half mad half worse

related to the excerpt i posted yesterday about how enslaved children in antiquity had no experience of sexuality that was not immediately suborned to adult use, this is my problem with "grooming" to describe what happens to rhaenyra and alicent. being from a family where incestuous marriage is institutionalized means there is no "non-sexual" relationship with family members truly possible for rhaenyra. "grooming" fails to get at her actual life - and what matters to me more, this suggests a failure to comprehend lives in the present where ritualized intergenerational incestuous abuse exists and similarly requires a radically different framework to conceptualize violence, one that doesn't rely on "violated innocence." similarly in a society where, from earliest consciousness, you know your sexuality is not your own because you are simply not to have one until your parents arrange your marriage to a (probably much older adult) man, that you will never have sexual agency in the way we think of it, how do we talk about alicent's experience with viserys, when she realizes the fate she was always destined for is at last happening and is still wrecked by it? it's just different. and neither are equivalent to the sexual violence facing enslaved children in the ancient world, but it's a helpful framework.

i just apolitically killed the king like i have no agenda or whatever im just the jester here but i stabbed him anyway LOL all the courtiers and advisors are trying really hard to figure out who did it LOL all of them wanted him dead but they dont know whose scheme it was so nobody can promulgate a coherent political maneuver based on the circumstances LOL just playing my lute #MyLute

the whole point of the Kingsguard is that they’re unbelievably fucking washed like zero heroic deeds on the board just morning noon night overtime fraud aura farming. Complicit in every act of patriarchal violence of the monarchy. Not even that good at fighting. Hypothetical victories only. Like “noooo Arthur Dayne would’ve—” except Arthur Dayne lay down his life to stop a pregnant 15 year-old dying in childbirth from seeing her big brother on her deathbed and then got fucking hosed by teenage Ned Stark and his gay best friend who does not hit 5 foot two. “Ohhhhhh aemon the dragonknight” kept his sister in that damn cage for decades and then died in the service of his brother which is dickrider behavior. Bystanderan Selmy? Washed.

Wait he stopped doing what