Can you talk more about your theory of Jaehaerys and Alyssa? You've mentioned Alyssa a few times, saying you didn't like how everyone talked about her, but I couldn't find a post going into detail about it.
oh yeah, i think like with his kids, jaehaerys is doing some hardcore editorializing when it comes to his mother’s legacy. i think the sources we have purposefully play down her influence and intelligence because depicting her as she was, which is a competent leader, a loving mother, and a shrewd politician, makes jaehaerys look really bad for vindictively stranding her in a shitty abusive marriage. so like, as an example, septon barth (who i usually love!! most of jaehaerys' good ideas come from barth or aly, it's THEM that was the Good, Peaceful King not jae!!) has this to say about alyssa:
“That Queen Alyssa wished to do the right thing, no man should doubt,” Septon Barth wrote years later. “Sad to say, however, she oft seemed at a loss as to what that thing might be. She desired above all to be loved, admired, and praised, a yearning she shared with King Aenys, her first husband. A ruler must sometimes do things that are necessary but unpopular, however, though he knows that opprobrium and censure must surely follow. These things Queen Alyssa could seldom bring herself to do.”
What's angering here is this is just false. Alyssa is not someone who is paralyzed by people pleasing; in fact, some of her biggest moments come from Alyssa taking decisive action and being willing to face the consequences! As a matter of fact, the exact issue she's having right at this moment when Gyldayn throws this in is Alyssa taking an action she knows is unpopular but sticking to her guns anyway!! She's confronted with her not even legal son making off in the night with her not even legal daughter and marrying, and last time this happened, her husband died from stress, her two oldest got stuck under siege for months, all of which culminated in a bloody civil war that got two more of her kids killed. OF COURSE she tries to stop it - she's doing the unpopular thing she thinks is right! And then, when Rogar tries to supplant Jaehaerys with one of her grandchildren and publicly humiliates her, she tells him to fuck all the way off and saves her son's throne yet a-fucking-gain. Oh so she didn't bother running tail tucked between her legs to her teenage son to apologize for getting angry at him for eloping with his barely pubescent sister? That's not a moral failing, that's a moral backbone.
And this is a pattern with Alyssa Velaryon. She attempts to help crown Aegon while still captive with Maegor, she plays along at court to try to protect her other children, she makes the difficult decision to abandon poor Viserys in King's Landing for the chance to escape to safety with the children she has on hand - which OBJECTIVELY is the only goddamn reason Jaehaerys is alive, because if Maegor had gotten his hands on another of Aenys' sons, he absolutely would have tortured him to death just like Viserys - she doesn't publicly contradict Jaehaerys to protect his claim, she refills the King's Guard in a smart move by giving people a fun little tourney to impress the royal family with, and when caught between Rogar and Jaehaerys, she sides with Jaehaerys every single time! Yes, she doesn't go to Dragonstone to get Jaehaerys after he marries Alysanne because Rogar tells her not to. But why does Rogar tell her not to? He plays on her fear of people seeing Jaehaerys as another Aenys! But does she let that stop her from trying to contact her son? NO! She sends ladies to him so she knows what the fuck is going on and so she's not publicly shit talking him. She sacrifices her marriage to protect Jaehaerys! And before the depression of having lost everything even though she's done everything she's supposed to do takes over her, she makes sure to get a competent Hand in that position!
But how does Jaehaerys repay all those years of Alyssa doing her best to protect him, of Alyssa sacrificing her own happiness and well being for him?
Thus was the peace made between the young king and his former Hand, and sealed that night by a feast in the great hall, where Lord Rogar sat beside Queen Alyssa, man and wife once more, and raised a toast to the health of Queen Alysanne, pledging her his love and loyalty before all the assembled lords and ladies. Four days later, when Lord Rogar departed to return to Storm’s End, Queen Alyssa went with him, escorted by Ser Pate the Woodcock and a hundred men-at-arms to see them safe through the kingswood.
He forces her away from court, to the seat of the husband that hates her, to die having his children. We know Alyssa is unhealthy during this time. We know she's older. We know she never recovers from the depressive episode after Rogar attempts a coup. Yet she has two more children! Even after she says how afraid she is of childbirth before the first one because of her age and her previous baby loss!! Jaehaerys stands there and does nothing while Alyssa is butchered by the husband he stranded her with!!
And then what does Jaehaerys do? Well, he does the exact same goddamn thing to his own wife. He forces pregnancies she doesn't want on her, pregnancies that severely impact her health, and then like...doesn't even bother parenting the children he's forcing on his wife.
The joy was therefore not entirely unalloyed when Her Grace was found to be pregnant once again. Prince Valerion was born in 77 AC, after another troubled labor that saw Alysanne confined to her bed for half a year. Like his brother Gaemon four years earlier, he was a small and sickly babe, and never thrived. Half a dozen wet nurses came and went to no avail. In 78 AC, Valerion died, a fortnight short of his first nameday. The queen took his passing with resignation. “I am forty-two years old,” she told the king. “You must be content with the children I have given you. I am more suited to be a grandmother than a mother now, I fear.”
King Jaehaerys did not share her certainty. “Our mother, Queen Alyssa, was forty-six when she gave birth to Jocelyn,” he pointed out to Grand Maester Elysar. “The gods may not be done with us.”
He was not wrong. The very next year, the Grand Maester informed Queen Alysanne that she was once more with child, to her surprise and dismay.
He says to the Grand Maester that essentially, he's totally cool with Alysanne being butchered during childbirth for the off chance that she has another healthy living child. This is the woman he's supposed to have a grand, amazing romance with and he treats her as disposable as he treats his own mother. So, in my opinion, just like how there's an underlying story here about a monstrous father who is likely raping At Least One of his kids and exerting severe and horrific sexual control of the rest of them, until he's dying and not a single one of his relatives even want to see him anymore, I think there's a story here about the ways in which sons will purposefully and vindictively harm their own mothers even when they have practical saints raising them.
He wants me gone, Catelyn thought wearily. Kings are not supposed to have mothers, it would seem, and I tell him things he does not want to hear.
