- Pronouns
- He/Him
It does say something distinctive that no one directly told Viserys "No you can't kept Rhaenyra as your Heir, it goes against precedent." to his face, like he could have refused but no one on the greens even tried to argue with him. The most we got was Vaemond trying to argue the King could not decide matters in DriftmarkHonestly I genuinely get the impression in FaB that for the most part, the perception that the great council had set a precedent didn't motivate people to oppose rhaenyra, people who were opposed to rhaenyra were motivated to say that the great council had created a precedent.
(And incidentally the fact that they were arguing from that great council instead of thousands of years of andal inheritance strongly implies that viserys absolutely had the authority to name rhaenyra his heir over andal inheritance, and everyone recognized it. So they needed something they could argue was even stronger than both, even if it didn't really make sense to be stronger than both.)
I agreee. I feel like they're laying the ground work for a specific character arc with RhaenyraHonestly I didn't have a problem with the episode or how it's characterized Rhaenyra because in my mind Episode 3 continues a trend of "give Rhaenyra sympathetic-ish motives but show how she's loosing control - damaging her position and has her own share of bias".
I believe they're setting the stage for her eventual decline into something more akin to what we see in the later bits of the war in the books, more complex of course but there's certain things she is going to do like turning on the bastards out of paranoia because of the two betrayers is not something this Rhaenyra would do. What these episodes are establishing is that Rhaenyra realizes that unleashing Dragons is basically crossing the nuclear line and the damage will be beyond the pale so she's trying everything to avoid it even though we've fundmentally gone past the point where that could be stopped. So she's failing, and it's going to probably blow up in face. And Rhaenys, the one pushing her to handle things calmly and with as little violence as possible is going to be the first dragon rider to die. Alicent rejecting peace even when she knows she fucked up, her attempt blowing up in face probably, and Rhaenys death is all going to convince her that peace isn't possible she must commit to war.
And then, probably early season 3, she's going to lose Jace, her heir. She was enraged when Luke died but she was able to process her grief and Daemon's screw up ultimately pretty much snapped her back to her senses. That won't happen when Jace dies.
And then, probably early season 3, she's going to lose Jace, her heir. She was enraged when Luke died but she was able to process her grief and Daemon's screw up ultimately pretty much snapped her back to her senses. That won't happen when Jace dies.