#f&b

Hopefully, I’ll have it finished by the end of this week.

😐😐😐😐

Cue to flashbacks of Arya Stark flying to kill the night king and ending the long night.

Till grrm finishes his books that is the only ending we have and it does not hero-fy the girl with dragon at her breast.

This is exactly why dragging Dany and prophecy nonsense into HOTD was idiotic.

It connects to nothing except the show ending where Daenerys destroys King’s Landing and Arya magically ends the Long Night like she downloaded the Chosen One update five minutes before battle. The books are not finished, so pretending this prophecy has some grand payoff is nonsense.

like you said, book!rhaenyra also has motives and ambitions and that doesn't make her a villain in any way, she just wants power and to rule. there is complexity there compared to whatever they made show!rhae out to be.

People keep villainizing characters they personally dislike because it makes their argument easier, even when the argument falls apart the second you look past the surface.

Most ASOIAF characters are not flat good-or-evil cardboard cutouts. They have ambition, fear, pride, trauma, greed, loyalty, and personal motives driving them. That includes book!Rhaenyra. Wanting power does not automatically make her a villain, it makes her an actual character.

First of all, book!Rhaenyra is not a villain, so that claim is already ridiculous. Anyone saying that has missed the basic point of the Dance, which is fucking impressive considering the book is not exactly subtle about everyone being awful in different ways.

Show!Rhaenyra is not “more complex” to me. She’s a hollowed-out victim of patriarchy whose main personality trait is being wronged while men act around her. Book!Rhaenyra had ambition, entitlement, grief, rage, pride, political motive, and actual agency.

Yeah, there has been a leak about that, and I do think the show is moving in that direction.

And honestly, I’m still mind-blown that this is even a debate.

One minute people are calling Rhaenyra a predator and a rapist who used her rank to pressure Criston. The next minute, people are calling Rhaenyra a helpless child and saying Criston assaulted her. So which is it? Because to me it feels less like analysis and more like people grabbing whatever argument makes their preferred character look like the victim.

This is exactly why applying modern legal logic to ASOIAF gets stupid very fast. Neither the books nor the show operate under modern values, modern laws, modern consent frameworks, or modern social structures. You can absolutely say something is messy, uncomfortable, exploitative, or fucked up. A lot of things in Westeros are fucked up. That is practically the foundation of the damn setting. But trying to turn every scene into a 2026 courtroom case just so your favorite character can win the morality Olympics is pointless.

Because if we are going to apply modern law consistently, then almost every underage character in Westeros becomes a victim by default, since minors cannot legally consent to sexual relationships with adults under modern standards. That means half the marriages, pregnancies, alliances, and dynastic arrangements in this world become criminal by default. Which may be true by modern morality, but then the argument stops being about Rhaenyra and Cole specifically and becomes “Westeros is a nightmare society.”

The problem is that fandom never applies this logic consistently. People use modern standards only when it helps their argument, then suddenly remember “historical context” when it protects a character they like. That is why the discourse is so fucking exhausting. It is not about actual analysis. It is about selectively weaponizing morality.

And funny enough, I rarely see show!Corlys being dragged with the same energy for basically parading little Laena in front of Viserys as a political marriage option. Apparently that one gets filed under “Westerosi politics” and everyone moves on. Very convenient. 😑

I don’t think the Rhaenyra and Cole situation needs to be flattened into “she raped him” or “he raped her.” The whole point is that it is a messy, ugly, complicated situation shaped by rank, desire, duty, youth, power, shame, and consequences. Rhaenyra was a princess. Criston was older, sworn, and bound by vows. Both had power in different ways, and both were operating inside a world that is not ours.

You can discuss the imbalance. You can criticize the choices. You can say it was uncomfortable, reckless, selfish, coercive, or badly handled by the show. But pretending it fits neatly into one clean modern victim-villain box is just fandom brainrot.