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[Spoilers] Episode 110 Discussion


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On 10/23/2022 at 10:10 PM, RumHam said:

I feel like they should have introduced the idea that they don't have full control over the dragons before this. There was Visery's speech in the first episode but I didn't take that literally.

I kind of like that it wasn't Aemond's intention to murder his nephew and that it just got out of hand. I can buy that dragons aren't used to fighting other dragons and share their riders animosities but not the self control to not straight up try to murder each other.

I was very happy that Aemond didn't intend to kill his nephew. Keeps his character much more grey even though thats not how it was written. And also if any of the dragons would be hard to reel in it would make sense that Vhagar wouldnt take commands like a house broken dog. 

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44 minutes ago, Khloey said:

At the dinner scene, she tells Lucerys that he'll be great as lord of the tides. But I think that's it..

She also says "grandmother" and "princess" right before Rhaenys and Rhaenyra's conversation by the heart tree.  Not much I know, but to be fair, teen Rhaena is only in two episodes.

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I’ve now seen a lot of people online talk about how HOTD makes them miss characters from GOT, and 9/10 times it’s one of the Lannisters (a lot of people bring up the Hound too). I guess that’s the one hole HOTD hasn’t been able to fill, despite all the parallel characters.

Now that I think about it, maybe they should have given Tyland some of Mushroom’s wit and bawdiness. He’s Tyrion’s ancestor, after all, why shouldn’t they bear some resemblance to each other? Tyland’s kind of a confusing character in the books—I don’t know how he went from wanting Aegon III mutilated to becoming his loyal Hand overnight—so they could do a lot with him.

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On 11/1/2022 at 6:02 AM, butterweedstrover said:

Viserys doesn't tell his wife what is going on and you see the horror and confusion upon her face. Hs main concern is having a son and he puts that above the well-being of his wife.

Viserys’s job is Protector of the Realm. That’s the gig. It’s not really a gig you can quit due to the risk of instability, death, war, and famine that would likely occur if he decided to peace-out of said gig.

One of the most important parts of that gig is keeping the realm stable, and that entails securing the succession which means a male heir in the world where these characters exist. (Obviously, changing that is what gives us the story of instability and chaos anyway…)

Aemma was a willing participant. By the time she was full term in this pregnancy, she’d had enough and told Viserys her participation in that endeavor was at an end.

Unfortunately, she exists in the fictional world of Westeros with the equivalent medical science of 15th century England.

Aemma has reached the point in her obstructed labor where she cannot survive. Viserys is given the information that she will die. That part is non-negotiable.

The choices are: 

  • Be honest: Tell her she’s going to die, hope she’s rational at the point in the female delivery stage where she’s exponentially hopped up on very specific hormones and adrenaline so instinct and the drive to survive childbirth at all costs takes over your mind and body preventing you from going insane and forces you to assist passing a life form the size of an adult cat out of your genitalia if things go smoothly as designed. She accepts the news of her impending death calmly, as fact, and volunteers to have a quick death to attempt to save the child.
  • Be honest, but… it causes her unimaginable stress and panic because of course it does because there’s no rationalizing your unavoidable death because your mind won’t allow that because your mind can’t biologically allow it during childbirth. She doesn’t have Bene Gesserit skills.
  • Say nothing: Let them both die while trying to comfort her and communicate how much he loves her which she’ll likely be oblivious to due to the pain and violence of the ongoing labor which her body will continue until she’s dead. If her heart doesn’t fail from exhaustion, it will likely take a day or two depending mostly on how quickly sepsis sets in from the decaying corpse of the breech which will likely die from trauma and asphyxiation long before the mother. So she has lots of unimaginable pain ahead unless she’s given gallons of milk of the poppy.
  • Be honest, but withhold telling her she’s terminal, giving no details and hope to give her a shorter time of panic and pain since that’s going to happen no matter what. Basically exactly what Viserys does in the show.

I’m curious, what exactly would you have preferred Viserys do or say to Aemma at that moment? This is a “Yes, and…” exercise, like improv. You must choose one of the choices above. No cheating by wishing there was a time machine to go back and prevent any more pregnancies.

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6 hours ago, ShadowKitteh said:

Viserys’s job is Protector of the Realm. That’s the gig. It’s not really a gig you can quit due to the risk of instability, death, war, and famine that would likely occur if he decided to peace-out of said gig.

One of the most important parts of that gig is keeping the realm stable, and that entails securing the succession which means a male heir in the world where these characters exist. (Obviously, changing that is what gives us the story of instability and chaos anyway…)

Aemma was a willing participant. By the time she was full term in this pregnancy, she’d had enough and told Viserys her participation in that endeavor was at an end.

Unfortunately, she exists in the fictional world of Westeros with the equivalent medical science of 15th century England.

Aemma has reached the point in her obstructed labor where she cannot survive. Viserys is given the information that she will die. That part is non-negotiable.

The choices are: 

  • Be honest: Tell her she’s going to die, hope she’s rational at the point in the female delivery stage where she’s exponentially hopped up on very specific hormones and adrenaline so instinct and the drive to survive childbirth at all costs takes over your mind and body preventing you from going insane and forces you to assist passing a life form the size of an adult cat out of your genitalia if things go smoothly as designed. She accepts the news of her impending death calmly, as fact, and volunteers to have a quick death to attempt to save the child.
  • Be honest, but… it causes her unimaginable stress and panic because of course it does because there’s no rationalizing your unavoidable death because your mind won’t allow that because your mind can’t biologically allow it during childbirth. She doesn’t have Bene Gesserit skills.
  • Say nothing: Let them both die while trying to comfort her and communicate how much he loves her which she’ll likely be oblivious to due to the pain and violence of the ongoing labor which her body will continue until she’s dead. If her heart doesn’t fail from exhaustion, it will likely take a day or two depending mostly on how quickly sepsis sets in from the decaying corpse of the breech which will likely die from trauma and asphyxiation long before the mother. So she has lots of unimaginable pain ahead unless she’s given gallons of milk of the poppy.
  • Be honest, but withhold telling her she’s terminal, giving no details and hope to give her a shorter time of panic and pain since that’s going to happen no matter what. Basically exactly what Viserys does in the show.

I’m curious, what exactly would you have preferred Viserys do or say to Aemma at that moment? This is a “Yes, and…” exercise, like improv. You must choose one of the choices above. No cheating by wishing there was a time machine to go back and prevent any more pregnancies.

I don't know in what way I can tell you this without sounding obtuse, but a juxtaposition is a juxtaposition. 

The story's framing puts childbirth in a very specific paradigm, and as the quote goes "childbirth is our battlefield". Willing or not the first episode highlights Viserys pursuit of a son not as a task bestowed upon him, but as a personal mission caused by dreams and prophesies. 

We are made to feel bad for Rhaenyra who is by consequence of this desire ignored, and made to seem like an unequal offspring to the male counterpart who is as of yet not even born. Regardless of her willingness to deny her husband, Aemma had a clear sense of the dangers involved and it was Viserys own obsessions that brought her to this point. 

Yes the Maester assures him the choice is a simple one, but it's not. Because the story is imbued with thematic resonance, and in this case it is the resonance that Aemma is suffering for Viserys' desire to have a son. She is literally cut open just so he can secure a male heir, and as the writers want us to think there is an implied misogyny behind ignoring the female claimant as if she were not worthy of power and these are the consequences.  

He (Viserys) feels not just grief, but blame. He feels regardless of any scientific justification to blame. He had Aemma all but tortured forcing her to but opened with a knife. This is the same thing Rogar went through with Alyssa, and he was given the same ultimatum: the mother will die but we can save the child. 

And just like Rogar he cowered and said yes, not wanting to face his own decision. And just like what Rhaena told Rogar, he should have fought for his wife, not watch as his desire for a son led to her death. It's about the emotional intent of the characters and who or what they prioritize. And just like Rogar, Viserys lost his unborn child as well despite it all. The narrative didn't reward him for making a hard choice, it punished him for wanting a son above all else and ignoring the interests of his eldest child and his wife.  

The difference with Daemon as established in Pentos is that unlike Viserys he is not driven by dreams or destiny. He does not want to usurp power or grow his own foothold in the Stepstones, or Driftmark, or anywhere else. He shows in the face of Laena's own insistence a domestic pleasure. He does not think to enter the game of thrones so that his children might benefit, but has children for sake of having a family. 

And when the dilemma is brought to him, he does not put the desire for a child over his wife, because he is fundamentally different from his brother. And the show knows its own lineage, having another childbirth go wrong where the husband is made to choose is not a coincidence of the show's part, but part of a wider theme the showrunners are trying to tell.

 

Edited by butterweedstrover
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On 11/2/2022 at 10:55 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

Now that I think about it, maybe they should have given Tyland some of Mushroom’s wit and bawdiness.

Ryan Condal said that there will be more humor in season 2, and I don't really know how to feel about that. I think the most fitting season for humor is the first one, given that it's a time of peace and prosperity.

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Viserys should have told Aemma what was happening. She deserved that, as both his wife and as a human being. And if she knew that she was going to die either way, and that this was the last chance to secure an heir to the throne, she would have agreed to go through with it. 

The writers admitted that Laena killed herself because death by childbirth wasn’t “badass” enough. But even still, Laena wasn’t a queen who was trying to birth the next king of Westeros, and Aemma didn’t have a dragon anyway (not to mention the logistics of a woman in labor somehow stumbling out to the yard without anyone being able to stop her). If she knew what was happening, she wouldn’t have died feeling as betrayed and terrified as she did.

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10 hours ago, ShadowKitteh said:

The choices are

The only choice there is to tell the pregnant queen what is going on and what her options are. She is not unconscious or otherwise unable to make a choice. Whether she wants to put her life and the life of the unborn child into the hands of the gods or the life of the unborn child into the hands of the maesters is her choice, and her choice alone.

Viserys could certainly also have some input on the matter, but the fact that the men in the room hand that choice to him, that he, in turn, doesn't ask his wife what she wants to do, and that he finally doesn't tell her what's going to happen to her all rank among the most monstrous things that happen in this show.

This is even symbolized by the acts when Aemma is no longer a human being but a piece of meat completely in the hands of and at the mercy of the people who handle and eventually cut open her body against her will.

This just gets worse by the fact that Viserys actually loved that woman. He loved her, but he was a coward who couldn't stand by her, be honest, when it mattered the most. And he suffers from guilt over this monstrous act for the remainder of his life. I think the writers really missed another great opportunity for dialogue there by never having Viserys talk about that the gods may have given him this monstrous sickness to punish him for killing his wife.

It is also quite clear that dynastically the king didn't really need a son. Yes, he just had a daughter, but he still had a brother as his presumptive heir, and if both Daemon and Rhaenyra were to die prematurely and childless, he could turn to Princess Rhaenys and her two children as spares.

The succession was secure enough.

What killed Queen Aemma was only Viserys' obsession with having a son - an obsession that pushed him to force his wife through more pregnancies than she should have reasonably had.

4 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Viserys should have told Aemma what was happening. She deserved that, as both his wife and as a human being. And if she knew that she was going to die either way, and that this was the last chance to secure an heir to the throne, she would have agreed to go through with it. 

It is likely she would have agreed, although the easiness with one says that is also playing into the patriarchal expectation that women put the lives of their (unborn) children first no matter what. In context of this society Aemma most likely would, but this is not necessarily a healthy or positive mindset or the mark of a great society.

4 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

The writers admitted that Laena killed herself because death by childbirth wasn’t “badass” enough. But even still, Laena wasn’t a queen who was trying to birth the next king of Westeros, and Aemma didn’t have a dragon anyway (not to mention the logistics of a woman in labor somehow stumbling out to the yard without anyone being able to stop her). If she knew what was happening, she wouldn’t have died feeling as betrayed and terrified as she did.

I think Laena's death works suprisingly well in the show symbolically ... although the execution is kind of weird. It shows that this woman does not want to put her life and death into the hands of men nor put the life of her unborn child above everything else.

It may have been better, though, I think, to go more with the book version there. Give Laena a stillborn child, possibly the first monstrosity we see in the show, and then having her suffer from childbed fever from which she then rises to fly one last time and have herself incinerated by Vhagar when she realizes she will die in any case.

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On 11/2/2022 at 11:47 AM, Chad Vader said:

I was very happy that Aemond didn't intend to kill his nephew. Keeps his character much more grey even though thats not how it was written. And also if any of the dragons would be hard to reel in it would make sense that Vhagar wouldnt take commands like a house broken dog. 

I was not at all happy about the death of Lucerys and Arrax being an accident and how Aemond was shocked and somewhat unhappy about it.

It could've very well been an accident but Aemond should've been pleasantly surprised or amused by it. Too much of what is going on is either an accident or a misunderstanding. Don't like it. Some things need to be completely intentional.

However, I did like their decision to show that dragons are semi-sentient beings that can and do defy their riders to act on their own accord. It is something that is not only present but critical to the plot in the books (especially in A Dance with Dragons). The showrunners of GoT effed it up but it's always been there.

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4 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

I was not at all happy about the death of Lucerys and Arrax being an accident and how Aemond was shocked and somewhat unhappy about it.

It could've very well been an accident but Aemond should've been pleasantly surprised or amused by it. Too much of what is going on is either an accident or a misunderstanding. Don't like it. Some things need to be completely intentional.

I'm sure some will.

But I must say that I like it pretty much that they go away from the 'these people hated each other from the start' take on the Dance, and make them more a (somewhat) dysfunctional family clan and less the mess that's the Lannister-Stark-Baratheon relationship in the main series (and even there are crucial misunderstandings between Jaime and Ned, say, which helped to poison the relationship). It is tempting to use that as the template for this era ... but I'm glad the show didn't do it.

The Greens want the throne, but not all of them are keen to murder Rhaenyra and her family for it. And it actually makes a lot of sense that Aemond - who grew up in a period of peace and prosperity - wouldn't be prepared for nor keen to plunge the Realm into a devastating civil war.

Because that's what he does when he kills Luke. And I'm sure that's what gives him pause there. He isn't so much concerned for his nephew Luke when he realizes Vhagar will kill him and Arrax now, it is more that he now understands what's going to happen next.

In context one also has to note that the setting is such that people didn't kill each other at all cost even after Blood and Cheese, the Cargyll attempt, or the Maelor incident. There was still some restraint there, especially on the Black side. Which is actually pretty hard to swallow if we imagine them totally loathing each other even before the war began.

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2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Viserys should have told Aemma what was happening. She deserved that, as both his wife and as a human being. And if she knew that she was going to die either way, and that this was the last chance to secure an heir to the throne, she would have agreed to go through with it. 

The writers admitted that Laena killed herself because death by childbirth wasn’t “badass” enough. But even still, Laena wasn’t a queen who was trying to birth the next king of Westeros, and Aemma didn’t have a dragon anyway (not to mention the logistics of a woman in labor somehow stumbling out to the yard without anyone being able to stop her). If she knew what was happening, she wouldn’t have died feeling as betrayed and terrified as she did.

For what it’s worth they could have still had the dragon fire death scene come after a failed pregnancy. The creative decision to have Daemon be the one to choose his wife over his unborn child was not a requisite of that. 
 

BTW: to anyone wondering, I think Daemon killing his first wife, saving his second, and choking his third were all in character, as in his characterization has been consistent throughout.

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4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It is likely she would have agreed, although the easiness with one says that is also playing into the patriarchal expectation that women put the lives of their (unborn) children first no matter what. In context of this society Aemma most likely would, but this is not necessarily a healthy or positive mindset or the mark of a great society.

I think Laena's death works suprisingly well in the show symbolically ... although the execution is kind of weird. It shows that this woman does not want to put her life and death into the hands of men nor put the life of her unborn child above everything else.

It may have been better, though, I think, to go more with the book version there. Give Laena a stillborn child, possibly the first monstrosity we see in the show, and then having her suffer from childbed fever from which she then rises to fly one last time and have herself incinerated by Vhagar when she realizes she will die in any case.

A mark of a great society, no. But a kindness that she should have received from a supposedly loving husband, even in a patriarchal monarchy.

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5 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I said this before the season premiered and I’ll say it again: this show needs some redheads. It’s not Westeros without them. It’s going to be so sad when we see Winterfell and everyone is a brunette.

Are there many redheads in ASOIAF, though? Aside from the Tullys' and Ygritte.

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3 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Are there many redheads in ASOIAF, though? Aside from the Tullys' and Ygritte.

In the books, all the Stark kids are redheads except for Jon and Arya. So that’s three POV characters right there. There’s also JonCon, Tormund, Melisandre, Rohanne Webber, etc. And on the show there was Ros too.

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11 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Are there many redheads in ASOIAF, though? Aside from the Tullys' and Ygritte.

Off the top of my head: Beric Dondarrion, the Redwynes, Meryn Trant, Red Ronnet Connington, Addam Marbrand, Mycah the butcher's boy, the mother of Berra (Robert's last bastard child), Lord Merryweather, Fireball, Glendon Flowers, Rohanne.. And more, certainly, but yeah, there's a number of them. I don't know if it's disproportionate to the other hair colors, though. Probably not.

Edited by Ran
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