okay, today we got the first poster for season 3 of house of the dragon — a poster of rhaenyra on the throne wearing her crown. we also know the first solo teaser drops tomorrow. i didn’t comment on any of it bc i'm honestly not that interested in what this show has to tell anymore, especially after grrm said it wasn’t his story anymore.
that said, my personal tastes and opinions aren’t enough to stop ryan (and the others) from opening their mouths about my favorite characters 😭 and he did — specifically about rhaenyra — and damn, i have a lot to say, and none of it is good.
my sister and i — and some people i follow on twitter — had already picked up on the fact that ryan condal seems to be building a “chosen one” narrative for rhaenyra. something like anakin skywalker, paul atreides, or show!daenerys — where the idea of being chosen slowly turns them into tyrants, cult leaders, or fanatics.
and honestly? i don’t hate that type of plot.
i love how paul’s story is written. i love anakin. i even love daenerys in the show (i don’t like her ending, but not bc she died — for other reasons). i love slow descents into madness.
but that is simply NOT rhaenyra.
when he says, “Hopefully, as with any character in a long-form story like this, you're seeing growth. Growth sometimes does not necessarily mean all positive, but you're seeing somebody evolving and finding their sense of self.” — he’s not wrong in theory. but we only have two seasons. and in neither of them do we actually see meaningful growth beyond the actor change in season 1 and the shift from young to adult rhaenyra.
season 2 was completely stagnant for her. there was no evolution. the change that should’ve started after luke’s death at the end of season 1 was dragged through all of season 2 until that moment with the targaryen bastards and the dragons. that “madness” appeared once. so what growth is he talking about?
we spent half the season watching a ghost of a rhaenyra — indecisive, passive, doing nothing — while other characters got far more development than she did.
“Rhaenyra began the season very much as a challenger to her own throne… you see this evolution… trying to find her footing in a world where she is the challenger, but she’s also a woman. And a big reason that she is a challenger is because she’s a woman.”
rhaenyra is a woman who suffered at the hands of her family and was ultimately killed. her death wasn’t justified bc of her crimes — it was bc she was a woman. her story is about misogyny. it’s about how men will override a woman at any cost to take what is hers.
the primary reason she’s a challenger is that she’s a woman. it’s that simple. but it feels like he’s pretending not to understand that.
book!rhaenyra commits wrongs. she’s not innocent. but when the show turns her into some cult-like, chosen-one fanatic, it creates a “justifiable” reason for her death later: “kill the mad queen before she burns the realm.”
it reminds me too much of dany in season 8.
her “madness” should come from grief. from injustice. from losing her children in a war that never should’ve started. that’s where cruelty grows. not from believing she was divinely chosen.
the issue isn’t rhaenyra doing bad things — she absolutely should. the issue is why she does them. if it’s to manufacture a justification for her eventual death — something other than “she was a woman” — then that undermines the entire thematic core of her story.
ironically, this “cult leader / chosen one” arc would fit aegon far better and could’ve been genuinely interesting. instead, he’s sidelined and stripped of narrative weight in his own story. he barely has a compelling arc at all.
it feels like they’re trying to recreate daenerys season 8 — repeating the same mistakes on purpose, as if they believe they’ll succeed where someone else failed. but it’s worse. it’s rushed, underdeveloped, and poorly structured — and there’s no time to fix it.
if game of thrones couldn’t properly develop that arc in eight seasons, how is house of the dragon supposed to do it in four or five?
it genuinely feels delusional to think this will land well.
