butterweedstrover

No one saw this as a negative thing and it does not besmirch her character, because it doesn't go anywhere. And even if it did it was clear Daemon isn't some random guy but a person she has deep feelings for and trusts implicitly. And rejects him. A big part of the implication in the book is that she wants Sir Criston who chooses Alicent over her. In the show it is made clear Rhaenyra rejects him. Which is explained as a result of Laenor's inability to perform. There we can neither blame her or deem this as sexually promiscuous. She needs children and she goes to only one other man for all three. But Mushroom's story's were meant to cast a negative light on Rhaenyra. They were suppose to show her as self-indulgent, sexually demanding, and vengeful. When she screams after hearing the news of Aegon's ascension it is a sign of anger and rage. She does not consider peace, but war. Because again she was never explicitly shown to be anything like what the show depicts her as: kind, soft of heart, reluctant for power, modest (no seriously), and loyal. There is no serious counter-narrative showing any of these things. My point is, the way in which it (supposedly) implements Mushroom's version does not tarnish Rhaenyra's character. She comes off as pure and perfect in a way the book never suggested. But it literally doesn't. The horrible picture isn't there because the context of her infidelity, her seduction, or anything else does not translate into a promiscuous women besot by jealously and demanding of war. The context of these actions are made in such a way that Rhaenyra's actions are above question as is her unwavering morality.

Well, she show no vices that a normal person with functioning emotions would have to deal with, and yet is filled with endless compassion so that she might still be likable. Her best friend betrays her and not even a hint of anger. Her throne is taken and not even a hint of vengeance. Her actions are always good and kind, but that goodness with no counterbalance seems artificial and shallow. Making the love she shows her children come off as robotic.

Yeah, and that is what I meant, the in world perception. Not whatever you feel constitutes a whore, you are not part of the equation. My point is her show behavior wouldn't even constitute a Tyrion/Robert type female 'whoring'. She is just pure and perfect. Honest question, where? He is a thin skinned asshole who bullies other people and lets them get under his nerve. I don't see anything else going on, not even a love for his mother or brother.

Yeah, like the show is doing. Thanks for catching on.

Cool, so I guess everything Mushroom said was a lie. I don't know, giving her an assortment of lovers after her marriage with Laenor might have classified her as a 'whore' ostensibly but it would have been more interesting than this pure hearted uncontaminated unemotional dispassionate robot filled with love and compassion that we got.

And Gregor was abused as a child, it doesn't add moral ambiguity to his actions. Aegon's behavior is pure evil but more specifically, why is his family pushing him to the throne? Either you blame him or Alicent for pressuring him, something Alicent did ostensibly for her children but actually against them since she was mad at Rhaenyra for being what she thought was an undutiful wife. Which is more ridiculous when you consider that is what Alicent is being by standing against Rhaenyra. So we have a rapist king who became a rapist because his reluctant mother who loves Rhaenyra forced him on the throne to betray her best friend whom she loved to protect her children. They all come out looking like irredeemable trash. He does by the end of it. That would make her an even worse character. If she just gives up after the first round of rejections then her desire for the throne and her emotional capacity for vengeance would be seriously put into question. And if after everything she has neither of these things she isn't a human being.

In the show, she isn't a whore. In fact she is only sexually active with one man per marriage. In the show, she doesn't, Leanor cheats on her if anything. She went to Cole AFTER Daemon left her. The period of one day when they were seeing each other Rhaenyra never did anything. Assuming she cheated on her husband, which she didn't changing the context of this statement. Because none of it was. Just like she never screams over Alicent's betrayal or demands vengeance, because she is hardly even a human being but a celestial being unaffected by the fall of man. Well you know, it'd be nice if someone on the Greens could be a half decent human being and not a total scum bag, but I guess that is too much to ask for. FYI: Making Aemond accidentally kill Luke or having Aegon not be a full on pedophile don't account as redeeming qualities. If I told you Ted Bundy didn't also eat his victims, it wouldn't add moral nuance to his actions or motives.

She was saying crazy shit, like the psychos who stole my throne should just have it because of some dumb prophecy which would require her to take the throne (unless she wanted to go have a chit chat with the rapist brother and fill him in). Granted they only did this, not for narrative reasons, but to reassure audiences that her heart is incapable of vice. When you pull out and see how insane she is being, the scene makes more sense. But then again she doesn't mean any of it, Rhaneyra was never going to accept the bargain.

Well yeah but their positions are indefensible. Saying Alicent is nuanced because she is reluctant to overthrow Rhaenyra is stupid because she is not reluctant to overthrow Rhaenyra, she just thinks that. Her emotions and Behavior don't line up with that. If you have a character who does something objectively bad for no reason and does not veer from that course ever under any circumstance we might call her mentally challenged, but not nuanced. Aemond being cool doesn't mean anything if he is just an asshole. And Rhaenyra, my god Rhaenyra. This insufferable human has greater decency than Winne the Pooh. Nothing can get her to show an ounce of anger, conceit, vengeance, cruelty, or spite even in the most deserving of situations. Honestly I would scream in her position but she has LESS complexity than a Disney princess. Because at least Disney Princesses have to overcome their own biases and grow as people.

It already did, with Viserys' death bed. Without proper motivation, they needed an accidental scene, which didn't even make sense since if Alicent is to betray her best friend out of obligation to her husband why had she been ignoring her husband's will for the prior 20 years. Honestly, Aemond has just been generic trash so at least giving him this did something to make it look like he isn't the devil incarnate. Sadly that doesn't matter because the Greens are psychos with no real motivations and the Blacks are saints who would have moved against the Greens anyways.

Oh Alicent is worse than a cackling villain, she is a stupid villain who can't decide what she wants yet incessantly leaps for power. The rest are more evil than the book because at least the book had some ambiguity as to the motivations of Criston Cole, Larys, etc. Now we know they are just generic shit. The Blacks are 100% less complex. Rhaenyra doesn't even get angry or approve any morally ambiguous stuff, she is Jesus reborn.

Rhaenyra reminds me of uncle Tom or Jesus of Nazareth. She is so pure of heart that when her tormentors are near to destroying her she prays that god will forgive them. In the book she was screaming over the news of Aegon's ascension, in the show she is screaming over her child birth. She doesn't show anger but grief. She is reluctant to go to war and seriously considers giving in to these psychopaths. She does not sully the name of Alicent or anyone, reluctant to shed any blood, even against Otto. Her crowning is the most majestic thing ever stripped from a disney film, with the gold crown of her father a fitting contrast to that of the evil black upon Aegon's head. Oh, and that table scene. It was like an avengers unit with all the good guys (Tullys, Starks, Valeyrons, etc.) coming together against the Brackens and those god damn Lannisters. Oh look at how the bad guys and good guys all team up with no variation or anything, I guess we have to shut off our brains and love this shit. I guess they were going for some parallels between Alicent's reluctance and Rhaenyra's. But that is incredibly stupid because... Alicent has no reason to want the throne and endanger her best friend, and more specifically she is never reluctant about naming her rapist son as king, only about making a peace offering where she tells Rhaenyra "sorry, but your shit is mine, deal with it and I won't have you burned alive." Ahh, so nuanced. Meanwhile Rhaenyra has no reason to not take the throne and no reason to negotiate with these criminal psychopaths who literally hid the death of her father. Come to think of it, Rhaenyra is kind of like Satan. I mean they want us to love this pure, calm, and rational queen but think about it for a second. Her childhood best friend spends a decade trying to destroy her and she does not react. She offers olive branches to this traitorous meanie. Rhaenyra show zero passion or emotion or connection to this 'friend' by not shedding a single ounce of energy to show herself being disturbed, angered, or otherwise distraught. Then, this schizophrenic (Alicent) comes and tells her she will be queen and apologizes to Rhaenyra (because Alicent has no clue how to align being a dutiful wife with betraying her best friend since the entire premise of this undeveloped hatred comes from the fact that Rhaenyra was not a dutiful wife) and Rhaenyra without a second thought forgives her. Does she have any heart at all? She comes to learn after this Alicent has stolen her throne and feels sad then thinks to give it all up. I mean these two share zero emotions for one another if they are not even slightly affected by each others offenses. But whatever, this is what the show is. I don't get how people here seriously argue Rhaenyra has moral flaws in terms of the narrative (she doesn't) or how Alicent is a nuanced character reluctant to betray her best friend (she isn't, she is certifiably insane and dedicated to seeing Rhaenyra die regardless of what she says because her thoughts are unrelated to her emotions). I don't get how people say "but Aemond's" cool in defense of the Greens. Aemond and Aegon are psychopaths while Jacerys and Lucerys are saints who turn the other cheek. They are in no way comparable and the only time Daemon is given any moral punishment is when he goes against his own queen. There are no consequences for killed Vaemond, instead Corlys comes up to the Queens and worships the hero of this story. It's not a complex nuanced tale like Martin advertised. It is a black and white story of saints versus the most despicable psychopaths on earth. This episode was just a montage of noble and great characters bowing their head to Rhaenyra as epic music swells and Rhaenyra behaves with an excess of grace and dignity. She can't even bring herself to call Alicent a 'bitch' or something in private. She can't sully her name or purity, she is perfect. This is a shallow uninteresting framing to a duel narrative meant to be complex and multifaceted. Otto is not a multifaceted character, he is an idiot who kills a bunch of nobles without having any preexisting support that would guarantee his family won't be slaughtered. He is not a calculated player, just a low-life villain. The Green episode was just a series of degenerate trash like Larys, Cole, Otto, Aemond, Aegon, and Alicent acting like degenerate trash whilst snipping at each-other like rats over a piece of stolen pie whereas this episode was just heroic bull shit. It's garbage, and the people who keep say "NO! But Alicent is nuanced! And Aemond is cool! And Rhaenyra has flaws or Daemon proves the Blacks aren't generic heroes" need to get over themselves. This is a show that wants to frame itself as morally ambiguous but doesn't have the guts to do it leaving a paltry cast of characters with zero motivating factors disguised by great production and acting. It's awful, it's pathetic, and people need to stop coming up with excuses for it.

Why Rhaenyra? Alicent is a dead horse, I won't keep beating it.

I think more so it is that she will never fight for the greens. Even if ostensibly she is not providing military aid to the Blacks her return to Dragonstone is at the very least to avoid persecution from the Greens. Someone here suggested she kept them alive as a viable alternative to the Blacks, but Eve more or less says it was done not for political reasons, but moral ones. If you remove the moral reasons, she’d have smoked them.

Well it’s not gonna rest whether we like it or not. GOT is still in demand. There will be a Jon show, and if that does well an Arya show, and who knows, maybe a Drogon show.

As the top comment says, if they're going to make a show about ships and voyages they might as well do one with Arya.

Eve also said her act of mercy showed why Rhaenys should be queen while everyone here was calling her stupid for such a decision. But also, I think that puts to sleep the idea she spared them because she was undecided.

But he had the problem with Rhaenyra in episode 4.

Oh wow, I completely forgot about that. It’s weird as how he breeds multiple children in a short amount of time with no perceived difficulty. I mean it was part of F&B but then why make such a big deal of his ED?

I agree, but I thought the futuristic/retro castles look cool in a weird way. They just needed to be bigger (but that may have to do with budget problems).

Someone ate my burrito so I'm angry this morning. Anyways, the only characters whitewashed so far in HotD are Daemon and Rhaenyra. Cole has gone from a somewhat ambiguous bachelor to a hyperventilating mopey piece of shit who killed two nobles at random in front of an audience. Alicent has gone from a fierce mother to a schizophrenic outpatient who might have escaped from a mental asylum, killing her duplicate as means to play the role of queen and 'friend'. Otto was a competent ruler with ambition. Now he is an incompetent administrator with a tyrannical streak of hanging nobles with impunity. Larys was a black box whose motives and loyalties seemed illusive. Now he is a psychopath motivated by his foot-fetish. Aegon was drunkard reluctant for the throne. Now he is a drunkard reluctant for the throne and a confirmed rapist. Aemond was a lunatic loyal to his brother's cause. Now Aemond is a lunatic disloyal to his brother's cause. Helaena was a sweet innocent girl, now she is a cryptic dreamer who randomly gives out sage advice like an NPC being paid to doll out information about the next boss fight. Daeron was a compassionate boy eager to do what was right. Now Daeron is in the void hurling through the dark. Rhaenys was a stoic and brave figure who has now become a compassionate, gentle, forgiving, badass queen who we all must bow down to. Oh yeah, and Rhaenyra and Daemon are saints beyond reproach. They are so good, moral, and kind that no one really can question their character, in fact desperately clinging onto the fact that he killed his wife (so see, he IS nuanced!) doesn't change the fact that he is the ultimate superhero who will always have your back because he is the ultimate badass who helped Viserys onto his throne as a fuck you to Otto and also fucked the king's daughter as a fuck you to those backwards hypocrites who think you can judge a woman's sex life.

I did watch it.

The best part was: "in a weird way." Weird is doing a lot of work there.

https://i.redd.it/1pxqyabr1mu91.jpg Eve Best’s reaction. It was an act of grace and mercy.

Women can be generic villains whose sole motivation is power, but that doesn't play well in a duel narrative where both sides are framed as having nuanced motivations that form a morally grey conflict. Martin quotes Faulkner about the heart at conflict with itself and that is the basis for character's worthy of an actual perspective, not just a one-dimensional power grab. It isn't a question of realism but making their psychological battles interesting and engaging. Alicent had her friendship with Rhaenyra developed to add conflict to her decision. The implicit emotional reluctance would require a strong motivating factor. But they weren't able to give her one so instead she appears to be conflicted but is really just schizophrenic. And that keep in mind ruins the Blacks as well since they come off as bland heroes fighting against a pointless evil.