House of the Dragon Gets 8 Episodes for Season 2, Season 3 (Almost) Greenlit

[Annara Snow]

45 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

@Lord Varys

Re Maelor: You answered your own question. Aegon II was married to Helaena to emphasize their Targaryeness. We've seen a few times that while the eldest son is married to a sister or something approaching that the same isn't always necessarily the case with a younger son. (Consider Maegor I (married to a Hightower for political purposes), Daemon (married to a Royce for presumably political purposes), Aemond (betrothed to a Baratheon to seal an alliance), and Aemon (joins the Kingsguard).)

Indeed, the only incest matches I can think of involving younger sons are Baelon (Aemon was already married to their half-aunt), Baelor (which has more to do with Daeron I's bizarre marital status than anything else), and Aerys I (which may not count considering Aelinor is a cousin of some sort and possibly Jena/Alys/Dyanna as well).

How was @Ran mistaken? He literally posted that at one point early on in the Targaryen family tree Alysanne was Maegor's daughter.

Just because she's not around in 209 AC doesn't mean she has to have died in childbirth. She could pass in her sleep, fall off a horse, succumb to an illness, drown in a shipwreck, choke on something, or been poisoned just off the top of my head. Childbirth wasn't the only killer of women in the Middle Ages.

A chapter focusing on J & A's grandchildren would have been better than what we got, which was nothing.

As I wrote in one of my replies, I used "femme fatale" for lack of a better word at the time. What I meant to say, as I later made clear, was that I see book!Alicent as being somewhat similar to show!Margaery.

As for her sleeping with Jaehaerys I and Viserys I, some would have considered it slutty (particularly if they were more traditional/conservative/pious) but others would have considered it business as usual (kings slept around, had mistresses and bastards, sometimes even married said mistresses, etc.).

And yeah, that's my main beef with show!Alicent. She just doesn't seem to have the same inner fire as her book counterpart but that may change in future seasons.

Show Margaery is Benioff and Weiss' headcanon/fanon of who book Margaery is (very similar to what Cersei imagines her to be, except older), and what you think book! Alicent is, is your interpretation of who she is. Ryan Condal has a different interpretation, which is at the very least not less similar to book Alicent than yours is. There is no such thing as book Alicent, she's a sketch for readers to project interpretations and tropes into. 

I, for instance, don't know when F&B Alicent showed "fire" on page; I think Alicent an ambitious teenage seductress of adult men is a very unlikely interpretation (if she did "sleep" with them, especially if she had to be sexually involved with an old man at 15, would make her a victim*), and I'd say that a woman whose fondest memories at the end of life are only her chilften and a dying old man who mistook her for her daughter when she was 15 and made her happy by telling her she had a nice voice, is unlikely to have been a femme fatale seductress at any point.

 

* but people love the trope of a teen seductress - so much that "Lolita", a character who is, in the novel, a tragic 12 year old who was molested by her pedophile stepfather and died in childbirth aged 15 , somehow became a synonym for a sexy teenage vixen (maybe because of Kubrick's movie and her casting and portrayal in that).

Edited April 21 by Annara Snow

[Khloey]

1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

Show Margaery is Benioff and Weiss' headcanon/fanon of who book Margaery is (very similar to what Cersei imagines her to be, except older), and what you think book! Alicent is, is your interpretation of who she is. Ryan Condal has a different interpretation, which is at the very least not less similar to book Alicent than yours is. There is no such thing as book Alicent, she's a sketch for readers to project interpretations and tropes into. 

I, for instance, don't know when F&B Alicent showed "fire" on page; I think Alicent an ambitious teenage seductress of adult men is a very unlikely interpretation (if she did "sleep" with them, especially if she had to be sexually involved with an old man at 15, would make her a victim*), and I'd say that a woman whose fondest memories at the end of life are only her chilften and a dying old man who mistook her for her daughter when she was 15 and made her happy by telling her she had a nice voice, is unlikely to have been a femme fatale seductress at any point.

 

* but people love the trope of a teen seductress - so much that "Lolita", a character who is, in the novel, a tragic 12 year old who was molested by her pedophile stepfather and died in childbirth aged 15 , somehow became a synonym for a sexy teenage vixen (maybe because of Kubrick's movie and her casting and portrayal in that).

I agree completely.

That people might think Alicent had sex with old and sick Jaeherys who confused her with his daughter is laughable.

Regarding the female reaction to one of their child's death, I find odd that GRRM spends so much time on the mothers' reaction and not so much on the father's.. It's something recurrent in his books, how even dark characters like Cersei still finds redemptive qualities through motherhood.

Though he's not the only author doing that, lots of them are doing it. Mrs Coulter is another example. Must be another trope ^^

Edited April 21 by Khloey

[Lord Varys]

Whether Alicent might be a slut or not isn't really important to her character.

She is still an evil stepmother cliché in the book - and just an asshole - as her picking on young Rhaenyra shows. That starts immediately after she has produced Aegon, indicating it was only about putting her children before Rhaenyra. It had nothing to do with Rhaenyra's behavior towards Alicent or her general conduct (the latter of which wasn't Alicent's business, anyway, since Rhaenyra wasn't her daughter).

I mean, you guys have to process that Alicent is ten years older than Rhaenyra in the book and an adult when she marries Viserys I in 106 AC. The picking thing starts at around 108-109 AC, when Rhaenyra is barely a teenager. Even if Rhaenyra had been rebellious child - say, somewhat like Arya or Aerea (which she wasn't) - then the older woman there should have had the largesse and strength of character to get over such things, to keep her cool, to wait until she could establish a good or at least neutral relationship with her stepdaughter once she was through puberty.

But, no. Alicent constantly picks on Rhaenyra - and she does that long before her marriage to Laenor and the 'common' looks of her children.

On Rhaenyra's side we never anything about what she said or did to her stepmother which might have provoked Alicent.

In that sense the best assessment of Alicent's character as presented in the book is that she is an asshole who effectively ruined the friendly relationship she originally had with her stepdaughter out of jealousy, spite, and ambition.

The show made Alicent much more sympathetic by omitting this abusive behavior. An accurate depiction of Alicent would have been a woman in her twenties picking on a young teenager because she felt her baby boy should be the king's favorite, not Rhaenyra.

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

@Lord Varys

Re Maelor: Aemond and Daeron not being betrothed is the more glaring issue I agree so I think we see eye-to-eye here.

Re Alysanne: Could you please provide proof that @Ran was mistaken about Alysanne at one point being Maegor's daughter? Because I have here a post saying otherwise:

Re Myriah: I pray you're wrong.

Re Alicent: I agree with you completely about giving her more ambition and agency.

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

@Lord Varys

Nvm re Alysanne and Maegor. Found the video.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I wonder what the budget per episode is now? It was already higher than at any point during GOT.

[BlackLightning]

8 episodes? Can they pull it off in 8 episodes?

They had 10 episodes last season and they barely managed to make almost 30 years of story fit within those 10 episodes in a coherent.

And there was no clear indication of character arcs for most of the main cast. The only people who actually got an arc were Alicent, Viserys, Rhaenys, Daemon and ironically Mysaria

[Annara Snow]

12 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

8 episodes? Can they pull it off in 8 episodes?

They had 10 episodes last season and they barely managed to make almost 30 years of story fit within those 10 episodes in a coherent.

And there was no clear indication of character arcs for most of the main cast. The only people who actually got an arc were Alicent, Viserys, Rhaenys, Daemon and ironically Mysaria

You just said it yourself. They had 30 years to cover and a big bunch of characters from 3 generations to introduce.

And do you mean Rhaenyra, not Rhaenys? Rhaenys barely had any arc (unless you count starring to support Rhaenyra) and is one of the most messily written characters . Criston, Aemond and Aegon have arcs (Aegon's is only beginning, but the change in his demeanor when he was crowned and heard the crowd cheering was obvious), Laenor was quite fleshed out and even Helaena is with 8 minutes of screentime. Heck, even Vhagar has a strong characterization. Corlys and Otto have no arcs, but that's because they are not supposed to at this point- they're just being themselves (though Corlys had a brief "let's leave ambition now" moment in the finale).

,