Isn't It Interesting
That this whole play provides justification as to WHY Elia was cool with being cheated on? They made her queer (despite having ZERO evidence of this being so in the books. And George has written queer characters before as explicitly queer so no I'm not gagged at this change) for the purpose of taking away guilt off of Rhaegar and Lyanna's relationship. Fans find it distasteful how they got together and he abandoned his wife and small children for an underaged girl? Simple solution, make her gay in love with her best friend and give RhaeLya her royal stamp of approval! Of course he can be like Aegon the Conquerer, once for duty and twice for love </3
Never mind that Lyanna's child could be another claimant against her own or that the Blackfyre rebellion highlighted how dangerous of a situation this would be to her children's inheritance. A move that makes no freaking sense from a political standpoint.
In fact, to cement home the fact that she's realllllyyyyyy ok with it, how about she and Lyanna become penpals? Disposable black/brown GF trope in full effect! Genius!
Interestingly enough, in ASOIAF both Catelyn and Cersei are given the understanding of them being hurt by their husbands infidelity (alleged in Ned's). There are no paragraphs justifying why Robert was right to have outside children on Cersei or why Lyanna was wrong for not being understanding of him sleeping around on her. Oh no, everyone agrees that Robert was a horrible husband and would have made Lyanna unhappy in their union. Lyanna is upset that he has outside children already and knows love can't change a man's character. Cat is resentful of Jon, and it's pretty obvious she's not happy with the situation. She even wished he was never born. Somehow, that's understood perfectly. Some fans have expressed their dislike of her yes the overwhelming majority still pitied her given her eventual end.
For Elia, everything gets boiled down to "She's Dornish tho" when pretty boy Rhaegar gets called out for cheating, abandoning her and their kids to their fates with his lunatic father around.
What makes me laugh is that had Elia been the other woman in between their fave couple, you can bet your sweet ass we would have seen even more racism like it was 1929.
This play's story is as ugly as those God awful wigs. BYEEEEE.
