TVTrashJen

She/Her, ND

[iflipforrizzles]

Ok so who’s writing the Robinhood!Rhaenyra AU?

[alicent-florent]

House of the Dragon S03E01 // S02E04

[our-very-souls-do-echo]

Something I appreciate about the Rhaenyra and Alicent fandom is that, regardless of whether people ship Rhaenicent romantically or see them as tragic friends, there’s a widespread tendency to engage with them as people first. Fans meme them, analyze their flaws, poke fun at their disastrous communication, celebrate their strengths, and argue over their choices with the same energy traditionally reserved for popular male characters. That kind of investment feels significant. For once, two female characters are driving the conversation. Of course some people are bitching about who is prettier or more moral, but most people are just enjoying their complexity.

Don’t get me wrong. Fandom is still misogynistic when it comes to women, but it is nice to see this. Maybe there is some hope after all.

[calliopeans]

i’ve never been less interested in the “correct” adaptation of a book than in this moment. the entire rest of the season could be comprised of hour-long episodes of alicent bouncing on rhaenyra’s strap and i’d be like and what of it

[iflipforrizzles]

Hey, before there was Fire and Blood, there was The Princess and The Queen. The people complaining about them being the main characters either don’t know the history of the series, or they’re misogynistic and/or homophobic, or all three.

Also Fire & Blood was written to be a biased history textbook, not an impartially narrated account.

[iflipforrizzles]

Gal pals, Sappho and her friend, etc.

[ladystoneshart]

I'm gonna think about this scene for the rest of my life alicent's eyes going from otto to rhaenyra and being met with the most charged complex look in human history ouch ouch ouch

[wolfienation]

house of the dragon is fundamentally a story which centres rhaenyra and alicent and their persisting tragic love for each other and there is genuinely no way this ends without alicent on dragonstone bearing witness to rhaenyra and aegon's confrontation. the dominos are lined up to fall like this. between "i want to fly with you" and "come with me" we are hurdling towards rhaenyra making that bid again and alicent finally taking that leap. them running away together is chekov's gun primed to go off

and another inevitability of this narrative to me is aegon's death and the central role i think alicent has to play. rumours abound in f&b as to who does it but for this show, for this story, alicent has to be the hand at which he meets his end.

what is aegon truly if not the very physical manifestation of Alicent's duty, created from her very flesh and blood. the son viserys wanted so badly, the boy otto sought after so much he shoved his daughter into marriage with a man old enough to be her father, the son alicent schemed and plotted to put on the throne because she believed it was her duty to heed a dying man's words (not matter that it was a misunderstanding). aegon is the symbol of the rift between rhaenyra and alicent, the first crack in the fissure.

and the love that alicent and rhaenyra share persists throughout the entirety of the show, beyond reason in the minds of other characters, none of them able to grasp the nature of it. otto and aemond and aegon consistently accusing alicent of her love for rhaenyra, jace pleading with his mother to not trust a word alicent says, rhaenyra sparing alicent's life when she retakes kings landing

what kills aegon if not that persisting love that exists between them?

what sees rhaenyra's blood on the throne if not alicent herself?

and what is love, if not the death of duty?

[curledquill]

"So, about Alicent Hightower..."

"We need to get that b*itch out the polycule"

[prideprejudce]

also love the fact the alicent and rhaenyra’s bond has become a common talking point among so many characters in this show. only real gay people know how to make their situationship everyone else’s problem

[will-you-be-kind-to-me-susie]

nervous as I am to dip my toe into this particular discourse, I do feel it needs to be said that while sexual assault is often lazy writing, violent men’s wish-fulfillment, all of the above, the majority of the audience still does not understand the danger alicent is in and has been in all her life. This scene made it clear even for alicent’s staunchest haters that she has never really had control and has always been at the mercy of men, regardless of her title, status, et cetera. It shouldn’t have taken something that explicit to be understood, but it did

[haltandcatch]

the daemon and mysaria interactions were so interesting this ep like they very well know that they are in battle with each other for rhaenyra’s favour and affection and that is almost like a game to them but what they both also know as an uncomfortable truth is that there is one person who seems to rank above them at the end of it…inexplicably so, and yet rhaenyra rests the future of her queendom on just the word of this person…

[iflipforrizzles]

I’m gonna watch the hell out of this reality tv show. Move over Keeping up with the Lannisters!

[queensinchains]

She has staked much on the word of Alicent Hightower. Hm, aye. HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022– ) 3.02 | Queen's Landing

[plummgrl]

it's literally all about rhaenicent

[wolfienation]

something so poignant about these being the colours we first meet them in. they`re wearing the same colours as when rhaenyra jumped down from syrax and said "she's almost large enough to saddle two" while she looks up at alicent in breathless wonder

and now its flipped. now alicent is looking up at rhaenyra with despair and betrayal. looking up at rhaenyra wondering if this is what they've come too

rhaenyra and alicent looking at each other 20 years apart

[sunderwight]

I suspect it's gonna be different for Alicent but honestly if my childhood BFF who I love-hated beheaded my father who I also love-hated but who was primarily responsible for putting me on the path that had resulted in my miserable life, and I walked in to see his cooling corpse on the floor and The Worstie sitting on the throne crying more like a beaten dog than a fresh tyrant having very obviously chopped off his head before leaving bloody footprints all the way up to the spiky sword chair of her predecessors, I would kinda be into that actually.

[wandas-darling]

the way this almost got to be a triumphant scene. rhaenyra has killed one of the men responsible for everything, she's taken back the red keep, she's on her throne but the glory doesn't get to last long when alicent arrives. it dawns on rhaenyra what she has done and what she has become. she is not inherently a violent person and seeing alicent reminds her of that. alicent is looking through her, not at the queen, but at the girl inside her. i wonder if she starts to think the price she has paid is too high

[iflipforrizzles]

I’d even go so far as to say Otto is the man most responsible for everything. He’s the reason Viserys replaced Daemon with Rhaenyra as heir in the first place, then he undermined her position at every turn once his royal grandson was born, and he whispered poison in Alicent’s ear, sowing mistrust between her side of the family and Rhaenyra’s, making the war between them inevitable. And for what?

[plummgrl]

"they were girls together" is literally the westeros version of "they're lesbians, harold"

[iflipforrizzles]

It pairs nicely with Westeros’s gal pals: