I read a post on reddit where it was claimed Laena "tamed" Daemon and that if R&D had married at her 19, it would have been a disaster. They were both allegedly, too chaotic and selfish to be good spouses, and would have turned out miserable and falling out.Funny, because Laena was even younger than Rhaenyra, and even wilder.
Aaand another day in the anti-black anti-Daemon shitshow. “Tamed” lol, when your entire agenda is to be as politically correct as possible and you end up being misogynistic AF.
“Tamed”? As if, there are some women who are supposed to “tame” evil men ? As if a woman can literally change a man and should be responsible for a man. Who TF uses that terminology nowadays?
EDIT: I even forgot the obvious, not only Rhaenyra and Daemon weren’t a “disaster” when Rhaenyra was younger, but Daemon Laena and Rhaenyra were a thriple in the book. Idk, just putting it out here for general knowledge.
now this is the thing: i HATE how they changed everyone from their book counterparts.
show!daemon hated his life in pentos. he was depressed, bored. did not treat laena well. she knew she wasn’t his first choice and rhaenyra was still in his mind and accepted that (disgusting)
i don’t see any proof that laena ‘tamed’ her. he was still pretty selfish. he didn’t listen her to go back to driftmark.
but if we talk about book!daemon, i wouldn’t say ‘she tamed’ but i do think he learned to be a decent man with her, a father and a husband. and yeah, laena was pretty wild too. that’s why rhaenyra, laena and daemon got along well.
after laena died, rhaenyra and daemon married quickly. does this mean they didn’t love her? no, but still it was a selfish act. they were both selfish and chaotic from the beginning to the end. and actually this is the point of their story
I agree. Adding to that, Daemon killed Vaemond without permission from anyone. In front of the court, his wife, Alicent, and their children, and he still boiled over and choked Rhaenyra. (While in the book, Rhaenyra was the one who told him to kill Vaemond for calling her sons bastards and her treasonous.) The show writers & showrunners have made it a point to say that their Daemon will never be a “tamed”, good man converted by the attentions of his perfect female lover.
In fact, Show!Daemon is just a the prime example of a man the writers assert is just inherently evil and unredeemable–one who, as a man has the eternal advantage over any woman of any class or position and who will consistently uses violence against helpless womenn. Especially those who he’s married to or sleeps with because he just be like that. This is the path the writers have for him in their premise that men are always the aggressors against vulnerable women.
As for the throuple situation consistently visiting Laena probably had part of its allure in getting to see Daemon himself, but I also always thought that the idea of Rhaenyra and Laena having either having a strong platonic or sexual/romantic bond was the most wholesome thing ever.
Some would argue that there was no romantic relationship between Laena and Rhaenyra, but I’m open to either circumstance beacuse the book is only ever says that Rhaenyra visited often and became close with Laena, I could see this as a case of “and they were roommates” that historians habitually did to negate the possibility of same-sex relationships.
Or I could see this as them actually just being just friends and that being valid on its own.
After all, because of the vagueness, Daemon’s presence and character, and Rhaenyra already being in a situation where she had a lover outside of marriage (even with that marriage being sexless, she’d be open to a more open arrangement elsewhere) it’s also possible that Laena was fine with a situation where Daemon was intimate with both her and Rhaenyra without her and Rhaenyra being romantic or sexual themselves (another ethically nonmonogamous arrangemnt that used to be called a “V”).
It was one of the only separate events where any of the characters found some personal happiness away from court and the rivalry between the greens and the blacks.
Missed opportunity on the show’s part. One of many.
i myself believe three of them had a romantic or platonic relationship not a sexual one because it’s unlikely rhaenyra to not getting pregnant if something happened between her and daemon. and saying rhaenyra only visited driftmark to see daemon is very disparaging her character for me. obviously laena and rhaenyra’s relationship had some sapphic undertones even if it wasn’t romantic at all (like the thing they push between alicent and rhaenyra in the show)
and that ‘love cannot change a man’s nature’ thing is just stupid to me (i’m sorry lyanna but) yeah like men always will be men specially men who are a part of a misogynist society like westeros. but does it mean they will be always act the same? if daemon wouldn’t change at all he wouldn’t stay 6 years in driftmark and 10 years in dragonstone with his family. nobody would have held him there
ofc these don’t make any sense to ryan condal and sara hess. their feminism is men= bad/abusive, women= naive/victim
It would be disparaging her character to assume Rhaenyra would only visited Laena for Daemon, because it would imply that she was desperate and cruel enough to just use Laena as a road to Daemon. I think that she genuinely saw Laena as one of the closest and most trustworthy persons around her, especially Laena being gender nonconforming, allowing them to have that sapphic bond.
When I mentioned Daemon’s actions in the show, I meant to imply that the reddit user’s thought that he was “tamed” was obviously false because the show itself has been allowing the idea that he hasn’t for the purpose of showing him as the extreme and apparent example of “entitled man negligently hurts his female lovers”. The show itself doesn’t allow for “love changes man’s nature” to the point where he’s a different person altogether. And I also hate this notion that women are eternal victims of men and are just either that or heroic mothers. It’s very flattening and boring because the Alicent has no way of changing into an aspirational figure. If you ask real mothers, I think there would be some who say that it is not even a duty, but a compulsion and reflex to put herself in danger for her kid if they are in danger. And that this is not a “good mother” thing, it is a “parent/guardian” thing. While it may be impressive or something foreign to those who aren’t parents–because it’s is a major shift in priorities and troubles self preservation for a society that encourages self gratification–it’s not that heroic of a thing. It just comes with being a parent and that part is not a determined by gender.
Some people think that Alicent putting herself before Aegon and going after Rhaenyra/Luke was her being determined to defend them and her being the best mother. They think like Otto, who in another scene said to her that he was impressed by her determination to win against Rhaenyra. Both they and Otto have the idea that Alicent’s act there was her actually taking throne to calculate and gain an advantage over Rhaenyra, but it wasn’t. It was her finally expressing her desperation and suppressed frustration with people not following the rules of sexual repression like she has always done. She wants conformity from others so that she can feel that her being used had a purpose other than to satisfy the ambitions of Otto. That she hasn’t wasted her life or that she has been recompensed for her sufferings.
Fire and Blood’s writer both wasn’t there to record what really happened and only sought to record what he thought was important to note and suggest that people should be more open minded to study the possibilities of the situation to be able to even make any conclusions. The reddit user had a take that didn’t even consider how the show wrote it’s characters, let alone how Gyldayn wrote his history and how he wasn’t in a position to hold all of the information, how people reading his history had to take on the role of interpreter and student to make conclusions themselves and debate why their conclusions are right ones. I don’t really know what word to use to describe a situation like this, but I amy also be helping to undermine the possibility of a queer or sapphic storyline myself. I honestly don’t really know. But
you can interpret their relationship in hundreds of different ways. i can say rhaenyra was in love with laena and always went to driftmark to see her not daemon but when laena died she felt alone and made a political marriage with daemon, there was no love. i can say that. and not only me, many people really think it was only a political marriage.
maesters were homophobic also misogynist. they portraid most of the women characters as rivals (even visenya and rhaenys which wasn’t the case at all) if rhaenyra’s main goal was only to see daemon, to have him, there would be lines that indicate that. i don’t think we should add another headcanon to it. the book is already messy and complicated with all that rumors.
You know what, rereading Fire and Blood….
While Princess Rhaenyra misliked her stepmother, Queen Alicent, she became fond and more fond of her good-sister Laena
(pg 378; “A Question of Succession”).
Well, fell into that hole. It’s a nice idea.