Why does Alicent have to make an effort towards Rhaenyra. Has to be bend the bridge between them, and make her children love Rhaenyra.
Rhaenyra never tried to that. Rhaenyra as a lady of her own house (Dragonstone) with financial independence and probably also a income from the crown could very well take her siblings under her wing. She could ward Helaena or Aegon in her household. It would be strange. But Daeron is fostered at Oldtown (a strange choice by Alicent since they don't need to court favor with their own house, but George needed Daeron there I guess).
Because again Rhaenyra is some special snowflake. And it think it is interesting seeing how her own self-absorbed mentality, due very likely to spending her entire life being told how "special" she was, ultimately makes her a terrible political actor.
Rhaenyra used the Arryn coat of arms in her banner. Yet we know she never spoke to her cousin Jeyne. We have no mentions of her aunts Elys and Amanda. And or their own children. The last two is probably because George wrote about them in F&B (same with Rodrik Arryn sister who we know nothing about other than she was a lady in waiting). But still, Jeyne was her cousin even before that. Jeyne is possible the best companion/supporter to have. Rhaenyra has a dragon that can get her into the Eyrie in less than a couple of days. Why are they not talking all the time? Why didn't Rhaenyra offer her young cousin a hand when her own family tried to steal her claims?
Rhaenyra's entire political storyline seems to have been a tour she did as 16 year old. Then she did nothing. The book doesn't even have her at the small council like the show did. Or did Alicent. Which I thinks makes a lot of sense. I never liked that Alicent was in the council prior to 120 when Viserys health made him impossible to rule. Only Visenya/Rhaenys and Alysanne attended them, and it is an important point to me, as we see the slow decline of queenship power.
It is even worse when we consider Jaehaerys and Alysanne spent their reign traveling Westeros. But Viserys never leaves the capital. Ok. Viserys is incompetent and doesn't have a dragon to travel as quickly. But Rhaenyra those! Use it for more than burn people! Is that to much to ask? Jaehaerys and Aegon I showed how dragons could be used for political proposes.
Cersei, who hates women and is considered by many a bad politician, knows she needs to build alliances with other families. She hates the Tyrells but knows she needs them.
Dany, who didn't have any formal education, understand the need to have fosterings and hostages. That she needs to work with people she doesn't like and build alliances to rule. Rulers can't be isolated from those around them. Not even monarchs.
How can Rhaenrya, who supposedly is "bold and bright" (even if the text actually never shows any of this. The contrary I would say), who sat at the foot of the Iron Throne since she was 7 and was a cupbearer to the King (a position that only Tywin and Steffon are known to have had) is so utterly incompetent at reading the room.
There is not one single political or ruling decision that Rhaenyra makes in her entire life that is good. Show!Rhaenyra at least proposed the Helaena/Jace married. Which is good to get a green hostage, but at the same time I would like to know what Daemon and Corlys think of it since there would be no Queen Baela.
Rhaenyra seems to inspire people based on what? Being a pretty teen? That's it. Why? Many girls on asoiaf are beautiful and neither had people forget laws to crown them.
Honestly, I think houses sided with TB because of Corlys and Daemon. But saying will probably sound anti feminism. But it makes more sense to me.
Daemon we know was loved and hated by people - which makes sense in the Westerosi context. Corlys was the Sea Snake, basically a legend.
And also because it seems Jace was truly a formidable player for his age. I think the text suffers from not caring about him (or Luke or Joff. Because in the end, George only wants Daemon's line to continue on). But Jace got the Vale and the North on his side. Jace did more on half a year dragonback than Rhaenyra her entire life.
So, it sad that the best political/military actors on TB are all men. Rhaenys seems to have had a presence but we don't know a thing she said or did besides Rook's Rest. Actually for a woman who was almost Queen, we know nothing of her character. Show Rhaenys is probably top 3 worse people alive. Hess saying killing smallfolk doesn't account actually made me stop watching the show, together with the Rhaenicent agenda.
The Dance was supposed to be the Princess vs the Queen. But both the books and show utterly fail at that. George was too in love with Daemon Targaryen to commit to Rhaenyra being the head of TB, and the show is more concern with vibes and fanservice than actually cohesive writing (which was what destroyed Game of Thrones)
Rhaenyra’s privileged laziness
I totally AGREE with everything you said. The entire emotional labor of the family cannot fall on Alicent’s shoulders. People love to dump all responsibility onto Alicent as if she alone should mend the family, make peace, make Rhaenyra happy, make her children adore their half-sister, and magically smooth over structural conflicts created by Viserys and the entire feudal system. Alicent cannot “make her children love Rhaenyra” when Rhaenyra never tried to know them. People speak as if Rhaenyra was some warm, loving big sister who was denied the chance to bond with the younger kids. But in canon, she barely interacted with Aegon, Helaena, Aemond, or Daeron. She did not spend time with them, didn’t build any trust, didn’t treat them like siblings, never refers to them as “my brothers” always “my half-brothers” The only time she pushed to “interact” with Aegon or Aemond was to demand punishment for the “bastard” insult And that’s it. That’s the relationship. You cannot demand that Alicent “make her children love Rhaenyra” when Rhaenyra showed no interest in them and no desire for familial closeness. Even in feudal terms, Rhaenyra didn’t act like siblings in royal families who were politically raised together to avoid conflict. She simply didn’t engage. Viserys creates the conflict ?Alicent is supposed to fix it. Rhaenyra refuses to bond ?Alicent is supposed to fix it. The children dislike each other ?Alicent is supposed to fix it. Tension rises ? Alicent is supposed to fix it. Violence erupts ? Alicent is supposed to fix it.
Why is Alicent expected to be: the therapist, the mediator, the stepmother in a modern sense, the emotional adult, the bridge-builder, the moral anchor and the peacemaker…while Viserys sits back doing nothing…and Rhaenyra refuses to engage? This is deeply sexist in both directions: it treats Alicent as the default caregiver, it treats Rhaenyra as a child who needs “fixing” instead of an adult heir with agency it excuses the king’s utter failures. Alicent had power, but not emotional control over othe r people’s feelings. And certainly not over the royal succession, which is the real issue. Viserys broke the family. But people want Alicent to be the emotional janitor.
I talked about Rhaenys HERE She’s mentioned, she fights, she flies her dragon, she’s clever but beyond that? Barely any exploration of her strategies, her counsel, or how she could’ve ruled. Even her sons, who might have been strong heirs, are barely acknowledged in terms of their potential. It’s sad because GRRM sets up this figure who could have been a real counterpoint to the chaos of the Dance, but instead, she’s mostly a footnote in history a brilliant character we never get to fully see.
Rhaenyra grows up believing the crown is hers by right, not something she has to maintain. Viserys drills this into her: you are the heir, the realm swore to you. So she internalizes a dangerous idea: “If they oppose me, they are wrong not politically relevant.” That’s not how power works in Westeros. Cersei understands this. Dany learns this the hard way. Rhaenyra never really does. Yes, she sat at the foot of the Iron Throne. Yes, she was cupbearer. But being present ≠ being mentored. Viserys doesn’t train her to rule. He shields her from consequences. That creates entitlement, not competence.
She refuses to do the unglamorous work of power. Politics is boring, humiliating, and transactional: fostering kids you don’t like, marrying for alliance, not desire, flattering houses you despise and sitting through insults and smiling. Cersei does this (badly, but she does it). Dany does this instinctively. Rhaenyra avoids it. When things get tense, she doesn’t stay and fight politically. She leaves for Dragonstone. She hears rumors starting to nip at her heels and immediately runs to Dragonstone. Cersei understands that absence is surrender. Power is proximity. If you leave the center, someone else will fill the space. Rhaenyra vacating King’s Landing gives her enemies oxygen, time, and narrative control. Cersei would never. Even at her most unstable, she clings to the Red Keep like a lifeline because she knows the moment she’s gone, she’s finished.
She reads disagreement as betrayal When people hesitate, gossip, or express doubt, Rhaenyra doesn’t think: “How do I neutralize this?” She thinks: “How dare they?” Her laziness absolutely shows in her motherhood too, Joffrey not understanding how the dragon-bond works is genuinely insane. By Westerosi standards, 11yo is a teenage. Robb Stark is leading armies at fourteen. And yet Joffrey doesn’t seem to grasp even the basics: that dragon access is regulated, that dragons are not family pets. Dragons are the Targaryen equivalent of nuclear weapons plus royal legitimacy. Understanding how they are housed, accessed, and controlled is basic Targaryen literacy. Rhaenyra herself more or less admits she didn’t prepare him When Joffrey tries to mount Syrax, Rhaenyra’s reaction was, “He doesn’t know.” In other words, he doesn’t understand how dragonbond works. But if he didn’t know, the question is: why didn’t you teach him? This isn’t just an oversight it’s a clear failure to prepare him for the responsibilities and dangers of being a Targaryen heir/prince.
GRRM writes her like she’s constitutionally incapable of doing the “hard” political or military work that every ruler even the dumb ones gets to do. And THAT reinforces a bigger gender problem in F&B: High-femme-coded women can be tragic, emotional, or beautiful but they cannot be competent. They cannot be strategic. They cannot shape events. Meanwhile, all the best tacticians, war leaders, political thinkers? Men. Every. Single. Time. BUT in Team Green, we have Alicent, a woman who is intelligent and decisive arguably the most competent strategist in her faction. She reminds me more of Corlys than of a traditional “courtly consort,” consistently thinking ahead and acting with foresight, rather than JUST reacting emotionally. [Of course, she had moments of anger and emotional turmoil. Even Corlys, who is usually measured and pragmatic, reportedly wished for Rhaenyra’s death after Rhaenys’s death. Still, that didn’t stop them from offering peace terms and trying to STOP the war, making decisions that anyone with a brain would]
Rhaenyra is written as one-sidedly incompetent and tyrannical.
Rhaenyra’s story in Fire & Blood is frustrating because, as the protagonist of her *own* war, she’s systematically denied agency by the way the history is written. Watsonianly, she could have been a strategic leader: she had years on Dragonstone, sat on councils, issued orders, and ruled effectively in her father’s name at times. She understood politics and dragons, had allies, and could have exercised influence without personally swinging a sword. She had the resources and capability to plan logistics, oversee armies, and guide the Black faction yet the narrative strips her of these victories, focusing instead on paranoia, grief, and alleged incompetence.
Rhaenyra’s failures weren’t just the result of bad luck or misogyny; part of it comes from her own personality and upbringing. As I said she was born into privilege, raised to believe her status alone made her rightful heir, and spent most of her life surrounded by sycophants on Dragonstone. She underestimated rival factions, and relied on fear rather than strategy, which in Westeros is a recipe for disaster. Her “laziness” is less a moral failing than the product of entitlement being born Targaryen, she could afford to be complacent for a time. Combine this with a volatile personality, emotional impulsiveness, and obsession with status, and it explains why she made choices that weakened her claim rather than strengthened it. It was her own fault, driven either by a lack of political intelligence or by this privileged ‘laziness’ she’d developed from being told her whole life that the throne would just fall into her lap.
The real problem with F&B portrayal of Rhaenyra is that the show keeps saying it’s about a woman fighting to reclaim the throne, but then refuses to actually let her fight for anything. She becomes a symbol, not a participant. Other characters get the agency, the strategy, the momentum, the political vision. Daemon gets to be the war-brain. Corlys gets to be the logistical mind. Even Rhaenys gets to be the unexpected wildcard. But Rhaenyra… who is supposed to be the reason this war even exists, is left constantly reacting, grieving, freezing, or being blindsided by decisions made without her. The result is a story about her war that treats her like a side character in her own succession crisis. And this would be fine if the whole point was that she collapses under pressure if the story wanted a tragic, spiraling character study. That can be powerful. But then the decline needs to be gradual, layered, psychologically consistent, and rooted in her political environment. What the show does instead is skip the build-up entirely. One son dies, she’s shattered. Another dies, she withdraws. Daemon goes rogue, she just stares. The council talks over her, she shrinks. It’s not a descent; it’s a collapse with no scaffolding. Her arc doesn’t feel like a tragic unraveling it feels like the writers didn’t know how to let her participate in her own war without making her “too assertive” or “too masculine,” so they kept pulling her back into passive mother-mode.
Which is wild, because real medieval and early modern women in power absolutely didn’t just sit there and let grief erase their political instincts. Caterina Sforza was out here storming fortresses while pregnant. Women can be strategic, relentless, and emotionally devastated at the same time. Fiction should understand that. Especially fiction that pretends to be about a woman claiming a throne. This is what makes the GRRM writing so frustrating. Rhaenyra is supposed to be the head of the Blacks while Daemon acts as her general, but the writing flips that dynamic so hard that Daemon ends up feeling like the real leader and she feels like the emotional backdrop. She never gets the political victories, the strategic debates, the council authority, the problem-solving moments. Everyone else gets to be active; she gets to be symbolic. The tragedy of Rhaenyra becomes less “a brilliant, driven woman defeated by misogyny and circumstance” and more “a sad mother watching her life fall apart bc of her stupidity while men make decisions around her.”
And then the story tries to patch that with legacy. She fails, but her descendants succeed. She loses the throne, but Aegon III, viserys II and Daenerys exist, so the bloodline wins in the long run. And that is exactly the problem. That’s not feminist storytelling; it’s the exact patriarchal narrative structure the show pretends to critique. Women aren’t allowed to win for themselves they are allowed to birth the people who win later. Their personal agency gets erased and replaced with lineage triumph. Their political failures are redeemed by what their sons or descendants accomplish, as if the woman herself is just a historical footnote, a vessel, a tragic symbol rather than an actor.
Rhaenyra needs to be allowed to be both mother and monarch, not a mother whose grief overrides her political identity. Daemon loses children and keeps functioning. Corlys loses children and keeps functioning. Aegon loses children and keeps functioning. Rhaenys loses children and keeps functioning. But the show treats Rhaenyra as if her pain stops the plot, while their pain moves the plot. It’s a fundamentally gendered choice. Her grief paralyzes her; their grief empowers them. And that’s where the narrative quietly reinforces the same patriarchal dynamics it’s pretending to interrogate.
If they wanted her to go down like Empress Matilda or any genuinely medieval queen, then we needed to see her fight first. We needed the early political brilliance, the clever compromises, the stubborn pride, the charisma, the miscalculations, the pressure shaping her. We needed to see her actively governing, actively planning, actively pushing back, actively failing. The fall of a woman who actually fought is a tragedy. The fall of a woman who mostly reacts is just disempowerment. And that’s the problem: Rhaenyra’s downfall isn’t earned. It’s imposed. The writing positions her as the emotional core but not the political core, the symbol but not the strategist, the mother but not the monarch. For a story that claims to be about a woman reclaiming her birthright, it rarely allows her to reclaim anything not momentum, not leadership, not narrative power. Even her legacy is framed through the men who descend from her.
Which is why so many people feel frustrated. A story about a woman fighting for the throne should let the woman actually fight win, lose, compromise, misjudge, rage, command, collaborate, and shape the war that defines her life. Even if she loses, the loss should be hers. Her choices should matter. Her actions should echo. Her downfall should be a tragedy of her own making, not a fate she passively drifts into. Rhaenyra isn’t allowed to be complex. She’s only allowed to be wrong. Her downfall is written like: “See? This is why women shouldn’t rule.” And bc the writing makes her tyranny so rigidly, she doesn’t even get the tragic grandeur that other tyrants in ASOIAF get. Compare her to Maegor who was cruel but effective, Aegon II a disaster, but given motives and nuance. Visenya too. Rhaenyra? Just wrong all the time. Just bad at ruling bc “woman + stress = meltdown.” And the cruelty the maesters assign her isn’t even tied to political logic it’s emotional, impulsive cruelty, the classic “female hysteria” brand of villainy. She’s never allowed the dignity of intentional tyranny. Which is wild bc women rulers in actual history were ruthless, strategic and yes, sometimes tyrants but none of them were this two-dimensional. Tyranny doesn’t automatically equal incompetence. If George wanted to write about a woman being a “tyrant” to foil Daenerys the “savior”, that’s fine but let her be fully realized. Don’t strip her of agency, reduce her to a one-note caricature, or make her decline purely to prop up other characters. Even a tyrant can be smart, strategic, and compelling; she can be cruel and smart, flawed and effective.
“The princess vs the queen” story never happens.
Yes, In the books, George’s obsession w// Daemon is so clear. Rhaenyra should be the head of her faction, making the big calls, commanding the loyalty of lords, and navigating court intrigue but instead, the narrative keeps pulling focus to Daemon’s brilliance, his charisma, his schemes. Rhaenyra becomes reactive, sidelined, and reduced to her emotional responses to losing her sons, her court, or her dragons. Even when she does act politically, it’s often framed as impulsive or cruel, so readers lowkey see her as incompetent.
GRRM could’ve made the Dance as Rhaenyra vs. Daemon, with Daemon trying to seize the throne for himself. Canonically, he’s ambitious and ruthless enough that he could gather support from key houses. If he were written as the direct usurper, all those beats would instead be Rhaenyra’s moments to shine or fail, making her political and military acumen front and center. Every victory or setback would be hers alone, her legacy not just “through her kids” or reactive measures, but through her own decisions and strategy. Rhaenyra’s character would’ve been far more compelling and tragic, and the story would’ve avoided a lot of the “Daemon overshadowing Rhaenyra” we see in both the books and the show.
I think the whole point of Rhaenyra’s story is to foreshadow Cersei’s story in The Winds of Winter. This is why GRRM wrote her story… Rhaenyra ends up feeling like a cheap, clumsier version of Cersei: same ambition, same desire for power, but none of the cunning and none of the subtlety. She’s like the knockoff that can’t even imitate the original’s skill. And tbh, I don’t like cheap copies of characters. The Dance feels like a setup for Cersei’s downfall in The Winds of Winter. Rhaenyra’s story is basically Cersei’s future: both start powerful but become paranoid, hated, and alone. Rhaenyra’s “Daemon” is Jaime, who abandons her for another woman, just like Daemon left Rhaenyra for Nettles. Both lose their children, their power, and the people’s love. Rhaenyra was denied help by Houses Rosby and Stokeworth when she fled King’s Landing, and Cersei wronged those same houses, so she’ll likely face the same fate. If Margaery (half Hightower) dies like Helaena (half Hightower), that could spark riots and mark the final collapse of Cersei’s rule. She’ll flee after the death of her last bastard and then Jaime finds her and kills her just as Rhaenyra was ultimately killed by her brother… fulfilling the prophecy.
[EDIT: As for “(a strange choice by Alicent since they don't need to court favor with their own house, but George needed Daeron there I guess).” I don’t think it’s strange. The reason Alicent sent him is that her children had no political role in King’s Landing. They had zero autonomy nothing beyond being prince and princess which is a huge problem. I think Alicent was trying to secure political power for them, either by betrothals or marriages into influential houses, but Viserys blocked all of it because any real power for them threatened rhaenyra. This is why she took the steps she did.]