Winter Is Coming with Fire and Blood

All the dance of the dragon targaryens and characters are assholes. not just alicent. she is an interesting character who is doing what is best for her house, rhaenyra is sometimes a brat who did not let Alicent have queen powers even. Rhaenyra also killed a child, isn't that worse than Alicent?

"all of the dance characters are assholes" i don't agree. jace, luke, joff, baela, rhaena, helaena, daeron the daring, corlys, rhaenys, addam, and dance-era alyn aren't assholes. all the kiddos as well. a lot of the side characters are interesting as well: the northerners who leave home and create new lives, sam tarly, black aly, sabitha frey, the thousand and one women who wield power in that era.

there are assholes during the dance (mainly, imo: daemon, aegon ii, aemond, alicent/otto, corlys to a degree, cregan), but rhaenyra i would consider more grey.

rhaenyra specifically - by the dance-era we see she's been forced into her first marriage at threat, had her sex life continuously picked apart in public, and is coming off a traumatic miscarriage caused by the fact that her father's death was grossly concealed in order to usurp one of his dearest wishes. chalking her choices up to "rhaenyra is an asshole" misunderstands the position she was in - from the dance, to losing her children, to attempting to deal with a realm impoverished by the greens removing 75% of the royal treasury to oldtown directly before winter.

so how is she a brat? because she chose the men she had sex with? because she refused to accept that a woman isn't fit to rule the 7K? she's traumatized by the end of her reign, unable to trust. chalking it up to "she's an asshole and got what she deserved" is unfair.

finally, rhaenyra didn't kill a child. daemon arranged that. kinslaying is the greatest sin in westeros yet the war is opened with aemond killing lucerys, followed by aemond + aegon killing rhaenys. is the traumatization of helaena and the killing of jaehaerys worse? possibly, depending on the metric. was it rhaenyra's direction? no.

To me, Rhaegar was clearly displeased with Aerys II killing Rickard and Brandon Stark.

We all know he meant to call a council, using the Tourney of Harrenhal as a disguise. Yet he hesitated; maybe Aerys II's presence made him step back. But, when he talks to Jaime before going to battle, he doesn't see so hesitant anymore. He talks about it openly with Jaime even.

Rhaegar says it does no good to dwell on roads not taken, but I can see a hint of regret on him. Maybele he thought that, had he not hesitated on Harrenhal, Aerys II wouldn't have killed Rickard and Brandon, the Rebellion wouldn't have happened and so on.

Of course! I can’t believe it needs to be said that Rhaegar did care about Rickard and Brandon’s death, that he didn’t approve of his father’s action, that his hands were pretty much tied from the very beginning which is proved by GRRM’s own words. We really have to chew every aspect of his character and put it into antis’ mouth

dany antis calling dany power hungry is so funny because dany will probably be relieved and happy when she finds out about faegon's existence since that means he can take up the mantle of ‘the head of house targaryen’ like i love dany and she’s incredibly open minded and revolutionary about a lot of things (for her time) except when it comes to succession tbh

dany mentioned how she could be married to rhaegar's son if he was alive so if she has a chance of meeting faegon i believe she'll be happy to see another targaryen, let alone her brother's son, alive. he'd be her second (westerosi) husband and a rider of the dragon, but the problem is faegon and his team's intentions aren't dany friendly. i don't want her to meet them bc i know for a fact varys and illyrio have no desire to see her as a ruling queen: they only need her dragons and her as a wife to faegon for his claim to be stronger. notice how belwas’ answer starts with "dragons" when dany asks him why illyrio sent them - he didn't want to help her, he wanted dragons.

Hello there!! it is me again

I was at 3:00 AM looking at the ceiling again and I got to thinking about the whole Catelyn and Jon thing.

But not on whether Catelyn mistreated Jon or not. I was thinking about why George made Catelyn hate Jon.

And the thing is, I realized that George decided to do that so that Jon would always have this need to know who his mother was, and that he never had one. Catelyn was not her mother, that is clearer than Aegon being fake.

But then I started to think ... Why ?? Why make Jon, one of the main characters, one of the most developed characters throughout 5 books, have to have this trauma of growing up without a mother?

Why not do the whole rxl = j plot and make Catelyn love Jon anyway ?? In any case, he will be left with the doubt of knowing who his biological mother was, even if he already has a maternal figure.

Or maybe Jon might not know who his biological mother was and not have Catelyn as a mother figure, and still continue with his perfectly normal character development.

But George decided that Jon's mother was important. George literally chose to make Jon's mother one of the biggest theories within the fandom.

How many paragraphs did George give us about Jon thinking about who his mother was??? in how many paragraphs did he always claim Jon's anonymous mother???

George was perfectly able to make Jon's character not care who his mother was. He is the author. He decides everything in this saga. But he decided to make it one of the most important conflicts within one of his most important characters.

He even asked d & d about it in the interview to hand over the copyright to asoiaf lol.

George's importance to Lyanna kills me 😭❤️

With all the importance you give to Jon and his need to know who his mother was at least give me a whole book on this girl George, damn it.

I also find it curious how George took the "a song of ..." from his old work "a song for Lya" and repeated Lyanna's name in asoiaf.

What I wanted to get at with all of this is that seeing the importance that George places on Jon's mother, what it will mean to his character when he found out, makes me realize that Lyanna is definitely an important character, no matter what that the antis or aka true fans say.

Lyanna is always going to be one of the most important characters in the saga.

In fact, can you imagine all the material we're going to have on Lyanna when Jon found out about the truth? I am sure that we will get more information about her through the visions of Bran or by Benjen (if he appears 😭) or BY HOWLAND REED AAAAAAAA

MAN APPEAR ONCE AND TELL ME ABOUT MY SHE-WOLF

George hurry up, I want to know more about my goddess 🛐

Sorry for my midnight ramblings but I needed to share it with another Lyanna fan 🤗🤗🤗

YOU COME INTO MY HOUSE YOU MAKE ME FEEL THINGS

I mean Margaery was surely bad friend to Sansa, but at least she knew her for like a week and she choose her family over her. ..unlike Sansa who was mocking her bff Jeyne for crying for father 's death oh and forget her own sis at some point lol. This is mostly sarcastic, but funny how I have never seen anyone criticising Sansa for being a "bad friend "

friend of the year <3 also love how sansa expects the acts of kindness to be rewarded - that's not how empathy works.

LOL the gurus are losing it in the tags.

i’ve made a mistake of going into the tags and saw jalsas claiming that dany wouldn’t like jon bc he isn’t attractive. please explain to me how canonically gorgeous rhaegar and canonically gorgeous lyanna produced an ‘unattractive’ jon, that’s not how genetics work.

"asoiaf stans" would rather read other people’s metas and essays than read the damn books. it's so weird. i've never seen another book fandom give so much importance to essays, metas, podcasts or whatever. like, why are these ppl being worshipped and treated as if they are on the same level as grrm?? open up google docs or word and type out your own essay. show some respect

LOUDER, LOUDER, LOUDER. i legit don't trust anyone writing metas other than dany stans i know bc they ALWAYS provide real book quotes to back up their statements unlike those experts who don't even bother opening a book before replying. how many times have i seen them calling rickard stark "lord paramount" or jocelyn baratheon/elia "crown princesses" and then people who worship them parroting their words during discourses. i once replied to one of them big writers who claimed "no one but ned loved lyanna" brining up his dismissal of lyanna's concerns about robert and stating that in that particular moment he loved robert more than lyanna. i got blocked without any replies 🤡 they aren't open to discussion, they act like a fucking cult: you either accept everything they say or they will taint your reputation inside the fandom calling you "toxic stan"