and daughter of the king - will always be a threat to rhaenyra's claim. the fact she had three black haired kids with both her and her husband's silver hair just makes it that much worse. no matter if they swear loyalty and bow down to her they will always be a threat to her claim with their own being stronger.

but im supposed to believe that the woman who was ride or die for her children is now willing to sacrifice her three sons because they are "irredeemable" because they sided against Rhaenyra and are now obstacles to her lesbian situation-ship?

alicent hightower in the show is literally on the same level as ramsay bolton in terms of evil - they are both willing to kill their families, only alicent doesn't do it herself. at least not yet.

[marvel-and-dc-geek]

Dear Ryan Condal and Sara Hess:

Sorry that your moms never hugged you, but you could try reading the fucking books with your eyes open

[crushingthebroken]

they need to stop eating crayons

[sansa-stark-is-me]

Book Alicent being considered "power hungry" never really sat right with me because to me a power hungry character is often someone who feels entitled to things not theirs, and as your posts break down - Alicent wasn't asking for special treatment, she was asking to have the same treatment as other wives where their firstborn son with their husband inherits.

Thats not to say she isn't ambitious - but ambitious isn't always the same as power hungry. A power hungry character isn't someone who is willing to make concessions. Alicent would have been fine with Aegon being Rhaenyras consort. She encouraged Aegon to send terms to Rhaenyra that were more generous than fair (ie Dragonstone in perpetuity) A power hungry person is going to prioritise power no matter what. In that case book Alicent when hostage would have NEVER considered the idea of going to Rhaenyra and proposing that they split the realm. NEVER. I also can't remember the exact details but I think it would have favoured Rhaenyra more because it was basically the Westernlands & Stormlands + Oldtown for the greens and that's it. Rhaenyra would have gotten the majority & the legitimacy symbols of the Red Keep & Dragonstone etc. I'm sorry but that's not the actions of a power hungry person that's a mother scared!

Its asking for justice, not power.

Power hungry does not mean anyone who wants power. It refers to someone who already possesses power and seeks to accumulate more of it beyond what they need, are owed, or are entitled to, at the expense of others. Someone who has no independent power and is trying to secure basic security or compensation for labor already performed is not power-hungry. That’s not ambition in the pathological sense that’s self-preservation and justice within the system they’re trapped in.

There’s a huge difference between hoarding authority you already control, and demanding payment or protection that the system itself promised in exchange for your labor. Asking for land, money, inheritance, or protection after YEARS of service is not power-hunger. It’s literally how feudal systems function. Queens advocate for their children because children are their only long-term security. That isn’t greed it’s necessity. Alicent is not asking for something extraordinary. She is asking for what the system normally promises. The entire point of marrying a king is that your firstborn son is expected to inherit. That isn’t ambition, it’s baseline feudal logic.

Alicent cannot be “power-hungry” in the literal sense because she never possessed independent power to begin with. It’s a feudal monarchy a queen consort’s authority is entirely derivative. It comes from her husband while he lives, and from her son if he inherits. Alicent has no ruling office, no legal sovereignty, no lands of her own, no army, and no crown in her own right. Her father is a second son her marriage does not elevate her family into ruling House Hightower. Everything she has exists only so long as the king allows it.

And Viserys explicitly cuts her off at the knees. By keeping Rhaenyra heir and refusing to reconsider even after fathering multiple sons, he ensures that Alicent’s status dies with him. Once he is gone, she will not rule, her sons will not rule, and her safety will depend entirely on the goodwill of the very faction that has the most incentive to eliminate her children.

Calling Alicent power-hungry for wanting her son to inherit is like calling a worker greedy for asking to be paid for labor already performed. She did exactly what Westerosi society demands of a queen consort. She married the king, produced heirs rapidly at great physical cost and upheld the court. In that system, sons are not a bonus they are the job. To then deny her the one thing that gives her and her children political protection is not neutrality, it is dispossession. When people call Book Alicent power-hungry, what they really mean is she refused to accept being politically erased after fulfilling her end of the bargain. And that discomfort isn’t about her ambition it’s about how uncomfortable people are with a woman insisting that the rules apply to her too.

[For most of medieval history, marriage among the nobility was a political contract, not a romance.] A woman entered that contract with a very clear understanding: she would risk her body and life to produce heirs. In exchange, the system promised her one thing that her legitimate sons would stand in the line of succession and be protected. That was simply how the machine functioned. Viserys breaks that machine.

That’s exactly what makes Alicent’s situation so uniquely unstable. Viserys doesn’t just favor a daughter he asks the realm to pretend his legitimate sons don’t exist. He demands that nobles, lords, and a queen consort accept something that directly contradicts centuries of legal and political precedent. So when Alicent pushes back, she isn’t “grasping for power.” She is responding the way every noblewoman was expected to respond. Protect your children. Secure their future. Demand the rights that the marriage contract implicitly promised.

[The marriage contract was rarely a single written document spelling everything out. Most of the time, it was just an understood agreement everyone knew about, based on tradition and social expectation. A noble marriage basically meant: “I’m giving you my body, my children, my work, my loyalty, and my political usefulness. In return, my children will be protected and set up to inherit.” They didn’t need to write all of this down because it was obvious to everyone it was shown in things like who got dowries, who got married to whom, who was sent as a ward, and how inheritance worked. Breaking that understanding wasn’t just unfair to the wife it was destabilizing to the entire realm. Lords married their daughters to kings precisely because of that expectation. Houses supported queens bc they assumed her sons mattered. When Viserys ignores that norm, he isn’t just slighting Alicent he’s quietly telling every noble family that the rules can change arbitrarily if the king feels like it.]

Viserys’ actions absolutely set a dangerous precedent for any future queen consort who wasn’t a Targaryen.

Viserys didn’t just mistreat a queen consort. He undermined the entire logic of marriage in Westeros, especially for non-Targaryen women. By calling Alicent’s children as “her blood” rather than his, he revealed an obsession with blood purity. These were not Alicent’s private children. They were the king’s lawful heirs by every social and religious standard of the realm.

And the insult wasn’t small. The Hightowers were ancient, wealthy, powerful, and loyal. Oldtown housed the Faith and the Citadel. If they could be treated as disposable incubators rather than partners in rule, then no non-Targaryen house was safe. Viserys effectively sent a message to every noble family in Westeros: your daughters may marry the king, bear his sons, sacrifice their bodies and lives and still be cast aside if they aren’t “pure enough.”

That is an insane precedent.

Royal marriages are political contracts. They exist to bind houses to the crown through shared blood and shared futures. By privileging one daughter from a more Targaryen mother over legitimate sons from a non-Targaryen queen, Viserys broke the trust that makes those contracts work. Once that trust is gone, why would any house gamble its daughters and loyalty on a royal match? Why marry into a family that openly devalues you and your children? It’s also deeply ironic. The Targaryens survived in Westeros bc they married outside their bloodline. They needed Andal swords, Andal gold, Andal legitimacy.

Cersei is power-hungry in the textbook sense because she subverts the system while pretending to uphold it. She tells Sansa to “do your duty,” to give the king heirs, to love his children, to endure marriage for the good of the realm while she herself deliberately refuses to do that work. She never intends to give Robert legitimate children. She prioritizes her own desires and her own power, keeps Jaime as her chosen partner, and then uses her children as tools once they exist. Her advice to Sansa was only control and projection. It’s internalized patriarchy weaponized you must suffer so the system survives even though I cheated it for myself.

That’s why it’s gaslighting. Cersei literally hoards power, scheming to stay on top, while telling others to follow rules she herself ignores. She wants the performance of monarchy without the sacrifice. That’s power hunger. But when someone sacrifices, they deserve to be paid. Alicent sacrificed and she was denied that’s the difference between her and Cersei. Mind you, if Alicent had been in Cersei’s position, there wouldn’t have been a War of the Five Kings.

The very first thing Alicent does after “taking the crown” is relinquish authority. A genuinely power-hungry character clings, consolidates, centralizes. Cersei hoards power, refuses to let go, undermines her children so she can rule through them, and panics at the idea of becoming irrelevant. Alicent does the opposite. She places the crown on Helaena’s head with her own hands, kneels, and says “My Queen.” She is publicly renouncing rule.

After that, she doesn’t scheme, doesn’t dominate council, doesn’t maneuver to remain indispensable. She steps into the role that medieval society actually allowed her: dowager, mother, grandmother. So thoroughly, in fact, that everyone knows her routine well enough for Blood and Cheese to exploit it (like Helaena bringing the children to see her each night) That is not a woman addicted to power. That is a woman who wanted security, not dominance.

As you said giving Rhaenyra Dragonstone in perpetuity and letting her children keep Driftmark is generosity beyond what she needed to secure and it actually limits her own family’s potential gains. If she were truly power-hungry, she would have pushed to keep Dragonstone for her other sons, block Driftmark, or seize the best posts for her sons immediately. It’s literally why calling Alicent “power-hungry” is so absurd she’s doing everything a responsible mother would do, not everything a scheming queen would do.

Her later actions only reinforce this. When her sons are in danger, she crawls to the Iron Throne on her knees to beg for peace. She offers to split the realm. She repeatedly proposes councils, compromises, anything that might keep her children alive. A power-hungry person does not give away territory, or POWER like that. A mother does.

When people call Alicent “power-hungry,” they’re reducing her into a stereotype they’re more comfortable hating.

Like Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. The first wife’s only son inherits everything by law, and despite promising his dying father to care for his stepmother and half-sisters, he quickly abandons them to insecurity. Austen isn’t portraying a villain so much as exposing a system where women’s survival depends on male goodwill that can evaporate overnight. That’s exactly the position Alicent is in. Misogyny hasn’t vanished it’s just learned new language. People still resent women who act to secure their children’s future, especially when those women are stepmothers. Historically, a stepmother who didn’t fight for her children was seen as virtuous one who did was called greedy, or manipulative.

Dowries and dower rights existed precisely to give wives some security, especially if they were widowed or if their husband died. It was supposed to be a “guarantee” for the woman, her survival, and sometimes her children, because otherwise she could be left completely powerless. It’s basically the system saying: “You gave your children, your household service here’s a chunk of wealth or land to keep you safe if things go wrong.” WHAT THE FUCK DID VISERYS GIVE ALICENT AND HER CHILDREN? Dragons? Cool… he gave them the tools to claim power but not the power itself.

I really love Alicent as a character, not just narratively but on a personal level, because I recognize her. I see so many women in her story who lived through the same thing women who did what was asked of them, who upheld their side of the social contract, and were still denied security and protection for their children. I relate to that deeply because my own family lived something very similar. My mother was the second wife. My father had been married before, and he gave the children of the first wife EVERYTHING: money, lands etc... My mother and we, her children were denied those same things. The imbalance was obvious, and it was devastating. Of course, the context today is very different we live in modern times, with laws and lawyers. Yet the emotional reality is similar. If my mother had gone to lawyers to claim what was rightfully hers and for her children, that wouldn’t have been power-hungry it would have been standing up for justice. Asking for what you earned or what is owed to you isn’t greed or ambition, it’s basic fairness. Alicent lives in a medieval system where divorce is impossible, legal recourse doesn’t exist, and a woman’s value is tied to what she provides to a man and his lineage. When that lineage is discarded, so is she. That helplessness, that quiet injustice, is something I understand in my bones. I don’t see Alicent as power-hungry. I see her as someone who was made weak by design, denied what she was promised, and then blamed for refusing to disappear quietly. I empathize with her because I know what it feels like to be on the losing side of a system you didn’t choose, watching your mother swallow injustice to keep the peace while you grow up knowing you were worth less in the eyes of the people who held everything. That’s why Alicent matters to me. Not because she’s perfect, but because she’s painfully real.

When your father ignores and denies your mother and her children their rightful inheritance, their security… and just lets them exist in that shadow, uhhh… it’s infuriating. That kind of neglect isn’t just unfair, it’s a kind of slow violence leaving them powerless, vulnerable, and dependent on systems stacked against them. I can see exactly why Alicent would have been forced to fight quietly for her children, because if she didn’t, nobody else would. You don’t have to like Alicent or agree with all her choices to understand her. Her story is painfully realistic she’s a second wife whose children are constantly at risk, living in a system that gives her almost no independent power. yes, she makes mistakes, but her actions come from fear and love for her children, not cruelty or ambition for its own sake. That’s what makes her relatable and, honestly, more human than a lot of “heroic” characters in the book.

[crushingthebroken]

FINALLY someone says it - alicent only wanted for HER SON what everyone else's firstborn sons had gotten for thousands of years; the inheritance that he was heir to. the show has gone so far out of its way to make team black out to be the heroic "default faction" and team green the baby eating villains that it's almost laughable how biased the writers are.

people say alicent "seduced" Viserys or is this evil bitch for wanting what her son was denied, her son, the only firstborn son in westerosi history denied the inheritance he was heir to. no wonder aegon turned out as broken as he was.

(going by the show verse, a teenaged alicent being married to a literal zombie four times her age and being forced to bear his children that he gave no shits about was also why they turned out broken)

[dyannasdayne]

Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but it really sounds like the writers shoved the Dalton Greyjoy arc at Criston as a fuck you to Fabien Frankel because he advocated for himself and called out how inconsistent and two-dimensional Criston has been.

[tessarionbestgirl]

I feel sick.

[crushingthebroken]

it's like she wants to punish her own sons for the crime of being male and alive and breathing. like christ on a cracker, book alicent would never. I would argue condal and hess are worse then D&D because D&D had the excuse of not having a completed story UNLIKE HOTD

something that never made sense to me is the weird way the show tries to frame Aegon, Aemond and Daeron as "others" and "not true Targs" when THEY ARE LITERALLY THE OFFSPRING OF THE DECAYING CORPSE CALLED VISERYS THAT WAS KING 10 MINUTES AGO

[crushingthebroken]

hotd teaser trailer

honestly it didn't look that good. just more of the same "Rhaenyra is the Messiah look at how amazing she is here in king's landing, what would you have me do" and the laughable character of Alicent throwing her family to the wolves for her lesbian situationship

"This is not my story any longer" - GRRM

[the-daily-dreamer]

So a lot of people have talked about the weird sexual punishment and embarrassment utilized against team green and I wanted to weigh in because I think it’s the perfect example of the hypocrisy of this show’s messaging.

Because on the surface, HOTD takes a very sex positive stance. They champion Rhaenyra for being very open with her sexuality and for being sexually liberated in a very conservative society. They act as if she is an impressive beacon of feminism for this. And that would be great…if it weren’t for the fact that this sex positive outlook lives and dies with Rhaenyra’s and team black’s sexual experiences only.

Outside of Rhaenyra’s perspective, sex scenes are often degrading, predatory, abusive, and meant to embarrass the character to others in universe and/or the audience.

Criston is seen saying no and trying to leave when being coerced into sex with Rhaenyra which she promptly ignores by kissing him and blocking the door. Then that sex he consistently has with Rhaenyra is used as a joke for how pathetic he is for not accepting her offer to be nothing more than a personal “whore”. And his consensual sex with Alicent is seen as hypocrisy but also interrupted by Helaena after blood and cheese so that he can be blamed for this atrocity because of his “immorality”.

Aemond is seen cuddling in the lap like a young child of the woman who raped him when he was young, then being served milk, and then walking out of the brothel naked. With the whole scene being painted uncomfortable and rather degenerate.

Aegon has a scene of him being a rapist to ensure he is known as a bad and evil man. And then he has a scene where he explicitly states how his genitalia have been damaged. As if his disability from his attack is embarrassing and disgusting.

Larys one of the few disabled characters in the show, has a fetish that surrounds his disability that he uses to degrade Alicent. Thereby making him seem disgusting and pathetic.

And of course. Alicent. Her first sexual encounter we see her have is her looking dead inside while being raped by her pedophilic husband, a scene that seems to have the connotation of deserved assault because “she asked for this” by “seducing” Viserys. She is fetishized for information and thus makes her seem degraded and gross. Her sex with Criston is interrupted by Helaena after blood and cheese so that she, too, is blamed for the atrocity of the murder of her grandchild because she was “immoral” for…having consensual sex with someone after her rapist husband finally dies.

Every scene that any team green character experiences is painted in a way that portrays them as disgusting, perverted, and immoral; or is painted in a way that is meant to humiliate these characters to others in and out of universe.

How is this sexually positive? How is this an appropriate way to portray your “villains”, by painting them negatively and embarrassing them through their sexual encounters?

-

The worst part is that they’ve used these sexually degrading scenes specifically to “humble” a rape victim and child bride. Humbling her because they believe that she is power hungry and desperate for the throne and so she uses and betrays Viserys and Rhaenyra. And aside from that being a major mischaracterization (Alicent didn’t want the throne as a teenage girl forced to marry the king, and she doesn’t betray Viserys and Rhaenyra out of personal ambition but protection for her family), you know who that description fits? DAEMON TARGARYEN.

Daemon wanted the throne more than anything. Groomed his teenage niece to have a chance to marry her to get closer to the title of king. Betrayed, humiliated, and hurt his brother and niece wife to make himself a better candidate as heir. Choked his niece wife when she didn’t listen to him. And consistently asserted himself as king, a position to be viewed as higher than his wife the queen.

And similar to Alicent, he was “humbled” this season. But how was he humbled? By having private visions that are unknown to (almost) everyone. And these visions are mostly just him being shown the people he hurt in the process of seeking his power. Except for the one with his mother, which is sexually inclined, but not presented in the same depraved and humiliating way that the scenes with Alicent or any of team green are.

-

This whole show just has such a gross way of depicting the people they see as villains. And it shows how hypocritical their messaging is. HOTD is not a feminist, sex positive show. It’s far too obsessed with sexual violence and humiliation against people they dislike to be one. This show believes that sexual positivity and liberty is good. But only for those who deserve it. That it’s not a right but rather a privilege. And anyone they deem as immoral, evil, bad, or “unfeminist” doesn’t deserve it. They deserve to be ridiculed, humiliated, and humbled by their failures as people. And I can’t stand it.

This show isn’t sex positive and feminist. It’s Rhaenyra positive. That’s it.

[mejcinta]

Seems like Daemon is patronizing Daeron here, to me at least.

Daemon's been sent by a politically inept Rhaenyra to urge Daeron to bow or perish. In what appears to be an echo to Daemon's scene with Oscar Tully in s2, Daeron accepts to negotiate, whatever that might entail.

But because we know Hugh and Ulf will be sent to Tumbleton in the finale, it's clear that Daeron rejected Rhaenyra's proposal for peace.

Note: Daemon is literally the physical reminder for what befell Jaehaerys, and the pain that Aegon and Helaena are undergoing. Even though Daemon thinks he's 'sorry' for what he did, why the hell would the Blacks expect Daeron would take kindly to the murderer of Jaehaerys in the end?

[crushingthebroken]

daemon's there because he heard of another underage kid he could try to molest that's part of his family

[crushingthebroken]

what else can be said about this nonsense than

[littlepeakydevil]

Do you love me? You imbecile.

[crushingthebroken]

as if i thought season 1 of HOTD could not get any worse lmaooo season 2 is like shit to a blanket

[vivalarevolution]

This is how I imagine Rhaenyra and her brother conversation after his coronation

Made by @vivalarevolution​

[crushingthebroken]

the fact ryan condal keeps hitting with the villain bat anyone who has a problem with rhaenyra and daemon's absolutely destructive behavior is beyond me

he turned corlys and rhaenys into simps who don't give a fuck that rhaenyra and daemon conspired to murder their son & daemon executed corlys's brother in the middle of the throne room for standing up for his family's blood right to driftmark to not pass to bastards who were being passed off as trueborn(a literal crime in westeros)

he removed all of rhaenyra's negative traits and made her out to be this tragic righteous angel who everyone should cheer for no matter what

no one cares about the random person daemon murdered to use as laenor's body double but we get 50 scenes of the serving girl aegon SA'd and she's coming back for season 2 - a character who does not exist in the books

vaemond is portrayed as a greedy and grasping fool instead of a man desperate to keep his family's seat in his family - westeros's world means blood is everything

daemon's crimes of murdering his first wife, grooming his niece/wife, being the westerosi equivalent of a neo nazi(except with valyria, a eugenicist oligarchy built on slavery and slaughter) are all brushed under the rug for "YAS MALEWIFE" (do you honestly think he would allow his wife's bastards to inherit ahead of his kids with her? nope)

meanwhile criston cole has his honor violated by rhaenyra who uses him like a glorified dildo - a sacred vow of the kingsguard that means death or castration for any who break it - and calls her a cunt one time and he's the worst man alive

corlys pimped out his 12 year old daughter to viserys and no one cares, but otto does it with alicent and he's somehow the most evil man alive next to criston cole

corlys in 1x10 was fucking hilarious

"rhaenyra was complicit in our son's death. that girl destroys everything she touches."

-minutes later-

"you have the full support of my fleet and house"

condal says the show isn't biased. and i'm the empress of austria.