Haelena Targaryen - Blog Posts

Im Till this day shocked that Rheanyra didn’t even feel bad about Aemond‘s Eye. I believe in, if Luce would apologise and maybe acted out a little Aemond and the rest wouldn’t hate them so much.

... she never made an effort... she only ever furthered herself from her siblings... she only made herself look like a threat, having it made clear viserys would always favor her, protecting her lies at the risk of others, after abandoning her mother when she needed her most, and used and lied to her, hurting her more than she already was from Viserys, for her own benefit (not to mention her manipulative father buried those thoughts deep in her mind while she was still a CHILD herself)... she had every reason to "hate" (fear) Rhaenyra and in her attempts to protect her children, extend that fear/hatred to them. even then, outside of Aemond (justifiably, considering she felt entitled to his eye and wanted to have him tortured) none of them even really hated her until the dance, at the very most, they felt resentful because their father loved her 10x more than he loved all 4 (including Daeron) of them combined, and at the very least, they felt nothing as she was never there, never mattered to their lives outside of court and politics.

this take is shit. Rhaenyra never cared. she never wanted her siblings in her life. she felt entitled to Aemond's eye, and you want to tell me she gave a shit, not even enough to spare her 10 year old brother, over an insult?

(and before you bring up her call for her siblings to come bend the knee, we know how she can kiss up and lie through her teeth in times of need, her words hold little backing. see it as truth if you want, but I can't trust it, not with how she's acted previously.)

THIS.

Imo blood and cheese could never have went down exactly like in the book anyways because luke's death ends up being an accident (as a result of them trying to make both teams come off as not as bad and violent as their book counterparts), in order to make team black not viciously evil (because we the audience know the circumstances of luke's death), they went with the approach of removing haelena choosing which son to kill like she does it the book. And tbh it makes blood and cheese in the show work well.

While I still don’t think it was done perfectly, the more I think about it, the more I think Blood & Cheese was done well. With no Maelor, the change to “which one is the boy” makes sense, and even Helaena offering up her necklace, which I really didn’t like at first, makes much more sense now that I think about it. Cheese(?)’s “does she look like a fucking prince to you” line and all their talk of sons makes it clear to Helaena that offering herself up is not going to do any good, and doing so might risk making them angry and just make them kill both children. So then of course she offers up her necklace, they have to be doing this for money and it’s the only thing that might appeal to them. Then, once they make it clear both kids are dying if she doesn’t tell them which one is Jaehaerys, she points to him. They know she’s telling the truth because she looks so guilty and horrified but she has no choice, at this point she can only save Jaehaera. Even her running out makes sense, being unable to watch the fate her son has been doomed to, saving who she can save and wandering around, not even being phased by Alicent and Criston because she’s so guilt-ridden and so traumatized and so stunned and so out of it that all she can do is collapse to the floor and say “they killed the boy.” Not even Jaehaerys’ name, they broke her so thoroughly that she can only speak like them. Okay maybe it was actually done well.