Rhaenyra Targaryen: The Black Queen

I'm pretty sure this generated art by @celindelouisa cured my soul.

house of the dragon + the major arcana

"If you cannot manage a horse, fetch me some wine and a pretty wench."

"I ... m'lord, pardons, I'm no serving man either. I have the honor to be a knight."

"Knighthood has fallen on sad days."

RHAENYRA THE REALM'S DELIGHT

She was a Targaryen. The same blood that coursed through the dragon ran in her veins. An ancient blood filled with magic and dreams, lost in time and existing only in them. Them, who were the last of their race. The last memory there was of Old Valyria. That fallen empire where men didn’t pray to gods. Men became them. -The Blacks & The Greens by @sweetestpopcorn

i edited holliday grainger with silver hair and purple eyes because i always imagined her as book rhaenyra. 💕hope you like this moodboard 💝

Listen- I am a Targ Stan, Team Black, Rhaenyra Apologist, whatever you wanna call it. As far from Team Green as you can get. BUT I SEE A MF WITH WHITE HAIR AND AN EYE SCAR AND ITS SIMPLY NOT FAIR!!!!

my shiera seastar 🌊⭐️

“The Mother gives the gift of life, and watches over every wife / Her gentle smile ends all strife, and she loves her little children.”

King Aenys Targaryen, the Son of Rhaenys the Conqueror

but why don't you ever complain about stark stans? because i don't think they're as annoying next question.

I haven't seen the episode and i just read the spoilers but I can't believe that the only consistent thing that the writers did was Rhaenyra and Alicent's story like they went "fuck it we'll make hotd a soap opera and the center of it will be these two women who love each other despite everything for decades" and run with that story lmao i feel like for the very first time I'm winning. Rhaenicent lives !

Rhaenyra with her and Daemon's third child: Visenya Targaryen

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON POSTERS!

Gorghan of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is....and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. That is the nature of prophecy, said Gorghan. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time.

ok asoiaf/hotd thoughts…idk if there is even that much to say about this? but like. now that hotd is out and has been watched by a bunch of people and lots of interesting discussions have been had around it (and terrible ones but let’s ignore those for now)…i care even less about dany than i did before. and the idea of her restoring targaryen rule to westeros is The Worst. so now i’m just kind of like…what’s her point in the story??? i guess the dragons could help with the winter apocalypse stuff and fight the others and all that but dany herself? i just can’t picture her having a place in westeros at all, at least not in a way that i would find narratively satisfying. and this also ties into the idea of jon embracing his targaryen heritage (gross) and getting the iron throne which would also be stupid bc we’ve seen the targs destroy each other and themselves and the country so sticking one of them back in charge is just ridiculous. and the two of them are probably the strongest candidates for “the prince that was promised” so what does this mean for that whole prophecy?? idk what my question is i’m just rambling at this point lmao…i guess i’m saying that twow and ados should partly be about the real End of the targ dynasty and if they’re not than idk what we’re doing here. sorry if this is nonsensical lol

okay so both of these are kinda asking the same questions so i'll talk about it here!!

the idea of targ restoration is one of those theories that has a couple different interpretations and the one you described is like, kinda the worst of them lol.

like the idea of dany winning and surviving the end is not an unfounded, nor irrational theory and no one is wrong for wanting that to happen-- why shouldn't she win versus anyone else if she maneuvers in the right ways and effectively wins the game!

i think what i personally take issue with is the version of this that posits dany's conquest as a Moral Good and something that NEEDS to happen because of nebulous down-the-road threat that she doesn't even know about yet. and that other characters arcs (jon's, tyrion's, varys even?? are all veering towards targaryen restoration). i've even seen them claim that the entire point ASOIAF as a whole is about targ restoration. nothing else matters its all about getting them dragons back in power, which i think is the most WILDLY insane thing i've ever heard in my life.

i think this theory of 'targ restoration' is one that wants to have it both ways- for dany to fight and win a war of conquest, but also not be seen as a villain because of it (because of the fans own need to be on the Moral Right of things) (there's a larger discussion here about fandom and morality politics especially in asoiaf)

and frankly... that just isn't how it works.

and this is mainly bred from dany stans who never wanted dany to be anything other than a 100% Good Person who cannot be challenged on a moral level and she is always on the right side of every conflict regardless of nuance. and so when HOTD makes up this whackadoodle prophecy of aegon NEEDING to do a conquest and he was totally justified in all the fucked up shit they did, it was because of some vague threat of the Others and the Long Night to justify their dynastic claims to Westeros. (i'll be honest, i think ole king joe made that one up)

not to mention i think they've completely lost sight of the narrative function of the targaryen dynasty as a relic of a bygone era and dany IS the last of it.

and if we're being completely honest, from what i've seen of the most hardcore targ nation stans, most of them don't really care about the prophecy or the threat of the Others, but that her capacity to help should be used as political leverage (as in the show) to enforce the subjugation of everyone else. and that in fact, they should be grateful because she's the ultimate yass queen girl boss slay etc

but if that's the takeaway you get from the Feudalism Is Bad And The Chair Is A Metaphor For It books, then idk what to tell you. there's a lot of ways that you can interpret what grrm writes, but i can promise you that Conquest Is Good Sometimes is not one of them. characters want to be their own heroes and will always justify themselves however they need, but that's not the intention the reader is meant to take away from it - or at best should feel challenged by.

and dany is absolutely one of those characters. even tho she's not my personal favorite, she's a character that you're meant to both sympathize with because you've been on this whole journey with her, but also be challenged by the hard decisions ahead. its not about cut and dry good/evil, but understanding her motivations and why she makes those choices.

i think it's no question that dany will play a major part in the conflicts to come in the north and the war against the white walkers. to what capacity, i have no idea. as azor ahai, as nissa nissa? as somehow both? no idea. but what i think ultimately what dany will have to war with internally, will be choosing her war of conquest (the thing that's defined her personal growth and all of her strength) and the war for humanity.

the reason why i hate 'targ restoration' is because it reduces so many characters into this wildly simplistic box based on dynastic lineage. i super hate the inclusion of tyrion in this theory because he is Not a targaryen and that isn't the point of his story at all. and even tho jon's father is rhaegar, a large part of his arc revolving around identity is him carving out one for his own. all for him to start going by 'jon targaryen' in the end??? i litchrelly hate it. i do think jon and dany's arc are going to intertwine in some way and i hope its way more compelling than it was in the show, at least for my own sanity.

and lastly to the point of what dany's place in the world will be, i think that's something she struggles with now and will also struggle with in the future. there's the surface level wants and broad-stroke politics, but what i think is interesting will be to see a character like her rise to the heights that she will no doubt achieve in terms of Plot, but all she wants is the house with the red door.

there's an innate tragedy to just wanting to be as safe and home as she was when she was five, even if it was temporary, and what it will mean for her to ever have that again. this is really the difference between her and her brother viserys. he DOES remember, that WAS his life and his insanity is fueled by that being stripped away like so many other children in war. but it was never dany's. idk what the end of the series means for dany, but i really cant see the end of her story being with her sitting on that throne and restoring that dynasty from hell.

I like parts of the Maester conspiracy theory but what I don’t like abt it is it’s used to blame everything that’s ever gone wrong for the targs on someone else & absolve them of any responsibility for negative actions. I can believe they hate magic, because all the types of magic we’ve seen in asoiaf is destructive and/or requires sacrifice of an unwilling innocent, and they want order and peace for the realm (how is that a bad thing??). I can even believe they may have poisoned the remaining eggs during aegon III’s time to prevent another dance from ripping apart the realm. I don’t think they are anti woman troglodytes who do things just to cause mass suffering, that’s not in line with what we’ve seen of any maesters besides maybe pycelle (besides, making targ women suffer is the hobby of targ men). I don’t think they somehow killed aemma arryn/baelon to install Alicent hightower. I’m willing to be generous and see how that’s a plausible theory to someone being told the broad strokes & not all the facts bc hightower = oldtown = citadel and all that. But we know the maesters were the ones telling viserys to leave her alone for a few more years, we know that her trying for kids too young is what made her weaker, which then eventually killed her. If the goal is to see her dead, why the hell were they trying to preserve her health? Wouldn’t they have encouraged viserys to start impregnating aemma the moment her cycle began? The situation is very clearly written to show viserys’ desperation to not be like jaehaerys & to have a son and heir, which culminates in him losing his wife and their most recent baby all at once. I don’t think the maesters caused summerhall. Even though I unironically love egg & will be saddened if I’m proven right & he’s the one who did the deed (again, willing to be gracious & say the experiment got out of control, but it’s more likely to me that he was intentionally sacrificing family members to hatch the eggs), it makes no sense for maesters to have done it just bc pycelle & tywin were alive and shady at the time. I think egg doing it makes sense with what we’ve seen of targaryen self destructive obsession & how desperate egg was to have dragons bc of war/trouble with the lords. Also some other things mentioned in dunk & egg that I’m not arsed to fully flesh out in my ramblings lol. Idk my point is some things abt the theory are plausible and some things sound like qanon supporters talking about The Deep StateTM to avoid talking about the failings/losses of their favorite politicians.

"Princess Rhaenys was born on the seventh day of the seventh moon of the year, which the septons judged to be highly auspicious. Large and fierce, she had the black hair of her Baratheon mother and the pale violet eyes of her Targaryen father."