Ewan Mitchell & Tom Glynn-Carney| House of the Dragon commentary

What a time to be in this fandom!

Saw something about Aegon and bar fights and...yeah...yeah he has....

the whole pick a side nonsense is weird to me because you know the team green actors are harassed because people cannot differentiate an actor from a character but you have a whole defend your council video when you know team green cannot talk about their feelings on the matter like team black did because the fanbase is insane

(and where are rhys and phia?)

Princess Elia Nymeros Martell

Commission for the wonderful @chemtrailsoverthesun 💕!

It's been a while since I've drawn her! I was absolutely excited to work on this commission!

"Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" is so Sansa Stark coded

Alicent Hightower trying to win the idgaf war at Rhaenyra's wedding — 1.05 | "We Light the Way"

“Alicent wouldn’t fuck you “ you think I wanna fuck her ?I want to stare in her soft and pleading big brown eyes and kill people for her and die for her and shit on people that make her suffer .I want to pray with her in a sept and I really wanna scheme and talk shit about men.Who cares about fucking .

I was feeling sad. So of course I made myself sadder by making this. Enjoy(?).

I think we don’t talk enough about this picture of Ewan..

Wip

To me Rhaenrya kinda came of as selfish with her comeback to Alicents speech.

Like Alicents speech is pretty much her saying how much she's sacrificed and been hurting all these years, and Rhaenryas response is essentially 'yeah, I already knew that'.

Like for all that people say Rhaenrya is feminist, she saw and knew that Alicent was miserable all these years, being stuck in an unhappy marriage and like never did anything about it, not even really comfort her or try and change Alicents way of thinking. Heck she never even got mad at her dad for how shit he treated alicent.

She kinda just comes across as a woman who doesn't necessarily care about broader justice for all women, but more thinks the rules shouldn't apply to her in general. In the very least she was a shitty friend. 😕

thank you for your ask!!

alicent really let loose when she charged with the knife, and what she said was better than i could have hoped for. she really got to vent, and it was delicious. i’m gonna put the whole quote in bc it’s so important to alicent’s character progression, and rheanyra’s response says so much more:

I? What have I done but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law. While you flout all to do as you please. … Where is duty? Where is sacrifice? It's trampled under your pretty foot again. … And now you take my son's eye, and to even that, you feel entitled.

when alicent says this, she’s all exhaustion and viciousness. this is the last straw; for all the awkwardness that comes with her relationships with her children, she loves them and one has been maimed. and nobody cares! no one is standing in that room saying, “hey, maybe we shouldn’t just sweep under the rug that aemond lost an eye? maybe we should seek some recompense?” but no, it’s like she’s screaming into a black hole; no one, not even the boy’s father, is taking this as devastatingly as she is. the focus is, instead, on the legitimacy of rhaenyra’s children. yes, this is an important issue, one that could hypothetically get the boys and rhaenyra killed if it’s determined that she’s attempted to put bastards on the throne. however, there is room for both issues in this situation, but viserys and rhaenyra push that rhaenyra’s is valid and alicent’s is not. and the rest follow suit.

now back to alicent’s speech itself. she’s finally speaking her whole mind, she’s letting the court see her as she is. and what is she? a victim of a system that pawns off young girls to the highest bidder, regardless of their own happiness. but how do they see her? as mad. and rhaenyra sees her as unjustly righteous, a performer. but this comeback actually seems to wound alicent; you can see it in olivia cooke’s performance as the knife begins to shake, her brow creases, her lips wobble. she looks like, “what? no. i wanted none of this, but it was my lot. and it’s hurt me all my life, can’t you see that?” she has been forced to give up everything, every piece of her, while rhaenyra has not only been able to remain herself, but feels entitled to do so in a world of women who cannot.

it seems to me that as long as it didn’t directly effect her, rhaenyra could turn a blind eye to what alicent was going through. that’s rhaenyra’s version of reform; if it effects her, it should be changed (for her), and the rest of the realm can fend for themselves. is this the mindset a queen should have?

Was I supposed to be rooting for Rhaenys girlboss speech? Because this lady accepted the Great Council despite having the better claim. She allowed her 12 year old daughter to be offered up to the king. She allowed her granddaughters to be passed over in favour of obvious bastards. Now, all of these actions can be seen as the correct political choices for her standing and survival despite them being choices which shackle her to a system that’s screwed her over…but that’s exactly what she’s shaming Alicent for! And the narrative doesn’t frame her as a hypocrite! And Alicent doesn’t have a dragon to fight, unlike Rhaenys, and the only thing Rhaenys has done to fight for freedom with that dragon is murders hundreds of innocents. Yay?

thank you for your ask, anon, and excuse me for just a moment while i roll my eyes into the back of my head from recalling rhaenys’ lovely little speech.

“Now, all of these actions can be seen as the correct political choices for her standing and survival despite them being choices which shackle her to a system that’s screwed her over…but that’s exactly what she’s shaming Alicent for! And the narrative doesn’t frame her as a hypocrite!”

anon, i think that might be the very worst part: for episodes upon episodes now, the narrative has been framing the blacks as morally superior to the greens, when in fact the dance itself is a very selfish and morally grey conflict. it’s not LOTR, with the clearly heroic fellowship fighting against a faceless dark lord (absolutely no LOTR shade, i adore it but i think it’s a good example of what i’m trying to say), it’s people’s wants vs. other people’s wants. “need against need”, as that richard siken quote goes. nobody is leading a revolution against the broken and toxic system; they want the world’s most uncomfortable chair as a means of survival in accordance with that system. and that is a fascinating story on its own, with no clear heroes and villains! but that’s not the story they want to tell.

now until this point, i was with rhaenys; i interpreted her actions exactly as you mentioned, necessary political moves to help her family survive, exactly what everybody else is doing (yes, including the greens, HOTD!). so much time and care was spent with building alicent hightower a compelling character journey, but that doesn’t appear to matter in the greater narrative; apparently that journey was meant to continuously shame her for adhering to the patriarchy (even though it’s clear why she’s doing it). lowkey it reminds me of what GOT did to sansa, subjecting her to trauma after trauma (and i mean the ones that were not book accurate, y’know, the ones that had something of a purpose?) for the sake of stripping her of her fundamental gentleness because that’s not the story they wanted.

maybe rhaenys’ intentions were just to mess with alicent’s head, but the narrative paints her words as justified and not manipulation. and then she throws all her political finesse out the window by slaughtering people in a careless act of dragon violence. what a messy writing decision, like wtf?? who is this woman on meleys bc that doesn’t feel like rhaenys anymore, the savvy grandma who made her peace with her lot and thusly tried to protect her family from the fallout of the throne scheming, because she recognized how toxic it was. she’d lived it. and now she’s bringing the roof down on her family’s heads, just as she did to those smallfolk. when otto hightower is advocating for the little guy and you’re preparing to roast somebody, you know you fucked up.

apparently the “inside the episode” relays that rhaenys didn’t go through with burning alicent and her family because she “couldn’t do that to a mother”, correct me if i’m wrong. idk, i’m interpreting it as a moment of camaraderie, rhaenys seeing herself in alicent, another woman putting herself between the people that she loves in the face of fire and blood and death… even though she just kinda shamed her for it.

in conclusion: just because you can ride a dragon doesn’t me you should (or that you’re the hero of the story).

this has been discussed before but reducing female characters to the girlboss braincell holder in the name of combating misogyny in fandom is ironically also a form of misogyny

Elia Martell with Aegon Targaryen/ Rhaenys Targaryen with Balerion

They deserved better!

thinking about how Aegon will constantly suffer from pain due to burns and broken legs, but he will always take Jaehaera on his lap and hold her as long as she wants, and he will ignore the agony in his body, because he will intend to compensate for all the time that he was an absent father with his only remaining child before he goes to his sons, brothers and wife-sister.

ALICENT HIGHTOWER APPRECIATION WEEK ↳ Day 6: Color(s) Alicent as Eyeshadow Palettes insp.