Why do they keep doing this to Alicent? It feels so gross to watch.
It's just so out of touch. Like what's the point? Sympathy for Alicent? This character has become so centered on and reduced to her victim status and completely stripped of any agency, and yet at the same time the show wants us to believe that she deserves it for somehow for choosing to fight for her own sons lives over Rhaenyra's.
On one hand, the show wants us to see Alicent as a terrible mother who has made wrong choices in her life and raising her kids and that makes her responsible for the war, and therefore she deserves punishment narratively for this, to the point of inventing even multiple instances of sexual violence or humiliation against her.
On the other hand, the show says Alicent has never had any choice in her life and that she's always been a pawn of the men around her, and she deserves sympathy for finally trying to act against the patriarchy, seeking "freedom" for herself and the girls in her family, and changing her mind to support the one true Queen (because girls support girls even in medieval times even if they've gotten each other's family killed apparently).
- A scene where she exposes her bare feet for a man to masturbate to and she has to sit through it in shame and embarrassment
- Her season 2 introduction is a close-up on her O face as a guy is eating her out
- A scene in the source material where her character is supposed to be clothed, bound, and gagged to witness her grandson's murder is changed to be a scene where she's naked riding a man's dick as her daughter walks in and announces that her son was killed
- A scene of her naked in the bath
- A scene where her adult son kisses her on the mouth (obviously without her wanting it)
- A scene where she is almost sexually assaulted
Game of Thrones was also known for deviating from the source material to add onscreen sexual violence when it wasn't necessary for shock value (notably with Daenerys and Sansa) and they were rightly criticized for this. Yet barely anyone is talking about the way this show has handled Alicent in a similar way. These writers - not GRRM - are the ones who wrote her to be a child bride to a decades older king, a sick man who was visibly rotting away as he used her night after night whether she wanted it or not. And then it was those same writers who took this child bride and then alternated between trying to convince the audience she's the ultimate villain who deserves all the bad things that have ever happened to her and trying to convince the audience she's the ultimate victim who deserves sympathy for trying to do the right thing and supporting Rhaenyra after years of "letting" herself be controlled by the men in her life.
I can only imagine how the seasons will continue for this character.
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