The point of her story was to highlight how no matter how good or evil or morally ambiguous a person you are, if you are female, you are subject to losing a power men are just granted. Or usurped. And this is inherently wrong. Rhaenyra chose to go to war rather than give up. This is valuable. Visenya was not thinking "for the realm" or for the benefit of smallfolk or outside of her family, yet she as so many fans bc she was not passive or restricted by "madness". She has less sexist writing.
If Rhaenyra weren't a woman and if I were to go about this as if we take F&B how GRRM--not Gyldayn--wrote it, I'd agree. It's actually how GRRM chose to write Rhaenyra that gives rise to all the issues with her people (and I) have had and will continue to have.
But since she is and this Dance is about misogyny and how it ended with the realm losing its dragons and making women lose more power, I disagree.
A)
You: "She did nothing when the smallfolk stormed the dragon pit."
This is the passage of Rhaenyra's response to the Storming:
As soon as word had reached her that the Shepherd’s savage flock was on the march, Rhaenyra sent riders to Ser Balon at the Old Gate and Ser Garth at the Dragon Gate, commanding them to disperse the lambs, seize the Shepherd, and defend the royal dragons…but with the city in such turmoil, it was far from certain that the riders had won through. Even if they had, what loyal gold cloaks remained were too few to have any hope of success. “Her Grace had as well commanded them to halt the Blackwater in its flow,” says Mushroom. When Prince Joffrey pleaded with his mother to let him ride forth with their own knights and those from White Harbor, the queen refused. “If they take that hill, this one will be next,” she said. “We will need every sword here to defend the castle.”
("Rhaenyra Overthrown")
I hardly call that "nothing".
And this is something most people would have done, which is already a lot once you consider that when she first tried to "arrest" the Shepherd, she ended up losing many 10 guardsmen & loyal soldiers. Other soldiers and gold cloaks were at the different points/city gates to protect them from any invaders (which includes the greens). By the time the Shepherd came back to rile the KLers for them to finally be inspired to storm the Dragonpit--not long after this mob-killing--she was already shorter than soldiers than ideal. We also have to remember that the Blackwoods, riverland supporters, etc. PLUS Cregan and his Northern men were not in KL at this time. they were either fighting the greens outside in other territories or they were still traveling to KL/the crownlands!
B)
The American Civil War had both sides display racism in that both white Northerners and Southerners believed that Africans and black people were inherently lesser peoples--some abolitionists still believed so and their problem was that slavery is a step too far because they believed that their God and country is based on more "graceful" ideas of freedom for all humanoids. For years, systematic methods to convince and reaffirm this belief of white supremacy through a mixture of education, entertainment, advertising, Jim Crow Laws, and structural, legal segregation.
Yes, the cognitive dissonance was/is real, but what slavery needed to end and its ending was a step towards gaining more political rights for black people. Would we rather go forward or backward? With Aegon--the only other choice other than Rhaenyra--it was way backward.
Also, while Rhaenyra was not herself a compassionate or strategic person even before her paranoia (partially because she was), she herself wasn't as terrible as she became. While her own blood purity was definitely there--this is still a feudalist world and realm--it was not the thing that started the Dance and pushed her and her family into the position to defend themselves and her to develop the paranoia she had.
Her children would have been great rulers. And if she wins, they win, because they draw their claim through her, not Aegon the Elder. Also, she seems had a huge hand in how they developed their personalities, strategic-ness, and sense of responsibility they all developed. This makes me feel even more that the fault of the Dance came from the circumstance of a woman being further denied power more than her making some decisions.
C)
1.
Bigger picture-wise, I think it's fascinating and useful to see how the imperfect victim (azureflight's comments-considering and learning more about the glass cliff) not totally digging her own grave after facing a lifetime of psychologically undermining and acting like her imperfect human self in order to survive psychologically, by the simplest means necessary, yet losing all the same because of a combo of her not being able to respond as quickly to the challenges of what's left to her to "fix". Yet given no space and time to do so. And she not choosing we Watsonianly, Rhaenyra is one particular way a victim of misogyny tries to aggrandize and gain control.
I agree that her, as the Queen and an adult, still was accountable for her own loss of focus and responsibility for the way she accumulated the taxes after the treasury was depleted. Celtigar was not the person to depend on (even here, she happened to have the wrong people at the wrong time bc the better ones already decided to go green not out of loyalty to the greens but either fear or greed), nor should she have turned against the dragonseeds.
But again, the greens depleted the treasury intentionally to make the very problem she had in KL AND Aemond burned down one of the major suppliers of food in Westeros' "south" regions: the riverlands and esp their farmer's villages and fields.
And with all that was dealt with and has to be done, I think it is very easy to see how she and most people in her position would falter. What was on her to do list:
- an influx of refugees
- a manic Shepherd preaching against her and calling her and Targ dragons unnatural to incite riots
- rumors flying about that she killed her own sister with no valid evidence, the crowd and others blaming her for Larys' action of taking Maelor
- her need to maintain relations with the lords immediately surrounding the Keep and in KL so she may be assure they continue to support her without her having to resort to Syrax and dragon fire
Me, I probably would have tried taxing both the rich and poor, but make it so that the rates are dependent on resources available to those houses. What else could she do to raise money for herself?
But with a completely empty coffer and the rumor-mongering Larys performed, I'd still likely be called "Maegor with Teats" in my having to heavily tax rich people/merchants, which goes to show how misogyny really opens one up to unanalytical criticism.
Other than that, Rhaenyra and I and the readers are very different people with different experiences and similar-but-different backgrounds--one fictional and created for a particular narrative purpose and I have the luxury of being removed from her specific situation by not being a dragon-riding princess of a super-misogynist land (after azureflight's notes below) in a situation in KL already horrid for any ruler to deal with treasury gone, missing green master of whispers who took Maleor despite the boy being safe with Rhaeyra and the rioters pulling the kid apart, refugees from Tumbleton, etc.
I also have the remove that helps me to see the bigger picture without being directly affected so I can better see how she should/could have responded to things--but because I am not a dragon-riding princess, do I really know what it's like to have lived in court and live in the middle of when chauvinism and female chastity reigned as completely normal?
2. Comparison to Daenerys "Stormborn"
In comparison to Rhaenyra, Dany proved herself both capable and more resilient against circumstances that one wouldn't pick over Rhaenyra's. Dany was abused and isolated from all that Rhaenyra had all her life, as her mother birthed her at Dragonstone and died not long after and she and her abusive brother lived traveled to several different places and with Illyrio Mopatis. These men sell her into sexual slavery. She almost died several times, once by her master-husband's own riders, in the desert while leading her own khalasar, she's targeted by those who shelter her, went through 2 miscarriages with the first being much more traumatic than the next, lost the husband she bonded with (even with him being her abuser as well), she faces Jorah Mormont's attempts to further emotionally isolate her, she's in danger every day from slavers and disgruntled men who wish to use her or destroy her, and her own husband-for-peace is plotting against her...and yet she still manages to manage an entire city and get her good-good simultaneously without totally failing as Rhaenyra did. Dany was under 15 when she went through all she went through, while Rhaenyra died at 33, so she ruled in her 30s.
Dany is so special because she comes into some sort of awareness and is thus the real change-agent. Partially because she was exiled from Westeros after Robert and the others usurped the Targs, Dany experienced having a remove from her own dynasty and family for her to see them from a more objective lens while Rhaenyra lived within that Targ-Andal paradigm from birth. If she hadn't been removed as she was, with how she tried to placate her brother for some time until she chose herself, she could have been similarly trampled under the machinations and dealing of abusive men like some Targ women. (And this was before she had her dragons, thank you very much).
Both women are constantly criticized for how they run their respective territories during heightened periods of violence or threats against them seeking to kill and usurp them. I think Dany is obviously doing a lot better than Rhaenyra, is much more concerned with how to live better for the "smallest" of smallfolk, and is Rhaenyra's superior in terms of leadership morally or strategically--while the past sentence is also correct. Dany was herself a compassionate intelligent and driven person. Rhaenyra wasn't compassionate or had true foresight or was willing to have one, but also came to be self-driven. (And why isn't Aegon or any other man expected of the same?) It happens that, with Rhaenyra's context (kids, lack of remove for perspective [not the abuse!]), she devolved into paranoia easier.
At first, Dany defended her brother and her father's claims as being automatic, and then through her removed experience, admitted that while they were usurped they also weren't fit for the rule, WHILE finding the justification of her own claim to the Iron throne through them both and her ancestry, WHILE also claiming from her own need to protect others. Rhaenyra also claims through her father and Valyrian heritage, without looking out for the disadvantaged and focusing more on herself, only succeeded in blinding herself to how looking out for other women/girls (or at least being strategic about it would have also strengthened her own legitimacy.
If for nothing else, they are coming from a similar place of needing to develop a new meaning of self and autonomy, and Rhaenyra fell into the more selfish identity. Very Jaehaerys I of her in that she chose herself over those she could have called a kind of "kin"--girls and female leaders.
I and Rhaenyra and Dany all have the shared experience of being born and raised in a misogynist society where most girls grow up having to confront and choose whether/how they will accrue power in a space that would deny them the same power, dignity, or self-respect as men are granted automatically, which does create a dearth that needs philosophical filling, so to speak. How the subject fills it is their responsibility, and different people respond to that differently and according to circumstances that both were out of their control and resulted in their own decisions. But it's always good to trace how each event both OUT of and IN their control has shaped how they view their own capabilities and the actions they took, this is analytical reading. It does not have to come with actually liking a character.
3.
However, apart from comparing her to Dany, who she falls short of obviously, I think it's worth more to investigate why Rhaenyra in her own story falls as she does instead of expecting her to be equal to Dany or Rhaegar or any other person. Who is Rhaenyra, and what makes her the way she is? That way, we find out truths about the way she was, where she faltered and failed. What exactly defined her fall and how do we, as readers and people look for aspirational behavior and principles, identify?
The idea of Rhaenyra's seeming lack of the most ideal creative pragmatism (which again, most people actually don't have) and sense of entitlement comes from these things:
- the Andal-adapted-Targ attitude to its own claims of power-from-its-historical-means-of-maintaining-power in conflict with its adopted Andal misogyny to maintain itself at the expense of its Targ's women's autonomy and right to the same authority
- a lack of real training that stems from that misogyny "for the sake of the dynasty"--denoting a lack of true confidence in her and thus leaving a such an effect on young Rhaenyra that she must rely on herself above all else -> I usually try my best to not get "psychological" here, but in building self-confidence, to me, she seemed to have relied and fallen back on her right to power through heritage and lineage, as most other males would feel entitled if they had been named heir and grew up as royal in a time of prosperity to legitimize herself as self-persuasion/defense mechanism
- Alicent/the greens' harassment of her since she was a child and the subsequent reclaiming of autonomy by sheer, necessary tenacity
As all these things provided shape to Rhaenyra's mindset towards her claim, I don't think we should ignore how her being set against didn't feed her sense of entitlement other than Viserys naming her. Her heritage as well as her means to assure herself and claim power.
I already explained what I think about her being unstrategic or pragmatic HERE, going a more Doylist route and mostly "blaming" GRRM.
If we are going just Watsonianly, I'd say that Rhaenyra, again, was a quasi-Othello figure even by being a spoiled princess and Queen at the same time. Both Rhaenyra and Othello are figures that are given the circumstances of people doubting their placements in higher positions of military and nonmilitary power. Both develop paranoia based on the existing fear of losing that power and dignity. While Othello gains his power, self-perception of dignity, and male credit/reputation through his own means in battle victories, he also is in the position of having to constantly prove how "useful" he is to this Christian/European society that is always going to be set against him and will only allow him to have his privileges and rights if he doesn't rock the boat. It is that element of self-proving to the domineering power that Rhaenyra shares with him in that she would always be held in some contempt or condescension for being a woman who goes after male-coded power, even with her growing up to be a princess-then-ruling-Queen. Inevitably she cannot share his started-from-the-bottom/culturally foreign and racialized Otherness, but she is also Other for being a woman, a Targ dragonrider (magic) in a Faith/Andal world. Both felt the need to "prove" themselves through patriarchal ideals to keep a sense of dignity provided by the same oppressive and embedded forces/sociopolitical contexts.
In the end, both succumbed to monarchical patriarchal forces but both also have always been vulnerable and compromised in some way by those forces and given the problem of where and how to compromise to gain power/peace and space to live. I want an ideally good and smart character from anyone who finds themselves in such positions, especially when they are in the highest seat of power with the ability to revolutionize the injustices of the world. But humans are diverse in temperament and develop differently by circumstances and their own decisions simultaneously.
In this way, I think that Rhaenyra was the victim turned perpetrator who continued to be a victim at the same time. Her entitlement was both her strength & her fatal flaw, which was engendered by her decisions to respond to circumstances. But her entitlement was also hardly a fault of her so much as par for the course for someone of her rank and position.
GRRM wanted Rhaenyra to be a little different and yet similar enough from Daenerys in terms of circumstance and backgrounds--someone to surpass--and provide context/stakes for why Dany comes to being physically, historically, and narratively so that we see what can form a leader. Rhaenyra is why a Daenerys "Stormborn" is necessary while being her cause. And part of that is that remove I speak of, and sometimes that remove is forced or self-willed or something of both. GRRM goes with "both" being necessary and caused by each other in a constant cycle.
D)
That being said, while both Rhaenyra I and Aegon II had blood purist expectations and drew claims from a misogynist Targ-Andal paradigm, one is a woman who was usurped because of misogyny while the other is a man who would have plunged the realm into a worse form of it than Rhaenyra if he had more time to actually rule. Rhaenyra's death and loss were disastrous for women: (bride of fires' post).
While he eventually lost, he/Alicent still usurped her and caused the war to happen in the first place based on misogynist principles instead of accepting her rule. that Rhaenyra lost all and lost out the opportunity to rule strengthened the notion that a female leader was undesirable AND that a woman would cause chaos for men if left to have influence and more power over them if there are no active higher powers on them even in the form of a specific will and testament, like with Rohanne Webber having to marry by a specific date or lose her right to power. Female=evil. Female ruler=herald of disorder. With such stakes, I'm not going to accept Aegon--the only other option aside from Rhaenyra in this feudal context.
The other option is a power vacuum. This society is not like Russia of the 20th century where there were people who studied political ideas of political liberties for the common man in other nations/states/territories. The riots are not revolutionary riots, they are incitements from a specific group that wishes to form their own vision of a monarchial feudal vision without dragons--which I must say, again, were necessary to get rid of the Others AND unify the previous warring states of the Westerosi kingdoms in the first place. Such does not exist in ASoIaF/real medieval societies.
Shit's complicated. Dragons are destructive, any yet this is a feudal, society where only the strongest (supernatural and ordinary) gain all and win. Dragons are useful for both ends, yet the Targs/both sides of this Dance are examples of humans who human their way into fucking shit up for themselves, but one was put out more and would have given (even unintentionally) some benefit to the realm by flouting patriarchal norms against female autonomy. Again, if we're forced to choose--and we certainly are because this state is not going to turn democratic overnight--Rhaenyra is still the one for me.
Again, I think that her dumber decisions made things worse, not that they 100% made her situation alone what it was.
Again, consider what @azureflight says in comments, which had me rethinking calling her actions "dumb" and more just inevitable.
(8/21/23):
THIS is a great post by mononijikayu about medieval queens, female rulers, the history of how women in leadership positions were made and seen as threats to the very structure of social "order", and contextualizing Rhaenyra thru Empress Matilda. I didn't even know about Matilda's husband being comparable to Rhaneyra's Daemon! PLZ READ!!!!
just as much, along with these fictitious portrayals, more lies are depicted. these women are considered vixens that cause havoc to men by shifting them into desires and danger. through the written word, we see how women are cast in roles of villains in men’s lives. it is because by their conclusive thoughts, women are the only creatures that are able to turn ‘good honorable men’ into despicable creatures who do shameful, deplorable acts for the sake of women’s pleasures.
[...]
itis within this narrative that ancient chroniclers declare that women were in fact the doom of men. if they were not able to control the dangers posed by the wiles of women, then the foundations of the mighty society they had built would be up in flames.
[...]
as i mentioned, these factors of community are written down and preserved. and with that, the example of the ancients were the foundations by which medieval society built itself. the same concepts continued to cause the same issue within society and that was the exclusion of women from participating in the bigger picture of community and state, much so with governing states in their own right—without judgment or disapproval.
