brown skin and lemon over ice!

these writers really hate their black women like i am sorry but i am not going to pretend that the writing choices and their treatment isn't racist. and it all started with laena velaryon. people just moved on from it because she isn't a very prominent character in the war but i haven't forgotten how she was rhaenyra's canonical love interest and daemon, laena and rhaenyra were basically a throuple. not to mention daemon marrying laena IS objectively romantic in the book. “Prince Daemon fell in love with Laena, the singers would have us believe.” he takes one look at her, challenges another man to a duel when he finds out she is betrothed to him and marries her after killing his rival. the show had daemon treat her in a way that she is heartbroken but makes peace with the fact that she is not the wife he had desired. rhaenyra was “fond and more than fond of her good-sister Lady Laena”. also why she betroths her kids with laena's in her lifetime in the book. in the show they don't share a single scene. in the book, during her last hours, laena is at her home and very cared for, rhaenyra immediately flies to driftmark and is present by her side, daemon rushes to get rhaenyra's more experienced and older maester. she dies trying to get to her dragon but faints on the stairs and is carried away by daemon unlike the show where she is allowed none of this tenderness, she just dies alone and far from home, having denied her last wish by an uncaring and indifferent daemon.

ALL of that is cut from the show. any gesture or moment where it appears that our main characters gave a fuck about her, that she was important to them is completely erased. where it seems that she was valued and loved by both daemon and rhaenyra her show counterpart is an insignificant nobody to both of them. like maybe the show writers aren't racist as fuck but so much of these girls' mistreatment by their white relatives feels fucking pointless. "uhhh daemon married rhaenyra within less than a year after laena's passing he must not have cared about her" hmmm you know what? good point. this would open up an opportunity to explore his daughters' reaction to their sudden and secret marriage, especially, in the show where rhaenyra is practically a stranger to them who then waltzes into their lives so boldly. the natural resentment they'd feel for their father and rhaenyra but ... that never happens. they're just magically happy to be betrothed to rhaenyra's boys an arrangement made as a desperate political move. how convenient! i guess we only care about giving any storyline to either of them when we have to cut out another very very pivotal black female character from the story.

maybe i am overthinking this maybe i should let it go and i actually did but then the choices with baela and rhaena? especially rhaena is HIGH-KEY RACIST!!! i cannot look past this i am sorry.

both baela and rhaena are associated with privilege they're like the silver spoon princesses. and it's very pointedly mentioned that rhaena is the more delicate, soft and graceful one after having lived a gentle life of privilege and coddling in the Vale “Maids had brushed her hair and drawn her baths, whilst singers composed odes to her beauty and knights jousted for her favor.” but her show counterpart is given mo such treatment in Vale, she is instead insulted, has to beg for asylum but is spurned, is running around alone in the mountains, hair burnt, covered in dirt, homeless and hungry, eating raw meat. WHAT THE FUCK? tell me how is this not an extremely racist choice? do you people honestly believe the show would've still treated her and nettles' storyline as interchangeable if rhaena was white?