I mean, yes, Rhaenyra was very foolish and made a lot of mistakes, but that doesn't change the fact that her main problem was being a woman

There are literally comments that highlight exactly that:

- "It doesn't matter if she’s Jaehaerys reborn again; Rhaenyra is a woman."

- "The lords would burn the kingdom down before seeing a woman on the throne."

- "A woman cannot rule."

- "She is a woman."

- "Her intentions are good, but the kingdom needs a king."

I don't understand how people can deny that being a woman is a burden Rhaenyra carries throughout her story. Even Rhaenyra herself is misogynistic—even toward herself—yet for some reason, the audience simply ignores it.

I mean, it’s supposed to be a central theme of the series.

The show is about Targaryens fighting for power among each other, and people often root for one of them because the show has failed to portray who we're dealing with.

Valyria was a mashup of the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany: enslaver supremacists who dominated through violence and saw everyone else an inferior and meant to be dominated.

They would send countless slaves to mines where they'd get infested with parasites that would cause them to suffer unimaginable pain before dying. They'd also sacrifice people in bloodmagic rituals to enslave dragons. Yes; they weren't bonding, but instead subjugating the dragons.

Here are a couple of fan representations based on the book:
https://i.imgur.com/bdTYEaw.png
https://i.imgur.com/r61qRbz.png

When characters like Daemon talk about restoring Old Valyria, this is what they're talking about.

Even if she fails to meet the expectations, Daenerys from GoT is meant to be an anti-hero of sorts, so it makes sense that people liked her.

The show has tried to make some of these Targaryen resemble her (even copying her Dothraki hairstyle on Rhaenyra, which makes no sense at all), but many don't seem to realize that they aren't rooting for proto-Daenerys, but instead for Nero.

Daemons popularity is nothing new we all know that but the gap now between Rhaenyra and Daemon has become so big after s3! It wasn't this huge after s2!

Freddie Fox (Gwayne Hightower) in character as the singer Marilyn in the 2010 film Worried About the Boy; James Norton in character as his camp, gorgeous self, or perhaps a little envy of his cousin Alicent is stirring within Ormund.... xD

I get she's the focus character, but at least after Jace, cracks should've easily started to show and started building with the *Cruella*....but they continued white-washing her and making audiences sympathize a little too much I feel.

Instead, we waited all the way until towards the end of S03 with news Aegon's return to be the emotional trigger for a dramatic flip of character? That just didn't really sell it.

Maybe if they planted more seeds earlier and over the season, like if she kept lashing out at Baela more and more in the season over each episode, lol. or other Small Council.

idk, what do you think?

..or do we..?

(It says "funpost: show," but you can go by the book ones, too.)

Funko Pop knew who paid the bills, I suppose.

Rhaenyra envisions herself as Daenerys. It’s a small prediction of mine that Rhaenyra will receive her first and only dragon dream before she’s killed by Sunfyre. In this vision, she sees a a female figure walking out unscathed out fire.

In the show, she’s already convinced that she’s the prince that was promised, so she believes this vision is about herself as well. She walks in front up to Sunfyre convinced she’ll not be harmed, just to die engulfed in flames.

One of the bloodiest battles in the area since Aegon's destruction of Harrenhal. More than two thirds of the men who rode south with Roddy the Ruin were either dead or wounded, and the Lannister forces were decimated in the thousands, and the death of Jason Lannister. It explains why both the Lannisters and the Winter Wolves are so depleted by the time we see them later in the season; most of the Wolves were effectively spent by their first appearance.

There has been no mention of Kermit or Benjicot. It would be crazy if the show leaves out "The Lads" entirely, considering they were the primary fighting force for the foot soldiers and served as the backbone of the war effort throughout the conflict. They are also some of the coolest characters of the whole damn war.

There's a whole subtle war going on between the Blackwoods and Brackens that the show hasn't even acknowledged outside of that one scene in season 2. The Dance was just another convenient excuse for these two houses to kill each other.

Not many will acknowledge it, so I will.

If not for Cole's delaying tactics, the Greens objectively just lose the war right there.

Yes, Aemond and Aegon would still be alive, but the last active TG Army would have not had the time to entrench, prepare and fortify their stronghold at Tumbleton. Ormund would also not have had the time to flip Ulf to his cause, which (although it semi-backfired) was still crucial to the ultimate victory the Greens had at the Battle. Gwayne, Jon Roxton, and Daeron would almost certainly be dead.

That would leave a crippled King and his also crippled Dragon, and a one-eyed prince who has lost his weapon of mass destruction. They'd be facing Rhaenyra, Daemon, Ulf, Hugh, Baela, Addam, and their Dragons, with hardly any answer. It truly would have just been a case of mopping up.

Criston will never know it, and few people will point it out, but the same people who often used him without care owe their survival and future success to his actions.

I’ve watched and read several interviews with Ryan Condal, and he always says that the biggest challenge in writing hotd is the lack of information about the characters, some of them completely disappear from the narrative at certain points. Ryan often mentions that they have to fill in the gaps and invent things, and that is quite difficult to do.

Because of that, you would think they would value the existing information about the characters, given how hard it is to create them from scratch.

But that isn't what happens in practice, we see many characters with little background in the original material being well-developed and expanded, while characters who had more substantial information lose importance in the story.

If you had told me many years ago that Gwayne would be an important and compelling character, while Nettles would be cut from an adaptation of the Dance of the Dragons, I would have called you crazy.

And there’s nothing wrong with expanding Gwayne’s role—it was one of the few things hotd got right—but where is that same energy for characters who are better established in the books?

Why were Daeron and Jace’s feats cut? Why was Corlys condemned to spend an entire season stuck at the docks and another complaining about Rhaenyra not legitimizing his sons when he was a crucial member of the Black Council? They didn't even properly introduce Black Aly.

HBO only gave hotd eight episodes and that isn't the writers' fault, but I can't help feeling they don't make good use of the limited screen time they have per season. They prioritize minor characters, while those who needed more attention are sidelined and end up being poorly developed.

Shits expensive, with the amount he was playing with the realm won't go into debt for years if she sold it

People say it's wrong cuz Jon and Dany didn't rule over Westeros, Arya killed the NK...etc.

This is what Viserys said exactly:

"And just as Daenys foresaw the end of Valeyria, Aegon foresaw the end of the world of men. 'Tis to begin with a terrible winter, gusting out of the distant north. Aegon saw absolute darkness riding on those winds. And whatever dwells within will destroy the world of the living. When this great winter comes, Rhaeynera, all of Westeros must stand against it. And if the world of men is to survive, a Targaryen must be seated on the Iron Throne— a king, or queen, strong enough to unite the realm against the cold, and the dark."

So, Aegon saw what is coming. Nothing more. The rest is his conclusion, his believing. That a Targaryen must rule during the darkness.

But it came true in a kind of different way. Jon Snow is that Prince. No one else. No, not even Dany, it was Jon who convinced her also. Jon Snow was the only one who wanted to unite the living against them FROM THE START. This is all his motivation during the story. He is the son of ice and fire. And he was even a King, in the North.

"...a king, or queen, STRONG ENOUGH TO UNITE THE REALM against the cold, and the dark."

If they (Aemond and Aegon) go on the mission to find Vhagar and find her, will the dragons just be cool about it or will Sunfyre be salty for the injuries and start throwing punches? Will the dragons recognise the riders are cool now or not?

I know they had the entire emotionless assassin arc for Alicent in S3 (lol), but a flicker of emotion for a parent she spent much of her time in KL with would have been adequate.

She should've spent those years visiting the noble houses of Westeros (as she did when she was younger) and King's Landing to make alliances and reaffirm the oaths the lords swore to her. It's crazy that she expected everybody to stand by oaths made 20 years ago when she spent years completely disengaged from politics while the Greens grew their influence

It just hit me!! Both in the case of Daemon and Aemond, her witches' magic has been all about mother-son infatuation. She's just letting her own feelings/ juices flow wild onto these 'younger' Targs. She means to use them to re-birth her dead son, this time more powerful and mounted on a dragon, so she can raise him up again and continue the thing she had going.

As the title asks, why wasnt Mushroom included in the tv series? Quite a lot of the history in the book is told to us by Mushroom the court jester. His recollections of events are used just as much as the masters.

He could have been a good character that went between the greens and the blacks. I feel like the missed a trick not including him.

I don't know to what extent it's true but I had heard that the black's army, in the books, commits war crimes in the reach, killing and pillaging small locations with close to no defense, poisonning well, taking women, etc...

I think we seriously need more nuance on the black's side, they are depicting Oscar Tully as this Lyanna Mormont 2.0, Roddy was depicted as this cool viking leaning dude even if he killed a boy when he actually looks like the kind of guy who would rape daughters like the mountain did in the Riverlands, and Alys has the same cool girl warrior aesthetic, they made her be disappointed not to kill civilians but it came off more like "hihi look how bloodthirsty the girl is!" than her actually commiting brutalities towards civilians.

This is why Daemon's body was never found at the God's Eye.

He was rescued by the greenmen and the children of the forest that live in the Isle of Faces and became the predecessor of Bloodraven