— House Of The Dragon S2 Appreciation Week Day 6 — dynamic / Aegon & Aemond + Ao3 Tags

jaehaera important, maelor important, jaehaerys important, helaena beloved by the smallfolk, aegon the father, all confirmed by the writer himself on aegon’s birthday

Lol, Rhaenra saying "the horrors I have just loosened cannot be for a crown alone" is the definitive proof that HOTD is NOT an adaptation of Fire & Blood. It's just a published fanfic.

This is not even a case of the show writers changing some major things and having different interpretations of the source material. No. They have literally invented a whole new story.

The ENTIRE point of Fire & Blood was about two royal brats willing to unleash horrors upon the smallfolk to win the Iron Throne. Yes, part of it was about a woman being denied power because she's a woman, but ultimately she is still an entitled, arrogant royal who is willing to let thousands of innocent people suffer just to get back what's hers.

Fire & Blood is an anti-war and anti-monarchy story. But now it's a story about a good, righteous queen who was unfairly betrayed and is forced to go to war to save the realm from itself and boohoo she's gonna get unfairly betrayed by the smallfolk too!!! 😃😃😃

The story went from "royals from both genders will sacrifice the smallfolk for their own benefit" to "a good female royal will sacrifice herself to save the stupid and ungrateful smallfolk who don't deserve her" 🫠🫠🫠

I bet GRRM is shaking his head and gritting his teeth now.

I already pity Tom for what nonsense they're going to make him do tbh.

He was already so uncomfortable with the lines he was given about his genitals gone, lines he BTW was informed of in front of everyone without warning , that I cannot imagine how horrible he will feel if they keep this bullshit going.

I find it funny that Condal builds the whole Aegon's character around Mushroom's rumors from the book. Rape? In the book, the closest thing to this episode is the story about a 12-year-old girl who allegedly gave Aegon a blowjob, according to Mushroom of course. Children fighting pits? This was also information from Mushroom. Aegon's inability to have children due to injury? Well, Aegon was going to marry again and said that he'd have strong heirs, which means that he himself was quite confident in his ability to fulfill marital duties. So who said his cock didn't work? Mushroom! If this goes on, in the third season we'll see an adaptation of Mushroom's rumors about Aegon forcing the servants to have sex and watching them. You can start getting ready.

prince regent aemond targaryen you will always be famous

🗣️ every word that came out of alicent's mouth in s2 in regards to aemond and aegon is bad writing. she condemns aegon to public death and aemond to death in battle because she believes - and the writers believe - and we are meant to believe - that they deserve to die, that they are both so irredeemable and fundamentally worthless as human beings because of their crimes (many of which they committed by c&h's own creative choice) that their continued existence is a shameful thorn in alicent's side. the only one she cares about now is helaena because of her "innocence." to have them wiped from existence would be a sort of cleansing for alicent and a reasonable price to pay for her freedom and the end of the war.

like.... in what world??? how am i supposed to buy that aegon and aemond are any worse than daemon?? than viserys? but only the men who support rhaenyra get redemption arcs, even when those redemption arcs do nothing to address the rot in their characters. daemon's most problematic trait isn't that he coveted his wife's throne. it's that he's a misogynist who was physically violent with said wife after he groomed her as a child in retaliation for a conflict with his brother (and i happen to like the guy!!!). it's that he's dismissive of women in general, including laena and his daughters, and was downright nasty to rhea for the entirety of their marriage until he onscreen!murdered her. and okay, some of these, like aemond and aegon's, are fanon crimes, but none of this is ever brought up, none of this is addressed in any meaningful way, it's okay because he bends the knee to rhaenyra and builds her an army and swears to never leave her. redemption. he is a man cleansed of his sins and we must accept him as such.

but aegon and aemond? who are much younger than him? were written off by the narrative long ago. it doesn't matter that aegon got a few sympathetic scenes this season; the fact that they made his mother offer up his life to rhaenyra (and that the scene approves of her decision by framing her as finally free underneath an open sky, with the belief that it's just her and helaena now) tells us everything we need to know.

Throw back to season 2 episode 1 when I fucking called that the show runners framed it as comedic but people thought that ‘nooo they wouldn’t do that, there’s nothing funny about dead kids’ well lookie here! They wanted it to be comedic despite the tragedy.

Vindication is sweet but knowing this was their intentions puts a sour taste in my mouth.

Honestly, I'm DEVASTATED they've completely cut Nettles and are doing this whole Rhaena x Sheepstealer thing.

Not just because that means we will most likely never see Morning but because Nettles was such an important part of the story. Not just because of the battles she fought but because of her crucial role in Daemon and Aemonds battle and deaths.

Believe what you want, whether she was Daemon's lover or bastard daughter, it was Rhaenyra growing so paranoid after the two dragonseeds changed sides and ordering the ASSASSINATION of that young woman that pushed Daemon to go on that su*cide mission after Aemond.

With Nettles needing to flee and Daemon realising Rhaenyra doesn't trust him anymore and is willing to go after him/his lover/his daughter, he was willing to sacrifice himself and his dragon while bringing down Aemond & Vhagar.

Had it not been for that, the whole story would have been totally different. Perhaps the war would have raged on for far longer as well.

At this point it feels like they won't even do Rhaenyra's paranoia arch and her demise. That they won't have her order Addams arrest, imprison Corlys, order the assassination of Nettles, etc.

It feels like they've turned her into an empowered, always rational, never doing any wrong feminist-icon while her book version was SO much different.

That's what I liked so much about the books and the entire GoT/HotD universe; that there are no good people, only bad people and worse ones.

"Choose your favourite war criminal" type of stuff. That's totally missing from this show, in my opinion. It's all too black and white. It's almost... boring at this point.

At this point, I hold little hope for the rest of this show to get much better. Even George has (indirectly) spoken out against this change.

People like "he should have dealt with this behind closed doors and just said this directly to HBO and Ryan Condal" y'all really think he didn't and somehow this is the first time they're hearing all of this? He tried telling them his perspective and they said okay go away old man we know how to make and sell TV. This blog post was his last resort to try to influence the adaptation of his work and that is something that we should be critical of Max for, not GRRM. A multi-million dollar corporation is taking control of an author's life work and destroying its integrity and reputation for the second time now, and the execs and writers don't really care what he has been saying behind closed doors and in meetings. The bad writing this season is obvious evidence of GRRM's lack of input on the process.

"[aegon and aemond] need each other in their own way. they have a weird love for each other. both of them would stab each other in the back just for self-gain"

— tom glynn-carney

watching the leaks like: