Ok I've rambled about this before but I want to do it once more.
You may need to sit down for this one but the Wicked Stepmother Trope is a reflection of very real life situations. There were and still are, "wicked" stepmothers. This is not just a stereotype. Irregardless of the societal reasons behind this (patriarchal structure of society), we cannot deny the fact that women, deprived of any real political power in the outside world, often abuse the little power they had inside their own household, at the detriment of other, weaker family members. Women are people, not holograms. Women historically had power however limited, and they too abused that power when they could, and they could do that against children because children are weaker. This is a centuries old societal problem that still exists today, especially in more traditional cultures. It is not mere construction. If you are not familiar with this issue, you have lived a very privileged life and I am happy for you.
However, let's suppose for a moment that the Wicked Stepmother Trope is indeed problematic and has a misogynistic nuance. I believe this is often the case and I will explain why.
If you want to deconstruct the Wicked Stepmother Trope, you have to be sure that there is a proper Wicked Stepmother Trope to begin with in the source material. You also have to make sure that the Wicked Stepmother Trope isn't already deconstructed in the source material. Which is EXACTLY the case in Fire and Blood.
So let's take a typical example of the Wicked Stepmother Trope : Cinderella. Let's compare Cinderella with Fire and Blood for a second.
There is no Wicked Stepmother resembling Cinderella's stepmother in Fire and Blood, for the simple reason that there is no Cinderella héroïne. What is a Cinderella héroïne : a passive, innocent, purely reactive girl, that patiently suffers and awaits for her Prince (a man) that will save her from her evil Stepmother (a woman). All these elements need to exist in order to talk about a proper Wicked Stepmother Trope. This trope gets this misogynistic nuance only when it is paralleled with the poor innocent fairytale heroine. It's the antithesis of the willful and driven woman that is punished in the end (stepmother) Vs the passive perfect feminine figure that is rewarded in the end (stepdaughter), that gives the Wicked Stepmother Trope the misogynistic nuance it has. And this is very important.
Now back to Fire and Blood.
Well, Rhaenyra isn't a Cinderella character at all. She is willful, she's radical, she claims her birthright, she makes mistakes, she dares, she goes against the status quo. She fits the stepdaughter role, and she too has a dashing Prince that tries to save her. Except that he doesn't. He dies, and so does she, horribly. She is not rewarded by patriarchy for her youth, beauty and submissiveness (very important factor if we wanna talk about misogyny in fairytales). Quite the contrary, SHE is punished by patriarchy.
Alicent fits the stepmother role, except that she doesn't fit the misogynistic Wicked Stepmother Trope because her punishment does not constitute an exemplary punishment for NOT being a Cinderella type of female. It's this juxtaposition to Cinderella that makes the trope misogynistic to begin with.
If anything, the Wicked Stepmother Trope is ALREADY deconstructed in the source material. By not respecting that, the writers achieved of course the contrary result : a deeply misogynistic narrative. Rhaenyra is basically a whore. The entire Dance stems from the fact that Rhaenyra had extramarital sex and that's it. That's literally it. The main antagonist was reduced to a rape victim, and had no ambition whatsoever. Since Rhaenyra wasn't a rape victim and had sexual freedom, morally she comes across as more ambiguous than the pure one dimensional victim that show!Alicent is. Rhaenyra had a choice, Alicent doesn't. So the whole BS that both women are equally victims of patriarchy comes at the expense of the actual female protagonist, the willful, daring, non-conforming female character trying to preserve her agency : Rhaenyra. It also comes at the expense of creating characters that feel real and consistent and are not just the product of a power-point on misogyny in uni.
Book!Alicent does not fit a stereotypical misogynistic Wicked Stepmother Trope, a trope whose main goal is to reward submissiveness and punish willfulness. It's already deconstructed in the source material. The author did all the work, all they had to do is copy it. They didn't, which is why we have takes like "oh if Rhaenyra didn't want to be burned alive she shouldn't have had a paramour in Court".
