I’ve been thinking lately how Rhaenyra, and by extension her family, receives some of the most baffling hate I’ve ever seen in my years of being in fandom spaces. It’s obsessive almost on a psychological level. They don’t hate her because of flaws in her morality, because if that was the case they would take issue with other characters that they never seem to speak on, to the surprise of no one. The male fans especially hate her in a way that feels sexual in nature. The way they talk about her, it’s always her body or her sexuality that they criticize. It's almost reminiscent of the way Aemond speaks about her, or Criston Cole. They rejoice at her death, which was sexualized as well. Posting memes depicting her screaming and crying in her final moments as a way to ‘own’ team black stans. They hate her in a violent, sexual manner because…they cannot control her, because she doesn’t conform to what the patriarchy expects of her. And then the whole of team green fans roll their eyes when you say this.
“She’s not the feminist girl boss you think she is!”
As if saying that defying patriarchy is something to roll your eyes and be annoyed about? Her rejecting patriarchal expectations isn’t the same thing as saying she’s a feminist, it’s a literal fact about her character. She takes what little charge in her own sexual agency that she can. She takes a lover, she causes a scandal, she finds what slice of happiness she can in a world that is never concerned with a woman’s happiness, and they want us to begrudge her over this? When they themselves post graphics and quotes about the sorrow from every female character that has endured an arranged marriage and suffered at the hands of men? The male fans of team green I never expect much from, but what’s truly bizarre is how many women join hands with them in the obsessive hatred and over criticism of Rhaenyra. Suddenly violence against women is acceptable and hilarious because said character is morally flawed, and her stans are all shrieking idiots, of course.They believe Rhaenyra stans are all braindead and clearly can’t see that it’s a story about how BOTH sides are bad, they just want their feminist girl boss to be queen, only they see the true story of course. That in a gendered conflict, it’s not tone deaf at all to sing the man’s praises for his bare minimum actions, he’s a fighter, doing this all for his family, giving him a noble and heroic light while characterizing the woman as a selfish, spoiled princess that deserved her death. This is the correct reading of the text, according to them. They are very intelligent of course.
And yet somehow, they still aren’t satisfied. They gear all their content towards hating and criticizing Rhaenyra. Many of them make more content about her than their supposed favorite characters, and if they do talk about them, somehow Rhaenyra still ends up in the conversation, it’s like they can’t help themselves. Usually hatred for a character can be traced to a reason, like they get in the way of a ship, or they do something truly heinous, but with Rhaenyra it’s different. There’s misogyny of course, but it also feels like compensation. Team green characters have never been beloved or analyzed to the point they are now. The show reinvented them and completely changed the game for how the fandom perceives the dance, when before, the greens had been seen as antagonists with little depth, and readers drew connections with Rhaenyra and the women that came before and after her. But now the greens have been given sad eyes, you see. Sad eyes and ‘nuance’. First they boasted that they were a ‘complex’ villainous family and this made them more interesting against Rhaenyra and her family. Then they shifted the narrative that actually they all had noble intentions, and were originally a united front, and came out on top in every scenario, and only REAL book readers know this.
Except this was a lie, as are most things they continue to claim about these characters, like Aegon being a heroic warrior, or Alicent being a political genius. Why then do they push it so much? Probably because outside of their circle, the reaction to the greens remained unchanged. Despite finally gaining a real fandom, their popularity could never match team black’s, and they were still largely considered as antagonists and no one was interested in engaging with their characters beyond treating them exactly as the source material does, as bitter antagonists. It’s like team green stan’s saw what most people thought of their new beloved characters and doubled down and channeled their hatred towards Rhaenyra because of it, and are willing to hold hands with actual misogynists in solidarity over it. How dare nobody take the complex nuance of the shakespearean greek tragedy that is the greens seriously and instead support the feminist girlboss Dany wannabe instead.
And of course, Rhaenyra is the main focus of their hatred, but by extension all of the characters on her team need to be stripped of anything positive, the whole ship has to go down. Jace was a loser who died in his first battle, and he would have had a terrible reign as king anyways being a bastard of course. Nevermind that the text does nothing but highlight him as a good and worthy heir, and his death was considered tragic. Daemon had an embarrassing death, having to kill himself just to take out Aemond. Nevermind that his death was seen as legendary and epic, having songs made out of it. Baela’s attempt at defeating Aegon was laughably bad compared to Aegon and Sunfyre’s heroic triumph. Let’s not take into consideration at all that she stayed with her dragon all the way down while Aegon jumped from his and broke his legs and Sunfyre only became more twisted and deformed after taking the life of another dragon. Definitely nothing more to analyze here at all. These are all the correct interpretations of the text and not at all opinions that only generated after the show popularized the greens, opinions that are not even shared in the universe of the text itself.
“Thousands died. Yet none of these losses were felt so deeply as that of Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, heir to the Iron Throne.”
“And it was then, the tales tell us, that Prince Daemon Targaryen swung a leg over his saddle and leapt from one dragon to the other.”
“Baela’s dragon brought down our late king.”
No, of course Rhaenyra is just a wannabe girlboss queen and her sides are all flops worthy of being laughed at while great minds and thinkers analyze the depth of Aegon and Alicent's complexities (and cheer for the downfall of a woman’s suffering in a gendered conflict in a book where gender is a central topic). This was definitely the point of the story and misogyny, fake intellectualism, and spiteful over compensation haven’t combined into a bizarre obsessive hate campaign against a victim of patriarchy. And if you don’t agree well, you clearly just haven’t read ‘the books’.
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