The misogynistic writing of HOTD and why Helaena Targaryen is not a good character
I want to talk about the confusing portrayal of Helaena Targaryen in season 3 of HOTD and previous seasons.
As we see, after she lost her son Jaehaerys in season 2, the writers left her grieving for just ONE EPISODE. ββBut along with that grief came the attitude, "Children always die, I'm no special." After that episode, nobody (except Daemon, ironically) mentioned Jaehaerys again. Hell, the audience even forgot about Blood & Cheese and cheered for Daemon as usual in this season.
Ryan condal said, "Children are probs, they are not characters," so I'm not surprised he is treating every toddler in HOTD as disposable . BUT the adults are real characters, so why didn't he treat them like one? Helaena's son died in a brutal way, but the writers only let her grieve for 5 minutes, and then she turned back into her default setting: A head in the cloud girl who doesn't care about anything around her. Why did they write Helaena that way? Because the show already marketed her as an "innocent, likable Targaryen." If they write her to me mad, depressed like in the book, they afraid that the audience will turn on her because she is not the "perfect manic pixie dream girl" anymore.
In this show, women can't do anything "morally wrong", is always the evil men fault. So a character like Helaena, a tradwife archetype, can't be angry, have an outburst, or do anything "unattractive."" She suffers in silence like an obedient woman cause how else can the audience is gonna go "Oh poor her" "she deserves better"?
In the book, after Jaehaerys death, Helaena is so traumatized and depressed that she didn't eat, didn't bathe, she couldn't even look at her kids in the eyes because of the guilt she carried. Alicent is the one who raised Jaehaera like her own. But in the show? She shed tears for one second, and in season 3, she talked about raising chickens and playing with bugs in the forest while her family is fighting in a WAR. I'm sorry, did she kind of forget who Jaehaerys is? Did she feel revealed when she finally got rid of that boy?
Why didn't she confront Rhaenyra about Blood & Cheese, why Otto is the one she brought up while HER SON IS GETTING MURDERED BY THE BLACK?
We all know Helaena is gonna die this season, and from the latest episode, she is pregnant with Maelor. There is no doubt that after GRRM criticism about the erasure of Maelor, Condal panicked and added the pregnancy in the last minute . We have seen the giving birth scene of her in the trailer, and if my prediction is right, Helaena will have a miscarriage or losing infant Maelor, and that's will be the reason for her suicide. With that change, the show, throughout 3 seasons, has FOUR (4) women (Aemma, Laena, Rhaenyra, Helaena) going through a traumatic birth and then lost her life immediately after (except from Rhaenyra).
Why did they do that? Why add another scene of a woman going through pain in childbirth? Because the writers didn't know how to gain empathy from the audience with their female characters if they were not assaulted or gave birth in pain. If they showed Helaena was already depressed and traumatized in season 2, then they wouldn't have to add the pregnancy subplot to "justified" her suicide. A woman losing a child by murdered? It's ok, she can get over it. A woman losing a child in childbirth? She immediately thought of killing herself right after. β
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Let's see how they will write Alicent reacting to Helaena's death cause I bet she will just cry for one episode and then go back to giggling and smiling with Rhaenyra again
