#esp bc in the book they have sex before they're married

[agathabridgerton]

colin 🤝 anthony: making an heir in s3

[lemonhemlock]

Thoughts on rhaencient?

and

Thoughts on rhaencient

and

What are ur thoughts on rhaenyra and alicents relationship?

i hear your grievances and i have come to address them!

what can i say, anons. this was one of the changes i really liked from the books. by making alicent rhaenyra's age, they removed the frankly overdone evil stepmother trope. or, rather, by making them childhood companions, they subverted it in an unexpected way. it's really "shut up or i'll fuck ur dad" only with extra layers of tragedy.

i thought their dynamic was really well done actually? i loved how they were framed. alicent helping rhaenyra dress before her ceremonial investiture. the twin faces of sorrow when viserys announces he will marry alicent in the small council room. the deleted scenes of rhaenyra helping alicent in her wedding dress. the hand-holding after the tapestries farce! the "alicent, your grace, sister"!!!! i was obsessed with THE GIRLS in the first half of the show!

i've noticed that the gay subtext really flies over a lot of people's heads & i think it's bc it's more socially-acceptable for girls to display physical affection towards each other than it is for men. so it's easier for viewers to resort to the traditional reading that "they're just gal pals". i was v disappointed with some male asoiaf reviewers i've watched since so many elements that had to do with womanhood were completely invisible to them. it was so jarring. but there was this permeating sense of YEARNING and melancholic tension that emanated out of these two, like you could sense they were meant to be soulmates

i think it's fair to say that rhaenyra is probably a bisexual woman (esp if we also take into account her dalliance with laena in the books), as she seems to also be very comfortable within relationships with men. but, for alicent, i don't really think she knows what she is. that exploration of self was denied to her and her feelings for rhaenyra were misdirected the moment she was forced to have children & fear for their lives. there's also this little-discussed facet of alicent as a queer woman shoved inside a very traditional female matronly role from a very early age. coerced into having old man sex with her decaying husband, impregnated against her will, just very generally developing a noxious relationship with sex. whereas rhaenyra is afforded the opportunity of reveling in romantic love and inhabits the role of motherhood from a much calmer, more balanced perspective

i've already spoken about the symbolism of The Page in the final third of this post, but alicent & rhaenyra are such representatives of their houses' respective ideologies: soft power & diplomacy vs conquest & claiming. alicent wants to tame rhaenyra. rhaenyra wants to ravish alicent. they could have MAYBE balanced each other out in a utopic world where they would have just been allowed to BE & it's so jarring to see how they're torn apart by gross old men who barter with women's bodies and convince themselves they are doing what's right for them & their families. but ofc it's also The System TM as a whole at fault here. no one wins, no one is happy, no one is safe under patriarchal feudalism.

the breakdown of their relationship doesn't happen overnight, it's a ruin dismantled brick by brick by them, their fathers, the society that has no place for them to explore their bond, the bankruptcy of empathy, the failure of trust, but still they cling onto each other whenever they are rewarded a moment of respite!