not fluent in english. Sorry for grammer mistakes and errors.
Calling Alicent’s children "Targtowers" is not a harmless fandom meme; it is a disgusting rhetorical weapon used to deny their legitimacy. It is a symptom of a much larger, uglier reality: the audience’s total eagerness to adopt the language of eugenics, blood-purism, and white supremacy just to defend their favorite fictional "girlboss."
Let’s strip away the romantic fantasy of the silver hair and the dragons: House Targaryen is an imperialist, colonizing superpower built on a foundation of unchecked violence, slavery, and an explicit ideology of racial supremacy. They don't practice incest out of love; they practice it because they view the rest of Westeros as genetically inferior. They are fantasy fascists.
When Alicent enters the royal lineage with her non-Valyrian Andal background, the fandom immediately treat her heritage as a pollutant. Her blood is framed as a "stain" on a sacred line. That is exactly what the term "Targtowers" means: it is a xenophobic dog-whistle used to declare that her children are structurally impure, dirty, and inherently "lesser" because they aren't product of incest.
The utter hypocrisy of this fandom obsession becomes glaringly obvious when we look at the rest of the Targaryen family tree. Numerous prominent Targaryens had non-Valyrian mothers, yet they are never subjected to this semantic erasure.
Take Baelor Breakspear, his brothers, and their subsequent children. No one in the fandom is inventing hybrid slurs to erase who they are, despite Baelor looking entirely Dornish. Why? Because their existence doesn't threaten the specific narrative that audiences want to coddle. Alicent’s children, by contrast, present a direct political threat to Rhaenyra. Because the fandom demands Rhaenyra's supremacy, Alicent's children must be stripped of their rights, proving that the rules of "purity" are only enforced when they are convenient for the chosen favorite.
In the patriarchal feudalism of Westeros, children legally and culturally inherit their father’s name and house. Their father is King Viserys I Targaryen. By the laws in their society, those children are Targaryens. End of story.
Yet, the fandom completely moves the goalposts for Alicent. Suddenly, the father’s royal blood doesn't matter; everything is reduced to her genetics, as if her Andal womb somehow overrode the King's. This reduces Alicent to an invasive, toxic vessel. She is stripped of her humanity and viewed merely as a parasite that "corrupted" the pure dragon line. To alter the rules of a patriarchal society just to blame a woman for "tainting" a royal lineage is textbook misogyny, and the fandom participates in it gleefully.
The defense of Rhaenyra Targaryen is one of the greatest ironies in modern media consumption. A massive portion of the audience champions her as the ultimate empowered, tragic heroine. But what is Rhaenyra’s "empowerment," really? It is the ultimate manifestation of white feminism. Rhaenyra does not want to dismantle the patriarchy; she just wants to be the one holding the whip. She expects to inherit an empire built on blood and subjugation while enjoying absolute immunity from the rules that oppress every other woman in the realm.
When fans defend her claim by using terms like "Targtowers," they are uplifting a wealthy, privileged princess who rides weapons of mass destruction, they always rely on, Blood Purism: Demanding the supremacy of "pure" Valyrian blood. Xenophobia: Treating the Andal population of Westeros as dirty outsiders. Misogyny: Dehumanizing another woman's motherhood and reproductive labor.
Alicent does not have the luxury of Rhaenyra’s privilege. She cannot fly away from her problems on a dragon. She is a woman who was groomed, traded by her father, forced into the bed of a decaying king, and compelled to perform her reproductive "duty" under the threat of violence. Alicent plays a quiet, institutional game, trying to carve out agency and protect her children from a system that gives her zero margin for error.
Instead of recognizing her surviva strategies as a deeply tragic, valid response to a horrific patriarchal world, the audience labels her a villain. They punish her for working within the system by targeting her children, stripping them of their royal birthright, and reducing them to a hybrid slur.
"Targtowers" is not a joke or a silly nickname; it is the point where white feminism and imperialism and misogyny meet. It allows viewers to root for a dragon-riding elite by adopting the very biases Xenophobia, blood-purism, and patriarchal cruelty that the story is actively screaming at us to reject and criticise. The nickname exists for one reason only: to strip Aegon, Aemond, Daeron, and Helaena of their legitimacy as Dragon riding targaryens.
Ah yes… I know team black stans use “Targtowers” as an insult toward Alicent’s children, usually to imply they aren’t “true” Targaryens because of their “dirty” Hightower blood.
Honestly I kind of find “Targtowers” more like a flex than an insult who wouldn’t want to have a Hightower mother? 🤷🏻♀️ It’s similar IRL arguments have been used against people with mixed heritage or immigrants to claim they are somehow “less” part of a nation or culture because one side of their family comes from somewhere else. There have been cases where women from immigrant or non-European backgrounds who married white European men were still treated as outsiders and denied a voice, even though their children were also part of that society and had European heritage through their father.
People can be born somewhere, grow up in that culture, speak the language, contribute to society, and still be told they are not “real” enough because of their ancestry. For example, there are French citizens of Arab descent who are born in France, speak French, grow up in French society, study, work, and are part of the country, yet some people still try to tell them they are “not real French people” because one of their parents or ancestors is Arab. Or when they use terms like “sale Arab,” meaning “dirty Arab,” it’s the same type of blood-based insult of the “dirty Hightower blood”
Or the argument that Alicent “doesn’t have the right” to fight for her children because she herself is not a Targaryen is also another racist argument. Despite her children are Targaryens through their father, and Alicent is still their mother and has every reason to advocate for them. Mind you, Alicent actively had to push back against Valyrian supremacy, to justify crowning Aegon since he arguably has less Valyrian blood than Rhaenyra. Which again it’s similar to arguments that have existed irl where mothers from immigrant or non-European backgrounds are told they have no place speaking up for their own children’s rights because they are not seen as "belonging" in the society despite their children being part of that society but the mother is still hated because of her own background. I’ll add white/European feminism too when talking about the way people hate characters like Alicent.
So yes people have questioned the blood of children whose mothers came from immigrant or minority backgrounds, even when their fathers belonged to the dominant national or ethnic group. Those children were treated as somehow “less authentic” or “less truly” part of the nation because of their maternal ancestry.
I do think Baelor Breakspear and other Dornish-Targaryen like Rhaenys Rhaegar’s daughter, face racism from parts of the fandom because they have both Dornish and Targaryen heritage. But not in the same way people talk about Alicent’s children. With Baelor and other Dornish-Targaryens (dark hair, darker eyes, and their Dornish ancestry) You can see it in the way people redraw them with purple eyes or add white/silver hair streaks to make them look MORE “traditionally” Valyrian. And… why is that always the change people feel the need to make? Why are the Targaryens with darker features the ones who constantly get “corrected” into having more stereotypically Valyrian traits? People try to erase darker features because they have been taught to see whiteness and lighter features as more beautiful more “pure” That’s how colorism and racism can show up, even in fictional fandom.
It’s actually wild how they project their real-life racism into fictional characters and don’t even realize they’re exposing themselves. The way they talk about “dirty blood,” “fake” members of a family because of where their bloodline comes from is the same type of blood purity logic we see irl. And then when people call it out, they get mad like… you said it out loud. Fiction being fictional doesn’t mean people can throw around racist ideas about ancestry and expect nobody to notice.
There’s a difference between criticizing a character’s actions and using racist arguments about someone’s heritage to say they’re somehow less worthy.
Misogyny: Dehumanizing another woman's motherhood and reproductive labor.
Alicent does not have the luxury of Rhaenyra’s privilege. She cannot fly away from her problems on a dragon. She is a woman who was groomed, traded by her father, forced into the bed of a decaying king, and compelled to perform her reproductive "duty" under the threat of violence. Alicent plays a quiet, institutional game, trying to carve out agency and protect her children from a system that gives her zero margin for error.
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