#hotd criticsm

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Collection of Race, the Medieval Ages, and the ASoIaF Franchise

🔗 LINKS, LINKS, LINKS!

Game of Thrones & Race  

(Guardian Article) “There are no black people on Game of Thrones’: why is fantasy TV so white?”

(Tor Article) “Game of Thrones’ Complex Relationship to Racism and Colonialism”

House of the Dragon & Race 

A) 

(Harper’s Bazaar Article) “Fantasy Has Always Been About Race”

Excerpt

But fantasy has always been about race. And medieval fantasy is not history, but a reproduction of history and its metaphors. The West cannot tell itself about itself without the inclusion of race. As a European invention emerging from colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, race is the story of Europe’s encounter with difference, and the West’s primary way of organizing the world. The racial hierarchies of our world get translated into fantasy races that reflect the measure of one’s humanity. Race is the dominant social system in The Lord of the Rings’ Middle-earth, and as the blueprint for “high fantasy” literature, its racial allegories are reproduced across the genre: In fantasy book series, role-playing games, and films written in its tradition, race is the social hierarchy and source of conflict; in Game of Thrones’ Westeros, race is more of a political geography. It’s even the first decision (race, gender, class) a player must make in creating a character for any campaign in the iconic Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games. In fantasy, race is not just part of world building. It is the world.

B)

(Cosmopolitan Article) “‘House of the Dragon’ Cast Black Actors Only to Toss Them Aside, Like I Knew It Would”

Excerpt

I didn’t have high expectations for diversity when watching HotD—I mean, it’s a TV show about dragons, and Black characters historically haven’t appeared outside slave or servant roles (Grey Worm and Missandei from the original Game of Thrones come to mind). So when Steve Toussaint was cast as Corlys Velaryon (aka the Sea Snake), I felt slightly apathetic. Game of Thrones had already fumbled its two Black characters, so I believed the prequel would do the same.

[...]

Nowhere in the first season does HotD mention the Blackness of its few Black characters. All we’re told is that House Velaryon has blood from Old Valyria, which means they are really close to the Targaryens and often marry each other to keep the bloodline “pure.” Nothing wrong with that, but since the Velaryons are Black, shouldn’t all Velaryons have Afrocentric features? The casting department didn’t think so, apparently. One of the main storylines in the first season is the denial that Rhaenyra Targaryen’s children are bastards even though they have white skin and loose curly black hair while their “father” is Laenor Velaryon, a white-haired Black man with dreads. The book Fire & Blood (which the show is adapted from) also follows this plot point. But the Velaryons aren’t Black in the book, meaning it’s somewhat believable or at the very least plausible that Rhaenyra’s children are Leanor’s. I know this is a fantasy show, but there’s something really cringe about (1) trying to pass three obviously white children off as Black and (2) making the one Black family on the show the center of a *checks notes* paternity scandal. Even if House of the Dragon were only following the book’s plot point—the question of the legitimacy of Rhaenyra’s children—the decision to cast House Velaryon and thus Laenor as Black means that race and racial connotations needed to be introduced as well. You shouldn’t cast a white character as a person of color and then ignore their racial identity.

I’m not saying the showrunners did a disservice to fans of color by trying to diversify. But they did checkmark casting by beginning and ending that effort with casting Toussaint as the Sea Snake. If the showrunners took real time to consider how color-conscious casting could alter the show, maybe Black viewers like myself wouldn’t be disappointed that the only Black family in the series has mostly not survived. There’s a scene in episode 4 where Laenor, Leana (the Sea Snake’s daughter), Corlys, and his wife Rhaenys are walking down a flight of stairs into a wedding scene. That three-second clip SCREAMED Black excellence. Watching it gave me the tiniest hope that maybe the showrunners had it together. But three episodes later, the majority of the Black characters had been killed, with only two Black Velaryons still on our screens: Baela and Rhaena, Corlys and Rhaenys’s two granddaughters.

And I get why the characters were killed off—Laena and Laenor don’t survive in the books, so why would they live on in the show? But the showrunners could have shown the Black Velaryons for more than 10ish scenes while also sticking to the source material. Instead of rushing to the main conflict of the Targaryen civil war, we could have seen the development of Laena and Daemon Targaryen’s relationship or Rhaenyra and Laenor’s struggles at King’s Landing. I’m just saying the show had options, k? They chose to cast House Velaryon as Black knowing Black fans like myself were excited to see Black fantasy representation onscreen, only for said representation to be sidelined in a span of three episodes. Like, damn. Can Black folks have anything? Maybe the showrunners will do better with their “diverse” representation in the upcoming seasons. Probably not. If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that fantasy series can have dragons, White Walkers, and dreamers who can see the future. But Black folks? That’s where they draw the line, apparently.

Other Articles about Black People/Territories in the Medieval World (c.400s - c.1400s)

The Table of Contents for the Public Medievalist’s “Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages” Series

Perfect Victims: 1096 and 2017

“Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages: Tearing Down the ‘Whites Only’ Medieval World”

“Uncovering the African Presence in Medieval Europe”

“A Brief History of a Terrible Idea: The ‘Dark Enlightenment’”

“Who were the African people living in Medieval and Tudor England?”

Finding Islamic Culture in a Christian Space

Introduction: Jews, Anti-Semitism, and the Middle Ages

“Ripping Anti-Semitism Out by its Roots”

A Tale of Two Europes: Jews in the Medieval World

Anti-Semitism Is Older Than You Think

Were Medieval People Racist?

Fascism and Chivalry in the Confederate Monuments of Richmond

Guardians of White Innocence

Is “Race” Real?

“Race” in the Trenches: Anglo-Saxons, Ethnicity, and the Misuse of the Medieval Past

A Vile Love Affair: Right Wing Nationalism and the Middle Ages

Recovering a “Lost” Medieval Africa: Interview with Chapurukha Kusimba, part I

Race: the Original Sin of the Fantasy Genre

Race in A Song of Ice and Fire: Medievalism Posing as Authenticity

Game of Thrones’ Racism Problem

Improving Dungeons and Dragons: Racism and the “Barbarian”

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[WAS PART OF A PREVIOUS REBLOG]

The premise/theme of House of the Dragon is that men hurt women and their relationships with each other. A prime implication from how they portrayed this theme is that men also are the definitive center of those women’s motivations.

The women just act to please or passively negotiate with the men, unless it concerns their female friends (that’s the only cause for resistance). 

Woman against man is the unavoidable, naturalized battle of the sexes, with culture forcing women to become mere puppets for the men in their lives, unable to form much complex ideas or devote themselves to their own ambitions and/or desires--or even have those that are not in some way more eminent for their male relatives/peers/children.

Women always get the short end of the stick, basically. And that female friendships become the default for the only real pushback against those patriarchal oppressions. But even those friendships are too vulnerable to dissolution under the strain of the ties women have to their male relatives and loved ones.  

But, there is also always resistance and “hard” negotiation as well as pleadings against culture even within the popular culture and amongst its most powerful rules. 

A)

This show makes stark contrast between Alicent and Rhaenyra from episode 1, which could have been fine if we didn’t just have these two giving the only richer displays of experiences women could have living in Westeros. It’s not just about noble women, after all (but more on that below).

Premise again: Women in the show are eternal victims of men and their ambition, and they can never hope to truly stop men from messing things up because they were never given the political power, nor social respect, to do so. Therefore, they--like Alicent--usually do not have enough self confidence or faith in themselves to wield whatever authority or power they do receive, customary or not, effectively.

However, Daenerys of AGoT/GoT even looked at Aegon’s prophecy or the prophecy of the “Prince” with one strain of power for herself as well as power to rule graciously for the better future of her prospective subjects. Dany got a whole arc of inner struggle from just having the one brother in exile, while both Rhaenyra and Alicent should have a whole gaggle of courtiers as well as children, followers, etc to have conflict with, as well as each other. And have us see how they, alone whether surrounded or actually alone, try to make sense of their positions.

The prophecy was never mentioned in Fire and Blood. The HotD writers and some in the fandom have used the argument that Maester Gyldayn, Septon Eustace, Mushroom, etc. all would never had access to such information, thus freeing up ther possibility of such prophecy actually being passed down from ruler to heir since his death. 

I think that that would have been a plausible reason for mentioning the prophecy here in the show, but using the prophecy this early and in a way that actually shapes Rhaenyra into giving motive for many of her power-keeping actions (refusing Criston, trying to keep peace despite Daemon, etc.) morphs her character into one with little decision-making apart from this prophecy and Viserys’ approval, which is cheap storytelling. 

The prophecy, as some in the fandom have interpreted it, became the overarching spiritual force that determines everything going on to the characters...meanwhile A Song of Ice and Fire suggests the authority and power of magic and prophecy as less influential than people have advertised or believed while also still leaving open the door of magic’s influence. There was a sense that nothing makes sense and yet the choices the characters made were “meant” to happen because that is what they chose in responses to several debasements, hypocrisies, etc. 

Much of the books strive to show how prophecies can’t really be taken too literally or even be trusted, and that it is actually because of humans’ desires for power, clarity, love, money, etc. that shape how they perceive their rights and access to the objects of their desires. So to see HotD make Aegon’s prophecy the objective moral guide and backbone of HotD and the Targaryen house’s main motivator comes across as flat and ridiculous to me.

It also still doesn’t explain the scotch-taping the writers are doing by using this as a justification/understanding of Daenerys’ madness and downfall in the last season of GoT.

What could have made this show distinct from GoT and better than what it is right now are these things that @jeynearrynofthevale lists out:

- Better pacing with less time jumps. End season 1 with Aemond claiming Vhagar and Luke cutting out his eye. This is a great way to demonstrate how the previous generation has fundamentally influenced their children and that there’s no going back. It establishes that conflict is coming and the sides are becoming more equal in terms of man power. And by having Viserys enforce no punishment while Rhaenyra demands Aemond be tortured, we see why Alicent fears for her children’s lives if Rhaenyra is queen.

- Spend way more time on court politics and the buildup of the dance. Show why the two sides are falling the way they do and establish the core issues at play. Spend some more time establishing the characters before time jumps. Maybe give Rhaenyra motivation for ruling in terms of what she wants to do. Have her and Alicent navigate around each other in court.

- Take some time to build lore and explain to the general audience what’s going on with the dragons. Maybe have a scene of Laena claiming Vhagar. Show what claiming a dragon means and talk about who has what dragon.

- Give some focus to court beyond the Targaryens. What do other lords and ladies there think? Do people still believe rhaenyra should be heiress? Who wants a marriage alliance with Joffrey? Who’s angling for court positions? What does the court actually think of Viserys?

- And even more drastically, show a little more of the smallfolk. They play a big role later on and having one or two smallfolk characters we occasionally see and interact with would make the world more rich.

In other words, where are the moments where Alicent and Rhaenyra really duke it out, where Jaecaerys and Luke and Joffery both face the court’s disdain for them and how the conflict between them and the green children develop, how Viserys excerbated all this in multiple incidents where he favored Rhaneyra, portraysls of how he treated and spoke to her versus Aegon, Aemond, Daeron, and Helaena and his different grandkids, how the ladies attending Alicent and Rhaenyra talked about the other repsective lady and spoke to their own, how Daemon, Corlys, Rhaenys, the Blackwoods and Darkllyns looked at King’s Landing and court life and Rhaneyra in private. What do the smallfolk think before, after, and away from the play of episode 4? How much do dragons and their bonds with humans shape those humans? How do the children all feel about their identity? 

You really didn’t need to make Aegon’s prophecy the floating puppeteer of the narrative.

Why is all this left more to the viewer to dream about? Shouldn’t this show fill in holes rather than go the way of its originator (F&B) and answer questions with enough actual material to back it up? Be similar to so many Chinese historical dramas in the level of detail and many smaller incidents that build up into major conflicts?

For me, there is a concerning lack of creativity in HotD, or a lot of wasted potential that has come to be boiled down to just “Team Rhaenyra” vs “Team Alicent”, or “Team Women-Who-Never-Would-Have-Won”. Like, they felt that their political-philosophical point was so powerful in its obviousness that it would carry the entire emotional weight for the entirety of the show without actually creating paradoxes and nuances of desire, psychosocial development, responses to environment and pressures apart from the two main women. (Viserys doesn’t even count because he’s justified in the wrong place.) A lot of fanfiction does all this much better than the actual show, by just showing what was listed above and thus giving us a rich worlds of different people’s inner and outer selves.

In real life, men can manipulate women without those women just reacting to those manipulations or going along with it 75% of the time, even with the lack of faith in themselves. The asker wasn’t protesting against the men manipulating, but that that is all what the show is doing. 

Not only does this TV depiction make the women look like “pawns” with no agency, it makes the men look like 2D villains with nothing more to them but careless, blind ambition or flailing incompetence with nothing to accompany those things.

This is not to say that men and boys are not systematically allowed to be violent towards women and girls. I’m saying that like Criston, we could have gotten more Otto, Daemon, Viserys, maybe Jaehaerys (a scene with him remebering Maegor), a little more of Rhea Royce (yes she is a woman, but Fire and Blood spoke more of her than did that one scene), more of Aemond and those siblings’ years between episode 5-6, 6-7,....

We need origins for the events we already saw (again, refer to @jeynearrynofthevale‘s post). There is no richness to it other than: men hurt women, and men always are the ones to win a competition that women never win, because men make victims out of women. We’ve been done that. So why are we accepting it so simply now in HotD?

You can have a television show that still gives more complexity than “I want to make my father/sons respect/guide me even though I love my best friend”. As you navigate life, there are things happening around you and your court circle that will also shape your own little bubble. Show those things, and you have yourself an actual world that feels real. Where are the other, external stakes that press onto the more personal ones, even informing them? Where are these lords who will oppose Rhaneyra and what do they think of Aegon (II), of Aemond? What do lords and peasants feel about Viserys, Otto, Rhaenyra and Alicent and their kids aside from that differently-contexted play in episode 4? King’s Landing is not all of Westeros. Television shows do not have to be so simple as that, as the first 4 seasons of GoT showed us.

There could have been more interior life from not only Rhaenyra and Alicent more persons, and they would have been much more than people meant to represent Man vs Woman. But since that philosophy is overriding the story, the story suffers. The first episode should be the launching pad, not the heft or the spectacle of the entire season.

And because the show doesn’t move on from that simplistic idea, we instead have the writers creating so many visual mirroring scenes for us to gush over: Rhaneyra/Daemon/Otto on the bridge to Dragonstone. 

B)

We have to remember that the original canon doesn’t even have these women as the same age (Alicent married Viserys when she was 18 and when Rhaneyra was 9). They also were never bosom pals.

The TV writers are telling a very particular story with a different emotional and psychological setting using the same characters, which means that the events that do match the events (or a version of them) in the book are used for the new premise. Which means they have a particular interpretation to serve the master reimagining of the original narrative.

House of the Dragon is fanfiction, not an adaptation.

Changing the ages and the initial relationships of the two women is a change made specifically so that they can express that men-hurt-women-and-female friendships-suffer-from-patriarchy premise.

From the first 4 episodes alone, we have already gotten to see how different and alike the Westerosi feudal patriarchy has treated Alicent vs Rhaenyra. Arguably, if that is all what they were going to show us, we could have just had the first 5 and be done with the show entirely. 

We’re encouraged to pit Alicent and Rhaenyra against each other or make comparisons between them from episode one because they are the only two young girls shown, interacting with each other and standing as contrast to their parents’ vulnerabilities and demands of them. Condal has gone on to say that Alicent is like a “Trumper” and Rhaneyra is “punk princess”; the first follows the rules while the other is a lot more expressive and rebellious in thought and action. These are there personalities/characterizations--they are foils to each other.

In the show and by looking at the hierarchal structure of the court, Alicent doesn’t have the same sort of power that Rhaenyra or Rhaneys have: her lineage is not Valyrian/Targaryen, she doesn’t ride a dragon, she’s not from one of the Great Westerosi houses, she’s not the daughter of the eldest living man/head of house leader/heir, she was never ever even considered for heir for the throne because of her heritage. She came into the scene on her father’s orders and she will never wield power officially in her own right, and there is no expectancy for that sort of power in her. So Alicent seems more vulnerable and stifled than the two mentioned. The show also makes it apparent Alicent goes through mid-to-severe anxiety, picking at her fingers (and this is never really shown again, or put into focus?). 

Rhaenyra, by contrast, seems a lot more put-together even when she’s down in Flea Bottom with Daemon. Rhaneyra doesn’t appear to have much of anxiety expect the trembling in her voice when facing Alicent and Viserys. Yet we do see how she doesn’t want to marry or birth children from the fear of dying in childbirth, losing what power she has while birthing, or having even more men dictate her mobility, after having watched Alicent and Aemma go through it. She also doesn’t ask for the throne nor its responsibility and feels the undue pressure to measure up tot he standards being the heir/her father’s esteem of her requires.

(Meanwhile, canonically, Rhaenyra played with her many, many rings whenever she was nervous or otherwise troubled while Alicent had no such anxious markers.)

We got all of this after the 4th episode. 

The 5th was the culmination and the 6th was an unfair interruption to the development of the toxicity of the relationship between the blacks and the greens, because stuff like how Viserys always favors Rhaneyra and passes over his sons’ little achievements could have been shown. But they weren’t. Which makes Alicent look more acting out than Rhaneyra does by episode 6. We also don’t really know if Alicent made some snide remarks or actively tried to undermine Rhaenyra in court games, and vice versa. Did either women try to promote themselves and their kids in a medieval competition of PR, going around and showing themselves to the peasants or going to almshouses to publicly donating food or money? Controlling rumors? We’ll never know, but it seems like most of the drama and contention happened only within the small court at the Red Keep, which is really (socially) unrealistic and shallow. We’re just launched right into the “final” break of episode 7, where Alicent loses it and tries to attack Lucerys/Rhaneyra.

What did episodes 8-10 really do other than close a chapter that was never really explored in the first place? Eight had us look at one conflict between the greens and blacks that involved other players who didn’t get their time to shine other than in this episode. Nine and Ten both ushered us into the next season with the reactions to the real center of this story: Viserys and the actions they take to seize power for themselves without hurting each other.

And to make matters worse, the lack of other characters or even ladies-in-waiting (as opposed to only servants) fails to really show women in Westerosi court life, which also included septas (Westerosi nuns) who were sometimes-enlisted as conduct-keepers for unmarried noble/royal women...remember Margarey and Cersei?. 

We are only given two main girls, to the point where they are presented as the only women around, making their loneliness unshown and “proven”. Why not show Alicent show some conflict over whether or not she should allow a random noble girl try to ingratiate herself with her? Try and decide that it’s better to not risk living with the m clearly just being around her, paying compliments, throwing disses at Rhaenyra, etc? Can we see how what happened to Alicent is happening with those girls, maybe a few of them being pushed into “befriending” her through their dads and some others doing it because they genuinely just want the power of being associated with the queen?  Where are Alicent’s temptations? And same for Rhaenyra as well? Where are the creepy dudes, old and young? We got Joffrey and Sansa, how they interacted as Arya rolled her eyes.

What about Laena Velaryon, who canonically becomes really close with Rhaenyra after she and Daemon marry?! Who actually seems to have developed a romantic relationship with her?!

But of course, it’s only going to be about Rhaneyra vs Alicent, and their relationship right? Talk about lesbianism, I mean....why did they sacrifice that?

You could have even left in the Alicent and Rhaenyra bond while continuing strong homosocial relationships between women in Laena and Rhaneyra. Show Rhaenyra in that context into her adulthood. But they were so focused on making Daemon look even more of a bad partner by having him ignore Laena's desire to go back to Driftmark. Meanwhile, on Fire and Blood, they definitely go back to Driftmark before Laena even goes into labor.

C)

We–the book readers and those who wanted things spoiled for themselves– already know the end of the Dance. And when it comes to stories we already know the ending of, there are still ways to make the narrative interesting without making them full on, dry, philosophical treatises. This is a fantasy world, so where is the world?

And since the intimate events of the Dance recorded in Fire and Blood are 

built from many unreliable sources (with other details still definitely reliably told) 

some events and details can be interpreted in many different ways according to how the reader looks at even one event, fanfiction writers, TV adaption writers and everyone in between can weave those events together in myriad different ways as long as they remain emotionally and logically consistent

We could have had Rhaenyra be both a spoiled girl who still was very lonely (having just lost her mom), looking to Alicent for a new mother figure but eventually seeing her as someone actively trying to take Viserys away after being named heir, maybe building insecurities as Alicent and her ladies continuously make comments and whispers about how she conducts herself in “unladylike” ways; we can have Alicent pushed into a marriage with Viserys by her father after already conditioned into believing men should be the ones determining values, or we have Alicent look at Rhaenyra as someone who is in the way of her practicing her Queenly power (whatever is left of the power she feels she can express); we could have Viserys either actually be in love with Alicent or marry her because she was available and older than the 12 year old Laena Velaryon. We could have had a combo of all of these things and more. Did Daemon ever truly love Laena, and how could we envision a world where he did? What was the quality of his care for her, if he did have it? Where are the scenes of Daemon spending time in Flea Bottom aside from the bigger parties with his gold cloaks, his having sex with Mysaria?

The possibilities are endless because Fire and Blood’s record of the Dance leaves so much to analyze and unpack while also leaving room for interpretation.

D)

Yes, it is true that these characters are not real people and that fiction/fantasy is creating new stories. Those new stories, however, also come from “old knowledge”-- legends, myth, etc. from real human philosophy, religion, and culture so that the creator may make something make a new “sense”, create something new to understand about a topic(s) or human conditions through the exploration of those themes and thus encourage more critical speculation. Entertainment, fiction and storytelling is never without study of some level or kind as well. It’s a paradox.

We cannot totally separate fantasy from its real world inspirations because that is where you build then stakes/conflicts for the characters. They are  the origins and inspiration for the meaning the writer/storyteller creators for themselves in their stories, which we as readers then feel, interpret and observe. 

And when engaging in media of any sort, we are always interpreting. Observing can’t be far from that. The level of interpretation, how deep you’re willing to keep track of patterns of meaning in a work, however is what separates actual study from “sensing” and enjoying. 

Which is not bad, but I think that’ it’s important to be aware of that. Because....

 The entire A Song of Ice and Fire world is based on real-life history and politics, especially Westeros–this continent almost 100% copying medieval Europe’s sociopolitical/cultural landscape and patterns. Even though there are polytheistic lords, the land also has a faith that resembles Catholicism’s histori-political structure (pope and his influence) and some doctrine/principles such as the Holy Trinity. Chivalric honor is a big part of Westerosi culture, as well as weirwood trees people pray to. And for the most part, HotD/the Dance is set more in the Faith of the Seven’s cultural influence than it is the old gods’ just by location alone. 

Alicent’s self control and “settling” after episode 7 is thematically supposed to be her publicly atoning and apologizing for not acting queenly, and to be a queen is to act within the confines of a woman culturally tasked with being the calm and submissive checker of the king and to be model women (making sure he acts within the confines of chivalric honor…on paper). To be models of piety and chastity. While, of course, birthing his heirs.

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So I think am finally able to parse through that one Larys and Alicent scene the best I can. I've literally been trying to see why I felt Larys scene in episode 9 was still strange. (Couldn't find the appropriate gif)

The show runners or the writers, maybe both IDK, thought that it would be good to highlight Alicent's conditioned resignation to men through Larys' disability. The logic is that since Larys has been defined by his "clubfoot" all his life and has probably been constantly compared to his older brother, Harwin, for most of their lives, he also is fixated on how his condition precludes him from enjoying the privileged respect and regard that the average Westerosi nobleman depends on for a huge chunk of their identity. So he looks to someone of a higher station than his to attain political power, inherit the Strong seat, and revel in that power. Alicent was able to get rid of Lyonel Strong and get Otto back through Larys (even though she didn't want an assassination) so to prevent the disclosure of her involvement in that ordeal and to take advantage of his "loyalty", she allows Larys to be her supporter. Therefore, she's bound to him and his demands for that sake of her reputation and her children's advantage. Larys then looks to debasing her through her "perfect" feet, all the more perfect because of her higher position.

So that scene was meant to continue, suggest, and reveal how deeply twisted Larys is by the disgust and discrimination of disabled people in Westeros (regardless of station) and one path the disabled take to gain back power, but actually to use that for the sake of showing how Alicent is bound to those who decide to support her and their own designs. How vulnerable and, again, conditioned she is. The scene reminded me of how some men or misogynists will take a picture of a particular publicly-favored woman or a woman in power and place that in pornographic, abusive imagery where the man is the abuser.

I suppose that the reason why many people feel that this scene was abelist is because that "sickness" and selfishness Larys has is can't be understood without his disability. That maybe the writers are showing a carelessness towards disabled people by presenting the Larys-Alicent relationship too simply? This could be mostly due to the time jumps excluding any more instances where we could see Larys by himself and how he thinks more intimately? Because in that scene he seems much less human than Alicent did and more a piece to show her acquiescence after her attacking the blacks in episode 7.

He also has never been in a scene alone with Harwin or Lyonel, only an accompanying character. I think of the episode 5 where he serves to let us know why Alicent wearing green is telling of the major shift in her mindset. And how he approaches her with one of the first seeds of doubt against Rhaenyra and Viserys. We never see how he interacts with his family, so we're led to see Harwin as only a loving father and protector to Rhaenyra, a less complex person also easier to let go of.

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still very confused

Alicent as a character that is supposed to be emotionally conditioned into depending on her father's counsel and other men's authority to have some sort of validation and political self defense. She's supposed to be unable to make decisions or take action without looking to Otto and others.

But Alicent has been trying to reveal Rhaenyra's infidelity and the illegitimacy of her son's for years, which would have resulted in her ruin as well as her children's. They could have even died, been executed or forever exiled. I don't see how this is forgiveable? Or how it can ever be ignored?

Should we ask mother's, or just caregivers and guardians of any gender, how they feel about this? Would they be so willing to forgive and even be friends again, as Hess and Condal assert?

In episode 6, we see her strongly dismiss Viserys (justifiably, regarding how stressed out at Viserys' dismissals) when he tries to make Rhaenyra's offer to marry Jaecaerys to Helaena. Once again insisting on his bastardry, how makes him unfit for her daughter. How unfit and wrong the boys very being is. For a noblewoman like her, it isn't difficult to gone that having a bastard allowed to go around court and inheriting a position over trueborns when she did the "right thing" has to be humiliating.

In episode 8, we're made to understand that she's doing a public atonement for episode 7's debacle by dressing more modestly in public, redecorating the Keep with more Seven stuff and taking down erotic tapestries for a more modest living space. (But we don't get to really see the bareness or how dull everything is, or actual Seven decor?) She makes her own power move by making Rhaenyra and Daemon go to the Keep to bid for Lucerys getting the Driftmark seat. And she goes along with Otto and Vaemond despite remembering Rhaenyra as her one and only friend and their childhood together. Why? Because she thinks that this will finally disempower a too powerful Rhaenyra, who again has been, in her eyes, flouting too many of the rules and is a danger to her own kids.

So why is it that she suddenly becomes more open to being friends again with Rhaneyra after Viserys reveals his decay? Nothing has changed: Rhaenyra is still a danger by the reason above an Alicent has been trying to put Rhaenyra's kids in danger for her own. All these kids, on both sides, are still potential devices for other lords' ambitions. And Viserys is still suppressing those things that have plagued Alicent for years when he does this. So why is she so willing to make peace? Peace is impossible at this point.

At one moment, Alicent is all gungho, let's destroy Rhaenyra, but she also doesn't seem to grasp that she would be ruining Rhaenyra and the boys when she says that she doesn't want to kill her. And the next she wants to stop a moving freight train and accept peace, and the writers AUS that she wants to restart their friendship, that it's still possible after all of that?

All of this is not the behavior of a reasoning or stable person. It's more than stress and anxiety, is she is living in a delusion or she is two different people. Or it feels rather like the writers are doing a great disservice to their own tweaked/"original" character by installing such nonsense into her psyche.