i see people saying “aegon and aemond arguing over who alicent loves most whole time it’s helaena” and i raise you she doesn’t truly love any of them. it is so obvious helaena has an aversion to touch and overstimulating situations but alicent either doesn’t see that or ignores it considering the situations they’ve been in together both this and last season (jaehaerys’s funeral, the multiple times alicent grabs her and she either tenses up or aggressively pulls away, pulling her out of the godswood ep2, grabbing her face aggressively this ep). she’s clearly projecting her fear and disgust of motherhood on helaena in trying to get her to drink the moontea and she is *shocked* that helaena truly has a desire to keep the baby. she attempts to *multiple times* convince helaena to abandon jaehaera bc, well, she would do that. hell we see so many parallels to the way alicent fearmongers aegon in 1x06 with helaena this episode. the reasoning she gives to justify helaena drinking moontea is her projecting her own desires onto her re: “do you wish not to be free”, “it is a blessing […] it has saved me from disgrace and ruin”, etc. she is trying VERY HARD to live out her escape fantasy with rhaenyra through helaena and it is Not working. bc it needs to be rhaenyra and nobody else. also want to make clear this is NOT alicent hate that is my girl she is just a very bad mother and that is not her fault!! but yeah i don’t think she truly loves any of her children as a result of the conditions she was forced to have them. the closest she gets is with helaena and daeron and with one she just views her as an extension of herself and two she’s literally hardly met and thinks he’d be better off without her.
