[Spoilers] Episode 109 Discussion

[Leticia Stark]

4 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

To be fair, we do have a nuanced view of a guy who killed his wife and, uhm, seduced his underage niece. I definitely didn't ask for any of that.

Yes and she dragged him in her interview as she should, she didn’t try to explain why he did those things lol

Edit:

But after thinking about it, I think one of the reasons she dragged him was because Daemon is universally loved and she didn’t expect that he would be the star of the show after so much time they spent on Alicent/Rhaenyra.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Leticia Stark

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

15 minutes ago, Leticia Stark said:

I think one of the reasons she dragged him was because Daemon is universally loved and she didn’t expect that he would be the star of the show after so much time they spent on Alicent/Rhaenyra.

There was a lot of marketing material focusing on Daemon before the show aired. Maybe not as much as Rhaenyra, but definitely more than Alicent. So it's a strange thing to be surprised by.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Takiedevushkikakzvezdy

[Leticia Stark]

2 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

There was a lot of marketing material focusing on Daemon before the show aired. Maybe not as much as Rhaenyra, but definitely more than Alicent. So it's a strange thing to be surprised by.

She maybe expected that he would be one of the stars, but not THE one lol

But I don’t know what they expected when they casted Matt Smith, he shines in every single one of his parts (except in Morbius but no one could save that lmao)

[DMC]

9 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Seriously, from a realpolitik perspective that action denies nukes to the Greens and puts all the nukes in the hands of the Blacks.

Scot, sorry for the delayed reaction but I wanted to address this because I think this is a facile understanding of "realpolitik," and more importantly is why Rhaenys' decision was the farthest thing from "idiotic" as has been repeated by many.  Realpolitik may be amoral rationality, but part and parcel of that is legitimacy.  Rhaenyra already has an inherent legitimacy problem simply by being a woman.  Any hope of such would be completely destroyed if she takes the throne through the incineration of her three half-siblings - along with the Queen Dowager, entire Small Council, and two septons - perpetrated by the previous female claimant who was denied no less.

Do you really think the "noble and honorable" paramount Houses of Arryn, Tully, and Stark - let alone the green-inclined Tyrells, Lannisters, and Baratheons - would countenance such an "outrage."  Now you can say the blacks still have five dragonriders (and would control even more), and it only took the Conqueror three.  But the rules of engagement - as well as legitimacy - still mattered during the Conquest, and the Faith alone hampered Maegor and the Black Dread up until the former's death.  Not to mention Dorne's successful defiance.  Unless Rhaenyra wants to be Queen of the Ashes, such an action would not only be emblematic of haunting decisions that always derive perilous consequences in Martin-verse, but also be antithetical to realpolitik.

And to once again employ the nuke analogy - the US could have deployed nukes against Iraq.  Depending on the weapon, it frankly would not have been as devastating as what Dubya did do.  Why didn't they?  It certainly wasn't MAD.  It was because that would have destroyed their legitimacy throughout the world.

[IFR]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

And to once again employ the nuke analogy - the US could have deployed nukes against Iraq.  Depending on the weapon, it frankly would not have been as devastating as what Dubya did do.  Why didn't they?  It certainly wasn't MAD.  It was because that would have destroyed their legitimacy throughout the world.

One country unilaterally controlling nukes I think would have a significant impact in any geopolitical structure. The US bombed Japan into submission quite readily. The geopolitics quickly changed when the Soviets developed nukes only a few years later.

People can account for Rhaenys' behavior as one of morality, but I cannot see it as a decision of good sense.

If she toasted Alicent and company, she could return to the Blacks. I very much doubt that Daemon or Rhaenyra would care at all that Rhaenys murdered family. Nobles might be angered, but Rhaenyra would assume power. If called for Rhaenys could be exiled for a few years. The Blacks would have enough supporters that with dragons everyone else would be cowed. Rhaenys granddaughters could then be married to the Strong children, and Rhaenys legacy would be secured. Rhaenyra and Daemon could then work to stifle any discontent, and at some point Rhaenys could return.

But this is a fictional world. It's hard enough to speculate on the real world, much less a fantasy one. But to me the clear and practical path would have been to kill Alicent and her family.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, IFR said:

The geopolitics quickly changed when the Soviets developed nukes only a few years later.

Not in the context of Iraq, which is the example I provided - and why I specifically mentioned MAD wasn't a factor.  The Russians wouldn't have done anything at that point.  The only nuclear country that would even consider responding to such an action would have been Pakistan, and good luck with that.

3 minutes ago, IFR said:

If called for Rhaenys could be exiled for a few years.

Then why the fuck would Rhaenys do it?  It's not like she's Michael Corleone protecting her father.  Again, she still thinks Rhaenyra and Daemon killed her son.

6 minutes ago, IFR said:

But to me the clear and practical path would have been to kill Alicent and her family.

This is delusional.

[IFR]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Then why the fuck would Rhaenys do it?  It's not like she's Michael Corleone protecting her father.  Again, she still thinks Rhaenyra and Daemon killed her son

So her grandchildren can rule. She doesn't place the same importance on legacy as her husband does, but even she has some desire for the security and inheritance of her progeny.

As opposed to letting Alicent live, where she knows it is entirely possible that the Greens will try to murder Daemon and his children.

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

Not in the context of Iraq, which is the example I provided - and why I specifically mentioned MAD wasn't a factor.  The Russians wouldn't have done anything at that point.  The only nuclear country that would even consider responding to such an action would have been Pakistan, and good luck with that.

I don't think your example is comparable. Why compare a situation where many different factions have nukes to one where in a single stroke only one faction has nukes?

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is delusional.

 Well, ok. I disagree obviously.

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, IFR said:

So her grandchildren can rule. She doesn't place the same importance on legacy as her husband does, but even she has some desire for the security and inheritance of her progeny.

Her grandchildren would be in just as perilous a position, indeed even more so, for all the reasons I said above.  Moreover, you're asking Rhaenys to consider all these permutations within minutes.  It's absurd.

10 minutes ago, IFR said:

I don't think your example is comparable. Why compare a situation where many different factions have nukes to one where in a single stroke only one faction has nukes?

Because, again, no one would stop the US from doing so - nor respond with nukes.  I've made that clear.

[Winterfell is Burning]

6 hours ago, Ran said:

People are super tribal about this show for some reason. In some senses, the Black vs. Green, Alicent vs. Rhaenyra, Daemon vs Aemond thing is great for stirring intense feelings about the show, but it's not great for actual discussion.

.

I don't know if you noticed but people are super tribal about EVERYTHING these days.

[El Guapo]

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

Okay having read this article I'm really not impressed with the answers from Sarah Hess.

After she just killed a large amount of women and children without remorse?
 

Okay, these comments are D+D levels of dumb. GRRM would be tearing his hair out at an answer like that.

Like I said, the writing on the show has been impeccable throughout the season, but now alarm bells are starting to ring.

I hope Ryan Condal reins these crazy people in before they ruin his show.

 

I think GRRM would take an answer like that and laugh as it was clearly a joke. It is truly amazing to me that a lot of people seem to be taking it seriously.

Edited October 19, 2022 by El Guapo

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Her grandchildren would be in just as perilous a position, indeed even more so, for all the reasons I said above.  Moreover, you're asking Rhaenys to consider all these permutations within minutes.  It's absurd.

Folks should take another look at FaB and remember that Rhaenyra herself didn't expect that Aegon II would murder her once he captured her at Dragonstone. If she didn't think that after close to two years of brutal war which had cost both pretenders most of their family members ... then it is quite nonsensical to assume Rhaenys should have torched the Green gang at a point when there was, as of yet, no war.

I think the scene would have worked much better if Rhaenys had been present at the family dinner in episode 8. It is quite odd that she is absent when Baela and Rhaena are there, anyway. But if she had been there, she would have witnessed the reconcoliation of Alicent and Rhaenyra ... and that could have added another motivational layer to her decision to spare her. After all, had she torched Alicent, Rhaenyra could have easily enough taken her head for that.

And while we don't know whether Rhaenyra likes Helaena ... it seems that no sane person dislikes her (Jace definitely enjoyed dancing with her), so murdering her may have been something Rhaenyra and her sons may also have not just approved. Hell, Luke and Jace may have approved offing Uncle Aemond, but they did get along reasonably well with Aegon, and Rhaenyra herself also gives no indication that she dislikes or loathes the guy.

If the writers are no fools they will continue to have a 'peace faction' in either camp, continuing the attempt to stop a further escalation of the war or to start peace talks whenever an opportunity presents itself.

There should be phases of escalation - Blood and Cheese, the reaction to Blood and Cheese (the Cargyll assassination plot, eventually Rook's Rest) - which eventually give way to attempts to cool things down again.

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, Leticia Stark said:

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Rhaenyra was the one who proposed, yes, but he didn’t act like he didn’t care about her as you say. In fact, if you watch the funeral scene again, you see he basically was watching her every move during the entire event and when they kissed he seemed pretty moved to me. In the behind the scenes video from episode 8 the director says that they wanted to show the audience that they were really in love and we actually see them holding hands, him caressing her baby bump, etc.

Yes, they watched each other, and Daemon went along with the whole thing, and it seems clear Rhaenyra is the woman he desires the most, more than Laena. But I don't think he is completely committed to this thing. It is the best road to take now, but he already revealed he feels his life sucks. I assume he always wanted a sister to marry, or an aunt (one of Jaehaerys' younger girls or perhaps even Aemma if Viserys had married Rhaenys, as he should have).

Rhaenyra is the one he wants because she is closest to that. But it happens too late to make him truly happy. And he wasn't even completely sure that he wanted her back when he could have had her.

5 hours ago, Leticia Stark said:

I’ve always seen him care about his family (Viserys&Rhaenyra, not so much about his kids but this was entirely the writers choice as we know).

I think it is pretty clear that book Daemon never truly cared about Rhaenyra ... just as she might have never cared that much about him. Both had other marriages and affairs, and in the book it is implied that their marriage is the result of a pregnancy as the result of grief sex after Laena's death (to whom Rhaenyra was very close). That's not exactly a love match.

Then there is the fact that Rhaenyra needed to ensure the Velaryons remain in her camp and that she strengthens her claim to the throne.

There is no reason in the book given as to why Daemon should cheat on Rhaenyra. She wouldn't have been uglier or fatter in early 130 AC than in early 129 AC when they were expecting the birth of their third child. In fact, in early 130 AC they should have been closer than ever, having just masterminded the fall of King's Landing together.

The only explanation we have for the renewed affair with Mysaria and the possible affair with Nettles later on is Daemon's general fickleness ... which in this context strongly implies that he never loved Rhaenyra. Because the moment to not antagonize this woman, the moment to suck up to her and pamper her would be after you just put her on the Iron Throne. Now she has real power. Now you can suck her dry and exploit her to get what you want from her.

In that sense, Daemon's later actions show how little he cared about his wife and his children.

[DMC]

20 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I think the scene would have worked much better if Rhaenys had been present at the family dinner in episode 8. It is quite odd that she is absent

Agreed.  The show does a decent job suggesting why she wasn't by juxtaposing her scene overseeing Vaemond's body then immediately cutting to the dinner scene but..you'd think Viserys would want her to be there.

I also agree with you about Helaena.  Nobody would have approved of her murder - both in-universe and among the fandom.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I came across a critique of HOTD and ROP from EW. Interestingly, it also suggests that the writers seem afraid to make Alicent and Rhaenyra more morally ambiguous:

https://ew.com/tv/tv-reviews/house-of-the-dragon-rings-of-power-finales-review/

[RumHam]

I didn't initially think about it, but how are Helena's prophecies supposed to work? It's one thing for her family to ignore her random comments about a beast under the boards but what did she think that meant?

My assumption was that she was having dreams and then being annoyingly cryptic about them. But she can't have known what was going to go down in the dragonpit and just showed up anyway.

[Ran]

I'm not always on board with Franich's takes (he pushed Star Trek V to the #4 spot in the Screen Drafts Star Trek Super Draft, the madman!), but that was a very interesting paragraph he wrote:

Quote

And Alicent's relationship with Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) didn't quite land. Martin's book Fire and Blood painted them as antagonists in a continental war. Season 1 revealed their secret teen origins, with overlooked princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and devoted Alicent (Emily Carey) starting out as friends. The intention — sincerely (if not successfully) feminist — was to show Westeros' patriarchy pushing two strong women into opposition. Or were the male showrunners defensively over-explaining female moral ambiguity? The grown-up pair even rekindle their friendship despite actual knife scars, and Alicent is less treasonous than the notably all-male small council. Cooke is giving full Manchurian Lansbury as a doting grandmomster. D'Arcy wears battered nobility well. Still, by downplaying their vital power-play hostility, I worry this adaptation has made Alicent and Rhaenyra something worse than evil: Boring.

OTOH, asking these shows to be more like Primal is weird. In animation, the cost difference between an animated frame showing intense action and an animate frame showing a dude and a dinosaur walking in a desert is very low. In live action shows, not so much.

@RumHam

She doesn't know what the dreams are. They're just things that strike her fancy or capture her attention and she spouts them off at random because she's neurodivergent. The actual dreams aren't flashes of the actual events, they are symbolic or metaphorical and are very much up to interpretation.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Ran

[RumHam]

14 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

@RumHam

She doesn't know what the dreams are. They're just things that strike her fancy or capture her attention and she spouts them off at random because she's neurodivergent. The actual dreams aren't flashes of the actual events, they are symbolic or metaphorical and are very much up to interpretation.

I think that works for this example, I'm not sure it works for the time Alicent told Aemond he would have a dragon and Helena chimed in that he'd have to lose an eye.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, RumHam said:

I think that works for this example, I'm not sure it works for the time Alicent told Aemond he would have a dragon and Helena chimed in that he'd have to lose an eye.

Rewatch the scene. She's mumbling to her centipede, her mother and Aemond don't hear that.

[RumHam]

Just now, Ran said:

Rewatch the scene. She's mumbling to her centipede, her mother and Aemond don't hear that.

Right but it still seems like she knows pretty clearly whats going to happen when Aemond gets his dragon. I guess maybe not though, maybe she just had a dream about a one eyed dragon or something.

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Right but it still seems like she knows pretty clearly whats going to happen when Aemond gets his dragon.

I'm not sure she "knows". She says stuff all the time. This was just one of those times where they aligned. I admit, it's convenient for them to have her basically be Cassandra while not even realizing she's Cassandra.

2 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I guess maybe not though, maybe she just had a dream about a one eyed dragon or something.

It was doubtless something obscure, yeah.