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angryratt

cersei in winterfell..🙏

halidki

little jon and lyanna

rhaegars-cervix

rhaegar is the most curious case in fandom bc he’s such an intricately crafted byronic hero who’s controversial enough to be interesting but also very clearly heroic very elric-ish very sexy. and yet everyone hates him for falling in love with a 16 year old and ignores all that. like isn’t that crazy that’s like if everyone hated renly for the same reason and ignored that he’s funny as fuck and has an insanely compelling relationship to his brother. or if everyone hated oberyn for the same reason again and ignored that he’s an awesome spear-wielding badass with a vow of vengeance. or if everyone hated corlys velaryon for again, the same thing, and ignored that he’s a cool as hell sea captain and voyager and political manipulator

#yeah but are they Targaryen???#resting my case #(also actually Corlys is getting SOME critism BUT he's close enough to being a Targaryen)#non-Targaryens mentioned?#as rare as good Disney production lately #and then ignored

swordsandarms

Arthur Dayne is such another victim of background character fanon.

1. "He is just another cynical portrayal of how knights are not actually good because he's only given good knight acts but he (by no text proof but supposition) stood at Aerys' door while he raped Rhaella like the others :/".

This guy was Rhaegar's closest friend (whom Aerys didn't trust) and a Dornishman (whom Aerys didn't trust on behalf of being on Rhaegar's side and Arthur moreso) so he would never be fucking trusted to keep guard at Aerys' very own door, and he would have been sent off to Dragonstone with the Prince and Princess, too. Dude didn't see shit of Aerys' chambers.

2. "He attacked Ned (and his companions) because he is (again) a cynical portrayal of the manipulated dumbass of a knight following orders blindly from his royal bosses :/."

The information Arthur and his companions have is that Rebels aren't just a bunch who fight a honourable fight with whom they perceive wronged them (Rhaegar) in the field as men do. They see them as people who went off and viciously murdered and abused a woman and toddlers on behalf of being related to Rhaegar, whom would be innocents regardless of whether Rhaegar even was evil. Not directly, but murderers are rewarded with royalty as specially recognised good allies of the "cause", which is just as good. "Good knighthood" isn't welcoming Ned Stark "the usurper's dog and toddler murder cheerer" as Lyanna's "saviours", especially with the knowledge of the little baby at her side.

lardouksam

tiktok asoaif fans can genuinely post something like 'i think this character mentioned once in fire and blood aerella targaryen who is 80% oc made of headcanons is more interesting and relevant than daenerys targaryen one of grrm's first and most important characters' and their posts get 100k likes

novembermorgon

me and the dragon can chase all the pain away

barnowlalys

thinking of princess of the world Rhaenys

forlya

by chris_luc

divergenseas

Queen Rhaella and her darling princess᪥

✎ᝰ.Manonnym117

swordsandarms

Knowing the rebellion needed to happen to stop a corrupt king isn't saying the rebels were perfect? Just because you guys aren't capable of acknowledging flaws in the Targaryens doesn't mean other fans are the same way.

But that isn't quite right, is it? "Targaryen fans" are discussing Targaryen nuance all the time. "Targaryen haters" are talking about their flaws all the time. 50 posts a day. A critical post about, say, Ned Stark, appears every few month, and people get mad.

I answered a post going "Jon Arryn is a nice, neat guy :)" post with his actual messed up actions and got pushed back on just a while back.

This phrasing is also distorting the actual argument brought against Rebellion defenders: which is that the Rebellion being seen as an improvement to some evil regime, and Targaryens being the one flaw in this world that once removed is the biggest of deals. (Also the use of "corrupt" is quite distorting in itself. Robert's regime is more "corrupt" than Aerys'. Aerys was mentally ill, unfit to rule, and there is no safeguard within their government in this kind of situation).

Not only does nothing in the regime/government changes with the Rebellion (hence the problem with the argument that the Rebellion puts an end to any "corruption"), but it gets worse in all significant ways, but people act like it's better because the King does not act in some cartoonish cruel way as Aerys was written to (though, once more, Aerys, yes, should have been made to step down in some way or other, as he was unfit to rule; him making these clearly chaotic, cruel decisions shouldn't have been allowed).

Economically, Robert manages to get a full treasury from a mentally ill Aerys in command, and throughout 15 years of fruity years, turn it into being owned by a foreign bank.

Dynastic-wise, he takes it from the Aerys situation where you (AGAIN) have the main problem being that the guy who causes family/vassal conflicts is literally too ill to act better. That results in a 3-way conflict (if you include Rhaegar vs Aerys). Somehow, the Rebels men with no such excuse whatsoever, have such a catastrophic fragmented legacy that they leave behind a 5-way conflict only to start with, and more claimant Kings keep stacking up.

It's almost embarrassing. We are, again, comparing them to the legacy of a man straight up INEPT.

But the fandom talks of them like Ned patting Robert gently on his dead bed: "It's OK. At least you weren't as bad as Aerys" (coughtheguyliterallytooilltodobettercough). Seriously?

Point remade: the Rebellion "support" in fandom almost always lacks nuance in the interest of the Rebels' defense in particular, all while the idea that the Targaryens were this unique problem is almost always promoted.

This kind of nuance isn't even only applicable to the Rebels. One could also address the faulty "Jaehaerys was a good king but a bad father" given that his decision AS father and grandfather are what created huge dynastic conflicts for their "government" down the line. Or "Aegon V was a good father but a bad King" in spite of the fact that the conflicts with his Lords had to do with gains they couldn't get by marrying into royalty BUT also even more from Aegon trying to take care of the commoners which is actually what a good King should do (but protecting the commoners means he was stepping on his Lords' "rights" to do whatever the Hell to whoever).

But there's nothing as pushed back or diluted as when you remark it about the Rebels.

wrath-of-achilleus

I think we'd have a much better time understanding the parallels that grrm creates within his stories if we stopped trying to create exact equations for the characters. like it is apparent that the Wo5K parallels Robert's Rebellion, but that doesn't mean that there characters from the asoiaf timeline who play the exact role of specific characters from the rebellion timeline. like robb and rhaegar have a lot of parallels, but that doesn't mean that robb does exactly what rhaegar does or vice versa. ned and rhaegar also have many parallels in the role that they play in the stories of their children. and then joffrey plays a similar role to that of aerys when he beheads ned, but so does tywin when he reacts to cat's insult of his son who he personally dislikes. cat plays a similar role to brandon when she inadvertently kickstarts the war through reacting to a grave misunderstanding, but there's some parallels to aerys (and tywin) in how she acts rashly to defend her son. etc etc.