#hotdpost

[branwinged]

"Dragons," Aemon whispered. "The grief and glory of my House, they were."

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-) A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS (2026-)

[branwinged]

Targaryen heirs/kings and their younger brothers for @boundwithpurple

[branwinged]

A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, George R. R. Martin HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-) A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS (2026-)

[branwinged]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-) 1.01 - "The Heirs of the Dragon"

[branwinged]

viserys's leprosy is a symbol for the destabilisation of the state/the institution of the crown in the years leading up to the dance, the body politic's condition being reflected on the king's body. it starts even before he kills aemma because he's an ineffectual ruler whose small council is made up of opportunistic men, then (1.02) his hand is rotting away at the same time otto—his hand is preparing to exchange alicent for political power and is giving the king advice that'll cause problems for rhaenyra's ascension down the the line. it doesn't have anything to do with viserys's moral character it would've been wildly ableist if that were the case. aegon's disfigurement is also doing this, in the sense that he's effectively dead to his small council and his own queen mother because power cannot flow through someone who's been excluded from the bounds of traditional masculinity (and this is right when larys, also locked out of ever fully attaining traditional masculinity and is losing the influence he previously gained at court, aligns himself with aegon as he did with the young queen in S1). it's not punishment for the violent misogyny because famously that's not even considered as either of their great flaw by any character in-universe because exploitation of young girls for the propagation of feudal bloodlines is normative within westeros and something that's being repeated by both rhaenyra and alicent in the way they treat with rhaena and dyana/helaena.

[branwinged]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-)

[branwinged]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-)

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[branwinged]

you said you like the hotd tv adaptation and I want to ask why since it's rewritten and made mistakes on a lot of fire&blood and the meaning behind the dance in the first place. this isnt meant to be a hater anon btw I love the tv show too. I just thought you wouldn't like it due to its inaccuracies

i don't care much for the version of events presented in fire & blood but i still genuinely find it to be a good adaptation. asoiaf's foundational premise is that of one's personal identity being both constructed and in conflict with social norms. much of it is about this struggle to not simply be reduced to the archetype of a stock character in a song and fire & blood is an in-universe history text which is in conversation with all that. the characters in it are all dead and cannot tell their stories and their lives have been distorted to serve certain cultural myths and expectations. this is obvious with the various women who feel like misogynistic caricatures - because westeros itself does not allow women interiority - but especially the dance section because it's recounted years laters and through three unreliable sources. there is not much in the way of proper character, the rhaenyra, daemon, and alicent we get are all a series of tropes, which is not to say that there aren't fleeting hints of interiority now and then (and f&b as a narrative wouldn't work if this were not the case), but the final portrait is not that of a real person, it's a stereotype. and house of the dragon gets this very well in the way it writes them.

daemon's arc is set up in resistance to that stereotype of the scheming, spurned second son who will usurp his brother's throne, this is what almost every character in the show assumes is going on with daemon but he is clearly incapable of doing all that, instead he is like this perfect embodiment of visenya and visenya's greatest and most important legacy is the kingsguard - knights who are unquestionably loyal to their king - and obviously the ideal of masculinity in westeros is personally and outwardly destructive and misery inducing, we get this through jaime (they took my sword hand. was that all i was? a sword hand?) but service to his family is how daemon derives his life's meaning. this is what he'll die doing! and i have seen claims about how this is a big adaptational difference but fire & blood is going for this reading as well, final thing he does is a service to his queen, only making an exception where nettles's life is concerned and he is still painted as a mysterious character with ambiguous motives till the very last but why else does aemond exist if not to make daemon's motives clearer?

then alicent, and i've said this once before, gets two differing portraits of either the pious queen who is content in serving her sons and the realm with no personal desires of her own, or the vengeful and wronged stepmother - both misogynistic stereotypes - and the show dramatises that through her contrasting relationships with criston and larys. and i found that to be a really clever adaptational choice. and the truth of her character being somewhere in the middle, that she too derives her life's meaning through service as a queen of the realm who has done her part in the preservation of feudal dynastic power, but it's not like she hasn't been wrecked by the demands made of her. this is good, this is a full portrait of a woman who will be reduced to either of those extremes once she's dead.

rhaenyra, i will admit, they have some trouble with because the show's gender politics are kind of regressive. first half of season two was excruciating for this reason, you could tell they were like terrified of rhaenyra registering as a cersei and the thing is she is very much a cersei in fire & blood, not in terms of personality (we don't get much to begin with) but in terms of what martin is trying to say with both characters. cersei is robert's double as much as rhaenyra is aegon's. in fire & blood rhaenyra & aegon both share certain traits that are met with these differing sentiments because unlike aegon, rhaenyra is a woman questing for absolute authority in the realm. so there's this misogynistic calumnies about her appetites for both sex and food but aegon is also described as being fat and having fathered bastards but it's not met with much comment in the histories. and his ability to rule is not being called into question over it. the same is true for any patriarchal violence either have wielded like it really is fine when aegon does it but when rhaenyra does it she's maegor with tits etc - there's a commitment to downplaying this in the show though, as i said they're kind of terrified about tv audiences recreating that in-universe misogynistic rhetoric about rhaenyra but what it did for me is make her scenes in the first half unbearable lol but the second half with the red sowing mostly fixes it.

and themes wise the dance is about family ties being severed, it's a tragedy about a family destroying itself over feudal dynastic politics - contingent on the reproductive exploitation of women - the inciting incident here is viserys killing his wife for his dream of a son. and feudal dynastic violence - alicent's sons do pose a problem for rhaenyra's legitimacy and vice versa, alicent is kind of unwell in 1.06-7 but she's not entirely wrong. at least once the claim is brought into question, the issue will only go away after one side is totally subdued and that necessarily means war. dramatising this through rhaenyra's mirroring relationships with daemon and alicent over the years was very good and compelling to me. so it's largely a good adaptation and is not simply doing its own thing. the only serious complaint i have here is that the exclusion of nettles is undeniably racist and detracts from both daemon's arc and broader themes.