hello

I originally planned to do a quick like, 2 frame gag👇👇 I ended up with this

Listen, I will be the first to acknowledge that Criston gives off massive incel energy, and also has some of the most wack anger issues out of anyone in the show (aside from maybe Daemon, which is basically a given). However, I do think he’s a much more complex character than a lot of viewers seem to realize, and large part of it traces back to sexist double standards.

First, we need to understand the sheer scale of the power difference between him and Rhaenyra, in order to understand how he approached their relationship. I think that because Rhaenyra is pretty, and young, and a woman, and of course a very lovable character, we don’t see her as very threatening. But she is lightyears above Criston in just about every possible way.

Criston Cole is the only PoC main character in the show. Fabien Frankel is of Iraqi descent, and it’s a deliberate casting choice, as Criston is Dornish. Dorne, for those of you who don’t know, was the territory in Westeros that gave Aegon the Conqueror the most trouble and fought the hardest against his rule. As of HotD, it’s the only part of Westeros that remains independent from the Targaryen dynasty, and there is undoubtedly a ton of racist, negative sentiments towards Dornishmen. And, in the main GoT series, we are explicitly made to understand that a lot of racism towards Dornishmen manifests in the form of heavy fetishization and hypersexualization--I'll come back to this later.

Think of all the jokes about Dorne and Dornishmen that have been made on Twitter regarding Vhagar-- they’re objectively hilarious, but are based on canon racism and hostility. He’s also the only lowborn character, which they point out explicitly in the show. And we see characters in the show comment disparagingly on this, both to his face and behind his back (Harwin Strong, as much as I love him, is one of those people). All of the Targaryens that we love dearly have not had to work for their wealth and their power; they were born into it. Criston is quite literally the only person on the show who has had to fight, and bleed, and sweat, and work for every scrap of respect and power that he has. He had to work twice as hard to earn half as much as everyone else.

Rhaenyra, on the other hand, is the heir to the Iron Throne. At the time that she and Criston sleep together, she is as highborn as it gets, and will wield the highest political power in Westeros in a matter of years. She is as wealthy as it gets. She is from the bloodline at the top of the racial hierarchy that has historically subjugated Dornishmen. By every possible marker except gender, she is the privileged, and Criston the underprivileged.

I don’t necessarily see what happened between him and Rhaenyra as rape, but there is absolutely something squidgy there. The combination of the power dynamic and the way she had to convince him into it is a little uncomfortable. We can’t see into his head, and we can’t know what consequences he fears he might face if he refuses her. She could so easily lie that he tried to come on to her, and literally have him killed. That’s the power she holds. You can understand why he might be afraid to upset her.

Imagine if the genders were reversed; if it was a powerful prince and future king pressuring a lowborn, non-white, female guard into a sexual relationship. One consequence of the patriarchy is a dismissal of male victims of sexual assault, and I think this is a big factor into why viewers weren’t largely creeped out by the scene. We are taught to view men as always down for sex, to the point of acting as if it's impossible for them to be coerced or forced into it. And again, the perception of all Dornishmen as these hypersexual beings would only exacerbate this unwillingness to view this scene as coercion.

Essentially, Criston has everything to lose in this encounter. If he says no, she could decide to lie and have him executed, and he would be powerless to stop her. Even if he says yes, she could tell people what happened, and he would also be helpless in the face of his own execution. And he puts his life at risk, to be intimate with her, clearly because he has strong feelings for her, and assumes that she does, too.

But Rhaenyra does not understand the power difference, and she does not understand the significance of Criston sleeping with her. I don’t think she intended to be the Targaryen equivalent of a fuckboy, but it’s undeniable that she uses him, here. She’s bored and upset that Daemon abandoned her, so she goes for the quick stress relief. But it’s because of her privilege and ignorance of the difference between their stations that she doesn’t take even a moment to think of how this impacts him so much more than it impacts her.

So Criston’s reaction on the boat, I think, is a desperate attempt to convince himself that he didn’t jeapordize his entire career and his life for a quick fuck. He’s devastated at the thought that it was virtually meaningless to her, that she does not want the same things he does and never has. It’s incredibly clear in that scene that Criston would NOT have slept with Rhaenyra if he’d known it wasn’t significant to her.

I also think this lends more depth to his (still absolutely batshit) reaction to Joffrey at Rhaenyra and Laenor’s wedding. He clearly has so many feelings towards what happened between him and Rhaenyra: hurt, anger, dread, but overwhelmingly, terror. The threat of Rhaenyra telling everyone about what they did has never once left him; he has lived in the years since with the knowledge that if she ever wanted to have him killed, she would simply have to open her mouth. And here comes this nobleman, a white man born to the kind of power and influence that Criston will never see in his life. And he tells him, as if it’s a joke, that he knows his biggest and most dangerous secret. The one that could have him killed in a heartbeat. I can understand why Criston took that as a threat, even if we as viewers can understand Joffrey meant it more in solidarity.

You know this guy has dreams of pushing Viserys down the stairs

Must have been horrible for you. As a Kingsguard, as a father.