Slytherins, DFTBA!

1. If she stays, they will take Maelor of her hands and kill him. Because Daemon will no allow another threat to throne

2. If she decides to join the war or use Dreamfyre, she will have to kill a lot of people like Rhaenys did and she doesn't want to be a mass murderer.

3. If she escapes with her children without Dreamfyre she will make it and have her chickens. But that will trigger the evernight before time without the prince that was promised (Daeny and Jon) because all of the dance is something is needed to bring Daeny and Jon to live.

when helaena asks rhaenyra “do you think living means just not being dead?” that is her trying to make her sister see sense. she is trying to tell her that rhaenyra, after all these losses, isn’t really living anymore.

the rhaenyra that she was died a little when visenya did, but she still had enough to carry on. and then luke died, and a part of her broke beyond repair.

when jace died, so did she.

and then, the final shot of the season—framed like she’s closing the doors upon her own crypt, because she's dead in all the ways that matter.

rhaenyra targaryen—the mother, the daughter, the wife, the friend, the sister—has perished. each one of them died, suffocated bit by bit under the weight of each successive tragedy. now, only the crown remains.

Portrait of Alicent, Aegon, Helaena, Aemond and fetus Daeron during happier(???) times

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She barely knew Luke, and her most memorable interaction with Jace was him treating her with genuine gentleness and asking her to dance; a stark contrast to the men in her own family. And before anyone brings up Luke taking Aemond’s eye, that was a chaotic brawl between literal children where Luke was defending his cousins. It’s wild how people blame Rhaenyra for not supervising her kids that night, yet completely ignore Alicent letting Aemond sneak off unsupervised to claim Vhagar in the first place.

More importantly, why would Helaena feel any sort of sympathy for Aemond? She knows exactly who he is. Aemond tried to murder Aegon and attempted to drag her directly into a horrific war she wanted no part of. She might not love Aegon romantically, but he is still her brother and the father of her children. Aemond, on the other hand, has brought nothing but destruction to her doorstep.

(btw let's all pretend daeron, gwayne and ormund are here too)

Phia Saban reflects on Queen Helaena's last season story arc and what it means

Bonus (some fun facts/details):

Some points of interest:

Corporate profits are soaring. After taxes, they now take 12.3 percent of national output, far above their postwar average of 7.3 percent.

Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019, Ip noted. Corporate profits over the same period have risen 50 percent.

The Economic Policy Institute calculates that since 1979 the productivity of American workers has grown 90 percent while the pay of the typical worker has grown 33 percent. Had wages tracked output, the average worker would earn $16.40 more an hour today.

The profits are concentrated among the largest corporations. Earnings at the 500 biggest US firms rose 28 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2021, and their profit margins reached 14.8 percent. The seven technology giants known as the “Magnificent 7”—Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla—grew their profits 63 percent.