Your post about Laena is quite accurate. She’s not the only one with the weird age casting. It applies to the other black characters too. During the Stepstones war, Laenor would’ve been around 10 years old in the book canon but the show aged him up a lot and leaned heavily into toxic masculinity tropes with him that go into racial stereotypes about black men (book Laenor was not remotely masculine). Addam and Alyn are aged up in a similar fashion. They should be around the age of Rhaenyra’s sons but the show made them Rhaenyra’s age. Baela & Rhaena are supposed to be younger than their white betrothed who are played by teenage actors. But Baela & Rhaena are played by adult women in their 20s. The show constantly adultifies its black characters in a way it does not do for the white ones.
Yesss, and that’s what makes it feel less like an accidental one-off and more like an actual pattern in the adaptation choices surrounding the black characters specifically.
This is what makes the Laena/Daemon situation especially irritating to me because the show frames Daemon’s withdrawal from Rhaenyra with that whole “you were a child” speech (AT laenas funeral, way to spit in her face) positioning her youth and innocence as something morally significant to him but then the narrative turns around and pairs him with Laena almost immediately after abandoning Rhaenyra, despite Laena also being incredibly young in the timeline, younger than rhaenyra. Was Laena not a child too? Why is Rhaenyra’s girlhood treated as sacred while Laena is presented as mature enough to marry, sleep with, and bear children for a grown man without the narrative really interrogating it in the same way.
It leaves this odd implication where Rhaenyra’s girlhood is treated as precious and in need of protection and the visual language absolutely contributes to that. Rhaenyra is framed with softness and vulnerability even when aged up, while Laena is styled almost exclusively through elegance, sensuality, and maturity. The audience is subtly encouraged to perceive one as “young” and the other as already womanly, even when the timeline says otherwise.
I agree with everything you said, the aging-up consistently affects the black characters. It changes them from literal children into those older, harsher, more physically mature, or more “adult” than their white counterparts. Addam and Alyn being aged up makes Corlys look significantly worse. Ignoring sons who are teenagers or very young men is already tragic; ignoring them until they are fully grown men in their thirties reframes it into something far colder and more severe.
Oh Baela, oh Rhaena, the narrative just straight up doesn't care about them like i do. They wiped Baela clean of all her relationships and personality, thats daemons mini me, thats his favourite daughter, those two are peas in a pod (and its my personal theory that her absence is what made daemon bond so fast with nettles. A girl around baelas age with a firey personality alike hers and with baela being black they couldve canonised my theory but didnt cuz they suck. Head up ass.) you'd never even know by watching the show. They made her jaces yes-man, a pet.
Rhaena. Sweet rhaena. My very own dead horse i can't stop beating all they let her actor do is make this 😟 little face. They make her miserable they ignore her all the time they've done nothing meaningful with her character, I can't name a single aspect of her personality other than "insecure" and by aging her up they take away from what could've been a beautiful relationship with Luke.
