I’m tired of team black stans act like acknowledging that bk!Alicent had political ambitions somehow means she can’t also be a victim of the system she lived in. No shit, the show didn’t suddenly make her a victim she always was one.
Book Alicent was surrounded by rumors from a very young age. There are stories that she slept with Viserys before her marriage to him, rumors that Daemon took her virginity, even claims that she was involved with or molested by the elderly King Jaehaerys. Whether those rumors are true is almost beside the point. The fact that they existed at all shows how quickly a teenage girl’s reputation could become public property and it’s damaging and sexualization. Adults were openly speculating about her sexuality for political purposes when she was still around fifteen.
Otto positioned Alicent to do excessive work for Jaehaerys I, acting as his caretaker. At just 15yo she was bathing an old man and fetching his food. Then the text itself notes that people at court suspected Otto had larger ambitions and had brought Alicent to court with the intention of advancing the family’s position "there were those who murmured that the Hand had risen above himself, that he had brought his daughter to court with this in mind." The book practically winks at the reader and says that people noticed what Otto was doing.
That doesn’t mean Alicent had zero agency and It doesn’t mean she never wanted power. But having ambitions does not magically erase abuse. A teenager can want power & status and still be used by her father and a woman can participate in politics and still be sexualized by the adults around her.
If her wanting to be a queen doesn't make her a victim, then Rhaenyra isn't a victim either.
What makes Alicent not loving Viserys and wanting power “shallow”? Seriously. People act like a woman not marrying for love automatically makes her selfish or inferior but that’s a very modern way of looking at her society. Love matches weren’t the norm. Even GRRM has talked about how noble marriages were primarily political arrangements not about love.
Rhaenyra herself didn’t marry Laenor because she was madly in love with him. She married him because it was politically necessary and because Viserys essentially threatened to disinherit her if she refused. So she accepted to marry him because she wanted to be a queen.
Alicent understood the world she lived in and tried to make the best of the opportunities available to her. In a society where women are expected to be silent, obedient tools for the ambitions of men, she found ways to gain influence and exercise power herself.
That’s not shallowness that’s ambition. And it’s funny because people praise ambition in male characters all the time. Men can want power, and they’re called strategic or interesting. A woman wants those same things and she’s “shallow” or “power-hungry.”
Alicent actively participated in politics. She helped lead the Green Council. She built relationships and influence at court. After Viserys died, she remained one of the most politically important figures in the realm. She didn’t just inherit power through a husband. She made herself politically relevant in her own right.
And the idea that she only cared about power is such a misogynistic take. We know that she genuinely loved Jaehaerys and took care of him. We know that she spent time with her children and grandchildren. We know she was close to Helaena and she suffered enormously after Blood and Cheese. We know the deaths of her children devastated her. We know that by the end of the war, grief has practically consumed her. That doesn’t sound like someone who only cared about power it sounds like a woman who cared about both power and family.
And honestly, that’s what makes her feel realistic. Most people aren’t driven by only one thing. Human beings are messy. They can be ambitious and loving and they can want power and still genuinely care about their children.
Alicent’s tragedy isn’t that she loved power half the nobles in Westeros love power her tragedy is that she lived in a system where power, family, survival, and duty became so tangled together that she could no longer separate them.
You don’t have to think she was a good person to acknowledge that. But reducing her to a shallow woman who simply wanted a crown ignores how much of her story is about agency, family, grief, and trying to carve out influence in a world designed to deny women influence in the first place.
People often do not take the rumours about Rhaenyra at face value, and that's good, it shows that they apply critical thinking to a work that requires it, but why don't they do the same for Alicent? These women clearly aren't exceptionally evil, but because Alicent is not a Targaryen, the audience is quick to agree that she aims to reach beyond her station and that's inherently bad, she refuses to stay in her place, therefore everything she does, be it for her ambition or her family, is tainted by the very fact of her blood. Then there's the "in service of men" thing, as if she's supporting the patriarchy because she just looooves to uphold it. She's supporting her son and family because that's what it takes for them to stay in power, and staying in power means staying safe. Also, the whole marriage as a political arrangement situation. She fufilled her part of it, but her husband the King arguably didn't.
At the end of the day none of them wanted to be the one to have their life at the mercy of others, and that's as much political as it is human.