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Gael Targaryen

I'm annoyed at how smothered she was...

thinking about the resentment ned must feel. his brothers were raised in winterfell. his sister was raised in winterfell. his gods are back home in the north and he is sent to the vale alone. his only comfort he finds in his best friend, the more confident and more powerful robert baratheon. sound familiar? when will someone be brave enough to make the ned stark-theon greyjoy comparison.

The Dragon Heirs

King Aegon I surrounded by his sons, Prince Aenys and little pre-teen Prince Maegor Targaryen.

I almost like it but I gave up trying to fix it. Maybe I've got to change my shading technique next year. My reference was this fashion plate of 10th century Franks.

Visenya the Conqueror and baby Maegor

based on Leyendecker's "Madonna and Child"

Rhaenys the Conqueror, baby Aenys, and his hatchling Quicksilver. Based on Leyendecker's Madonna and Child

companion-piece to my Visenya and baby Maegor

Princess Rhaena Targaryen with Queen Alyssa reading to Princess Alysanne.

maekar & dyanna

so, one aspect of catelyn which i think is underrated (certainly the biggest adaptation loss which nobody talks about) is her, let's say superstitiousness, or better yet, let's call it genre-savviness, being one of the few adult characters open to magic and the supernatural in this fantasy world. we first meet her in the godswood, home of gods which are not truly hers, yet she is still very aware of their power. when she and ned talk of the deserter he killed, he hopes he won't have to go with the nw to deal with mance rayder, but she has even more fear of that idea bc there are worse things beyond the wall than just wildlings. ned scoffs and says she's been listening to old nan too much, but she's right. we already know from the prologue that she's right! and here she is, understanding the genre of their world better than her husband, who was actually born and spent his earliest years in this northern land of deep magic, listening to old nan's stories. same with the direwolves, where she was uncomfortable with them at first, but later believed in them as guardians from the old gods even after robb had lost his own faith. and once again, we know she's right even if she doesn't know the evidence to back up her instincts, bc summer and shaggydog did not fail bran and rickon and robb was almost certainly a warg like his brothers. (perhaps making it more fitting that she's the one brought back as a fantasy vengeance monster, not ned and robb, the most unbelieving dead starks.) and in her 2nd agot chapter, everyone focuses on her ambition in wanting ned to agree to the hand job (pun intended) and sansa's betrothal, and while she does recognize the value of their daughter being a future queen more than ned does, that's only her stated argument bc she thinks it's rational enough for ned to listen to. (if ambitious matchmaking were as important to her as to her father she never would have made those frey betrothals fandom loves to blame her for.) in her own head there's a deeper urge driving her. she keeps thinking of the dead direwolf with antlers in its throat, an omen which filled her with dread from the first she heard of it, before robert's arrival, and thinking of it again is what makes her desperate to convince ned not to refuse robert. she had to make him see. and really, she's not wrong, as jon snow would say. the dead direwolf was an omen of ned and robert getting each other killed. it's just one of those misread portents, with no way of knowing the danger to ned was in his loyalty to robert, not conflict with him. BUT the next time she's dealing with baratheons, she knows exactly what she's talking about. it's catelyn, not brienne, who sees the shadow slaying renly, and explains that it was stannis who did that through some dark magic. with no way of knowing how it was achieved and no prior expectation that such a thing were ever possible, she realizes with no hestitation that stannis was guilty and that his red witch was capable of pulling this off somehow. really, the only instinct of the supernatural she's wholly wrong about is her insistence that varys gathered his knowledge through some dark enchantment. however, though that might offend varys, given his own personal experience with a sorcerer, i'd say it's a reasonable assumption without knowing the dude had children moving through walls everywhere like oversized rodents. and imo it just shows she had a healthy respect and awe for varys's power which most other characters lack.

oh, oh, and let's not forget that she also believed in the curse of harrenhal, from her own childhood and the stories old nan told her kids. "and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and cursed. 'I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of that keep,' Catelyn admitted." sure, that wasn't enough to save robb, but he did not die from the curse of harrenhal. that doom was for his enemies fro tywin lannister to roose bolton.

Sometimes when I'm having trouble sleeping instead of counting sheep I recite the Targaryen family tree from memory. In doing so I have come to the conclusion that if you want your Targaryen son to turn out at least somewhat normal you need to name him Daeron.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-) S02E06 | "Smallfolk"

i’ll be brave

the funeral (a grotesque display of two queens’ grief, forced on them against their will) being interjected by images of aegon beating blood into a bloody ruin says something about how women’s grief is exploited and paraded around as a virtue while male grief is only allowed to exist in conjunction with violence.

female sorrow is expected to be public, dignified, and even noble, it serves as a symbol of quiet strength and resilience. otto uses it as a tool to gain sympathy for their cause. notice how he forced alicent and helaena into it, while he allowed aegon not to participate. wouldn‘t the king being at the funeral send a powerful message? yes, it would. but otto looks at aegon with contempt, the other councilmen and alicent do not know what to do with his tears. the realm cannot be allowed to see the king grieve. not like this.

male grief is denied its own space and validity unless it manifests in aggressive or destructive acts. aegon realizes this to some degree too— he lashes out publicly by killing the rat catchers. he shows his grief by being violent, by spilling blood.

the toxicity of it all is very effectively shown at the end when aegon is crying by himself. did he retreat there to be alone and finally let it all out? his mother is either letting him have that moment alone or she’s deeply uncomfortable with it and chooses to leave. no matter what motivated alicent in acting the way she did— the moment still reveals how male vulnerability is something people fear. it shows that even the most human expressions of pain are not acceptable for some.

i'm baffled by the discourse surrounding daemon this episode. he's not out of character, he's probably the most in character we've ever seen him. why are we surprised that DAEMON TARGARYEN of all people has an oedipus complex? and of course you can argue that daemon in the book would never, but you have to remember that fire & blood is the unreliable narrator book where everything interesting in the story is predicated on the fact that what's written on the page may or may not be true, the reader is relied upon to piece together bits of information presented by multiple narrators who are biased in various conflicting ways. it's a loose collection of plot points lacking in any meaningful characterization; arguments that any characters strayed from "book canon" are absurd. they strayed from one specific person's specific interpretation of the information given, and in this case, the information given is that daemon willingly groomed at least one family member, gleefully orchestrated the murder of at least one child, and fucked off to harrenhal for most of the war, culminating in him dying in a murder/suicide with yet another family member. maybe i'm being disingenuous and unfair to the source material, but i don't think an oedipus complex is far off from the characterization we've been provided

Dragon twins

daemon targaryen & alyssa targaryen — his mother.

do you think larys ever watched aegon jerk off through that window

I think I'll just do some portraits for some time