And while I'm rage-posting about my beloved Heleana, I just want to say something about the insults that so many people threw her way about how she handled the death of her son.
First of all, the fact that she didn't fight it or offer to be killed instead, but takes her surviving child and flees. I think this is all because of the work of Phia, because it's very obvious that once it starts to happen that Heleana realized what her visions had meant and that her son is going to be killed and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it. She doesn't fight because she knows it won't do any good and that she's known all along this would happen on some level and has just now realized it.
The morning afterwards, she is seen silently crying, clutching the shroud she had been unwittingly making for days, shoving it at Alicent and telling her that it's for her boy. It's the last thing she can give him. She didn't realize it until it was done. She never knew what any of this meant but she didn't want it to happen this way.
She bawls throughout the entire funeral procession.
Several episodes later, she tells Alice that she feels sad about what happened to Jaehaerys but she feels that she shouldn't because so many commonborn people have shared her pain. This sounds like a reasonable realization for someone who knows that a civil war is being fought amongst her family members and that she knows is causing lots of death, misery, and poverty for the subjects they are supposed to be protecting. Heleana won't participate and later tells Aemond she is not going to directly cause anyone's death. Yes, it sounds callous. But it does not mean she doesn't care about her son.
Contrast this to Aegon, whose grief is much more dramatic. He reacts in rage when he learns of the murder and is seen collapsing into sobs. He kills the ratcatchers and devotes himself to the war effort.
However, even before that exchange where Heleana says she shouldn't focus on her grief, Aegon is seen drinking and carousing with his buddies and antagonizing Aemond at the brothel (which is the last straw for Aemond, who tries to kill him soon afterwards). Team Green fans tend to sympathize with Aegon and don't care for anyone else but as much as they rage at Heleana for not wanting to succumb to grief, they have very little to say about Aegon returning to his old ways soon after the little boy's murder.
I don't think Aegon has said anything much about Jaehaerys after he was injured. The only callback we get to how badly he grieved him is when he witnesses a little boy amongst the rubble in season 3 and is taken back, mistaking him for his son. Jaehaerys is not even mentioned during his comeback speech.
Heleana is seen mournfully playing with Jaehaerys's old toys in season 3 and bitterly reminds Alicent that the tunnels Alicent wants them to escape in were the same ones her son's murderers traveled in to kill her boy. She won't abandon Jaehaera or terminate her pregnancy: she clings tightly to protecting the kids she still has until she begins to lose all hope.
She very much still mourned him. And if she didn't grieve "properly", neither did Aegon. Rhaenyra has lost three children in quick succession and pretty much just goes on soon afterwards as if it hadn't happened. I don't think she's forgotten, either.
Anyway, justice for my beleaguered queen. May she rest in the peace she did not get enough in during her short life.
