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✷ @perzonye sent a raven: "and what else was there to be done?"

there is precious little that comes to alicent's lips without a sting, half-swallowed bile of an ill night's rest sitting low in her throat. even if it had not been for the ever-present attendants of her husband, the ministrations of maesters were ever-closer due to aemond's wound, the pains of quick surgeon's work that even a promised dragon could not salve. driftmark's walls, as those of every great keep and house, may be of stone, but alicent's ears are quickly keen to whispers, fluent in their overhearing as another tongue from a near-lifetime in king's landing, from an early marriage born of shattered precidents and dark words. so, too, was her hearing all the more sharply turned to the sounds of her son's cries, the stifled whimper of a wounded pup through gritted, small teeth.

she couldswallow her own atrocities for his sake, now — could force the memory of her hands in rhaeynra's blood, the space she had further rent between them by its flowing, down, deeper from the throat to sit like a stone in her belly. shame burns hot there, sends an ache to her spine that alicent straightens against, chin lifting in a counterweight to hold herself higher. readying for departure, a rich mantle against the driftmark seas sits on her shoulders, broadening them, the bearing of a woman carved of stone, as she must be for her son's sake, for the temper that pulsed so hotly in her throat that it lept for the heat of spilt blood.

❝ his grace would see his wife and daughter part ways with respect, ❞ it is carefully, evenly as she may that alicent speaks, eye lifted with her chin to meet rhaenyra's gaze. ❝ such may be given by acknowledging what has transpired as gone and done, nothing more. ❞

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i have a fair amount of work to tackle today, but the first of my owed replies will be popping out of the queue later! i set it in there last night, and will be using my remaining drafts as rewards on breaks, since writing last evening and re-watching the s2 finale earlier in the week definitely helped. once i'm caught up on drafts, expect a fresh meme or two on the dash for your perusal.

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WARDROBE ∞ APPRECIATION Alicent Hightower ♡ (2.07)

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—Sophocles, Antigonick (tr. Anne Carson)

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The Dreamer

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✷ MUNDAY ASKS — accepting!

@lvscinvs sent a raven for munday!

📕 — favorite book/series? since i was a child, one of my favorite books has been "inkheart" by cornelia funke! it enchanted me from a very young age, and was what i always read when i was up too late and couldn't quite sleep yet. i have other favorites, but there are far too many to name here — among them are "little women," his dark materials, and any shakespeare (though "king lear" is quite high up there).

🧶 — any non-writing hobbies/interests? currently, i've been picking cross-stitch back up after quite a few months of having set it down! i'm an artist by trade, so plenty of what most folks would consider hobbies fall under that, but outside of those pursuits (i'm primarily a printmaker), i also greatly enjoy a good hike, learning about herbs and edible plants, and plenty of dungeons & dragons.

🎧 — do you write while listening to music/podcasts/videos/etc, or do you need total silence? i used to write with music, but as i've come back to writing in the last week-ish, i've so far stuck to silence! i live in a shared home, so most of the time i either pop in full earplugs or partial ones (i have a pair of loop earplugs for general sound sensitivity, errands, etc).

🗒 — what is/are your favorite genre(s)/theme(s) to write? angst, any day of the week, with a healthy dose of heart beneath — i'll need a little something to balance it out, but i very rarely write outright fluff! hurt/comfort is also a favorite of mine, though i have yet to write it here.

📺 — favorite movie(s) and/or tv show(s)? i don't watch many movies, but a longtime favorite show of mine is "endeavour," the bbc mystery series! i've rewatched all of it about... seven times? quite possibly more individually depending on the episode.

😁 — what’s your favorite part about being part of the rpc? getting to share the love of a favorite character with others, and having the chance to dig into them and their world with other equally passionate, devoted people. i've only been writing here for a little over a week, but i've very much enjoyed the glimpses of the depth of others' portrayals by reading their headcanons, meta, and even the little tags on reblogged gifsets or art! i'm new enough to this fandom, and to returning to the rpc in general, after more than a year away that i don't quite yet feel fully "a part" of things again just yet, but i hope to with time, and with a bit of my own courage.

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MUNDAY  ASKS !

🌈 — name(s) & pronouns 🎈 — gender and/or sexuality 🎂 — age and/or birthday 🕗 — time zone 💕 — single or taken? ⭐️ — sun, moon, & rising signs, if known 💭 — MBTI and/or enneagram, if known ❓ — three adjectives that describe you ❤️ — what are some of your best qualities? 💔 — what are some of your worst qualities? ✨ — what would you change about yourself, if anything? 💘 — what and/or who do you consider near and dear to you? 🚗 — what vehicle(s) do you drive? ✈️ — ever traveled anywhere interesting? ⌨️ — what operating system(s) do you use? 📱 — mobile or desktop version of tumblr? 🖥 — favorite platform besides tumblr? 🎮 — favorite video game(s)? 🖱 — any cool devices/tool(s) of the trade? (i.e. type of mouse, monitor, keyboard, tablet, etc) 💍 — any piercings? 💎 — want any (more) piercings? 🖊 — any tattoos? 🔏 — want any (more) tattoos? 🎄 — favorite holiday(s)? 🍝 — favorite food(s)? 🍦 — favorite ice cream flavor(s)? 🍰 — favorite sweet(s)/dessert(s)? 🐶 — any pets? 😍 — celebrity crush(es)? 😊 — any career desires? 📚 — if you’re in college, what’s your level (undergrad, grad, phd, etc) and/or degree program? 😖 — what annoys you? 🎶 — favorite song at the moment? 📕 — favorite book/series? 🧶 — any non-writing hobbies/interests? 📺 — favorite movie(s) and/or tv show(s)? 📇 — does your url have a meaning? if so, what is it? ✏️ — how long have you been roleplaying on tumblr? ✍️ — what other platforms have you roleplayed on? 🗒 — what is/are your favorite genre(s)/theme(s) to write? 🤔 — what genre(s)/theme(s) do you struggle to write the most? 😁 — what’s your favorite part about being part of the rpc? 😤 — what do you dislike the most about being part of the rpc? 💻 — how many friends have you made in the rpc? feel free to tag a few of them! 🎧 — do you write while listening to music/podcasts/videos/etc, or do you need total silence? 🤗 — are there any rpc mutuals that you’d like to meet irl? 😀 — are there any rpc mutuals that you’ve met irl before? 💖 — what was one of the greatest/happiest moments you’ve had in the rpc? 🖤 — what was one of the worst/most depressing moments you’ve had in the rpc? 😳 — what was your most embarrassing moment in the rpc? 🎁 — what have you accomplished in the rpc that you’re proud of? 🫂 — how many friends are in your irl friend group(s)? 🎉 — what are some of your favorite things to do with your irl friends? 😗 — what are some of your favorite things to do when you have some time to yourself? 💯 — share three random facts about yourself that your mutuals may not know about you.

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the concept of the admirers of knights giving them tokens or "favors" to show their love before a tournament or battle has me so fucked up today. like it's such a small gesture but it speaks volumes. i cannot be there in body next to you in the dust and blood and pain to share your victory or defeat, your suffering or your celebration, because honor and duty and social convention requires that i be elsewhere, so wear me over your heart so that my own might go with you. i cannot keep you safe but if you wear my love perhaps the world and its people will be kinder to one it knows has another waiting for it to rejoin them. nobody else might even know who the ribbon tied to your arm or flower tucked in your breastplate belongs to unless they saw us exchange it, but you and i know. and they will know that we exist. they will know that our love exists.

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you could never do anything wrong <3

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for @galatariel ❤️

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the gods have yet to make a man who lacks the patience for absolute power, your grace. independent ser otto hightower of hbo's house of the dragon. sideblog, follows back from @thesellsword. book and show friendly. crossover and oc friendly. schemed by bunny, 31, she/they. 18+ only. est 9/2024. promo by @/resonette.

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        ✷ as i've now been in the rpc for over a week, for clarity's sake on my portrayal, i've added the following to my carrd! i've made some tweaks since i first wrote my carrd in general, but since this is especially relevant as I continue writing, following, and interacting with various portrayals, i'm also putting it on the dash as an fyi.

        currently, this blog is show-based with headcanon influences. this applies to my portrayal of alicent, but i do not necessarily expect the same from all of my writing partners — if i follow you, this means i am both willing to learn, adapt, and consider your changes and modifications to your muses' canon within our writing together, and i am interested in doing so! as long as i can find them, i read a person's rules and portrayal notes before even following.

        i've never been in an rpc before with as many headcanon-based and canon-divergent portrayals, so it's a bit new to me — nevertheless, follows are still a genuine sign of interest. despite being show-based, i don't co-sign everything the writers have ever done, and if i acknowledge a show event that your portrayal does not in a thread with someone else, or meta / headcanon post of my own, you can interact (or not) with that as you see fit.

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✷ META:  the young queen in the godswood.

          it becomes so clear, the second one sees it, why in her youth — and well into adulthood — alicent uses both viserys' name, title, and intentions as a stand-in for her own. from the moment we first reunite with alicent after her marriage, she is swathed in targaryen red, surrounded by a court who speaks any name but hers — over a year has passed, nearly two as aegon's second name-day is approaching at the beginning of episode three, and though rhaenyra will speak of and to alicent as "my queen" in the godswood, even the bard who sings there as she approaches does not seem to know, at first, whether to away at the beckoning of one young woman or anther, to stay at the order of the princess or leave when commanded by "your queen." when alicent speaks to rhaenyra beneath the weirwood, she keeps to a simple first name, trying to beckon forth an inkling of old friendship, yet when rhaenyra speaks to her, it is only at hearing that "the king wishes it" that she moves, albeit surlily. in the bond that alicent never hoped would break, it is only viserys' title that even superficially stanches the flowing blood between her and rhaenyra, and despite the position that it places her in — speaking through summons, never acknowledging her own power such as it is — alicent uses it in an attempt to bandage things enough for a moment, to exercise what little control she feels she has to the effect of bringing a former friend, now stepdaughter, to her side.

        alicent is acknowledged as queen in episode three, and we are given no indications that suggest this acknowledgement is anything but unanimous, and has been, yet everyone in the red keep who saw her betrothal, who was there at her wedding to viserys, has known alicent for years as the hand's daughter, a lady but never one higher than any other courtier,one light among many that spins around the targaryen's orbit. how difficult was it for them to swallow — even in their hearts, i doubt it would have been spoken aloud — their old habits of simply calling her "my lady," "the young lady hightower," or even "alicent" in favor of "your grace," "my queen," "queen" itself? how, when her name is given to a title that she grows into, a power that she is grafted onto, like a foreign rose to a new stalk, can alicent be listened to in her own right, when that title and marriage are things given by a fundamentally inequal marriage, a thing she could never say "no" to due to societal expectations, her family's desires, the power of a teenage girl, even a noble one, in the face of a grown man who reigns the seven kingdoms and has for years?

      as a teenager, viserys' title, "the king wishes it," each of these legitimizes alicent's power through her connection to viserys, yet obfuscates her own — a thing that becomes subtle and intentional as she gets older, a cloak behind which to move her own hidden, well-learned hands on the board of the game of thrones.

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The Greens

HOTD 1X08//Electra a Sophocles Play//Succession 4X10//HOTD 1X06// Quote by honeytuesday//HOTD 2X01//Quote from HOTD 1X09//HOTD 1X09// 'Cain and Abel' by Orazio Riminaldi// The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker//HOTD 2X10//Madwomen: Poems of Gabriela Mistral//Unknown//HOTD 01X03// HOTD 01X06//Quote by Lyra//HOTD 01X02//Quote from HOTD 1X06//HOTD 1X09//Quote by Richard Siken//HOTD 1X07// Quote from HOTD 2X01//The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice//HOTD 1X09//‘Ivan the Terrible and Son’ by Richard Siken//the guessing game: a mothers love by Silas Denver Melvin

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and what else was there to be done?

✷ AND OTHER STORIES — no longer accepting!

❝ what else—? ❞ alicent's ever-biding tongue has near-loosed, drawn in her hand as surely as an archer's to a bowstring, held by only the bearing of a great tension, a swallowed fury beckoned, hastened forth in the blood of her son. midwives aplenty had attended at aemond's birth, at the squalling, bellowing rush of bringing forth another of viserys' heirs to the world, yet it is alicent who is midwife to his anger, hastening it, honed by it as surely as a blade at a whetstone. he is a child, her child — and the wound of his eye is far too high a price for a child to bear on his nephew's folly, however much rhaenyra the princess calls into question.

alicent has made her apologies to viserys, and the wound has been stitched by the hands of driftmark's most careful maesters — prayers have been called upon, yet far fewer to the mother than to the father, far fewer to compassion than to justice, that which sticks in the queen's throat like a great knife, impossible to speak around but for its calls for further blood, for the wound to her boy that would speak against even her own horror at herself. unlike aemond's scar, rhaenyra's arm appears untouched from its own wound, at least to the cursory eye in candlelight — bandage lost to swathes of rich, dark fabric which still holds the colors of her husband's house, the house she must think as freedom for both herself and her children, her bastards and their straying father.

❝ there is naught else to be done at present, and what has passed is now in the hands of the gods, ❞ speaking around the cries for blood in her throat, the desperate woman's fury that once fully loosed her tongue, alicent's words are even, kept as closely to her chest as her hands, resting against one another, one disobedient finger coming to the inside of her own wrist, the mirror of the dagger-mark's tip where she remembers it had torn rhaenyra's flesh. ❝ what was spoken has been paid for, your grace. the king trusts that his blood was sufficient. ❞

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Alicent watching her son Aemond who was maimed by Luke (S1EP7) vs Alicent seeing her son Aegon II who was maimed by Aemond (S2EP5) 🔪 inspiration

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✷ "it is uncanny sometimes... how much you look like your mother." / @inheritsnothing :)

her father's words are as a blow to a heart — alicent's own, yes, but that of her youth, a fluttering, intemperate thing kept deep within her chest, a child's sorrow ever-open, ever-tender, pressed aside, within, below her present concerns so that it might beat against her ribs in silence. a hand presses to her breast, holding it at bay, barring the doors behind which memory rests, behind which it must remain, licking the sweat off of alyrie's fever-stained brow as it was caught in the alicent's memory, held fast as the carvings of stone in the great sept.

❝ to what end? ❞ alicent's own words come hollowed, weary with the effort of holding that child's heart back, the worry and injustice that gnawed at her mother's every fading hour, while her daughter gnawed at her own hands, never quite enough amongst the murmurs and administrations of maesters. she raises her head, her proud, even brow, the picture of duty, of the heart beating just beneath the breast yet never rarely raised. ❝ i am older now than she ever was. we cannot be so much alike when there is a grandson at your knee. ❞