Would love to hear about this degendering theory for the maidenvault sisters?
the term might not be right but it's a little like this: daena, rhaena and elaena escaped their gender, the thing they were guilty of after leaving the maidenvault.
the sisters in the maidenvault were explicitly locked up for being girls and for their potential temptation of baelor the blessed. this a very gendered punishment (look how elaena cuts her long hair, a sign of her potential womanhood) that ties both into their status as unattached maidens and as sisters of the king. note that 1) naerys was not locked up because she was married, she was a matron with a son and thus unavailable to baelor for being claimed by another man; and 2) non targaryen girls weren't locked up either, they just served as temporary companion to the sisters.
so ten years passes and they are freed after baelor's death.i'm not going to get into the psychological implications of spending formative years locked up for being a woman with only your sisters as company but i am interested in how each one dealt with this, how they escaped their """crime""".
daena. most obvious of all. she's the oldest and boldest of the three. in the books this part of the story revolves around her exploits and her ultimate purpose within the story: birthing daemon blackfyre. she's said to escape the maidenvault alongside her cousin aegon to meet men and drink in taverns, she probably did races as well and caused mayhem as a way to free herself from the oppression she lives at home. during this time she eventually falls pregnant and has a bastard, a direct parallel to what aegon was doing around this time too.
we all know how it goes yadda yadda baelor fasts and kills himself (or not...) and after this it's very probably daena continues with even more excess now that she's free and was never chosen as the next queen. daena acts just like any second son noble born without responsibilities (like aegon!!!), mothering bastards (grrm saying she was a "stepmother of sorts" to bittersteel...), drinking, going to town and generally being very debauched. compare how naerys spends her time in the story! daena has put herself outside of the woman, princess, lady role. none of the usual rules apply to her at all, she can't ever be locked up again by her gender.
this is why my speculation that she died in some mishap riding or hunting fits very well with what her life was like after the vault. just like viserra trying to escape a marriage, daena could've died doing a typical male-dominated hobby or activity (i unfortunately don't discard dying in childbirth due to how common it is in targ women).
rhaena, though we don't know much of her, we know that she was the most pious one of the sisters and "never chafed" at the captivity due to her being more meek, ladylike and kind. it isn't said if she had aspirations of becoming a septa before their imprisonment but that she followed through it's incredible interesting for me. she fully escaped court and any role as a lady, mother and wife she could've had if she had stayed available. it's like she removed herself completely, like daena, from another maidenvault situation.
of course, a motherhouse is just as restrictive if we liken it to a real world convent but we can't ignore that as a septa she's just another servant to the seven gods and has much more freedom than any other lady of the court (think naerys and her constant motif of escaping her role of wife, sister and mother by becoming a septa), which is ultimately, what they are all looking for.
elaena, at last, embodies perhaps the most successful of these attempts. she was the youngest one of the three but the cutting of her hair shows a real clarity in the situation they were going to put in, this same clarity is what separated her from her peers in later years. she begins as the little sister following into daena's footsteps by having children outside of marriage, again, a typical male-dominated occupation, and then she's married off to lord plumm.
i think elaena was the most practical one out of her sisters (she was like aunt rhaena in this way #ToMe). she understood it was better to follow along with what was being presented to her after the maidenvault and specially after having two children with someone who wasn't going to marry her. better this than what i had before, better this than being adrift. nonetheless with her subsequent marriages she takes a decidedly masculine position by being in all but name, the master of coin. another thing i find particularly interesting about elaena's story is that she has a third marriage (practically unheard of in asoiaf female characters), that she personally chooses in a younger man without obvious ambition and with what we could say mere ornamental (and sexual) purpose for the well established and older elaena, AND the narrative allows her to very probably die of old age (something very very few targ woman are allowed to do).
ultimately, this is no more a theory than a different way to view the sister's story post maidenvault post baelor in a way i think sheds some light in the gendered punishment they suffered and the fascinating way they escaped it. thanks for the question!
