r/HOTDBlacks

If you were Rhaenyra what would you have done to better prepare for the dance

Here are three starting points you may choose from

When Rhaenyra married Laenor.

When Aemond claimed Vhagar.

Right before you send Luke and Jace as messagers.

Some rules are the three strong boy, legitimate or not must be born, anymore children you decide, you must have a plan b because no plan in Asoiaf ever seems to go perfect and you can't just do some shit like kill the greens before viserys dies.

https://preview.redd.it/vpygt5vo0mkh1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b1e4c0ff1a4d3b29bc45092beb609bffb23e2e4

hey guys im back from the dead. ama before i go back to targaryen heaven

Posted a similar question on the Green sub for the women, asking what their reasons are for supporting Aegon over Rhaenyra. Got some…er…interesting answers, to say the least.

Also got accused of Team Black never asking this question to men 🙃 So, let’s hear it.

So, men of Team Black! What are your reasons for supporting Rhaenyra over Aegon?

I was surfing around the Citadel subreddit when I found a post where an author was trying to set up a Romeo/Juliet scenario with Aegon and a trueborn daughter heir of Rhaenyra and Laenor.

Rhaenyra would negotiate a marriage between daughter heir and Aegon to secure her peaceful ascendancy. Then she marries Daemon and has Aegon 3. Naturally Rhaenyra decides to blow up her peace deal and name Aegon 3 her heir instead. Specifically citing Otto’s own logic of ‘well I only named daughter heir because I didn’t have a son’ and now Daughter-heir can rightly hate her mother and of course Rhaenyra hate her daughter right back… 🙄🤮🤢

https://preview.redd.it/t2epnithhgkh1.jpg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66ad482c02ecfd87cf0d859f0cae7fa535e03190

if youre a sheepstealer stan then hop off my thread

This is a rough jumble of a lot of thoughts that I’ll probably have a more organized flow of later, but I’ve been thinking about why Rhaenyra’s character and arc so far is unsatisfying to me. Part of it is in the cast and crew’s comments regarding Rhaenyra becoming “fascist” and using fascist iconography. Rhaenyra is an absolute monarch in a feudal society - I realize there are feudal monarchs and absolute monarchs, but Westeros has characteristics of both systems, and given that Viserys declared her as heir and that’s that, I’ll use the term absolute monarch. GRRM also describes the Targaryens as absolute monarchs.

Regardless, fascism doesn’t apply here - it’s a modern governmental idea based on a burning sense of nationalism (usually far-right conservatism) that is governed by a dictator. I understand what they’re going for, but they’re wrong, and the fact that Rhaenyra is described as fascist when she is, 1) entitled to her throne by bloodline and the decree of the previous king, and 2) well within her rights to crush the usurping side in a civil war, is ridiculous. As a further example, Sonoya Mizuno said that Mysaria’s outlook is basically that she can’t believe she helped put a fascist in power when that goes against all of her beliefs (because she’s da peepul’s champion). So… it’s not questionable for Mysaria to help to put Aegon in power when she knows of his bastard child fighting pits and other unsavory characteristics, but when Rhaenyra makes the completely right move of firing her, suddenly she’s all “oh no this is terrible”? Mysaria conveniently deciding that having an absolute monarch is bad when said monarch is the first woman and shows even a hint of cruelty is so funny. I hate this implication from the creators that Rhaenyra was a good ruler until she finally decided to take action and do something that they defined as “aligning herself with Daemon” - which brings me to my next point.

Rhaenyra always seems to be defined through the lens of others. For example, this season, the creators kept saying that she was oscillating between two things: Mysaria’s vision and Daemon’s vision of how she should rule. Where’s Rhaenyra’s vision? What is Rhaenyra’s vision? Hell if we know, because she only ever makes decisions based upon what others think or suggest (Viserys, Mysaria, Daemon, etc). Emma D’Arcy herself has been quoted saying that Alicent and Mysaria were Rhaenyra’s moral compasses (lmfao). When we do see her make independent decisions, they’re usually idiotic (Septanyra, sending Alicent to kill Aemond). I keep realizing that, imo, Rhaenyra hasn’t had her own character since…S1? I was hoping we would get more of it this season, especially when we started to see her cruelty - but, nope. They strip her even of that by framing it as her listening to ol’ evil Daemon. She even quotes him when convincing Alyn to kill the High Septon. The only thing we’ve got for her is that she thinks she’s the Chosen One, and even those flames have been fanned by Daemon and, to a lesser extent, Viserys.

Rhaenyra is supposed to be a confident woman who knows what she wants and is secure in her femininity as relating to the throne and her ability to rule. Her descent into cruelty and paranoia is informed by her losses in the war. Instead, she’s adapted as an ineffectual co-dependent who is driven to cruelty by delusions of grandeur and her “devil husband” on her shoulder, and she is now labeled a fascist.

Thanks, I hate it. Again, rough draft of thoughts, but would love to hear others’ opinions, whether in agreement or disagreement.