Squgs

These different readings of scenes and characters and lines have contributed to the pretty ugly fandom discourse since there is enough evidence for mutually exclusive claims to argue extensively. Whoever your favorite character is you can twist the shown events in order to make them seem like a hero and for everyone who opposes them to be terrible. However I don't have anything worthwhile to say on that, so I want to talk about the writing on its own instead.

Now having uncertain motives can be interesting writing wise (show don't tell and all that), but I think that as House of the Dragon's first season continued it ran into more and more problems around this, especially with the time jumps and actor changes. When character's motives and wants are unclear after the time jumps first impressions are what will decide how most people view them. So when we first see Rhaenyra giving birth, and we first see Alicent trying to separate a newborn from her mother, and we first see Criston calling Rhaenyra a slur and we first see Harwin being a protective father and we first see Aegon bullying his brother, it adds up. Those first impressions are then applied forward and backwards leading to the idea that Alicent and Criston have been abusing Rhaenyra for ten years, and that in the training yard Criston the incel fucked around with Harwin and then found out (my read is that Criston the step-dad took advantage of Harwin being an entitled ass to get him fired).

(Side note about Criston: While the exact thinking behind his downward spiral in episode 5 is ambiguous, the scene between him and Rhaenyra in episode 4 is unambiguously rape given that he tells her to stop and she doesn't.)

In that way the show encourages very one sided readings of complicated and ambiguous scenes, leading to people either being annoyed that the show ignores all the terrible things that the greens are doing, or that it's unfairly biased against them. That's a problem, but things don't completely fall apart until episodes 9 and 10 when people start going to war. For all of the characters we still have no idea what they are fighting for. If we ask why Alicent crowns Aegon we have a bunch of possible answers:

Because she thinks Viserys told her to. This is stupid and I hate it.

Because she fears for her children's lives. This is a good reason, but it has not been brought up since episode 6 despite episodes 7 and 8 both featuring moments that would certainly validate that fear.

Internalized misogyny. This one makes no sense to me, and I haven't seen any convincing evidence for Alicent specifically having more internalized misogyny than any of the other women on the show. However it could be interesting if it was actually seen beforehand.

Ambition and pride. This isn't really seen in the show, but it certainly seems like an understandable feeling for Alicent to have after suffering through an abusive marriage for 20 years and being denied the two things that women are promised through marriage (her husband's protection of her and her children, and the inheritance of her son)

Now if we ask why Rhaenyra wants the crown enough to go to war for it (she agrees to lay siege to king's landing before Luke dies so I'm ignoring that) we have a similarly confusing list of possibilities:

Her dad told her to. This is the reason that I think fits best, but it isn't really delved into. I think there would be a lot of rich interesting stuff with Rhaenyra evaluating her father's legacy and whether she wants to continue it, but Rhaenyra never seems to acknowledge how much bad shit her father has done.

So she can fulfill the prophecy. This is stupid.

Ambition and pride. Also aren't really seen, but certainly understandable and believable.

She fears for her children. This also isn't really shown at all, but you could argue that she fears her children will be killed either to protect Aegon's claim or to put an actual Valeryon on the throne of Driftmark. However we don't really know Rhaenyra's view of the political situation.

To destroy the patriarchy. This would be interesting, but we don't really see her wanting to do that. We do see her usurp Baela's claim to Driftmark in episode 8 though.

These issues get even worse with the more minor characters, the worst example being Rhaenys for whom all her possible motivations contradict her previous actions and opinions:

To protect/honor her grand daughters: if this is what she wants why doesn't she take Alicent's offer of Driftmark, giving her granddaughters an inheritance and keeping them out of the war?

To protect Luke and Jace: she never shows them any affection except maybe in the background of the eye gouging aftermath.

Feminism: if she is willing to go to war in order to have a queen on the iron throne why didn't she fight for her own claim?

Because she wants peace: then why didn't she accept Alicent's offer which was made in the name of peace? Literally as soon as she and Corlys put their support behind Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra stops considering making peace.

Because she trusts Rhaenyra more than the greens: Why? She thinks that Rhaenyra and Daemon killed at least one of her children, she saw Daemon murder her brother in law and we have no reason to think she knows of any misdeeds done by the greens.