My take on the Aemond/Alicent Kiss
(Iām not a psychologist or anything and English is not my first language, this is just my theory/interpretation)
I think the main reason why Aemond kissed Alicent, his own mother is mainly bc in his life and upbringing the lines between motherly affection/consolation and sexual acts are blurred bc of various things.
Firstly we have his relationship with Alicent and the emotional incest in their dynamic.Because of the absence of Viserys and therefor a husband or at least emotional partner for Alicent, she has no one to really talk to.Her own mother died when she was young and Otto was also no emotional anchor for her in her youth or her adulthood. So she tries to turn to her children.Her dynamic with Aegon is more than complicated (example the carriage scene before the coronation) and even with her daughter Helaena she kind of fails to bond. That only leaves Aemond.
Aemond on the other side always felt left out and was bullied in his childhood. He hadnāt had a dragon in his early childhood and was kind of a loner. He was calm and often more quiet. Soon we notice that he tends to console his mother, when she is in distress. We see this in multiple scenes when he is adult but also even in the scene where he lost his eye. HE had lost an eye, yet one of the first things he did was to console the very distressed Alicent. (āDo not mourn me mother, I may have lost an eye, but I gained a dragon).
Because of him constantly being the emotional support for Alicent (which by the way should no Teenager have to be for their own mother), their bond of course was very tight. Aemond became sort of the partner/missing husband for Alicent. Or at least he fell into the role. He searched for Aegon before the coronation (and once again consoled Alicent). Their bond was already emotional incest. Where the child takes over the role of the emotional anchor for their parent.
Here is a simple definition of the term:
Emotional incest (also called covert incest or enmeshment) is a dynamic where a parent relies on their child to fulfill their own emotional needs, treating them as a surrogate partner, spouse, or confidant rather than a child.
Then the second big impact on Aemond is in my opinion Sylvi, the owner/madame of the brothel Aegon took Aemond to when he was very young.
In the scene in season two we see that Aemond finds some sort of comfort in her, or at least allows himself to be vulnerable around her.
I belive that over all the years they kept seeing each other/Aemond visited the brothel, she became sort of a mother figure to him, but not a mother like Alicent. With Sylvi, Aemond wasnāt an emotional anchor. She didnt need him to take care of her or to console her. That allowed Aemond to be sort of vunerable and to be in the role of the child in that dynamic. Sylvi consoled him and maybe even treated him like the child he still actually was.
The dark side of this dynamic is definitely the sexual part. Iām not sure if it was actually said or implied If they were intimate with each other, but If they were, Aemond would already be in some sort of incestual relationship with a mother figure of his. I could imagine that with Sylvi, the lines between her being a mother figure and a sexual partner were basically none existent. One minute she was his sexual partner (which is highly disturbing If it were the case because Aemond was clearly underage), the next one she became this caring mother role, holding him and allowing him to be a child ans vunerable towards her.
I think this dynamic could cause that for Aemond the line between a consoling mother and a sexual/romantic partner became blurred. Because Sylvie was both to him. Plus he witnessed incest in his close family. Rhaenyra was married to her uncle, Aegon was married to Helaena and Aemond was very proud of his Targaryen descendant and probably studied the history of the family. He seems himself as a full Targaryen. For him the incest is probably way more ānormalā than for Alicent, who is a born Hightower and has criticised the Targaryen customs in the past (āYou Targaryens do have queer customsā)
Maybe for him this sort of romantic/sexual behavior became a way to console someone. Because a person he saw as a mother figure consoled him like that. He saw how anxious Alicent was in that scene. Maybe he even thought that this scene was going to be a goodbye. He kisses her because he didnāt know how to console her or calm her down in any other way. He himself during that scene was anxious and emotional.
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