i just don’t think alicent is fundamentally opposed to violence or war. she is practical about having to use violence to advance a goal, and does it herself - she just has unacceptable limits that she hits, like rhaenyra’s murder or sending helaena to war against her will. but tellingly, in both cases she orders violence or accedes to violence to achieve the goal she herself seeks. she tries to stop one instance of violence unacceptable to herself, but must permit other kinds of violence to occur to do so. to save rhaenyra and her family in 1.09 she has larys burn down mysaria’s spy operation, and though the show is a bit frustratingly vague on this, it seems clear that this is done with the intent of killing the people who work for mysaria - just destroying the building wouldn’t achieve much. she agrees to aegon’s murder in 2.08 to save helaena. i think she experiences significant distress at both acts. she has an abhorrence of violence that is a thread throughout the show, from her anxiety at the bloodshed at the tourney in 1.01 to her horror at the violence of her own outburst in 1.07. but she does do them, and accept she has to do them, to acquire the (often limited) power to achieve her specific ends…which is exactly what she’s telling rhaenyra she’ll have to do in all we’ve gotten of her s3 so far!
she is a power player in a very violent political system that she has survived for a long time in, and regardless of her ambivalence, i just do not see the figure criston’s partial and sexist view conjures - a woman too tender and good to confront violence as a reality, and therefore unfitting to head a government prosecuting a war. it’s equally telling her moments of resistance, of using power for herself rather than others, are centered around the love of women, and work against the goals of the men who try to control her. but it can’t really undo the patriarchal power structure, as it is often posited to do via a richean lesbian continuum kind of framework - she has to work within it, always. none of alicent’s relationships with women can ever be extricated from hierarchies of power or said to be working against it in any neat way, at least so far. alicent saves rhaenyra’s life, but the only way she can do that is by seeking and affirming power for aegon. it doesn’t disrupt monarchal power, it actually affirms it, while working to strip rhaenyra of power. she later capitulates to rhaenyra for helaena, but it entails affirming rhaenyra’s pursuit of power, because safety for helaena is dependent on rhaenyra gaining power. these female bonds do not have any straightforward, inherent political purpose or function. they always affirm power as much as they disturb it, they might redistribute it or fight specific unacceptable ends, but they are too tied up in this system for it to ever fundamentally disrupt it. but that has great meaning to me! life is often not made up of radical acts or breaks, which most of us have few real opportunities for, but a more complex negotiation of accommodations and resistances that can still profoundly shape lives.
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