A post in tumblr was eye-opening: the hatred that Rhaegar gets is because he's connected to Dany and we know that Dany is hated because of her gender, because she challenges the status quo and doesn't become some dead sister, mother, daughter. She becomes queen of her own right, she wakes up the dragons, she's the Chosen One. She's the author's favorite and daughter.
Had she been a Daeron or Viserys, Rhaegar wouldn't get so much hate..
Yes, absolutely. I think this is a huge factor. A large portion of this fandom is surprisingly dismissive of Dany's storyline (hence the lack of understanding surrounding Rhaegar's character, and the refusal to actually critically engage with his character as he is written in the books), which is so weird, considering that her and Jon are literally the face of ASOIAF.
As you said, this is because she challenges the status quo. Weirdly enough, they hate her because she is a strong female character, but they articulate this hate in a way that seems 'feminist'. (I mean, the minute you look into their reasoning, you see their thinly veiled misogyny, but they themselves don't see it, and they turn around and call you misogynistic/racist for pointing it out). We see this in the Sansa vs Arya discourse as well, where we've got people dismissing Arya in favour of Sansa, because feminine characters can be strong too! You're just misogynistic. This exact phenomenon happens in the Elia vs Lyanna debate as well. But by doing this, they completely bulldoze over the fact that strong female characters like Dany, Arya, and Lyanna are incredibly feminine too. Dany and Lyanna more than Arya, but then Arya is also 10 years old.
Like, Lyanna in the Rebellion literally fulfills the most stereotypical damsel-in-distress/maiden-in-love trope (depending on which character you hear it from). Dany is literally the MOTHER of dragons. These are characters who are feminine at their very core. It's just that there's is more to them than their gender. They refuse to remain within the confines of their gender, because they are well-written female characters, because, in the case of Dany, she's literally the main fucking character, and even in the case of Lyanna, she is central to the storylines of Jon, Arya, and Dany (all main characters). Sansa and Elia as characters do remain within the confines of their gender, because they are not very developed. They are minor characters compared to the others.
Also, I think that the way this fandom interacts with Rebellion-era characters is very similar to the way that the Marauders fandom interacts with their characters. It might have started off as them finding these them incredibly compelling (which they are, in part because of how little we know about them AND how central they actually are to the narrative in the sense that they're foundational to the state of the world and characters that we, the readers, start the story with), but it's now evolved into people just projecting their ocs onto these characters. Except, they refuse to admit that this is what they're doing, so when you object and cite the actual text, they get offended and act like you're the one who doesn't know what they're talking about.
I see this especially with the way people talk about Elia Martell. They call Rhaegar racist for running off with Lyanna (ignoring that race doesn't work like that in ASOIAF, and the 'racism' against the Dornish that we see in-universe is actually xenophobia, not systemic racism). They call you racist for shipping Rhaegar/Lyanna (despite the fact that the narrative obviously paints them as a romance, and Elia and the Dornish, were not very developed at all until later in the series, so the white woman vs WOC thing was something that unfortunately emerged, and is continuously stoked by the fandom itself, and is not baked into the story at all). GRRM is an old, white man. As is obvious from the way he writes Essos, the man doesn't really write matters of race very well. Because of this, race isn't something that factors in at all in the Elia/Rhaegar/Lyanna dynamic. You can argue that it should, but you would have to completely rewrite Dorne (which people do, but refuse to acknowledge that it's not actually canon). Race isn't even an implicit reason for why Rhaegar ran off with Elia, because GRRM, as a white man, doesn't think about race all that much. It is problematic, but unfortunately, it is a truth of reading ASOIAF. But when you point this out to them, they double down and start moralising.
Also, the Rhaegar hate is literally because these bitches love a good catfight lol. They talk about how you're a monster for not hating Rhaegar, but then they go and place the blame for Elia and the children solely at his feet, which inadvertently absolves Tywin, Gregor, and Amory Lorch for their inhumane acts. It just shows a complete lack of critical thinking, which shows in the way that all their thoughts on the subject are completely reactionary.
gamechangershow
izzy806
dailybridgerton
