there’s just people in rooms trying to be happy.

she is a power player in a very violent political system that she has survived for a long time in, and regardless of her ambivalence, i just do not see the figure criston’s partial and sexist view conjures - a woman too tender and good to confront violence as a reality, and therefore unfitting to head a government prosecuting a war. it’s equally telling her moments of resistance, of using power for herself rather than others, are centered around the love of women, and work against the goals of the men who try to control her. but it can’t really undo the patriarchal power structure, as it is often posited to do via a richean lesbian continuum kind of framework - she has to work within it, always. none of alicent’s relationships with women can ever be extricated from hierarchies of power or said to be working against it in any neat way, at least so far. alicent saves rhaenyra’s life, but the only way she can do that is by seeking and affirming power for aegon. it doesn’t disrupt monarchal power, it actually affirms it, while working to strip rhaenyra of power. she later capitulates to rhaenyra for helaena, but it entails affirming rhaenyra’s pursuit of power, because safety for helaena is dependent on rhaenyra gaining power. these female bonds do not have any straightforward, inherent political purpose or function. they always affirm power as much as they disturb it, they might redistribute it or fight specific unacceptable ends, but they are too tied up in this system for it to ever fundamentally disrupt it. but that has great meaning to me! life is often not made up of radical acts or breaks, which most of us have few real opportunities for, but a more complex negotiation of accommodations and resistances that can still profoundly shape lives.

If she falters, if her light goes out, that’s where his death is.

i actually believe u can read it as up in the air, and ppl should, but i personally am a big fan of this interpretation too

RHAENYRA TARGARYEN AND ALICENT HIGHTOWER House of the Dragon, Season 3

pick a side

and how jealous he is of molly at first for joining them--that she has a secret understanding with the unicorn that he can't know, even with all his age and knowledge, though they come to love each other very much. with molly and the unicorn, there's this terrible beautiful catharsis, but schmendrick's relationship with her is more painful for them both. he saves her, but he changes her, and as much as he wants to help her, he also wants something from it/her, even though they both know she can't give it. some mixture of that dynamic + the bittersweet molly parallels you pointed out are the undertones i imagine for tyrion and dany, though darker because of their circumstances/grrm and with the potential for real betrayal.