aegon's hypersexuality and unacknowledged victimhood
rape cw for this entire post, including rape of a minor
hello all i'm thinking of tom glynn-carney's aegon ii and wanted to put down some thoughts about his promiscuity. as a side note, i refuse to fuck with rapists and so in stormbreak i lean more towards the book rather than the show when it comes to the rape and the child fighting pits (as in, those things have not happened). but i wanted to comment on a few things: his known penchant for sleeping around, his trip to the brothel with 13-year-old aemond, and his relationship with helaena.
these things probably also provide context for how he became what he is in the show, but i don't want this post to be used to excuse his rape of dyanna at all because nothing can excuse rape. let's discuss further:
if you re-watch hotd, take note of how many times aegon is touched, and the nature of that touch. he is kicked and berated by otto. alicent grips his face tightly and slaps him while shouting him. aemond tackles him to the floor and wrestles him into submission. criston holds his shoulder, yes, but to keep him from running away. alicent kisses his forehead, yes, but as part of a ceremony. the only time aegon receives a loving touch from anyone is when alicent grabs his arm to push him behind her at rhaenys's threat.
this is a boy who is so completely touch-starved he doesn't even know what he's missing even as he hungers for it.
from a psychological standpoint, it's very common for people deprived of affection to seek its closest approximation: the bodily contact required by sex. they can hide behind the defense of simply wanting pleasure, all while secretly treasuring the feeling of someone touching them. not to bruise, not to punish, not to restrain, just for pleasure. if they close their eyes, they can pretend it's for love, too.
i wouldn't be surprised if aegon had his first sexual experience when he was far too young. we see that he likes to slip away from the castle--and is somehow usually successful, despite all the scrutiny upon him due to his position. it's not a far reach to assume that an unhappy, unloved, touch-starved baby aegon might have wandered into a flea bottom brothel and discovered that touch didn't have to hurt. having this very warped relationship with sex while he was too young to understand what he was doing and how it was hurting him influences his entire adult personality.
this would also help to provide context for the completely whack decision to bring aemond to a brothel. at this point, aemond has lost his eye, and i've discussed before here that the injury represented a major turning point in their relationship. aegon has no demonstrated desire to belittle or mock or hurt aemond at any point after the eye incident. i don't think he did this malevolently. i think it was aegon, trying to think of what could help aemond to feel less ugly, less unlovable, turning to the only thing he knew of that could come even close to feeling like love and desire. it wasn't, of course, and he knew that, but it was the only balm he had to soothe his own hurt and it was the only one he knew to offer aemond.
i also really don't see enough discussion of how aegon is a victim of rape within his marriage to helaena. obviously helaena isn't given a choice in marrying aegon and having children with him, but neither is aegon. and we see aegon explicitly express that he doesn't want this, which we haven't actually seen from helaena.
there's a reason helaena says aegon only ever touches her when he's drunk. he cannot bring himself to endure rape when he is sober. there's a reason he ignores his children. they are the product of his own rape, by his own hand.
he feels that he has been forced into the position of perpetrator of assault against helaena, his baby sister. he is the rapist and yet he is also the victim and how is he meant to reconcile the two? how is he meant to look helaena in the eye when the sight of her makes his skin crawl with the memory of having to walk willingly to his own assault? of being forced to be the active party, unable to even lay there and dissociate the way alicent always did with viserys?
and not once does anyone acknowledge what has happened to him. even alicent, who should empathize with him the most, has no sympathy for him in this regard. why would she? she's the one who did this to him.
tldr aegon's relationship to sex is and always has been defined by his victimhood. he fell into dangerous patterns of abuse as a child that no one saved him from, and even as an adult is forced to carry out his own rape like i cannot emphasize enough how fucked up that part is. i don't think he's ever had an experience with sex that didn't make him feel like shit when it was over, if not during. and yet he keeps doing it, keeps hurting himself, because it's the closest thing he thinks he'll ever get--the closest thing he thinks he'll ever deserve--to love.
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