Duty provides the ready framework for how she behaves with regards them and trains herself to think of them; it does not act as a substitute for actual emotion that framework is meant to hold. There is this mixture of bewilderment, mild horro, occasional straight up disgust, and a yearning feeling of wanting to detach, to run away to, to never again lay eyes upon them. But the duty holds her unweildy, entirely blasphemous emotions in acceptable shapes; but every now and then when duty comes in conflict with duty, you see her true detachment peek through. She doesn't care about Aemond, Aegon, Jahaera or any of them, as people. Perhaps Haelena, on whom she has projected herself, gets a modicum of mild affection. When I see her behaviours this season, I am irresistably reminded of that season 1 young teen mom Alicent shot of her with Aegon? Aemond? In her arms, impeccably dressed, her arms perfectly performing the soothing duties of a mother but with a face unable to keep the contempt and weariness at - not her children - but motherhood itself; a motherhood forced on her, a motherhood so precious and sacred and long hungered for by the realm, by the king, by her father, by her house, a motherhood the pinnacle of her achievement and her life's successful purpose, a motherhood forced on her; a motherhood that stripped agency, dignity, freedom, youth, consent, bodily autonomy, passion, intimacy and joy from her; and left her with these creatures she is supposed to love, cherish and nurture. The intrinsic horror of physical birth, intensified by the context of her being essentially a walking teen incubator of middle aged men's dreams, ambitions and anxieties, of being and feeling like a brood mare; body horror - being invaded painfully to look down and see monsters crawling out of you - is manifested by the otherness of the perfect Targaryen children she produces - they are not hers, all of these people, these men, considered her body at Public Service to satisfy the realm with Healthy Targaryen Heirs. So she clinically acquiesced and clinically reproduced and the results horrified her. These silver haired psychic dragon flying freaks, are nothing like her and have nothing to do with her emotionally. They are the realms and to the realms caprice she abandons them when duty fails to hold its structure around her antipathy for them.
None of this is a commentary on her ethics (unambiguously fucked) or a mitigation of the damage she did to her kids (she fucked them up for sure). I just think its an interesting counterpoint to Cersei Lannister; who I think is more needlessly cruel, tyrannical, greedy, and immoral in every way to Alicent; but who sincerely declared about loving her children "upon that front a mother has no choice".
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