As much as people like to give everything an outer Maester propaganda angle, not everything in the book is maester propaganda. In fact, there is a clear Daemon bias in fire & blood. Like or not, Rhaenyra is unfortunately very incompetent and that writing is on GRRM. Her writing leaves much to be desired as a protagonist. To some extent, I understand Ryan and Sara trying to give her more active badass moments in war that she never had from GRRM. But R&S ended up botching it. Not just Rhaenyra but almost every other character in the show is a caricature. However book rhaenyra had realistic faults and written to be not very heroic. She was no Visenya or Daenerys and I think that is where show writers had to make a compromise. Book rhaenyra if adapted word for word would not have inspired fans because she is a flawed character. Therefore to make her more palatable to the general audience she was lent better qualities from other Targ women to make her more herolike than GRRM ever made her to be.
Define "hero". Morally good (Christian-developed), or impressive (Greek and Roman tragedy)?
GRRM'S WRITING//Rhaenyra's Character//WOMEN AT LARGE
Yeah, GRRM left much of the strategizing to the men around her and left her to her grief for the most part. Yeah, when she got herself into a more responsive state she didn't bust out chess moves or to rival Robb Starks or something out of both grief from her kids being monstrously killed. Yes, like other rulers her classism and likely racism got her to make one of the worst choices concerning the Seeds. Could she have done what Jaehaerys I did and tax luxury items against rich and nobles instead of other people--yes. Should she have given the Rosby and Stokeworth girls' inheritances and positions to men, obviously not.
However, Rhaenyra of the bk, IS a more active character than show!Rhaenyra, who gives a lot of looks at the camera but fail to really follow through [REFER TO THIS SUBSTACK ARTICLE, I RE-PUBLISHED IT HERE ON TUMBLR]....or maybe it is that we don't really stay on her as much as we should and the show itself still gravitates towards the surrounding men. I think it's both (look below at the quote).
Anyway, GRRM does write a suggestively active woman despite those flaws. Rhaenyra does get up within her emotional means, does retake KL, does rule, does endeavour to go back and retake the throne, does consult with her councilors, does seek revenge and try to create order. She also happened to be stuck on Dragonstone by Visery's order, leaving Alicent the opporuntity to take the throne as quickly as she did. Like that Substack writer reminds me, Rhaenyra knew much and prepared herself for death...so why did Condal not include that she was told by her king to stay far (enough) away from court when it wasn't a good time for her to stay away?
A central point of the original story was to show the degradation of certain individuals of such a system and how it comes for who gets to wield power, no matter how competent they are they always somehow lose something essential. (Yes, even Jaehaerys who loses the love Alysanne had at the beginning and most of his children to die relatively alone except for a daughter of a power-hungry man with mixed-intent). And Rhaenyra's degradation, like other women and even some men in the original stories, is through their kids (again, Jaehaerys I but also Tywin and Randall Tarly) and the love or lack of such they have for them.
It's not just Targs eating each other, it's this patriarchy creating competition between relatives in general and punishing its actors (like Tyrion) for choosing or reflexively pushing back. A prevalent theme in this entire series. (Which goes to show that GRRM was right in wanting to start the series not with Viserys being chosen as heir, but with Baelon and Aemon. If we're just going by this post, we would have needed the context. A show fault.)
AND None of GRRM's 80s/90s-early 2000s sexist flaws, I think, should then turn into writing a 2025 version of misogynistic writing where the female protagonist becomes a morally model woman trying to lead seemingly-naturally violent men and dull her rage (the main criticism lobbied against Condal in how he chose to rewrite Rhaenyra, which ultimately confused even him. F for effort). His writing, whatever it may be, does not make Condal's better nor acceptable. It actually highlights the sexism we're given in the show and were told is "better" bc Rhaenyra appears to be a human woman just bc she is more "palatable". Condal had the option of assigning more to Rhaenyra in S1; why did he choose to make her indecisive, wavering, as cself-serving as she was while still showing her grit? Why is a "palatable" woman one who isn't rageful about being jilted of her power?
Why does a HUMAN need to be palatable when the story is about HUMANS?!
This story was about a human woman with many flaws who didn't lose just bc she couldn't "man up" or bc she was written to lay in her grief more. Especially when we know that she was ruling Dragonstone fairly okay or well and there have never been any concerns or reports of Daemon trying to overpower her authority there. So we should know she isn't completely incompetent, as many try to suggest or outright say.
It appears to me that by your argument, we shouldn't see adapted into TV anything about Rhaena the BB, who a lot of readers unfairly and wrongly hated upon reading in the first couple times they read about her. This woman who didn't really strategize or fight in much battle and also drove her own daughter away with her own traumas? Who couldn't completely rescue her daughters from her uncle Maegor and was forced to marry him? Who was ignored by her entire family when she gave warning about certain people? But a few readers say that she had amazing qualities, and it was just that she was basically trapped...wasn't Rhaenyra, in her own way? Maybe GRRM is trying to write about another Targ woman trapped but in a different way? By the time Rhaena was considered to become queen in councils of lords, she herself said that she couldn't go through it and just wanted to isolate herself from everyone else. Rhaena is different from Rhaenyra--she chose to try to leave it behind and Rhaenyra tried to fight, and BOTH end up devastated by a system anyway. I'd say
Yeah, these women are different people (part fo the point), but both of what one could qualify as "heroism" escapes a lot of people. What is "heroic" in question here, I have to ask, again. I think we really need to challenge what makes for a "worthy" protagonist to root for; do they ALWAYS HAVE TO BE OBVIOUSLY "COOL" or SMART AND CLEVER--perhaps we're meant to accept that victims don't need to be perfect and question how/why it's not just their actions that lead to disaster? Maybe we are supposed to sit with lead in our chest as we watch who was meant to rise as a kind of hero become abject under circumstances that weren't whoolly of her own doing?
Is it possible that much of the problems with Rhaenyra's story is the seeming lack of clarity of fault, when it's both a conspiracy happening (below) AND some actions responding to that concerted effort to stop her rise? Where does the one begin, the other end and where do they take turns? Or is the overlap the point?
AND none of this, I think, should ever be re-written to inspire watchers with mishandled re-characterizations that only end with misunderstanding of what the Dance teaches big-picture wise (referring to what I wrote below concerning the maesters' relationship with the Targs) and reading cross-textually. Women come in different forms and shapes, why? Because they are human.
LATER BOOKS (Canon-time-wise) AND CROSS READING
To comment further on your comment about the Maester propaganda theory: if I am remembering correctly, said theory originated from people remembering -- Marwyn saying that the maesters are totally against magic and anything that would possibly diminish their authority through the Faith--remembering Archmaester Aemon saying that it has to be a maester who goes to Dany to advise her, someone who is trustworthy -- and RE-examining what happened at the Storming and looking back from there to the dragons that existed before the Dance + the unfortunate reproductive struggles Targ women had since -- specifically how strange Syrax acted after Joffrey tried to ride her (dragons don't go ballistic for long periods of time just bc someone other than their bonded rider tried to ride them).
....then the idea that the maesters poisoned the dragons along with sending that mysterious Shepherd (remember the text itself states and makes as if he ight have come from the Citadel or just that his presence was strange and almost too good to be coincidental, what with his eloquent fervor)...If we are to understand through Archmaester Marwyn (A Feast for Crows, final chapter) that the Citadel purposely poisoned or harmed or did something to the dragons some time ago...what is the likeliest point of history that we can see the dragons acted weird? The Dance, the Storming.
And that theory comes from/developed into the theory that the Targs "forgot" that healthy human women = strong dragon numbers but they put that aside to assimilate into Andal-FM aristocratic patriarchy.
So it seems to me that "not everything in the book is maester propaganda" is both correct (like how Aegon III's siege was told isn't "propaganda" at all) but when it comes to Rhaenyra and how the dragons were killed...it's really not as simple was "propaganda". I truly believe that there has been a strong conspiracy, something much more than propaganda, made against the Targs. Even when Aegon II brutally and publicly killed multiple people during his short reign, the writer of the text describes his posioning as if were a melancholic tragedy while Rhaenyra's murder is more...incidental and consequential chaotic event.
The kinda-likely conspiracy reveals itself through a bias baked into this text, of which the show mirrors instead of reveal. A good mutual (mononijikayu) I have said this [or use this LINK]:
Whatâs most disheartening is that House of the Dragon had, at its foundation, the raw material for a genuinely feminist tragedy. Not one defined by hollow girlboss aesthetics or sanitized empowerment arcs, but a brutal, emotionally rich story about a woman born into a system designed to destroy her.Â
Rhaenyraâs arc in Fire & Blood is not about being flawless, nor is it about easy victories. It is about endurance. About the slow, devastating erosion of a womanâs power, not because she was weak, but because the world would not allow her to be strong on her own terms. Her tragedy is not that she failed, but that she was never allowed to be fully human: ambitious, flawed, grieving, angry and still worthy of the crown.
The story of Rhaenyra is one of resistance: a woman hemmed in by expectations, reduced by rumors, slandered for her sexuality, scrutinized for her body, and eventually broken by a society that demanded either perfection or silence from its women.Â
Her power was conditional. Her motherhood weaponized her. Her grief, politicized. She is not a tragic heroine because of her own moral collapse, but because no matter how hard she fought, no matter how much legitimacy she held, the weight of patriarchal tradition was always heavier.
And yet, the show resists this reading. Rather than lean into the complexity of female rage, such as Rhaenyraâs seething anger at her usurpation, the fury of a mother who has lost child after child, the righteous violence of a woman tired of appeasing a world that will not bend. The series sands down those edges.Â
It reduces her to silence, softness, and strategic restraint. Her pain is aestheticized, her decisions dulled. She becomes not a fire, she is not the dragon, but a symbol of how patriarchy views a woman, how they want a woman to be.Â
To define the âmale gazeâ is to understand it not merely as the act of looking, but as a system of storytelling that positions women as objects rather than agents. As characters whose primary function is to reflect or provoke male emotion, desire, or violence.Â
The male gaze dictates not just what is shown on screen, but how it is shown: who gets interiority, who is allowed complexity, and whose suffering matters [note how the original book does the same?! Why didn't the show take it somewhere else?]. In the case of House of the Dragon, the male gaze insidiously shapes the portrayal of Rhaenyra Targaryen, despite the showâs premise being centered on her fight for legitimacy in a deeply misogynistic world.
While House of the Dragon appears on the surface to champion a feminist narrative, which to some degree is true, as the plot points are still hit, it doesnât understand how to tell a story that understands the underlying crux of the story.Â
Rhaenyra is named heir, challenges gender roles, and occupies the symbolic center of the Dance of the Dragons yet this framing is ultimately superficial. Everything is somehow taken away from Rhaenyra.Â
The deeper narrative attention consistently drifts toward the men around her: Daemonâs volatile moods are explored with nuance and sympathy; Viserysâ failures are treated as tragic rather than negligent;Â
[...]
The storytelling undermines her claim not just to the throne, but to emotional authority in her own tale. Her grief over the deaths of her children is given fleeting moments, while Daemonâs brooding, Aegonâs volatility, and Aemondâs trauma receive extended screen time and richer cinematographic treatment. This is not a coincidence, of course. It is a re-centering of the male gaze.
[...]
Alicent Hightower is not merely a mother; she is a power broker who plays the court with ruthless precision, leveraging her femininity, religion, and family status to shape the realm. But in the show, she is rewritten through a softer, more palatable frame.
In the show, she is a woman coerced by her father, motivated by fear, and victimized by circumstance. Her ambition is made sympathetic by aligning it with âmaternal dutyâ rather than self-driven power, once again sanitizing a womanâs desire to rule in a way that appeals to patriarchal comfort.
She is not allowed to be vicious or Machiavellian without apology
[...]
This failure to grant Rhaenyra and Alicent the sharpness, ugliness, and command they wield in Fire & Blood reveals how deeply the male gaze has shaped the adaptation, not just in what is shown, but in whose pain matters, and whose story is truly being told.
Even against this guy who I don't think the maesters "liked" either, but thought he'd be better simply bc he was male and the Targs allowing a female ruler to become a reigning queen over men would go towards disaster. That their order (Faith-based feudal patriarchy)is both in danger from such an upheaval AND must continue to exist.
Later on, during Aegon III's reign not a small amount of time later, we hear Grand Maester Munkun say it is disastrous from one of the advisors concerning Baela's marriage. Who chooses the GM? Not any of the lords nor the king; it's traditional and customary that it's the maesters, specifically those in the highest stations at the Citadel.
There were concerted efforts not just from maesters and lords (men) but a few other women actively or passively working against her using the powers their station gave them. We have two things happening at once here.
Therefore, to me, anon, if there is a years-long conspiracy happening (and the main texts are leading us towards that) AND seeing as Rhaena the BB's dragon Dreamfyre laid Dany's eggs for her to hatch (again, the constant turns of Targ female reproduction and here culminating into Dany's successful and miraculous rebirth of dragons through magic--the thing the maesters canonically both hate and are trying to control and consolidate into their own mainstream)...it appears Rhaenyra's story is not just about a mundane power struggle between nobles amped up a little bit by the presence of war-dragons at the sides' disposal...but part of a larger tale of multidimensional levels of CONTROLLING perspective and perception. Prophecy did matter in F&B/the Dance, just not in the superficial way Condal and co tried through the inheritance of daggers or whatever.
IF such is happening....it cannot be ALL Rhaenyra, which is clear even without such a theory bc the greens have done much to disable her even after they fled ON TOP OF usurping her.
I actually have many posts abt Rhaenyra's reign, one of which I am reminded of her possible parallel to Othello. Yeah, Othello was a general who got a lot of respect...still, he was also a constant pressure to perform well or become utterly abject by the Italians and he was still subtly/unsubtly even before he even enters the stage.
There's probs so much I want to say, but can't think of right now. I've written multiple posts about this already.
