the thing about first half of S1 rhaenyra is that she witnesses a divine omen from the gods that ought to validate her claim to the throne without question and instead of bringing it back to camp to prove her worth to her father and the rest of his court she lets the white hart go. she drags the boar carcass back with her, the one she kills in a moment of fury at the misogynistic presumptions of her father's court, that surely he would name aegon his heir now. she knows herself to be deserving of the future she's been offered and she's willing to wield violence to preserve it, but 1.10 & S2-3 have been a betrayal of this foundational premise of her character. they won't let her go to war or answer public dissent to her rule with violence no matter what and now she's madly clinging to her dead father's approval which like where is this even coming from! daemon tells her in 2.02 that your father was weak and i see you'll go the same way because you refuse to shed blood and she answers this accusation with the red sowing in which she does willingly shed blood in her pursuit for power, i thought the intent was to establish her as someone who's finding a middle ground between viserys and daemon's contradictory approaches to ruling instead we've just gone back to endless scenes of what would viserys do and how he would be repulsed by her now - makes sense for helaena to think this, but despite what rhaenyra had to say about him in the previous episode (his whole life was a dream) it genuinely feels like the narrative's actual stance which is absurd are we forgetting the inciting incident of the dance is viserys's violently misogynistic murder of aemma.
i think the obvious route to go here was to have her unpleasantly mirror viserys in her relationships with alicent and daemon and have this be part of the reason for her downfall, she finally has the kingly authority viserys possessed over the two of them and she should've exploited it in similar ways. they did away with queen in chains and in turn rhaenyra as an overt threat to alicent's bodily autonomy but i did think they had something in rhaenyra ordering alicent to provide assistance in aemond's murder as she begged her not to, it was even kind of reminiscent of the 1.07 driftmark scene where she pleads with viserys on aemond's behalf. except they wasted this on a seemingly inconsequential and comic side quest that was over in one episode. rhaenyra's last interaction with daemon in fire & blood is her accusing him of being disloyal which is echoing a lifetime of similar accusations made against daemon by viserys and he kills himself immediately afterwards to prove he's always been loyal. i thought they were going to go here somewhat with rhaena & sheepstealer except that seemingly went nowhere as well. what are they doing.
