#it /would/ be targnation who have no problem hyperbolizing aegon's evils

[lemonhemlock]

What themes George used with Rhaenyra and Aegon in the book?

the main theme for both of them, like in most of FB, is kingship, so what makes a "good" king/queen, what is power in the first place, how do you receive it, how to wield it etc. add to that the theme of hubris - house targaryen cannibalizing itself and sowing the seeds for its future destruction. and, also, the theme that follows through the entirety of the series - corruption - power as a means to its own ends, not for the betterment of society - “why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?”

when asked the question put to shireen, "who would you prefer, aegon or rhaenyra?", you should be going "oh, well, on the one hand this, on the other hand that" and it should lead to a debate on political structures and how societies are organized and how laws are enacted in society and what is the nature of law anyway etc. instead the show turned it into "rhaenyra obviously bc aegon is a literal danger to society".

so when people say that aegon should be even darker bc this is game of thrones and everyone is mean and dark and awful so stop being a crybaby about it, like, ok, but there is a limit as to how far you can push this without sacrificing the balance of this story.

bc this is not the kind of story in which maegor reborn kills saint rhaenyra and does her this great injustice of erasing her queenship from the history books. not that it's a moralistic children's tale either, but, if the lopsidedness between them would have skewed so much in rhaenyra's favour, she would have received a more heroic death or died on her own terms at least