#daeron ormund

[ormundaeron]

ormund's face after daeron retracts into himself and is visibly hurt by the viserys insult has been stuck in my brain.

does ormund ever wonder if he's struck too hard or have the impulse to reach out to console daeron? would he ever think there's such a thing as having gone too far in his ambition through daeron? does daeron resent viserys to be in despair when compared to him? is sharing resemblance to his father a known sore spot that ormund's exploited before?

this face reads to me as one that is sympathetic!!! there's almost a remorse or regret shared towards daeron's reaction.

norton emphasized their relationship containing love just as much as control. ormund's treatment towards daeron is precisely because he is the most important person to ormund. he's convinced himself that what he does is for their combined benefit.

would there ever be a sliver of doubt or regret in what efforts he goes to in order to secure their power? especially when it concerns hurting daeron in the process?

[ormundaeron]

ormund intentionally putting daeron through the hightower Psychological Horrors because he knows that regardless of what he does each and every time daeron will still look for his affection, and ormund, in a twisted version of it, will offer and provide those needs.

there's a push and pull of daeron needing fulfillment and ormund needing self satisfaction. daeron endures because his only source of love is from ormund and ormund fosters their relationship because there is genuine affection born from pride in raising a son the way he's done

[ormundaeron]

realized that the alys, aemond, + alicent and daeron, ormund, + corlys dinner scenes mirror each other and are intentional character parallels.

alicent and corlys both attend a dinner against their will, alicent being sent to kill aemond by rhaenyra and corlys being kidnapped by ormund, and are subjected to the notions of two people that hold an infatuation with them. aemond is in love with his mother and ormund is stated to hold corlys in high regard and tries to convince him to join his army.

aemond and ormund are engaged in a dynamic that holds a power imbalance. additionally, those dynamics have robbed daeron and aemond of their dragons by people that are non targaryen. daeron and aemond have lost sense of their identity and are latching onto what is familiar to them.

aemond and ormund are also humiliated to some degree in their respective dinner scenes. daeron questions ormund at some point in front of their enemy, corlys, and alys' remarks grow increasingly frustated with aemond throughout their dinner scene.

[ormundaeron]

daeron is ormund's his son, weapon, and treasure all in one. these things are synonymous in his view of daeron.

ormund views daeron in a sense of ownership. in addition, he constantly uses physical touch to manipulate and exert control over him. he intentionally uses his physicality to intimidate and subdue people; he infiltrates their space and imposes on their boundaries. it's even implied daeron has repeatedly faced his wrath enough, likely through several forms, to fear and recognize it before it even happens.

ormund also has a dynamic range of switching from the manipulative maternal figure to the wrathful paternal figure. he’s adopted these two roles so only he himself can a balance, however twisted, in daeron's life. he could not share ownership with him alongside anyone else, he's curated their lives to specifically fit his needs and what he imagines for daeron.

alongside daeron being an extension of ormund, him converting daeron’s entire identity to being a hightower is a way to inextricably bound himself to him, because then daeron is reminded of ormund in every aspect of his self. he cannot distinguish where he ends and where ormund begins. embracing his targaryen identity would be an act of “defiance” that ormund has instilled in him to reject. in a sense, ormund is a targaryen in the way he has tamed and caged daeron. he has left him flightless unless needed and dictates every single part of him.

ormund would devour daeron from within until there's nothing left!

[ormundaeron]

ormund's fostered an environment through codependency where daeron cannot receive any other influence. "and devour me from within until there's nothing left" is insane to me. daeron is verbalizing that he's being shaped by ormund to his liking, that he'll lose himself by the end of it all and retain nothing of his autonomy. "then who will protect me then" to rather and knowingly discard your identity because no one else is there to love you, no one else would care for you or fill that parental role you have needed to be filled your entire life

[ormundaeron]

ormund presumably has children but this isn't stated in show canon aside from norton's comment on how ormund does have some type of family in oldtown. daeron is the most important person in ormund's life (another statement by norton that he quite literally phrases as such) daeron himself carries multitudes of concepts that would contradict ormund's ideology, but he doesn't acknowledge any of them. he instead claims that all the best parts of daeron are due to how he's raised him and all of his "faults" are due to his ancestry/lineage. ormund feeds into his narcissism through self ideological praise, because this would mean he as a hightower has "cleansed" or saved daeron from becoming another "vile" targaryen. he's developed a savior complex from raising daeron and to him that's the biggest reward of it all; no one else could claim they've done the same feat