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I'm sorry this interview quote is so funny to me. "Questioning how their relationship can ever recover" girl THAT'S what you're thinking about? THERE IS A WAR ON YOU USELESS LESBIAN

Alicent over her father's literal corpse:

Just look at how traumatized she is! Although there was no need to SA Alicent again, and I'd rather the writers have avoided this scene altogether, it proves beyond doubt that Alicent is an abuse victim and has spent her entire life being violated and directly or indirectly having her body used and abused by others:

(1) Otto first instrumentalized her body, comparing her to her mother and dressing her in her clothes before sending her to (2) Viserys, who did the same when he had her wear Aemma's nightgown, turning her into a replacement for the woman he had lost. (3) She gave her body to the Crown by sleeping with Viserys and bearing Targaryen heirs, all the while suppressing her own wants and anxieties until they (4) manifested as self-harm through her skin-picking. (5) Larys exploited her, coercing her into exchanging access to her body for information. When she finally believes she has found a measure of happiness in a consensual relationship with Criston, (6) Daemon's murder of Jaehaerys becomes her punishment for daring to serve her body, (7) which she then subjects to a painful abortion. Conditioned by years of Larys' abuse to see her body as a political transaction, (8) she later offers part of it again to Aemond, capitalizing on his desire for her. And now, just as she's preparing to flee King's Landing, she is once again reminded that her body is not hers, as (9) Jasper can just as easily march into her chambers and take it away.

Merely numbering the instances when Alicent's body belonged to someone other than herself makes me further realize how traumatizing her life was. No wonder S1 Alicent was so resentful of Rhaenyra's freedom. She watched Rhaenyra exercise a bodily autonomy she herself had never known: Rhaenyra could do as she pleased with her body, sleep with whomever she wanted, and even have illegitimate kids. Alicent never had that freedom because she was always part of an institution built to control her, and one of the most effective ways it controlled her was by denying her ownership of her own body.

My heart breaks for Alicent. Time and again she's forced into situations where she has to reclaim herself after men have taken something from her, and only now, after everything she has endured, does she allow herself to even dream of a measure of freedom. Her broken, disbelieving "what?!" as she realizes what Jasper is about to do will haunt me for a long time, along with the fact that she screams, fights back, struggles to break free, but not even once cries out for help out of fear of humiliation. The silence she tries to maintain, her effort to fight this again alone, reveals just how deeply conditioned Alicent is, how instinctively she internalizes shame, and how familiar violation has become to her. Even when Orwyle enters the room, the overwhelming emotion on her face is relief laced with humiliation, as though she believes she has somehow "allowed" herself to be used again and she should be ashamed for it.

Because of the misogyny of real life that makes it difficult for people to understand or sympathize with victims, the other difference with those scenes is that they’re less recognizable to a broad audience as sexual assault, because it is Alicent’s “duty” to have heirs (fans broadly paint her as manipulative for this, despite being a child at the time), and Larys and Aemond do not go further with her, so one needs to believe Olivia Cooke’s performance and the framing of the scene to recognize that rape has occurred. However, the Jasper scene is VERY recognizable that he intends to take advantage of her precarity and rape her to affirm his own social power advantage as a man. This is a formal narrative choice that emphasizes the importance of Alicent’s subsequent gathering of Heleana and escape attempt, and part of why she is acting “desperately” (as Orwyle points out). This episode had various heavy-handed moments in explaining Alicent and Rhaenyra’s actions, which I think is necessary for an audience who is by default (living under patriarchy) unwilling to grant women characters the various and nuanced motivations that are written into the show.

All of that being said, there are literally other ways that the escalating desperation of Alicent’s situation could have been portrayed. The other thing this scene is doing is moving characters around: Orwyle is disgusted with Jasper and has him imprisoned, which means Orwyle is later willing to sell Jasper out to keep his own head, which means Daemon has a reason to gather the imprisoned nobles and Otto, who then become essential for the major moment of Rhaenyra having to bloodily perform her first act of taking the throne. We are also prepared as an audience for Rickard’s betrayal (since we no longer trust him after telling Jasper about Alicent’s vulnerability), as well as how the internal conflicts within the castle extend far beyond what we have been following so far of Alicent’s change in motivation.