#aligon

I think the key difficulty with the narrative of Alicent's decision to "give up her sons for Rhaenyra" is that there are two different stories being told simultaneously: the political story and the symbolic/spiritual story.

Politically, her decision is almost impossible to justify. A mother agreeing to hand over Aegon, and by implication condemning Aemond as well, is a shocking violation of what we've seen Alicent value over two seasons. This is why you can go ahead and call it betrayal, character assassination, and overall bad writing. Sure. If we judge the scene purely by realistic maternal psychology, it doesn't quite fit the woman who spent twenty years fighting for her children and ensuring Aegon sat the throne because she believed Rhaenyra's accession endangered them.

But if we read the scene as the culmination of Alicent's religious and sacrificial arc, it's not that Alicent chooses Rhaenyra over her sons; it is that Alicent chooses peace over herself.

Throughout the series, Alicent repeatedly becomes the sacrifice. Otto sacrifices her to Viserys, Viserys sacrifices her happiness to his comfort, the Green Council sacrifices her to their wishes, unruly Aegon sacrifices her dignity, ambitious Aemond sacrifices her authority, and inevitably, the war sacrifices her entire family line while she is cursed to remain alive and see it all unfold. Alicent's entire life is built around being offered up for causes larger than herself.

The tragedy is that by the end of Season 2, she has internalized this logic so deeply that she begins applying it to the people she loves. In that sense, Aegon becomes the final sacrifice on the altar, not because she loves him least, but (as I have theorized and analyzed countless times before) because she loves him most. It's a paradox because Aegon is the child most bound up with her own identity. He is the living consequence of all that has molded and shaped Alicent: Otto's ambition, Viserys' neglect, her youthful suffering, her religious guilt, her failures as a mother, and her complicity in the war. When Alicent looks at Aegon, she sees herself.

Which is why sacrificing him functions symbolically as self-sacrifice. Surrendering a son (at a time when she has nothing else to do or give to end the war) is to surrender the entire meaning of her life. The lie that she based her marriage on, the legitimacy of his coronation, the justification for twenty years of struggle, the notion that she was right to pursue her own ambitions, the ingrained belief that all her suffering had a purpose, and all her past sacrifices were worth it.

If Aegon dies, then everything Alicent endured was ultimately for nothing, and she knows it; that's what makes willingly giving him up feel almost religious. Alicent's faith has always operated through suffering. She understands love through sacrifice, duty through renunciation, and holiness through pain. Alicent has, unfortunately, never learned the lesson that she deserves happiness. Whenever she tries to reach for it, she thinks herself the recipient of divine punishment (see her comments post Blood and Cheese, when she thinks that even her desire for a consensual and fulfilling sexual relationship is contemptible: "the Gods punish us, they punish me." She links Jaehaerys' death to her own "deviant behavior" of "having sullied herself with a lover.")

Through countless years of conditioning and self-sacrifice, Alicent learns the lesson that peace requires suffering. She was able to maintain peace with the Hightowers, Otto, the Green Council, and Viserys through her own suffering. So when confronted with an impossible choice, she reaches for the only language she knows: someone must pay, someone must be offered, someone must suffer so others can live. That is the logic that has governed her entire existence.

What makes the choice particularly tragic is that, as a "queen counting the cost to her people," Alicent seems to believe that, by suffering Aegon's sacrifice she can finally end the chain and restore peace to Westeros, but peace is an elusive insatiable beast that wants to feed off her flesh. She has to give Aemond too, and then more, and more, and eventually all of herself for the peace to come. Alicent has spent her entire life believing that sacrifice creates redemption, but in reality, sacrifice creates only more suffering for her. Alicent sacrifices herself again and again and never finds peace or freedom.

The irony is that by giving up Aegon and Aemond, Alicent truly thinks she is sticking to her duty of making her final sacrificial offering which nevertheless won't save any of her children, the Hightowers, or the realm.

aegon & alicent; do you love me?