☆ fire & blood [book] ☆ & ☆ house of the dragon [tv show] ☆
i've only skimmed alicent-relevant portions of f&b, but i really like the approach the hotd showrunners have taken with the show being the in-universe reality to f&b as essentially an in-universe history. it's incredibly complementary to alicent's narrative as a woman enduring in a patriarchal society.
[☆ Posted: Jan. 25, 2023.]
she makes me insane.
alicent hightower is a character that shouldn't be. she is the second coming of theon greyjoy, something i once thought impossible. and yet, we live in a world where the impossible has become possible for there is alicent hightower.
but, first, you must understand my history with this franchise. i got big into the game of thrones tv show back when its second season was airing. it was a good show! i met my fictional love of loves there, my beloved fuck-up boy, my much-adored son: theon greyjoy. i'll save rambling about why i love this mess called theon for his own section because this is for alicent, his impossible successor. the point is that i was successfully bought in by game of thrones, and it had earned my good faith for a time.
then i stopped watching partway into season 4 when a book scene was adapted as much more noncon than its original dubcon. in isolation, that would have been annoying, but fine…it's fine. but, i think basically everyone knows that game of thrones can be a tad questionable in how it depicts sexual assault. it took what the book series had and amplified it to the extent that i got sick of it, and the way sansa was shoved into theon's plotline and subjected to sexual assault was what ensured i would never watch the show again. at best, i kept up news on if my favorites (theon, sansa, and cersei) were alive and gawked at how steep the decline in writing quality was.
i really had no intent of watching any got spinoff show. game of thrones burned me on the way out, and i was glad i had already shut the door on the trash fire that became its final season. then a very good friend said she checked out house of the dragon and that it was a step above what got concluded its run as. not as good as the show began, but definitely better than how it ended. the incest seemed spicy enough, and this friend was curious if alicent was my type of character bait.
oh. oh, how disgustingly right she was.
by far the funniest thing about hotd, beyond its utterly bonkers pacing, is that the incest ultimately bored me and i didn't care when the initially intriguing uncle/niece couple got married. yeah, that's nice. too bad the show speedran from the death of laena to rhaenyra kissing her creepy uncle-husband. i just did not care, though the daemon and rhaenyra relationship is decently interesting from the angle of daemon having been obsessively fixated on his late brother (and rhaenyra's father) to the point that he views rhaenyra as an extension of viserys.
the incest on the incest show was a bust, but alicent. her! alicent hightower! ohhh, my girl! the saddest woman alive! i love her. once the first timeskip hit, she started to melt my brain, and then she, in a breakdown incited by gaslighting and sheer desperation, tried to take a dagger to rhaenyra--i ascended. i swore myself to the cult of alicent. she is groomed into trusting that if she plays her part as a Good and Respectable Woman in this misogynistic society, the patriarchy will protect her. if she lets her father and her husband and the other powerful men in her life brick her up, she can carve a window out, and that's fine. alicent might have lost her closest friend in being wedded to the king, and she might have lost her girlhood in being made to have the king's children, and she might have no sense of her own desires in being made to follow her father's instructions.
but it's fine.
until it isn't.
alicent is made lonelier and lonelier. rhaenyra is furious at alicent for a marriage alicent never wanted, and when alicent chooses to trust rhaenyra, it is rhaenyra's lie that gets alicent's father expelled from court. her father is responsible for alicent being in the situation she is in, but he would be partial to her, and alicent becomes starved for anyone she can trust. her children's mere existences pose a threat to rhaenyra. her husband so overtly prefers his first daughter that aemond being grievously injured is nothing next to suspecting the parentage of rhaenyra's children.
alicent is anxious and isolated and so, so, so worried. she is the saddest woman alive in her emotional repression and loneliness. i want her to be allowed to commit a few war crimes as a treat in season 2. i love her so, so, so much.
dear god, i would kill for the fandom to be less disgustingly misogynistic towards her. neither she or rhaenyra are feminists. alicent is a woman who bought into the patriarchy and its promise of safety. rhaenyra denies the prescribed roles for women, but not with the intent of improving the lot for even upper-class women like her; rhaenyra's privilege is an exception, and its an exception she appears comfortable with continuing.
dislike her all you want, but you can do it without being grotesquely misogynistic because a fictional lady isn't to your tastes. if your dislike carries over into bothering the actor, you should probably stop watching the show and reassess yourself. just pick a favorite war criminal and chill.
love alicent or perish. let her do a war crime or two for fun.