RIDE THE SUNLIGHT.

Not "The Character did nothing wrong" or "The Character is irredeemably awful" but a secret third thing: The Character may display moments of deep love & compassion, may even have a strong sense of ethics, and may also be capable of brutal cruelty that is irreconcilable with those traits. The constant tension between the different sides of The Character's nature is exactly what makes them compelling, and attempting to reduce them down to simply "a terrible person" or "innocent & misunderstood" is missing the point of the questions a media with nuanced characters is asking you to consider

thinking about lyanna and aegon ii again. if you're new here, you might be like... via wtf? but i want you to trust me ( and ozzy / @sinfyre ) when i tell you that it works. the best thing about lyanna and aegon is that neither of them is the other's salvation. instead, they're each other's witness. lyanna is perhaps, one of the very few people who looks at aegon and sees the person beneath the prince and the responsibility he's been asked to carry. and aegon in turn becomes the one who sees past lyanna's reputation and recognizes the young woman grieving a life she imagined that she can't have, because she's constrained by the limitation of their society and her gender. despite this, being truly seen doesn't solve their problems... it just changes how they face them. there are layers to this dynamic: friendship, advocacy, forgiveness, shared humor / shared wounds, and eventually, love. but love is the natural consequence of what they painstakingly built together, rather than its forgone conclusion. and that is why i love them so much.