#daemon and rhaena

[cinematic-phosphenes]

I'm once again pissed off about Nettles likely being cut.

Dragonstone has dragons coming out the seams. If they had to give Rhaena an adult dragon*, they could have given her Grey Ghost and Nettles could still claim Sheepstealer. I don't want to hear shit about the CGI budget. There are some other unnecessary dragon scenes they could have cut. (I love Syrax and Caraxes but we did not have to see Caraxes doing nothing in the Riverlands or Rhaenyra taking off on Syrax to go confront Addam - although admittedly that shot of Syrax diving like a hawk is cool.)

*They're basically recycling Aemond's S1 plot for Rhaena. A Targaryen kid feels inferior and left out because they don't have a dragon. Eventually they claim the biggest, baddest dragon around and everything is (not) fine.

I think Rhaena coming into her own by hatching a dragon egg (something we haven't seen anyone else do in this series) and also realizing Targaryens are more than just their dragons and she can be a leader despite not being a dragon rider and not having a grown, intimidating dragon would've made for a better story and character development for her.

They could've shown Rhaena impressing Lady Jeyne Arryn and winning her over to Rhaenyra's cause despite not bringing a dragon to defend the Vale. They could have shown Lady Jeyne tutoring Rhaena in how to be a ruler and command men in a world that's reluctant to accept female leaders. That would be more scenes and character development for Lady Jeyne too, who has a great actress playing her.

They could've had Rhaena show up at Harrenhal in the season finale leading the Vale army she's recruited with diplomacy and negotiation instead of pointing a dragon at them. They could've shown Daemon realizing he's been underestimating Rhaena all along and finally show pride in his second daughter. It could have been a character growth moment for Daemon too since he's all about dragon supremacy and has been neglecting Rhaena her whole life.

I do like HOTD despite it being far from perfect ... but I want to like it more. I just want all my favourite girl characters to have better :(

Maybe the leaks are wrong.

Maybe I should console myself by writing fanfic.

[darklinaforever]

To anyone who thinks Daemon doesn't love Rhaena, doesn't care about her, etc. Explain to me then why he didn't send her and Baela to live half the time with Rhaenys? (Yes, because, let's be real, Baela had to split her time between Driftmark and Dragonstone) Rhaenys must have asked to have Baela in her care, and Rhaenyra and Daemon probably agreed due to wanting a good deal with Rhaenys after the Laenor case, and also I guess part of Daemon knows Laena surely would have wanted it for Baela too. But so, my question. If Daemon is mocking Rhaena, why not take the opportunity to send her to Driftmark as well? (since apparently he only cares about Baela) Rhaenys would certainly not have said no, since we know that she adores her little girls. And since she doesn't seem to like Daemon that much, I'm sure she would have been okay with taking her second daughter away from him. You have to think about these kinds of details. Daemon could have sought to get rid of Rhaena, or at least shift some of his responsibilities towards her to someone else, but no. Instead, he kept it in Dragonstone with him and their family.

I really hope that we will be entitled to positive scenes of Daemon with Rhaena and Baela in season 2.

[horizon-verizon]

To be clear, this is also disparagement of the court during Viserys’ time: the presence of sexism on Alicent and the Court's parts.

Alicent and the court of the Red Keep both in HotD and F&B all anticipated or gossiped that Rhaenyra's three boys would not have their dragon eggs hatch when presented int their cradles because they were rumored to not be Laenor's kids (they said that Rhaenyra cheated on Laenor and had an affair with Harwin, this the three Velayron boys' brown hair, brown eyes, and "pug" noses).

However, all the V boys eggs hatched not long at all after they were born.

The reason why Alicent and the court believed that Rhaenyra's kids would have hatched eggs is because Westerosi tend to believe that a father rather than the other passes down the most distinctive or powerful treats to a child. It did not ever occur to them that Rhaenyra would pass on her family's dragonriding abilities to her sons on her own "merit", or on her own (as if this were an active decision, but that's a separate issue).

Also, Alicent wants her own son, Aegon the Elder, to be the heir and inherit the throne, so any pretext that could have Rhaenyra removed (since women's fidelity is treated more seriously as a fault and crime than a men's) is something she wants to both believe in and actively use for that end.

I feel it’s important to know that when Rhaena Targaryen (the princess-turned-forced-bride-of-Maegor the Cruel) gave her siblings Jaehaerys and Alysanne their dragons by placing their eggs in their cradles, she did so out of love because she herself grew more confident or willing to confront and interact with others after bonding with her own dragon, Dreamfyre, at age 9.

So when she was 13 and her siblings were born, she wanted them to experience that unique, character-developing event like she did as early as possible. (Maybe I’m just projecting, but this is such an lonely, new older sister move.)

Rhaena is not at fault for displaying such care towards her siblings. This moment of Targ history just goes to also show that dragons, eggs or already hatched, are directly linked to female power, autonomy, etc. Other examples of femininity linked to magic and magical connections, supplying and advancing them even include:

Dany "Stormborn” (obvious, her hatching stone-cold eggs)

Rhaena (Laena’s daughter) -- she was the last dragonrider before Dany and she manged to hatch Morning (interesting name for the “birth” of a dragon...)

Laena Velaryon (she loved flying more than most things)

Alysanne (loved flying, cried when she couldn’t anymore)

Rhaenys the Conqueror (like Laena, also loved flying more than anything)

Alyssa (the only one of Jaehaerys’ daughter successfully claim a dragon; as soon as she could, strapped her two sons on top of Meleys for a ride with her)

Saera, who would have claimed a dragon to escape the unfair and Amisogynist imprisonment her father enforced on her

Aerea, Rhaena’s daughter, who claimed Balerion to escape her mother and upset in her loss of title/heir position 

Nettles (who though not seemingly Valyrian in face, managed to get a dragon to trust her enough to bond with her)

This are the most emotionally-packed stories of the Valyrian human-dragon bond that, again, are also connected to the life cycles and regeneration of Targ dragons and Valyrian power. So it’s ironic for Alicent and the court to perceive and anticipate Rhaenyra’s kids not being able to bond with dragons at the cradle on account that their bio dad is not a dragonrider.

But I also think it’s funny how the that idea turned into a justification to see if a Targ royal child was a “true” Targaryen, trueborn or not (as some people think) by the time of Viserys I. "True" as in they have the makings of a Targ, or truly, truly their legitimacy.

If people hadn’t read Fire and Blood, they wouldn’t know that it’s actually very strange and new in the entire timeline of the Targaryen dynasty that children born from Targaryen men--trueborn or illegitimate--were expected to have a dragon egg beside them and have it hatch so the child can bond with the hatchling.

It was only a mere 3 generations after Aegon I conquered Westeros that this practice came to be, but the Targaryens have had many more generations of people mainly claiming their dragons way after they’re able to walk on their own. Until Rhaena did what she did. 

Including Aegon the Conqueror himself, who had to claim Balerion. Balerion, who was one of the dragons that was brought to Dragonstone many generations before Aegon the Conqueror was even born. 

And Viserys, her own husband, claimed/first rode Balerion in his 20s. Her own daughter, Helaena, claimed Dreamfyre, who once obeyed Rhaena (mentioned above), which means that she also did not cradle-bond with her and lived some time without being bonded to a dragon. So these people are also illegitimate, or should have their parentage questioned?

What does that mean for Alicent saying how she couldn’t understand how Rhaenyra’s first children could have had their eggs hatched in episode 6 of House of the Dragon and in Fire and Blood, when both her own husband and brother-in-law both claimed, rather than cradle-bonded with their dragons? What does it say about the entire court who doubted Jace, Luke, and Joff in Fire and Blood?

Cradle-bonding is a sign of a "blessing”. Yeah, sure. 

And I said children of Targaryen "men" earlier because the Westerosi has had a bad habit of assuming that the father is the more likely subject to pass on his physical or nonphysical traits to his children. Why wouldn't Rhaenyra be capable of passing on her dragonriding to her sons on her own merit? Why is it when Cersei had her children, the maesters automatically assumed that the Baratheon blood would give the kids darker features when the Lannisters also have repeatedly sired blondes in its own lineage? (No one truly knew that Cersei's kids weren't Roberts.)

Finally, with the cradle-bonding vs the longer Targ history of claiming, I find even more reason to call “inconsistency” at HotD: Daemon ignoring Rhaena & favoring Baela in episode 6. 

Why would he do that when he would intimately know the practices and habits about his own house, including the fact that Targaryens mainly claim their dragons? When he himself, his own brother and niece all claimed their dragons way after their time in the cradle? As I mentioned above, Rhaena Targayren bonded with Dreamfyre when she was 9. She also started riding her when she was 12. 

Daemon, a Targaryen, would have known all of this. 

We see him reading about Old Valyrian dragonriders in episode 6.

We hear him talk about brining the Targs to their “glory”, which tells us he has a certain knowledge concerning the progression of the dynasty--meaning he had to have looked back for comparison.

Nah, I call bullshit. The writers of this show are doing too much without ever actually reading the source material carefully, or caring to.

[shipcestuous]

SPOILERS for possible future plot lines in HOTD!

DON'T READ THIS if you don't want to know about characters and stories from Fire & Blood that the HOTD writers MIGHT integrate in the show!

...

...

Okay, now, with that HOPEFULLY out of the way... XD

There's been discourse in the HOTD fandom about the character of Nettles, who may or may not (I don't think anything substantial has been officially said about casting) appear in season 2. In the books, she is said to be a young lowborn girl with no apparent Valyrian ancestry who tames a dragon by using her wits rather than calling on any ancestral bond, fights on Team Black, and becomes Daemon's lover, drawing Rhaenyra's wrath on herself to the point Rhaenyra claims she seduced Daemon through witchcraft and tries to have her murdered.

The discourse, from what I have seen, is mainly about how much truth there is that story. Some take it at face value. Others think that Nettles couldn't have tamed a dragon without Valyrian ancestry and claim she's really Daemon's bastard daughter, so the story about her relationship with Daemon and Rhaenyra's jealousy is either a historical fake, a misinterpration of an innocent platonic father-daughter bond on Rhaenyra's part that led her to make a tragic mistake, or Mysaria or someone else purposefully whispering lies into Rhaenyra's ear to turn her against Daemon.

Most of it, of course, comes from Daemyra antis on one side and diehard Daemyra shippers on the other. Although it would be disingenuous to act like some in the "Nettles is Daemon's lover" camp don't genuinely want the unchanged storyline for representation (Nettles is already canonically described as dark-skinned in the book, unlike the Velaryons, and she's not only a fearless warrior but smart enough that she might have figured out on her own how Valyrians first approached dragons before coming up with blood magic, so "oh no, it only worked because she's a secret Targaryen, lol" would take away from that) and some in the "Nettles is Daemon's daughter" camp aren't just squicked out by their age gap in the book (I'm not sure how old show!Daemon is supposed to be at this point, but in the book he's like fifty while Nettles is seventeen).

That said... I'm a contrarian by nature, so even though I know that's never going to happen on the show, all this back and forth (especially when it gets aggressive on both sides) just makes me want a version of the story where "Nettles is Daemon's lover" and "Nettles is Daemon's daughter" are somehow both true at the same time. Partly because it would be kind of hilarious to spite both camps in one go, possibly while squicking out both those who watch a show about the Targaryens only to condemn any canonical incest AND those who make an exception for Daemyra but then turn around and condemn any fanon siblings or parent/child incest ship, and partly because I do actually feel it could be interesting from a narrative and characterization standpoint.

I've seen the picture of Daemon hugging his daughters after Laena's death and I really, really wish they had kept that scene, but without it actually being in the show, Daemon doesn't look an especially caring father to Baela and Rhaena. We know very little about their relationship, basically just that when they were children Rhaena felt Daemon favored Baela over her because Baela already had a dragon, that he agreed to Baela becoming Rhaenys' ward but kept Rhaena in Dragonstone with the rest of the family (because there are wild dragons and also Syrax laying eggs there? Because he couldn't bear to separate himself from both his daughters? Because there weren't any advantageous opportunities to have her fostered by an ally?), that Baela knew to contact him in case anything of political importance happened while she was in Driftmark, and that he agreed to betroth both of them to Rhaenyra's sons. So, what would it do to the relationship between all three of them if he found out he had another, illegitimate daughter? And that daughter tamed a dragon without having ever been taught anything about the Targaryens' history as dragon-riders or any of the command in High Valyrian? And he hit it off with her because of her reckless bravery and spent part of his time mentoring her and teaching her about those subjects? And then... he even fell in love with her, making her not just a daughter but something more? It would be even crueler than hooking up with Nettles while Rhaenyra's in the middle of a war to defend her birthright, imo... and tbh I just can't resist twisted, complicated, heartbreaking angst!

I also want to point out that there IS a third camp that wants Nettles just cut out of the series altogether and replaced with Rhaena for a "young black female character with an important connection to Daemon tames a dragon using her smarts" story, and I think that could also be an interesting variation from an incest shipper's perspective. Did Rhaena's fears as a child ease as she grew and matured or has she kept feeling the unfavorite compared to Baela all this time? Did gaining *counts* three stepbrothers and two half-brothers through Daemon's marraige with Rhaenyra make her feel more insecure and possibly overlooked? In that case, getting a dragon by showing off her cunning and then fighting alongside her father could make her feel more appreciated by him and also make them grow a lot closer... and doesn't that sound like an intriguing father/daughter plot? ;)

Lots of father/daughter possibilities! I wouldn't be surprised if they left her out altogether but if they don't, it should be pretty interesting, especially in fandom. Daughter or mistress?

I like your analysis of the possibilities with Daemon/Baela or Daemon/Rhaena!

[artnoonewants]

Poor delusional Viserys 😔

[chappysuey]

Dragonriders

[ophelieverse]

when my girl talks,you listen to her!

[kudriaken]

Daemon with daughters. I hope to see Rhaena and Baela more next season.

[princessofmarvel]

Petition for all team Black and team Green fans to not be at each other's throats this upcoming season, and instead, we all just root for our favorite war criminals in peace? And normalize liking characters from each team and just have a preference on teams? Because that sounds like a fun time to me, thank you 🫶

[helaenalyst]

hows it going in the riverlands daemon

[giallo4ver]

Yes.

[saltywinteradult]

House of the Dragon + "I could fix him"

Team Green (+ Viserys) edition / Team Black edition

[kacl-art]

Helaena mourning with Dreamfyre😭

Seeing as the show seems to be ignoring their bond, I wanted to draw them together😭

[gotham-at-nightfall]

House of the Dragon Playing Cards

The King and the Queen

The Cast-Aside Queens

The Queen's Right-Hand men

The Second Sons

Daughters of the Rogue Prince

The Innocent and the Guilty

The New Hands

The Warden of the North

By Dvincii

[artnoonewants]

Part two of this

Delusion runs in the family

[scentedmiracleobject]

Aemond learns that Daemon sent assassins after him

Aemond in the brothel: