I’m Just So Bored

the whole “Aemond was the child closest to their mother” VS “Alicent actually despise who Aemond is/is becoming” is so boring, because it implies that if one of these affirmation is true, the other must be false. Why can’t they be both true? Both true is more interesting.

the key thing that people miss out when talking about alicent and aemond imo is just how similar they are. they both carry so much repressed grief and resentment and anger at the injustices they’ve suffered that they themselves can hardly contend with or even comprehend it. their victimhood and experiences of neglect and abuse (in aemond’s case facilitated in part by alicent) and suffocating sense of loyalty and duty (and sacrifice) are all things they share; there’s even a parallel you could draw between alicent being married off at fourteen and how aemond is groomed and fashioned into a weapon of war. in many ways aemond is a reflection of his mother and her pain and is also significantly the only family member who’s ever tried to protect her (and vice versa). all of this contributes to her complex feelings of terror seeing what he’s becoming and how his upbringing has shaped him; terror of aemond is also by extension terror of herself. i’m interested to see how the aftermath of ep10 will unfold in s2 and whether or not aemond will tell the truth about what happened (my hunch is that he won’t)

People talking about that line of Viserys going “Rhaenyra my only child” as if it’s supposed to be something very moving and tearjerking and even calling it his moment of “redemption” makes me so fucking pissed I can’t even. Why are we not talking about how disrespectful and callous this is towards his VERY REAL OTHER CHILDREN who are currently still existing?? How disrespectful this is to Alicent, his WIFE who was forced to marry him as a teen and who gave him these children whom he clearly doesn’t give a shit about? I simply don’t get anyone who wants to paint Viserys in a sympathetic light and consider this such a ~touching moment in which he shows his love for his daughter. He is a fucking callous asshole who never gave a shit about his other children to the extent that he considers his daughter from his first marriage his “only child”. And you want me to see this as his moment of redemption?

i love how sympathetic the show is making all sides here. i felt so horrible for criston: he is being so dumb in his grand proposal to rhaenyra, but it’s so easy to see how you’d get there when you are lost in the sauce of westerosi concepts of honor; it is genuinely heartbreaking when he says all he has is his cloak and he’s dishonored it - and a really brutal reminder of the disparities in class position that led to this moment. and yet i also understand exactly where rhaenyra is coming from, and why she is so blindsided by how her plan to have the kind of sexual freedom that daemon can enjoy falls through, and the carelessness with others feelings she has learned from daemon, from viserys, from everything about her position as a targaryen. and i absolutely totally understand why rhaenyra lied to alicent - what choice did she have, faced with alicent’s clear revulsion? but i also can see exactly why alicent feels so monumentally betrayed by it. it’s good stuff