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i think of Rhaenyra's life and it's just sad. imagine a 8 year old completely scared after her mother's death. then this new step mother comes and it's fine but then as she births sons little Rhaenyra's whole life turns shades darker while still a child like 😭 no matter viserys adored her so much he neglected her when she needed him. she was a child in court full of adults. didn't even have her uncle by her side and when he came back she was a woman grown and so was plagued by rumours again! and more happened and yet she kept her head high and fought for her birth right for something which was promised to her till the very end no matter how it ended.

my heart just breaks for that little rhaenyra so much. i don't think people really understand what kinda place she was living in since she was a child. a little girl.

Before people start slapping this ask with a "Rhaenyra was 15 when Daemon came back from the Stepstones, she wasn't a woman!", yes, duh.

The point of this ask is to look through Rhaenyra using what circumstances she lives through and in. In Rhaenyra's world/society, she is no longer just a child and up for marriage. Viserys had always considered her marriage to Laenor and Westerosi noblewomen (when they are not in special circumstances) usually get married in their mid-teens. For better or worse, yes, Rhaenyra occupies the place of a marriageable not-child youth of majority who was available for marriage at the time that Daemon came back. I wouldn't go so far as to say others around her would think she is a matured woman, more like that she was considered "old enough". Again, that definition of "maiden". Which is itself coming from factual medieval ideas about female life stages:

It was easy enough to pinpoint the start of medieval adolescence. As the writer John Trevisa put it, it was a ‘full age to get children’: that is, entering puberty. When it ended, however, was less clear. As Avicenna, the great Persian philosopher, wrote in a work that was translated into Latin and widely disseminated throughout the Middle Ages: ‘There is the age of growing up, which is called the age of adolescence and commonly lasts until the age of thirty.’ Avicenna was contributing to the scholarship on ‘The Ages of Man’, used by many medieval thinkers to explain the stages of man’s life. While ‘man’ might be a universal term for humanity, these schemes make it clear they were not about female experience. The 13th-century jurist Henry of Bracton said a woman reached maturity when she was able to take on the responsibilities of a housewife, but few other writers concerned themselves much with the female life cycle. Women were believed to experience the prime of their lives during adolescence, as this was the age when they were considered to be most spiritually pure and physically beautiful. For a female youth, adolescence was tied to her ‘maidenhood’ – both her youth and her virginity – and so with marriage and the loss of her virgin status she was usually perceived to have exited the most ‘perfect age’ of a woman’s life. In short, girls usually became women because of their relationships with men: when they left their natal families and became wives. Boys’ transition to manhood was a longer and more variable process.

GRRM takes medieval ideas about womanhood and gives the word "maiden" a more technical and material existence/role in the Westerosi feudal social system, but the idea remains the same. What's different is that 15-year-old Rhaenyra--as heir and a girl coming into authority in her own right over men instead of subject to her husband's authority in the official manner--now also partially occupied that which is a male office and condition of power, so she would be simultaneously seen as not as capable and someone who should "realize" how much responsibility she's been given.

And that is where Daemon as her boon comes into play. Regarding the timeline of their relationship, Daemon treated her as a child first when she was actually young, and then as a person capable of making their decisions--at least compared to others--as well as protected her claim to the throne. No, the gifts he'd intermittently give her BEFORE he left for the Stepstones were not of the socially isolating kind.

Yeah, this can be considered grooming, semi-Doylistically. Esp since it was not official, open courting that the girl's father approved of.

Why this specification? Grooming entails:

physically or emotionally separate a victim from those protecting them and often seek out positions in which they have contact with minors

gaining the trust of a potential victim through gifts, attention, sharing “secrets” and other means to make them feel that they have a caring relationship and to train them to keep the relationship secret

will often start to touch a victim in ways that appear harmless, such as hugging, wrestling and tickling, and later escalate to increasingly more sexual contact, such as massages or showering together. Abusers may also show the victim pornography or discuss sexual topics with them, to introduce the idea of sexual contact

behaviors are not only used to gain a victim’s trust, but often are used to create a trustworthy image and relationship with their family and community. Child and teen sexual abusers are often charming, kind, and helpful — exactly the type of behavior we value in friends and acquaintances

Daemon never tried to be kind or mild enough to anyone except Rhaenyra and his kids out for well-wishes for that individual or to make them feel good for the sake of it. Even with the gold cloaks, he was a leader who had to keep the loyalty of those under his command, which entails giving a sense of purpose and confidence. The guy is not a man of complex duplicity and machination, he's a guy who has a family heritage of dragonriders that lives in an incestuous family. Both he and Rhaenyra are products and individuals shaped by their conditions. And their conditions allow/necessitate that they look to each other as first partners-by-family-and-sustained/proven-trust, then the sexual/romantic element infused into that base that is uniquely Targaryen/Valyrian dragonrider. *EDIT* REMOVED LAST SENTENCE *END OF EDIT*

Back to the ask, yes, it is a sad story. It is a weird state to acknowledge that as a princess she enjoyed a lot more luxuries and protections than "commonborn" girls and women while also having her own classist view AND how she had been so exposed to adult intrigue before she turned 10. But this is the truth. The most Rhaenyra got to live as an autonomous person doing her own thing--before marrying Daemon--as much as she could was after she left the Red Keep for Dragonstone to become its ruling "Lady" and raise her kids with her lover/guardsman Harwin Strong.