editorialized torpedo

MAEGOR’S THIRD WEDDING Artwork by Andrey Pervukhin

On his return to King’s Landing, Maegor declared his intent to marry Tyanna of the Tower. The only one to raise an objection was Grand Maester Myros, whose head Maegor promptly separated from his shoulders. Among the witnesses to the marriage was the limbless Wat the Hewer, whom Maegor had kept alive until the wedding. Also present was Queen Alyssa and her youngest sons and daughter, who were “convinced” by Visenya and Vhagar to join the royal family in King’s Landing. The wedding was loudly decried in Oldtown by both the High Septon and Ceryse Hightower, who claimed she was the only lawful queen. But for the time being, Maegor seemed content to ignore them.

Maegor's six wives - 2/6

Queen Alys Harroway

The show gives Rhaenyra's characteristic nervous habit of playing with her rings to Alicent in having Alicent shows her nerves through picking her fingers' skin, sans rings. But Rhaenyra/Emma D'Arcy, has no obvious outward expression of anxiety, whilst Young Alicent/Emilia Carey does (but not Olivia Cooke? where is the consistency?).

They gave Rhaenyra's canonical black/red dress reveal-and-entry to Alicent in her green-dress moment of episode 5. Rhaenyra's entry in canon is: her declaring political opposition to the already formed green faction; autonomous monarchial claim against Alicent and Otto's attempts to lessen the legitimacy of that; where she draws that claim from (the colors representing her house, her blood connection, and Viserys choosing her); AND her defying Alicent's domestic attempts at ruining her self esteem or disconnect her from her roots. It was her first real moment of triumph. Whereas canonically Alicent is one of Rhaenyra's antagonists; Alicent was the one who independently and intentionally used female chastity (a principle of sexual repression for women) against Rhaenyra to tarnish her reputation and public image in order to raise dissent against her and her prospective reign. And make her son seem even more desirable...which didn't work, as she continues and eventually has to imprison people to make way for herself and Aegon the Elder.

Second, not only does what HotD did steal most of Rhaenyra's agency and boldness to give to their diluted version of Alicent and incorrectly center her as if she were the protagonist of this story, it makes Alicent, of all people, the one who experiences the a central problem of this story: societal misogyny. It removes Alicent's accountability and suggests that Rhaenyra is the problem. That whatever Show!Alicent perceives Rhaenyra to have done (lied to her, didn't stay "chaste" like her by sleeping with a person outside of marriage, didn't recognize her queenly authority how she thinks she should...when all that actually matters is Viserys' word AND it is actually Otto who put her in the position she is in to fear absolutely knowing what that portion entails [as he thinks]), that is the wrong being done here....when it is really Show!Otto's ambition.

Some may say, after watching this show, that Rhaenyra should have observed her friend's anxiety as she was "talking" with Viserys...but Rhaenyra 1) lost her mother just a few months (presumably) earlier 2) is just coming into her heir duties and activities, one of which was her choosing her personal guard in the various candidates Otto tries to present to her, and we see in that particular point that she also had to come up against people doubting her, questioning her...why? because she is both young and female. It does not require much imagination to figure out that Rhaenyra was going through her own stuff that justifiably draws her attention away from Alicent, who could have also told her what was going on but didn't. 3) By principle, Rhaenyra was also developing her own life and growing into her own adulthood -- making a life for herself.

Where would she have the emotional bandwidth to catch everything going on with her friend in the face of all mentioned?! In relationships, we take turns to support the other. Rhaenyra is the one with less room to do something since her fears, duties, grief, loneliness, and prerogative to live all are present and probably emotionally overwhelming, understandably making her less aware of others when the are not either the focus or means to accomplishing those ends of monarchial duties or alleviating misery. Alicent is fully aware of what's happening and knows that it would hurt Rhaenyra' emotional and political position even worse to follow through without resistance...yet chooses not to tell her and maybe thinks of ways to resist, even with Rhaenyra.

And again, even that ambition is being denied to Alicent herself, who canonically drives much of the green cause by attacking Rhaenyra since the latter was 10 before the war begins until her grand moment of calling the green council.

Thirdly, all of these changes...just to ultimately create confusion in narrative direction and switch/reduce the philosophical and political priorities (are we against misogyny or against others having what we want but deny ourselves because we actually like the patriarchy that has actually victimized us?). We have fallen from criticizing how women with internalized misogyny target other women to gain whatever power a patriarchy seems to bestow them to what HotD gives us -- a woman not being rewarded by being "good" and compliant with the patriarchy, as if compliance is the answer to escape the suffering caused by the oppressve forces one is told to comply with and obey! So the message is that we should always follow and conform with unjust social hierarchies?!

The fourth problem with what HotD did is that in the writers' probable justification of not giving Rhaenyra her dress moment because viewers should already know that red and black are her families colors and that they will deduce that the blacks' name come from that, they reduced all of what I point out the moment meant in canon to it being "obvious" why the blacks are called the blacks.

Fifthly, the Hightowers' colors are not even green. If anything it would be silver or grey! And the firelight the Hightower tower basis the usual red, orange, and yellow in real life and in their sigil. So not only did they remove Rhaenyra's agency-practicing moment, they moved away from the fact that Alicent chose green independently as her own faction and cause' color. She was staking a claim herself, for herself! And as @mononijikayu says in the linked reblogs, green-as-the-color-Alicent-chooses thematically works to show how her own envy, greed, ambition, and tyranny subsequently has her lose all of her children and die alone and delirious. Similar to how Jaehaerys I's tyranny and misogyny against his own family causes him to be completely alone the day he died, as Saera was his only living relative aside from Viserys, Daemon, and Aemma Arryn, who all did not seem to care about the man one way or another nor were raised close to him.

This user/anonymous asker told me how some green stans give Daemon's narrative of self sacrifice for family and faction to Aemond.

The show refused to give Mysaria and Daemon his and Mysaria's grief over their baby's loss and a justification of anger against Viserys other than not being made his Hand, but it will very likely give Aemond an arc of passion with Alys Rivers and a pregnancy partially to mimic the "children having children" arc they gave to Alicent and partially to facilitate the idea of him making mistake after mistake from him maybe choosing "fuck duty", or just running from it (Ryan Condal's "theory of reactions and accidents") as this other user contemplates. Meanwhile Mysaria and Daemon were always in a consensual relationship....and Alys was Aemond's war prize and sex slave, so there was no consent there. (And if she did have visions, and she told Aemond that he should meet Daemon and where to find him....it is also very possible that she saw Aemond die....such a situation leads me to believe that this was not the sunshine and roses relationship many green stans like to think.)

The show made it much easier to see Rhaenyra as the aggressor against Criston....meanwhile it's too arguable that even as young as Rhaenyra was at the time (15), she'd ever go for Criston when you read the account (in order: HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE). That it was most likely Criston who wanted Rhaenyra and she rejected him while he tried something. It is especially important to note this part of the text I didn't include that is between the last two quotes I do give:

Thus relying more on Mushroom's (the arguably most unreliable narrator and source for the events pre and during and post-Dance -- those who will try to make anything sexual and exaggerate just to self-aggrandize and attention) account of how Rhaenyra and Criston fell out......sure.

It refused to insert or to imagine any of Aegon and Aemond's pre-Dance misogyny towards Rhaenyra (an example) that would have existed following Alicent teaching them all how to view her. Or any of his pre-Dance viciousness: "Two years later, she produced a daughter for the king, Helaena; in 110 AC, she bore him a second son, Aemond, who was said to be half the size of his elder brother, but twice as fierce ("A Question of Succession"). Aemond's probable bullying of the V boys made into Aegon, his own brother, being one of his bullies despite this quote and its emphasis that no matter what Viserys tried, all five boys couldn't get along and that the green boys resented the V boys for taking what they thought was theirs.

But sure, we get Show!Daemon obviously kill his wife with a rock -- not even an assassin -- despite the fact that he was at the Stepstones, still fighting and preoccupied, when Rhea died and it took a few more days after the nine it took for her to die for him to even be notified of her death and travel to the Vale. The same woman who would have, if she had been able to sit up and talk, immediately name foul play with her canon dislike of Daemon.

As I mentioned before above, this show even removes Alicent's biggest and game-changing, plot-driving, self-determined act to convene the green council while purposefully leaving Viserys' body to rot over to the council members acting under Otto and ignoring her until she has to yell at them, and even that is ignored as we see her wrestle against Otto to bring Aegon in. Instead of them working together to do so, illustrating further how a woman can work with patriarchal authorities and use the power the system allows her to block another woman. The most memorable thing adult Show!Alicent did was to gives her feet over to Larys to drool over in a very disturbing voyeuristic scene, just so she gets information...this show is even more misogynist and unrealistic towards Alicent than the book/the maesters could ever be, for the sake of making Alicent a victim instead of a woman who decided to use power for power's sake. Because apparently that's an anomaly or a sexist take...that women could hurt themselves, their children, the children of others, and other women who arguably are in similar sociopolitical positions for power.

And because they aged Alicent down, her kids are all supposed to be aged down, so that in itself can and has drawn more sympathy (whether intentional or not) for the greens for what will happen in the next season to them. While we get no other scenes of how Alicent and Rhaenyra even interacted and how their relationship became nothing (ignore Alicent of episodes 8-9, this is such a terrible switch up because it makes no psychological sense) during the time between the 6th and 7th episode, how Alicent would have a isolated, victimized, antagonized, and pressured Rhaenyra as we saw her do at the 6th episode's council. Because, apparently, these women can still theoretically become friends again even after all of this AND Lucerys' death?

But then you can't tell a good or fair story about a feudal family, about "generational conflict"...without showing how two of those generations....fought each other at home AND then at war.

So Twitter made me realize another thing about HotD's writing, about a thing that may or may not be taken from one character and given to another, this time between Daemon and Aemond:

In the show, Daemon is the one to have a weird psychosexual relationship with Viserys through Rhaenyra (as Condal and others write it). He pursues Viserys through her.

Meanwhile the prime or closest relationship to be called psychosexual in the book and in canon lore is between Aemond and Daemon, with Aemond symbolically pursuing Daemon through Rhaenyra, but more subtly.

That he dismisses Rhaenyra one moment ("The whore on Dragonstone is not the threat, "he said. “No more than Rowan and these traitors in the Reach. The danger is my uncle. Once Daemon is dead, all these fools flying our sister’s banners will run back to their castles and trouble us no more.”) and then goes back to insult her as if she truly were the threat is telling.

A)

I don't think Aemond wanted to have sex with Rhaenyra, but I do think we can make an adaptation where it's clear he wishes to embody Daemon through violence (verbal, promised physical, or otherwise) against Rhaenyra. It's already canon.

Condal said many times that Daemon loves Viserys through Rhaenyra, that he devotes himself to his brother through his wife as if Rhaenyra were a tool to connect again with Viserys. Which is part of their justification for why they made him choke her in episode 10. Meanwhile, though book!Daemon could have still loved Viserys after he sent Mysaria away and caused Mysaria and Daemon to lose their child (what would have been Daemon's first), it is made very clear that Daemon regarded Viserys less. Plus he spent 10 years or so with Rhaenyra on Dragonstone without visiting Viserys much. If there were any progress as to their relationship, Gyldayn and the others who lived at the time would have mentioned it, as Gyldayn bothers to when he says that Daemon "grumbled" more after Mysaria lost the child.

Much of incel culture stems from not the "reality" of not having any options of female sex partners available to them because of anything that women do, but from the desire to impress and avoid rejection from their male peers. Men grow up valuing emotional connections with other men/boys (but not feminized emotional expressive connections except for very specific ones), while devaluing those with women/girl. So they become unwilling and unable to emotionally connect with women or believing that they could have platonic relationships with women. Even in their formative years, they are taught that women and girls are devices to be used for male respect and male intimacy.

A lot of the time people witness men participating in conversations between men/boys about how many women/girls they can attract without care to if they actually like the women/girls. Because the point is to show other men that you are sexually virile and therefore have power/worthy of respect.

While some women and girls do compare and talk to each other about how attractive they are to men/boys, femininity is not itself dependent on "active" sexuality so much as "passive" sexuality. Going out and convincing someone to sleep with you versus looking "good" to be worthy of sleeping with. We give more passes, as a society, to ungroomed or unhygienic men than we do women of the same conditions.

Male respect is dependent on active sexuality. I once heard a male acquaintance that the reason why there's more respect given to a guy when he's had a woman or declares that he has had what's thought of as a lot of sexual female partners is because it is "harder" for a man to get a woman to sleep with them than it is for a woman to convince a man to sleep with her.

However, this assessment ignores what I already pointed out with men needing male validation, rejecting female friendship, BUT also how women and girls are expected and socialized to not be assertive or confrontational by institutions apart from parents (as well as some parents and cultures), as well as the woman/girl's protecting themselves from male aggression, men's insistence past the women's reluctance and their word "No".

So it is actually very hetero for men/boys to reject emotional intimacy with women for male intimacy, sexual or not.

B)

If Aemond wants to be as feared and respected, make a name for him myself and glory, his rival/model is Daemon. The respect he wants is from the hetero, patriarchal, feudalist, monarchist society then it is from Daemon the man -- Aemond wants Daemon's status, but better.

And who is the person who gets to enjoy intimacy from him as well as the woman who "doesn't know her place"? Rhaenyra, who he sees as standing in his path towards his rival and said glory in every way.

Which is why he hates her so much and emphasizes her gender and her vagina almost every chance he can get in the book. He can't take it out on Aegon, his brother, the person who receives eminence just by being firstborn, his elder brother, the one Alicent is fighting Rhaenyra for and pressing all of them to consider as the one to support, and being his King.

And he couldn't for a long time against Daemon, because Daemon reasonably has much more of a physical and mental edge--by virtue of his experience, older age (not old, I mean by him being older than Aemond and having more years to have his skills, etc.) and Daemon--unlike being a person who their society would allow the grace of siding with, since Rhaenyra is already going against the patriarchal more of male exclusionary power by insisting on pursue the throne.

A great Twitter thread of how Aemond wishes to socially dominate and reaffirm his masculinity through sexual domination over Rhaenyra, Daemon, and Alys Rivers:

Pics:

Ceryse Hightower, Alys Harroway, Tyanna of the Tower, Elinor Costayne, Jeyne Westerling, and Rhaena Targaryen

Some WIPs for Maegor’s first three wives:

Ceryse Hightower

Alys Harroway

Tyanna of the Tower

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Americans! And Happy Thursday (or Friday if you’re on the other side of the world) to everyone else!

🔥 𝐓𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐲𝐞𝐧 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐬 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 🔥:

𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐞𝐠𝐨𝐫 with L-R: Ceryse Hightower, Tyanna of the Tower, Rhaena Targaryen, Jeyne Westerling, Elinor Costayne and Alys Harroway.

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Maegor the Cruel has multiple wives, from lines outside his own, so there was and is precedent. However, the extent to which the Targaryen kings could defy convention, the Faith, and the opinions of the other lords decreased markedly after they no longer had dragons. If you have a dragon, you can have as many wives as you want, and people are less likely to object.

The polygamous Maegor had six wives: Ceryse Hightower, Alys Harroway, Tyanna of the Tower, Elinor Costayne, Jeyne Westerling, and his niece Rhaena Targaryen, the last three of whom are known as the Black Brides.

THE DEATH OF TYANNA Artwork by Kieran Yanner

Maegor revealed that Queen Elinor was also pregnant. He was greatly pleased, showering gifts and lands on them and their kin. However, Queen Jeyne entered labor three moons before she was due—delivering a stillborn child of monstrous appearance—and did not long survive the birth. Though men whispered that Maegor and his seed were cursed, the king himself laid the blame at the feet of Queen Tyanna. She was seized and imprisoned by Ser Owen Bush and Ser Maladon Moore, but before the torturers could begin their work, she confessed that she had poisoned Jeyne Westerling’s child in the womb, as she had done to Queen Alys Harroway before her…and to Queen Elinor as well, though Elinor not yet given birth. Maegor killed Tyanna by his own hand, allegedly cutting out her heart and feeding it to his dogs.