I always find your takes so interesting... so i have a Q.
Do you think that in an AU where the conquerors were a queen + her brothers (let's just say valyrian's weren't misogynistic like the westerosi) it would be believable that the kingdoms would have submitted the way they did for Aegon in canon?
Rhaenyra had like 50 houses behind her when a war broke out (ik there were oaths)... if fem Aegon had 2 brothers who backed her and Balerion, maybe it would go like canon because he wasn't really trying to change the status quo. Just a thought might write a fic but idk if it's too out of the realm of possibility.
I think the Westerosi lords would have fought a lot harder once they realized this hypothetical trio (assuming you meant that the sister was the ruling head with brother husband consorts) were serious about using their dragons, but there'd not be a lot of lords up to alliances until proof of "strength" to a different and higher degree were shown.
Rhaenyra was chosen by a man and lived during a period where Targ rule was more or less established and accepted for years. She would have supporters more than a completely foreign set of conquerors.
As much as people like to give everything an outer Maester propaganda angle, not everything in the book is maester propaganda. In fact, there is a clear Daemon bias in fire & blood. Like or not, Rhaenyra is unfortunately very incompetent and that writing is on GRRM. Her writing leaves much to be desired as a protagonist. To some extent, I understand Ryan and Sara trying to give her more active badass moments in war that she never had from GRRM. But R&S ended up botching it. Not just Rhaenyra but almost every other character in the show is a caricature. However book rhaenyra had realistic faults and written to be not very heroic. She was no Visenya or Daenerys and I think that is where show writers had to make a compromise. Book rhaenyra if adapted word for word would not have inspired fans because she is a flawed character. Therefore to make her more palatable to the general audience she was lent better qualities from other Targ women to make her more herolike than GRRM ever made her to be.
Define "hero". Morally good (Christian-developed), or impressive (Greek and Roman tragedy)?
GRRM'S WRITING//Rhaenyra's Character//WOMEN AT LARGE
Yeah, GRRM left much of the strategizing to the men around her and left her to her grief for the most part. Yeah, when she got herself into a more responsive state she didn't bust out chess moves or to rival Robb Starks or something out of both grief from her kids being monstrously killed. Yes, like other rulers her classism and likely racism got her to make one of the worst choices concerning the Seeds. Could she have done what Jaehaerys I did and tax luxury items against rich and nobles instead of other people--yes. Should she have given the Rosby and Stokeworth girls' inheritances and positions to men, obviously not.
However, Rhaenyra of the bk, IS a more active character than show!Rhaenyra, who gives a lot of looks at the camera but fail to really follow through [REFER TO THIS SUBSTACK ARTICLE, I RE-PUBLISHED IT HERE ON TUMBLR]....or maybe it is that we don't really stay on her as much as we should and the show itself still gravitates towards the surrounding men. I think it's both (look below at the quote).
Anyway, GRRM does write a suggestively active woman despite those flaws. Rhaenyra does get up within her emotional means, does retake KL, does rule, does endeavour to go back and retake the throne, does consult with her councilors, does seek revenge and try to create order. She also happened to be stuck on Dragonstone by Visery's order, leaving Alicent the opporuntity to take the throne as quickly as she did. Like that Substack writer reminds me, Rhaenyra knew much and prepared herself for death...so why did Condal not include that she was told by her king to stay far (enough) away from court when it wasn't a good time for her to stay away?
A central point of the original story was to show the degradation of certain individuals of such a system and how it comes for who gets to wield power, no matter how competent they are they always somehow lose something essential. (Yes, even Jaehaerys who loses the love Alysanne had at the beginning and most of his children to die relatively alone except for a daughter of a power-hungry man with mixed-intent). And Rhaenyra's degradation, like other women and even some men in the original stories, is through their kids (again, Jaehaerys I but also Tywin and Randall Tarly) and the love or lack of such they have for them.
It's not just Targs eating each other, it's this patriarchy creating competition between relatives in general and punishing its actors (like Tyrion) for choosing or reflexively pushing back. A prevalent theme in this entire series. (Which goes to show that GRRM was right in wanting to start the series not with Viserys being chosen as heir, but with Baelon and Aemon. If we're just going by this post, we would have needed the context. A show fault.)
AND None of GRRM's 80s/90s-early 2000s sexist flaws, I think, should then turn into writing a 2025 version of misogynistic writing where the female protagonist becomes a morally model woman trying to lead seemingly-naturally violent men and dull her rage (the main criticism lobbied against Condal in how he chose to rewrite Rhaenyra, which ultimately confused even him. F for effort). His writing, whatever it may be, does not make Condal's better nor acceptable. It actually highlights the sexism we're given in the show and were told is "better" bc Rhaenyra appears to be a human woman just bc she is more "palatable". Condal had the option of assigning more to Rhaenyra in S1; why did he choose to make her indecisive, wavering, as cself-serving as she was while still showing her grit? Why is a "palatable" woman one who isn't rageful about being jilted of her power?
Why does a HUMAN need to be palatable when the story is about HUMANS?!
This story was about a human woman with many flaws who didn't lose just bc she couldn't "man up" or bc she was written to lay in her grief more. Especially when we know that she was ruling Dragonstone fairly okay or well and there have never been any concerns or reports of Daemon trying to overpower her authority there. So we should know she isn't completely incompetent, as many try to suggest or outright say.
It appears to me that by your argument, we shouldn't see adapted into TV anything about Rhaena the BB, who a lot of readers unfairly and wrongly hated upon reading in the first couple times they read about her. This woman who didn't really strategize or fight in much battle and also drove her own daughter away with her own traumas? Who couldn't completely rescue her daughters from her uncle Maegor and was forced to marry him? Who was ignored by her entire family when she gave warning about certain people? But a few readers say that she had amazing qualities, and it was just that she was basically trapped...wasn't Rhaenyra, in her own way? Maybe GRRM is trying to write about another Targ woman trapped but in a different way? By the time Rhaena was considered to become queen in councils of lords, she herself said that she couldn't go through it and just wanted to isolate herself from everyone else. Rhaena is different from Rhaenyra--she chose to try to leave it behind and Rhaenyra tried to fight, and BOTH end up devastated by a system anyway. I'd say
Yeah, these women are different people (part fo the point), but both of what one could qualify as "heroism" escapes a lot of people. What is "heroic" in question here, I have to ask, again. I think we really need to challenge what makes for a "worthy" protagonist to root for; do they ALWAYS HAVE TO BE OBVIOUSLY "COOL" or SMART AND CLEVER--perhaps we're meant to accept that victims don't need to be perfect and question how/why it's not just their actions that lead to disaster? Maybe we are supposed to sit with lead in our chest as we watch who was meant to rise as a kind of hero become abject under circumstances that weren't whoolly of her own doing?
Is it possible that much of the problems with Rhaenyra's story is the seeming lack of clarity of fault, when it's both a conspiracy happening (below) AND some actions responding to that concerted effort to stop her rise? Where does the one begin, the other end and where do they take turns? Or is the overlap the point?
AND none of this, I think, should ever be re-written to inspire watchers with mishandled re-characterizations that only end with misunderstanding of what the Dance teaches big-picture wise (referring to what I wrote below concerning the maesters' relationship with the Targs) and reading cross-textually. Women come in different forms and shapes, why? Because they are human.
LATER BOOKS (Canon-time-wise) AND CROSS READING
To comment further on your comment about the Maester propaganda theory: if I am remembering correctly, said theory originated from people remembering -- Marwyn saying that the maesters are totally against magic and anything that would possibly diminish their authority through the Faith--remembering Archmaester Aemon saying that it has to be a maester who goes to Dany to advise her, someone who is trustworthy -- and RE-examining what happened at the Storming and looking back from there to the dragons that existed before the Dance + the unfortunate reproductive struggles Targ women had since -- specifically how strange Syrax acted after Joffrey tried to ride her (dragons don't go ballistic for long periods of time just bc someone other than their bonded rider tried to ride them).
....then the idea that the maesters poisoned the dragons along with sending that mysterious Shepherd (remember the text itself states and makes as if he ight have come from the Citadel or just that his presence was strange and almost too good to be coincidental, what with his eloquent fervor)...If we are to understand through Archmaester Marwyn (A Feast for Crows, final chapter) that the Citadel purposely poisoned or harmed or did something to the dragons some time ago...what is the likeliest point of history that we can see the dragons acted weird? The Dance, the Storming.
And that theory comes from/developed into the theory that the Targs "forgot" that healthy human women = strong dragon numbers but they put that aside to assimilate into Andal-FM aristocratic patriarchy.
So it seems to me that "not everything in the book is maester propaganda" is both correct (like how Aegon III's siege was told isn't "propaganda" at all) but when it comes to Rhaenyra and how the dragons were killed...it's really not as simple was "propaganda". I truly believe that there has been a strong conspiracy, something much more than propaganda, made against the Targs. Even when Aegon II brutally and publicly killed multiple people during his short reign, the writer of the text describes his posioning as if were a melancholic tragedy while Rhaenyra's murder is more...incidental and consequential chaotic event.
The kinda-likely conspiracy reveals itself through a bias baked into this text, of which the show mirrors instead of reveal. A good mutual (mononijikayu) I have said this [or use this LINK]:
What’s most disheartening is that House of the Dragon had, at its foundation, the raw material for a genuinely feminist tragedy. Not one defined by hollow girlboss aesthetics or sanitized empowerment arcs, but a brutal, emotionally rich story about a woman born into a system designed to destroy her.
Rhaenyra’s arc in Fire & Blood is not about being flawless, nor is it about easy victories. It is about endurance. About the slow, devastating erosion of a woman’s power, not because she was weak, but because the world would not allow her to be strong on her own terms. Her tragedy is not that she failed, but that she was never allowed to be fully human: ambitious, flawed, grieving, angry and still worthy of the crown.
The story of Rhaenyra is one of resistance: a woman hemmed in by expectations, reduced by rumors, slandered for her sexuality, scrutinized for her body, and eventually broken by a society that demanded either perfection or silence from its women.
Her power was conditional. Her motherhood weaponized her. Her grief, politicized. She is not a tragic heroine because of her own moral collapse, but because no matter how hard she fought, no matter how much legitimacy she held, the weight of patriarchal tradition was always heavier.
And yet, the show resists this reading. Rather than lean into the complexity of female rage, such as Rhaenyra’s seething anger at her usurpation, the fury of a mother who has lost child after child, the righteous violence of a woman tired of appeasing a world that will not bend. The series sands down those edges.
It reduces her to silence, softness, and strategic restraint. Her pain is aestheticized, her decisions dulled. She becomes not a fire, she is not the dragon, but a symbol of how patriarchy views a woman, how they want a woman to be.
AND
To define the “male gaze” is to understand it not merely as the act of looking, but as a system of storytelling that positions women as objects rather than agents. As characters whose primary function is to reflect or provoke male emotion, desire, or violence.
The male gaze dictates not just what is shown on screen, but how it is shown: who gets interiority, who is allowed complexity, and whose suffering matters [note how the original book does the same?! Why didn't the show take it somewhere else?]. In the case of House of the Dragon, the male gaze insidiously shapes the portrayal of Rhaenyra Targaryen, despite the show’s premise being centered on her fight for legitimacy in a deeply misogynistic world.
While House of the Dragon appears on the surface to champion a feminist narrative, which to some degree is true, as the plot points are still hit, it doesn’t understand how to tell a story that understands the underlying crux of the story.
Rhaenyra is named heir, challenges gender roles, and occupies the symbolic center of the Dance of the Dragons yet this framing is ultimately superficial. Everything is somehow taken away from Rhaenyra.
The deeper narrative attention consistently drifts toward the men around her: Daemon’s volatile moods are explored with nuance and sympathy; Viserys’ failures are treated as tragic rather than negligent;
[...]
The storytelling undermines her claim not just to the throne, but to emotional authority in her own tale. Her grief over the deaths of her children is given fleeting moments, while Daemon’s brooding, Aegon’s volatility, and Aemond’s trauma receive extended screen time and richer cinematographic treatment. This is not a coincidence, of course. It is a re-centering of the male gaze.
[...]
Alicent Hightower is not merely a mother; she is a power broker who plays the court with ruthless precision, leveraging her femininity, religion, and family status to shape the realm. But in the show, she is rewritten through a softer, more palatable frame.
In the show, she is a woman coerced by her father, motivated by fear, and victimized by circumstance. Her ambition is made sympathetic by aligning it with “maternal duty” rather than self-driven power, once again sanitizing a woman’s desire to rule in a way that appeals to patriarchal comfort.
She is not allowed to be vicious or Machiavellian without apology
[...]
This failure to grant Rhaenyra and Alicent the sharpness, ugliness, and command they wield in Fire & Blood reveals how deeply the male gaze has shaped the adaptation, not just in what is shown, but in whose pain matters, and whose story is truly being told.
Even against this guy who I don't think the maesters "liked" either, but thought he'd be better simply bc he was male and the Targs allowing a female ruler to become a reigning queen over men would go towards disaster. That their order (Faith-based feudal patriarchy)is both in danger from such an upheaval AND must continue to exist.
Later on, during Aegon III's reign not a small amount of time later, we hear Grand Maester Munkun say it is disastrous from one of the advisors concerning Baela's marriage. Who chooses the GM? Not any of the lords nor the king; it's traditional and customary that it's the maesters, specifically those in the highest stations at the Citadel.
There were concerted efforts not just from maesters and lords (men) but a few other women actively or passively working against her using the powers their station gave them. We have two things happening at once here.
Therefore, to me, anon, if there is a years-long conspiracy happening (and the main texts are leading us towards that) AND seeing as Rhaena the BB's dragon Dreamfyre laid Dany's eggs for her to hatch (again, the constant turns of Targ female reproduction and here culminating into Dany's successful and miraculous rebirth of dragons through magic--the thing the maesters canonically both hate and are trying to control and consolidate into their own mainstream)...it appears Rhaenyra's story is not just about a mundane power struggle between nobles amped up a little bit by the presence of war-dragons at the sides' disposal...but part of a larger tale of multidimensional levels of CONTROLLING perspective and perception. Prophecy did matter in F&B/the Dance, just not in the superficial way Condal and co tried through the inheritance of daggers or whatever.
IF such is happening....it cannot be ALL Rhaenyra, which is clear even without such a theory bc the greens have done much to disable her even after they fled ON TOP OF usurping her.
I actually have many posts abt Rhaenyra's reign, one of which I am reminded of her possible parallel to Othello. Yeah, Othello was a general who got a lot of respect...still, he was also a constant pressure to perform well or become utterly abject by the Italians and he was still subtly/unsubtly even before he even enters the stage.
There's probs so much I want to say, but can't think of right now. I've written multiple posts about this already.
I recently realized that Viserys II could have met his grandson Baelor, which made me wonder why is Daeron II known for unifying Dorne with the other kingdoms when he didn't even arrange the marriage himself? I know we'll probably only get more information about his reign when volume 2 comes out, but it really doesn't seem like he had much say in the relations with Dorne if the marriages had already been arranged (although I acknowledge that he apparently got along well with his wife and respected her, something we can't say about most targs in arranged marriages) and by the time he was king his main problem would be the Blackfyre rebellion
It was Baelor I who arranged his marriage to Myriah, not Viserys II. Yes, Daeron didn't have any much of a say in his marriage--like most high-classed heirs--but for all intents and purposes, he was canonically very happy in his marriage (for those fo us who care). It's said as much in AWoIaF, that he was happy. And it's not just or uniquely Targaryens who were unhappy or "neutral" in their marriages, that's a commone thing in the aristocratic parts of society (or well-to-do enough) where arranged marriages were done for ambition, security, strategy. We just hear more from the Targs bc, quite frankly, they were the rulers, interesting in their position as pseudo-foreigners who could ride dragons -- the "stars" of the show so to speak.
But to really answer the question, he's known for this bc he didn't just leave it at his marriage but he allowed some Dornish/Martell people to hold office in KL/under his authority, showed much favor towards them, and conceded to allow the Dornish to retain their critical customs pertaining women, inheritance, marriage, etc. to begin consolidating a true merge of Dorne and the rest of the realm. He also had Summerhal built "in the Dornish Marches, near to where the boundaries of the Reach, the stormlands, and Dorne met. Calling it Summerhall to mark the peace he had created, it was more palace than castle and lightly fortified at best--" (AWoIaF).
So he had ALOT of say and performed much critical action himself to solder those bonds and assure the Dornish paid fealty bonds (oaths, which is part of why Dorne still paid fealty after Elia, the other reason being as Doran said that Dorne was too vulnerable for open war) to the Iron throne/became part of the real officially.
I think what makes Daenerys so incredibly special to me despite George's orientalism marring her chapters, is that she was also deliberately written as a subversion of gender roles and the tropes that were mostly reserved for male characters in traditional fantasy were being embodied by a female character for one of the first times. Like people who roll their eyes at her now keep forgetting he came up with her back in the 90s. Nobody was writing women as Messiah like figure main character in their fantasy worlds. It's also just very satisfying to see how within the universe, Daenerys's entire existence is a sweet sweet revenge for every Targaryen women who was usurped and forced aside.
Final Words (For Today or June 1) abt Rhaenyra's writing in F&B
A)
Yesterday recently answered two asks about Rhaenyra's writing HERE and HERE.
It's agreed that a woman putting the same position as a man is not necessarily going to solve misogyny realm-wide/world-wide, right?
...But it is necessary to recognize that a woman is facing patriarchal, mobilized violence (the reason to support Rhaenyra as the story is told) when it is going against a woman trying to gain power in her own right as a Queen regnant. A woman who is trying for power for herself, thus is becoming an actor (even with GRRM not really enacting that to the level/proof he should have to make this apparent or to present that conflict of acing woman vs reacting narrative to try to re-objectify her as "unnatural") rather than stay as the object of other men's political self interests.
Yes, many men are more narratively active than her during the war--doesn't mean that the story isn't also trying to say she was her own person and that the she was trying to be more than what her society disallowed women to be.
None of what I'm saying means that Rhaenyra should have given anyone a moral or "more real" reason why she should be queen/ruler (not in terms of being a ruler of humans in general, but in terms of critizing Westerois feudalism, bc yes she DOES NEED to give a moral reason or act in the interests of public good to be consider GENERALLY a good ruler) bc the whole thing is that these in-wrold/real world men don't care abt her showing herself to be a good person or a smart person. They only care that she was a woman who wanted to take claim for herself and not for another man like a man would and is given the asocial graces to do. Rhaenyra is subject, not the object they want her to be.
AGAIN, I mean in the context of Westerosi feudalism when WE THE FANS are discussing what IN WESTEROS leadership means. When it comes to what it SHOULD be, no Rhaenyra didn't perform well under pressure and acted against the well being of the majority of her subjects, including and especially the more vulnerable.
In lieu of PhoenixAshes/oxymalek's recent video [for how people wrote about Mary I v Elizabeth I and how Elizabeth created a sexless authority for herself, go to 25:50], AND my own many, many posts about why people should still "support" Rhaenyra. Starting from HERE or HERE.
[Again, this is before we talk abt Nettles, bc Nettles is the very last plot point of this story. IF we take Septon Eustace at his word abt how Rhaenyra goes after Nettles specifically in the misogynoirist way {I have 10% of doubts bc he talks abt Mysaria and how she convinced Rhaenyra, which was all very suspect and could be another part of his trend of distorting facts...I'm talking about him being a septon and hating "witches" but for the most part, I beleive Rhaenyra capable all on her own}, THEN Rhaenyra deserves an "end" for that, but not the specific, sexist, femicidal end she actually got! If for nothing else, bc the patriarchal ethical precedent it sets/strengthens for women; we have to realize that the war itself was not made bc she had a tyrannical character BEFORE the war and the greens were trying to save Westeros; she wasn't murdered bc Aegon was exacting justice for Nettles or any underclass. But bec she dared to "steal" what he thought was his by his maleness---thus every women, regardless of her values or abilities , is subject to such estimation and violence. Even within their own classes.]
GRRM is at fault for not allowing Rhaenyra to do else with her dragons or showing hints of her doing stuff "behind the scenes" that made great impact AND doing this while subjecting her to incessant, successive violence without those things in between at the very least BECAUSE she had less limiting circumstances to be "distant" or less active during the war than her inspiration Empress Matilda had in her own war for the English throne.
Ozymalek makes a point to say that:
Empress Matilda was ultimately punished for 2 things:
“exercising political power in her own name”, making her “too masculine in the eyes of many”
the “following” inability to “wield unquestioned political power in the same manner as her male counterparts” thus “making her too feminine in the eyes of many”
The writers and those detractors of Matilda argued toward these two to strengthen the masculine and martial appeal of Stephen.
Which is exactly what Rhaenyra, by the writers, is going through:
having to delegate her armies to Robert of Gloucester
OR
actively forbidden from making her own armies
Gyldayn and some sources dislike her an berate her for not participating in the war the same exact way a man can; Corlys even says so out of grief after Rhaneys dies. At the same time, they do not ike that she even decided to oppose Aegon at all to reclaim the throne. But at this time, she was still recovering from her miscarriage/stillbirth labors with Visenya, as the book states:
("The Red Dragon and the Gold")
The greens so debilitated her ability to actually feed/protect the people of King's Landing as the war raged on by stealing the entire treasury.
BUT since:
George doesn't address how Rhaenyra tried or didn't try to use Corlys' wealth.
Matilda didn't have a dragon, when she was miles away from England as her half brother Robert of Glouscester was leading armies in her name before her husband George Plantagenet, did.
The men around Rhaenrya (Daemon, Jacaerys, and Corlys) all manage to be active/movers of the war while having lost loved ones (Lucerys & Rhaenys).
Rhaenyra's distance from the war looks like she is just totally lost to her own grief and has no sort of mental resilience...which contradicts how she managed to resist against Alicent (dress) for years and decided to go to war in the first place.
Three different anons have said to me:
Pathologizing motherhood in particular, esp. in relation to women who are also in politics while being mothers. Fathers are never “too mad with grief” to rule competently or make good decisions; only mothers are.
..........
Daemon and Corlys are presented as masterful at both politics and military strategy, even while besieged by grief and loss, while Rhaenyra is automatically assigned the trope of hysterical mother unable to make rational or good decisions as a ruler because she’s just too steeped in mourning and later too emotionally volatile to make the right decisions. Which is funny considering that it was Daemon who was presented as emotionally volatile for the bulk of his life (before he married Laena and had his daughters, at least).
..........
There’s no sense of balance to her, she does basically nothing but the wrong political moves, when she’s supposed to be the protagonist of this story.
..........
Rhaenyra’s seclusion and grief over Luke’s death and her absence from her own war council is blamed for Rhaenys flying to Rook’s Nest alone and getting killed. The narrative even accentuates how detrimental Rhaenyra’s absence might have been to her own war efforts in having Corlys blame her for Rhaenys’ death, and again in having Jace recruit dragonseeds to increase the Blacks’s draconic power at a time when one of their dragonriders is indisposed. I don’t get why Martin uses a mother’s grief so often as a convenient plot device to force passivity, silence and absence on his female characters to fit the requirements of the plot, why it’s always the women who break down, rend their garments and retreat from public life, whereas men react to similar tragedies with anger, pursuit of vengeance and singular political focus.
I maintain that Corlys and the narrative blaming her for not participating enough was actually just part of the sexism (miscarriage and Matilda, again).
But that comes in more for how GRRM undermines his own writing and falls back to gender stereotypes as he is trying to make the point about mobilized gender violence: he builds up a character and then makes her comparatively inactive and seemingly mentally incompetent to her male counterparts....
GRRM could have had Rhaenyra come up with the Dragonseed idea as well as and Jace would go to Cregan Stark and Lady Jeyne to convince them both to fight for his mother and they'd both be hailed. He'd still be using diplomacy on his mother's behalf while Rhaenyra supply them all with more riders. And the narrative of F&B/Gyldayn will praise Jace while giving no praise to Rhaenyra or trying to say that Rhaenrya "should have seen how thjis plan opened her up to betrayal" and try to diminsh this accomplishement. As would be fair, on GRRM's part while highlighting how the book is trying its best to denigrate Rhaenyra.
(There's also the thing where Rhaenyra is killed with her son watching while Matilda lived to see her son crowned.)
It seems Martin just gave Rhaenyra less reason to be as "inactive" as Matilda was. Matilda was in a whole other country and had to depend on Robert of Gloucester to lead her cause on English ground.
Rhaenyra's absence from the war proceedings despite being much closer to the site of the war in Westeros than Matilda was to the war in England being waged in her name could be "explained" by the sources and writers losing reports of her doing things, or they deliberately left them out, or they were done behind closed doors and people refused to allow Rhaenyra to participate...but that sounds like how some articles like this one saying that the maesters/writers/sources could have erased the event of Rhaenys killing tons of people in her escape from the Dragonpit in episode 9 bc the later monarchs didn't want to leave a bad impression on the monarchy . Ignoring how:
Rhaenys was never at the Red Keep in the orig canon
how this is an event that would definitely be recorded if not to denigrate Rhaenyra and the blacks
we still have record of how Aemond killed hundreds of Riverland people and the entire House of Strong (the males at least)
So yes that was bk!Rhaenyra's problem and F&B is writing of her...I still maintain that GRRM had to make Rhaenyra more active so that so that Gyldayn and his sources--though obviously green leaning AND anti-female ruler--were forced to include events that several witnesses witnessed and testified. One would work. If she's going to fight, let her fight on Syrax, even if she is not directly in battle as a swordsperson.
Yes, losing a child is different and may seem to justify her distance from the war for her, but part of it that can't be ignored is how:
men around her also lose close ones (yes even though they weren't blod children) but manage to make successful or seemingly-was-going-to-suceed plans, to repeat myself
in its negligence of Rhaenyra in doing as i suggested she could have done at least once, the story GRRM (not Gyldayn!) writes also resupports that men are more equipped to address militaristic catastrophes, solidifying and ignoring how much of that ignores how it encourages men to put aside their emotions for these activities (war stuff) or really anything to do with power-grabbing
historically, women and all manner of Queens have continued to participate or lead wars while their kids or harmed/die or they utilized their kids for war because they had to (Olga of Kiev, who some sources say she had her child-official ruling son declare war by throwing a spear into the ground)
Women like Bergljot Håkonsdatter --- "raised an army to kill a king for murdering her spouse and son -- takes the king's estate, but by then the king had managed to escape her", also "encouraged" "peasants to fight against that king [Google search]
B)
HOWEVER, high-classed women are not shielded from sexist violence. And there is no concept for a "true" republic or a democracy anywhere in Planetos.
There is no material basis for the abolition of monarchy or oligarchy--not for the Starks, Jon Snow, the Lannisters, the Free Cities, etc.
What would happen if Robb Stark, Ned Stark, a Tully, any male lord who took the throne, abdicated the next day, point blank declared to remove every single privilege the nobles had? So why this standard for Rhaenyra?
It's not about supporting Rhaenyra bc you think she's a great ruler or person of moral character, but about calling out & condemning the mobilized patriarchal violence against her--a woman trying to claim power in her own right, not a man's--and isolating the issue was systematic violence not just in arms but in the pen, "legal" arguments, etc. that justify the later injusitces and violence. Which is what the Dance is about & what F&B is the vehicle of!
But like Cersei w/the Walk, Rhaenyra--however incompetent GRRM makes her, which is on him--still does not deserve to face the mobilized patriarchal violence suffered, of which the usurpation lead to (as usurpations lead to murdering people most often and Aegon was determined to kill her). Because it's never just targeting woman of "evil" or amoral character!
Yes Rhaenyra's particular classist--likely racist as well--flaws/attack of Nettles had to do w/how she fell in the last acts of the Dance. Rhaenyra's unwillingness to shove off her council's prejudiced "advice" showed that she herself was willing to indulge in her own biases to maintain a perception of control to them over the Dragonseeds and Daemon, her male consort (as she already, yes, lost many kids/heirs [personal and political losses] has been compelled to show "strength" to would-be/real doubters) in the downward spiral she was experiencing in KL and with all the riots. It is similar to how Cersei's actions against women and lower-classed people bites back at her later when she's doing the Walk of Atonement.
Both women are essentially "felled" by the religious-patriarchal institiution using a claim against their moral womanhood and under another, overarching situation of war and discontent w/their families' rule--or an aspect (even if w/Rhaenyra it's also Westerosi prejudice agaisnt magic and dragons). Both women victimize or seek to victimize and wield their class power against a more vulnerable party. And esp w/Rhaenyra, said party was so connected to her own success--bc the Seeds literally were her top "soldiers"--that te consequences of her prejudices and actions towards power for herself immediately accelrate her downfall and bring it to a point of no return. Cersei killed several lower-classed bastard kids to protect her own and would have done a Walk against Margarey and the Tyrells...instead it backfires bc she thought sge had everything well in hand and uderestimated the tool-person/the Sparrow. You can't win by tearing people down and using traditional exploitative or abuses privileges up in the same system that harming you. You will become a victim of some mechanism of the same system eventually, or sooner than you think.
Therefore *what seemed like* the abuse clip HotD put out as a featurette AND the show writers justifying her dilution of character from her book self--who never actually relinquished her rights (even as she wasn't directly involved in that war as she could have been)--to the reluctant show!Rhaenyra is an even more sexist (re)writing of Rhaenyra than the orig!canon.
Even if she begins to fight/fly around on Syrax burning people in the war in the 2nd season. That's just HotD's way to re-establish the idea that Rhaenrya needs to be a (socially-masculine coded) warrior to be a "true" leader and giving themselves license to have Daemon abuse her privately. When we have a lot of reason to believe that bk!Daemon never DVed her, making Rhaenyra subject to DV anyway and then not having her subject show!Daemon to punishment as is her right as his superior (Daemon may be inspiring, but he didn't have the scale of independent forces that Georffrey of Anjou--Matilda's husband--had) exposes her to even more patriarchal violence. She has also less expression of power than what GRRM denies her in canon!
So, yes, "supporting" Rhaenyra--book or show and esp against someone like Aegon--or at least not wholly blaming her for her death nor is always the better choice. It's why I am not "neutral". She gives the opportunity for us to expose the slander used against her from the writers & fans. Like ozymalek said, It's not like fans cared about the smallfolk when the Lannisters or Starks were duking it out for power before Robb died.
It is the mere existence of a precedent of a female ruler in a feudal system where precedents are often the way to make great changes--progress or "severe regress"-- (even when she is mediocre or a genuinely bad ruler) was very important. Under this context. After the Dance, women in the Targ monarchy had less power & ability to defend themselves until we have Rhaella, Dany's mother. Abused and raped several times with no recourse at all.
Making as if Rhaenyra should have been a "progressive" or feminist and perfectly "moral" woman [ozymalek in video, but I also argued this several times!]:
diminish the realism of the story and rob her of realistic flaws
anachronistic (not of the time)
place conditions not expected of other characters vying for power/the throne
To challenge the audience with what biases they have AND ask who they think deserves sympathy. And it's basically more than just about her.
So don't be this person:
If Rhaenyra wasn’t a Targaryen, people would have no problem calling her incompetent, stupid, paranoid, hating her for being spoiled, femini
Excerpt of anon's ask:
If Rhaenyra wasn’t a Targaryen, people would have no problem calling her incompetent, stupid, paranoid, hating her for being spoiled, feminine and refined, and shipping Daemon with GNC Nettles, a dark-skinned, foul-mouthed, filthy, and clever bastard peasant girl who managed to tame a dragon and rode into battle (unlike Rhaenyra).
Rhaenyra was foolish and cruel when it came to her ruling decisions. Instead of sending Joffrey into the field, utilizing his young dragon’s quick speed for reconnaissance against the fled Hightower-Targaryens (or even sending Addam Velaryon to do so and leaving Joffrey as the rider in the Dragonpit), Rhaenyra instead planned a lavish induction ceremony to name him Prince of Dragonstone (using the city’s precious resources strained by war and winter for a party, exactly like Sansa in TWOW, and flaunting her obviously bastard son as the center of it).
This new GRRM interview is just hilarious to me. Truly. Because for so many years, Sansa stans (not just Sansa stans who were Dany haters, but neutrals too) would tell us Dany stans that Dany was clearly going to die and Sansa was clearly going to live and rule.
Their idea was that "Sansa's arc is about politics, so clearly the conclusion is that she's gonna end up alive and ruling something". We Dany stans would challenge this by pointing out that, so far, Sansa's arc hasn't really been that much about politics, she's learning a few things, but so far, her political experience has been organizing parties and arranging chairs, and she has zero ruling experience whatsoever. We would also point out that Dany is the character who has a a political and ruling arc, to which they would answer that "Dany's arc isn't really about ruling, it's about the Long Night, she's going to die sacrificing herself".
One of their most popular theories (that was accepted as practically fact by huge portions of the fandom) was that the three heads of the dragon (Dany, Jon and Tyrion) would die in the Long Night, while the Starklings (Bran, Sansa and Arya) would be the rebuilders/rulers of the new world. Which doesn't make any sense: why would GRRM kill off the three characters with political/ruling arcs (Dany, Jon and Tyrion) and leave the characters who don't have any ruling arc (Sansa, Arya and Bran) to be the ones in charge of rebuilding everything? Sometimes, the theory would change: maybe Jon will survive, maybe Tyrion will survive, but Dany is always dying, no matter what their theory is. And this wasn't just coming from Sansa stans who were Dany haters, the majority of neutral Sansa stans would always treat Dany's death (and Sansa's survival) as a given, as obvious, and would refuse to consider any alternative.
And even words from GRRM himself wouldn't change their minds. When we Dany stans pointed out that in ASOIAF's original outline, Dany lives, they'd say that "well, clearly GRRM has changed his mind, because ASOIAF is so different from the original outline". When we would point out that GRRM has actually said in interviews that the broad strokes of the outline will remain that same, including who lives and who dies (see here the interview), they'd ignore it. They would also ignore the other plenty of times where GRRM said the ending of the show and the books are not the same, or the time where a fan said they wanted Dany to die and GRRM answered with "tsk tsk". Nothing could convince them that their Dany dying theory wasn't set in stone.
Now, after so many years of being told by Sansa stans that Dany dying and Sansa living were foregone conclusions, we have an interview in which GRRM states that the people who die in the show are not the same as the ones who die in the books (which he has already said before, so very strong chance that Dany will live, especially considering that, as far as we know, the original outline still stands), and that he was going to kill Sansa, and that he still might do it (he said maybe he will let her live, but gave no certainty).
I can't help it, guys. After years of hearing their theories about Dany dying and their smug confidence that their fave would have a good ending, I can't help being petty. I don't care if people think I'm mean for "celebrating" the idea that GRRM was going to kill Sansa, because after so many years of "Dany dies" theories coming from Sansa stans and their absolute certainty that this was going to be the case, I think I have the right to be a little petty and find a little joy in this.
This is actually not finished. I started this a while ago, but I don't think I'll ever finish it, so I made a few touch-ups so I could at least post it.
