Sharing this really good analysis on Alicent's character. I like how straightforward it is and how it combs episode by episode to show why adding the element of misunderstanding Viserys's final words hurts and muddles her character arc.
People argue that she's using Viserys's final words as a shield to delude herself that what she's doing is righteous, but if that is the case, then that minimizes every event up until then that already serves as her justification to go against Rhaenyra.
The Driftmark confrontation should have been the point when she's committed herself to keeping Rhaenyra off the throne. By the time Viserys dies, Alicent shouldn't need to be looking for justifications to usurp Rhaenyra because the injustices Alicent perceived to have happened there should have been just that.
Her son maimed by Rhaenyra's son and the authorities not protecting him but instead siding with her son's aggressor? That should have been what convinced her to seize power because it showed that Rhaenyra is a danger to her and her family — that even if Rhaenyra herself wouldn't swing the executioner's axe, the system will side with Rhaenyra over Alicent every time. And it's unfair.
So that's when Alicent decides to say fuck trusting the king's wisdom and due process then. She's done being self-sacrificing and letting Rhaenyra step over her children's rights. Fuck the duty that she supposedly owes to her husband and his side of the family because they certainly didn't afford that to hers. When she takes the dagger into her hands and attacks Rhaenyra, she's saying she's done "trust[ing] honor and decency will prevail" anymore. The system will not right the perceived wrongs Rhaenyra has done, because now it's confirmed that it's unfairly weighted in her favor. Alicent has decided she must correct that injustice herself and tip the scales back to its established order.
If we kept with these character motivations for Alicent, it would have set her up to turn into the person she despised — someone who uses their position and status to get away with breaking the rules and not caring who they hurt. It would set up her own desire being at conflict with itself when enforcing her children's rights did not protect them and was what actually led to their deaths. It could set up the eventual realization that Rhaenyra was a misplaced target of Alicent's resentment, that Rhaenyra was never the anomaly disrupting Alicent's precious established order that would have protected her and her family. Rhaenyra's favoritism is the system working as it was intended to work: unfairly. And it will continue to be unfair to Alicent even after Rhaenyra has died and Aegon is installed as king.
But they instead decide to walk back all that character development. They sacrificed Alicent's motivations on the altar of making Viserys a tragic and sympathetic character in that dinner scene. They put a full stop to her old character resentments that they built up in the first season as soon as she backed off when he made that dinner speech. Alicent from then on in just follows whatever she thinks Viserys wants, even though she has no reason to be this devoted to him or loyal to his wishes.
And now that it's revealed that she doesn't know what Viserys wants, what are we left with? If her character motivations have been forcefully shifted from "protecting and righting the wrongs done to my children" to "fulfilling Viserys's last words," then what happens now that the latter falls apart?
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