This Meme Is Inescapable On French Insta So I'm Posting It Here For All To Enjoy

I am continuously perplexed at how a show as objectively bad and problematic as hotd keeps inspiring outstanding fanfics like yours and @gwenllian-in-the-abbey’s. Truly it’s a mystery to me, especially considering that the books covering the dance are supposed to be quite mediocre as well from what I’ve perceived. Just so you know,with that trailer out now I’m gonna completely blend out the events of the show and consider our fathers clad in red canon

@gwenllian-in-the-abbey AAAAAAAAAAAAAA, I think George's gonna order a hit on us:D

I'm glad you like our slightly destructive approach to teh canon. I'm mostly fueled by spite and my dislike for George's and HBO's complete disregard for the historical context of the stuff they draw their inspiration from (you can't do the Matilda vs Stephen showdown and expect the same sense of injustice, when your main conflict is about Viserys' imbecilic approach to rules, Rhaenyra's weak-ass claim and papa/dragons being her go-to solution to all her problems, Daemon being a chaos gremlin, Corlys' malignant ambition and the Hightowers being the only ones who actually care about the rule of law.)

A lesbian romance doesn't automatically turn a story into a feminist manifesto, nor does a girlboss who's treated by the narrative as the second coming of Christ. Context matters and it's a mistake to view the Dance through the lens of modern ideals about egalitarianism.

GRRM's hubris when it comes to "Aragorn's tax policies" is just another thing that enrages me and Gwenllian, because the man completely misunderstands the medieval legal codes. Just because they were complex that doesn't mean they were fucking contradictory on their own; no one wanted civil wars breaking out each time a monarch died.

Problems happened when two countries with generational beefs worked on two different principles of succession, ie. England (male-preference primogeniture) vs France (male-only primogeniture), or if there was some dynastic fuckery that completely messed up the clear-cut succession lines with usurpations and cousin marriages (Yorks vs Lancasters).

Had Richard II (the son of the Black Prince) died peacefully without issue, the succession would have followed through the line of the Duke of Clarence, with Edmund the Earl of March eventually becoming the king (and he was Richard's heir, btw).

But that's not what happened. The son of John of Gaunt usurped the throne and it was then passed down through his line, because he was the crowned king. Now, you can argue whether or not he had any right to do the usurpation in the first place and whether or not he was the legitimate king and you bet people back then argued about that too. This ambiguity is how you create a proper narrative about actually conflicting claims. The only thing propping up Rhaenyra against her brother is the fact that Viserys is a moron.

How the fuck can I take F&B seriously and without the Dead Sea's worth of salt, when it pretty much blows Jaehaerys' posthumous dick about his wisdom when he "let" the council of 101 decide the succession (while politely ignoring the fact that Jaehaerys' own claim is legit only in the cases of either full salic or semi-salic succession, ie male-only), while never once it calls out Viserys out on his extremely dangerous decision. He gets to die venerated as the peaceful grandpa and all the blame for his incompetence is piled on Aegon II and Alicent.

Let's go through the possible succession systems, shall we?

If we follow male-preference primogeniture, the legitimate line of kings ends with Aerea because she was the eldest child of Aegon the Uncrowned, Maegor's eldest nephew. Only after she and her sister die without issue, Jaehaerys can become the king. Jaehaerys' canon ascension works only because Rhaena gave up her daughters' claims. The next in line would be Aemon and after him Rhaenys. But that's not what happened.

If we follow the salic law (male only), the legitimate line of the kings goes Aegon I -> Aenys I -> Aegon Uncrowned -> Jaehaerys I -> Viserys I -> Aegon II. This is probably what Jaehaerys wanted to ensure, since he challenged Maegor's kingship in the first place.

If a crowned king can choose his heir, then Jaehaerys was never a legitimate king and Aerea was the true queen, because Maegor, who had won his crown in the trial by combat, chose her as his heir.

What about the principle of seniority? Cognatic seniority where men and women have equal claims is out of the question since Aegon I was the crowned king, not Visenya. Male-only seniority would go Aegon I -> Aenys I -> Maegor I (uncontested!) -> Aegon Crowned This Time -> Viserys the Not Tortured to Death -> Jaehaerys I -> Aemon (only if his uncle Viserys has no issue) -> Baelon -> Vaegon -> Viserys I -> Daemon (EW).

Notice the distinct lack of Rhaenyra.

Team Black keeps mentioning the widow's law, but that's a bulk of nonsense. I suppose the misunderstanding originates from a (willful) misinterpretation of this passage. The book says:

Now, I highly doubt Jaehaerys intended for the law to mean that a daughter from the first marriage should come before the sons from the second. The wording is a bit unlucky, but I suppose the intention was to establish the legal position of the second wife and her children as united with the position of her step-children - she has the same duties towards them as if they were own, and the same goes the other way. Which would make sense. Because otherwise, no one would be desperate enough to marry a widower with daughters. Since we know that title and land ownerships have remained in the same families without changing hands once or twice since the implementation of the law, I really doubt the team black's literal interpretation of the passage was the one intended. Ffs, Viserys was pushed to marry again because he had only one daughter, meaning, this law wasn't viewed the way the Team Black wishes for. And I'm not even delving into the fact that this would be a female inheritance hack penned by Jaehaerys, if that was the case. Talk about ooc.

So, yeah, we're taking Gyldayne's interpretation of the past with so much salt our hearts are gonna fail.

all RIGHT:

Why You're Writing Medieval (and Medieval-Coded) Women Wrong: A RANT

(Or, For the Love of God, People, Stop Pretending Victorian Style Gender Roles Applied to All of History)

This is a problem I see alllll over the place - I'll be reading a medieval-coded book and the women will be told they aren't allowed to fight or learn or work, that they are only supposed to get married, keep house and have babies, &c &c.

If I point this out ppl will be like "yes but there was misogyny back then! women were treated terribly!" and OK. Stop right there.

By & large, what we as a culture think of as misogyny & patriarchy is the expression prevalent in Victorian times - not medieval. (And NO, this is not me blaming Victorians for their theme park version of "medieval history". This is me blaming 21st century people for being ignorant & refusing to do their homework).

Yes, there was misogyny in medieval times, but 1) in many ways it was actually markedly less severe than Victorian misogyny, tyvm - and 2) it was of a quite different type. (Disclaimer: I am speaking specifically of Frankish, Western European medieval women rather than those in other parts of the world. This applies to a lesser extent in Byzantium and I am still learning about women in the medieval Islamic world.)

So, here are the 2 vital things to remember about women when writing medieval or medieval-coded societies

FIRST. Where in Victorian times the primary axes of prejudice were gender and race - so that a male labourer had more rights than a female of the higher classes, and a middle class white man would be treated with more respect than an African or Indian dignitary - In medieval times, the primary axis of prejudice was, overwhelmingly, class. Thus, Frankish crusader knights arguably felt more solidarity with their Muslim opponents of knightly status, than they did their own peasants. Faith and age were also medieval axes of prejudice - children and young people were exploited ruthlessly, sent into war or marriage at 15 (boys) or 12 (girls). Gender was less important.

What this meant was that a medieval woman could expect - indeed demand - to be treated more or less the same way the men of her class were. Where no ancient legal obstacle existed, such as Salic law, a king's daughter could and did expect to rule, even after marriage.

Women of the knightly class could & did arm & fight - something that required a MASSIVE outlay of money, which was obviously at their discretion & disposal. See: Sichelgaita, Isabel de Conches, the unnamed women fighting in armour as knights during the Third Crusade, as recorded by Muslim chroniclers.

Tolkien's Eowyn is a great example of this medieval attitude to class trumping race: complaining that she's being told not to fight, she stresses her class: "I am of the house of Eorl & not a serving woman". She claims her rights, not as a woman, but as a member of the warrior class and the ruling family. Similarly in Renaissance Venice a doge protested the practice which saw 80% of noble women locked into convents for life: if these had been men they would have been "born to command & govern the world". Their class ought to have exempted them from discrimination on the basis of sex.

So, tip #1 for writing medieval women: remember that their class always outweighed their gender. They might be subordinate to the men within their own class, but not to those below.

SECOND. Whereas Victorians saw women's highest calling as marriage & children - the "angel in the house" ennobling & improving their men on a spiritual but rarely practical level - Medievals by contrast prized virginity/celibacy above marriage, seeing it as a way for women to transcend their sex. Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life

When Elizabeth I claimed to have "the heart & stomach of a king" & adopted the persona of the virgin queen, this was the norm she appealed to. Women could do things; they just had to prove they were Not Like Other Girls. By Elizabeth's time things were already changing: it was the Reformation that switched the ideal to marriage, & the Enlightenment that divorced femininity from reason, aggression & public life.

For more on this topic, read Katherine Hager's article "Endowed With Manly Courage: Medieval Perceptions of Women in Combat" on women who transcended gender to occupy a liminal space as warrior/virgin/saint.

So, tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn't the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself "not like other girls" you could gain significant autonomy & freedom.

Finally a bonus tip: if writing about medieval women, be sure to read writing on women's issues from the time so as to understand the terms in which these women spoke about & defended their ambitions. Start with Christine de Pisan.

I learned all this doing the reading for WATCHERS OF OUTREMER, my series of historical fantasy novels set in the medieval crusader states, which were dominated by strong medieval women! Book 5, THE HOUSE OF MOURNING (forthcoming 2023) will focus, to a greater extent than any other novel I've ever yet read or written, on the experience of women during the crusades - as warriors, captives, and political leaders. I can't wait to share it with you all!

Please share.

Actually planning on doing that.

I’m half tempted to rewrite season 2, just for the sake of fixing the mess they have made. I shall title it “Fuck You Condal” and it shall be known as the ‘I reject your fanfiction and substitute my own’ movement. Anyone wanna help?

Reblog this if you support sex-averse and sex-repulsed aces, including:

Aces who never want to have sex

Aces who had sex in the past but don't desire it anymore

Aces with sexual trauma who feel like their trauma ties into their asexuality

Aces with sexual trauma who don't feel like their trauma caused their asexuality

Aces who don't want to talk to you about sex

Aces who don't want to hear about sex

Yes even aces who do not want to engage with any sexual content and don't want it in their own personal spaces

Yes even aces who express the desire to have more spaces for queer adults where their boundaries are met (on top of the queer spaces that exist, we do not want to sanitize your existing spaces ffs)

If you cannot be normal about these people existing, if you believe they're a threat to our community and to how we're viewed by people who aren't aspec and the rest of the LGBTQ+ community, you are not an asexual ally. Yes, even if you're aspec yourself. Especially if you're aspec yourself.

Because it's been pride month for 4 days and I'm already seeing people trying to throw us under the bus or pretend we don't exist because that makes the ace community more palatable to exclusionists and people who swallowed too much "aces are puritans" propaganda.

You've gotta love Jews more than you hate Nazis.

You've gotta love trans folks more than you hate TERFs.

You've gotta love your unhoused neighbors more than you hate the billionaires.

You've gotta love immigrants more than you hate ICE.

You've gotta love queer kids more than you hate christian fundamentalists.

You've gotta love fat people more than you hate the diet industry.

You've gotta love disabled people more than you hate the insurance companies.

You've gotta love your fellow humans more than you hate the worst that humanity has to offer. You don't have to like every person you're fighting for, and you sure as hell don't have to give up your righteous anger, but hate is ultimately corrosive.

You've gotta love.

as expected, now that ep 1 with b&c will be aired in 2 weeks, people are getting weird.

please keep your "b&c wasn't that bad" shit takes out of the general tags <3 mind you, these are the same people that have been whining about "misogyny" for the last 2 years, but are now apparently ok with an innocent woman being tortured to the point of literally becoming a shell of her former self & a 6yo girl being threatened with rape.

and to all of the pro-b&c weirdos saying "bUt iT wAs aBoUt AeGoN", so 1. b&c is justified because aegon threw a party? 2. daemon also threw a party when his nephew and sister in law died, but y'all don't want to talk about that. 3. even if aegon was the one to kill luke, it still doesn't justify what daemon did to helaena and her kids - you're actually justifying a woman being punished for the crimes of her male relatives - and it doesn't matter if it's aegon or aemond.

We need to go back to using sailing ships full time like immediately. Yes it would take longer to get places but the Aesthetic is unmatched

Like there is nothing sexier hthan this

Alicent's New Bedroom: Book vs Show and Impact on Blood and Cheese

This is the Red Keep. It's made up of distinct towers and structures.

Maegor's Holdfast is the place of the royal residence, where the king's apartments are located. This is where the king and/or queen and their immediate household. It has unique characteristics:

"The royal apartments were in Maegor's Holdfast, a massive square fortress that nestled in the heart of the Red Keep behind walls twelve feet thick and a dry moat lined with iron spikes, a castle-with-a-castle. Ser Boros Blount guarded the far end of the bridge, white steel armor ghostly in the moonlight" (p. 502, Edward XIII, A Game of Thrones).

Well-designed and well-guarded, not even a rat catcher in the castle knows of a hidden way in or out of Maegor's Holdfast:

"The hidden doors and secret tunnels that Maegor the Cruel had built were as familiar to the rat catcher as to the rats he hunted. Using a forgotten pssageway, Cheese led Blood into the heart of the castle, unseen by guard. Some say their quarry was the king himself, but Aegon was accompanied by Kingsguard wherever he went and even Cheese knew of no way in and out of Maegor's Holdfast save the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat and it's formidable spikes" (p. 424, The Dying of the Dragons - A Son for a Son, Fire and Blood).

This is the most secure location within the Red Keep itself, which is why the royal family lives there. It is a large space with many rooms, including the Queen's Ballroom. In season one of House of the Dragon, Viserys lives in the king's apartments with his wives and there are many bedrooms where members of the royal household and their household staff live. After Alicent marries Viserys, she moves from the Tower of the Hand where she lived with her father to the king's apartment in Maegor's Holdfast and lives there until Viserys' death.

Separate from Maegor's Holdfast is the Tower of the Hand, where the Hand of the King and his family live. The tower contains many rooms, including the bedchamber of the Hand of the King, rooms for his household, and the Small Hall. There are guards in the Tower of the Hand, but there were those who were familiar with its hidden doorways and secret tunnels:

"Any man of normal size would have had to crawl on hands and knees, but Tyrion was short enough to walk upright [...] He came to the third door and fumbled about for a long time before his fingers brushed a small iron hook set between two stones. When he pulled down on it, there was a soft rumble that sounded loud as an avalanche in the stillness, and a square dull orange light opened a foot to his left. The hearth! He almost laughed [...] When he found himself in what had been once his bedchamber, he stood for a long moment" (p. 1070, Tyrion XI, A Storm of Swords).

After Aegon is crowned, he, Helaena, and their young children move into the king's apartments in Maegor's Holdfast, so the Dowager Queen, Alicent moves out. But where does she move to? In Fire and Blood, Alicent moves back into the Tower of the Hand, where she lived as a child with her father. It's because of this move to the Tower of the Hand specifically that Blood and Cheese have the opportunity to access Aegon's sons. Every night, Helaena and her kids would leave Maegor's Holdfast to go to the Tower of the Hand and visit Alicent before bed, which allowed Blood and Cheese to plan their ambush. Despite Helaena having a guard and the presence of guards throughout the Tower of the Hand and the Red Keep itself, Alicent's new bedchamber and its secret passageways have Blood and Cheese a chance to sneak in and make their move:

"The Tower of the Hand was less secure. The two men crept up through the walls, bypassing the spearman posted at the tower doors. Ser Otto's rooms were of no interest to them. Instead they slipped into his daughter's chambers, one floor below [...] Once inside, Cheese bound and gagged the Dowager Queen whilst Blood strangled her beadmaid. Then they settled down to wait, for they knew that it was the custom of Queen Helaena to bring her children to see their grandmother every evening before bed [...] Blood barred the door and slew the Queen's guardsman, while Cheese appeared to snatch up Maelor" p. 424, The Dying of the Dragons - A Son for a Son, Fire and Blood).

House of the Dragon, however, decided to make some major changes to the event of Blood and Cheese. In HOTD season 2, Queen Alicent doesn't move out of Maegor's Holdfast, and and instead, despite having choice of several different bedrooms, decides to move into the specific room where Rhaenyra lived up until episode 6 of season one.

The show previously added a tunnel from Rhaenyra's old room to the outside of the Red Keep in season one. However, instead of using that connection to have Blood and Cheese surprise Alicent in her room as they did in the book, they instead use a tunnel to sneak into the Red Keep. They then proceed to walk through large portions of the Red Keep, including the throne room, eventually walking right into Maegor's Holdfast, all the while unchecked by any servants or guards. They walk right into the king's apartments where the unguarded Helaena is with her sleeping children. Once Blood begins killing Jaehaerys, Helaena carries Jaehaera through empty hallways to Alicent's room where she walks in on Alicent and Criston.

Why the changes from the book? A few possibilities:

1) The show made the change because they write the characters of Alicent and Criston as intrinsically linked to Rhaenyra, so they wanted to make a point of showing them have sex in her old room, in order to make them both hypocritical, something that could only likely happen if Alicent lived there. Placing this scene at the end of the Blood and Cheese sequence adds an extra shock element for viewers. Removing Alicent's presence during Blood and Cheese and giving her a sex scene during the event instead viewers to focus on her "hypocrisy" as well as point the blame and outrage towards her and away from the true culprit. Additionally, the show doesn't have to include a scene where the Greens act like the family they are.

2) The show made the change of hallways being empty of servants and guards, as well as personal guards being absent from members of the royal family, to show viewers that the Greens have somehow become incompetent almost overnight when it comes to household security, despite having lived in the Red Keep for the last several years and effectively ruling the kingdoms in Viserys' stead. This diverts blame away from the Blacks and toward the Greens, as they should have been protecting themselves. Specifically, the blame is in on Criston Cole for not having guards posted (there's no real explanation for why he did not have them posted).

3) The show made the change because they wanted to film a one shot of Helaena and her baby walking through Maegor's Holdfast to call back to Rhaenyra's walk through the same hallways with her newborn in season 1 episode 6 because everything comes back to Rhaenyra in this show and they wanted viewers to connect the two events for whatever reason.

Among other changes to Blood and Cheese, it seems to me that the show ultimately changed these aspects of the event in order to minimize the event itself and shift the blame.

alicent shouldnt stripe rhaenyra out from her birthrights and rhaenyra shouldnt do that for alicent's kid either, because other lovely anon: friendly reminder that in HOTD all rhaenyra's kids are bastards and her natural heir is aegon... sooo... yeah, i'd say they are even. 👍

Sure they're even! I'd dare say that in Alicent's eyes, Rhaenyra's cold indifference for her siblings and her future hurts as much as her childhood betrayal did all those years ago... Because Rhaenyra herself could have acknowledged and recognized Alicent's fears about her children and done something about it... formed an "I-will-never-under-any-circumstances-hurt-your-children-and-my-siblings" pact, but she wanted Aemond "to be sharply questioned" instead, and insisted on naming Jacaerys her heir which further jeopardized Aegon and his siblings because everyone knew they were the real male Targaryen heirs who could be easily used by anyone who disliked Rhaenyra as pawns to claim the throne from her. As long as the legitimate male heirs were alive, and Rhaenyra continued the stance of enmity, hostility, and complete disregard toward them, they would remain a threat and challenge to her reign and claimants to the throne, and Alicent would do everything in her power to make sure they stayed alive by having Aegon sit that throne himself.