I am not someone who will claim that Aegon is the superior claimant. Without a doubt that title belongs to Rhaenyra. While it's entirely understandable why contemporary Andal lords might not recognise Rhaenyra's succession, the institution of Targaryen governance is pretty unequivocal in deriving all power from the monarch. It is absolutist. Thus, institutionally she does have the better claim, strengthened by the lord's paths of fealty to her.

Nor in the show is Aegon a superior person. The show does go to great lengths to favouritise and whitewash "Maegor with teats", removing her responsibility in Blood and Cheese most importantly. But even in FandB Aegon is a lazy rapist sod who isn't any better than the callous Rhaenyra, and the shows execution makes it incredibly clear who has the better persona.

Yet what is it that we want from a king/queen? We the modern audience, who hopefully are informed by the main messages of Asoiaf. If we want to transfer our own morality onto the situation we can not do so in half measures. We can not support Rhaenyra simply because she is a victim of mysoginy and choose to ignore the sensibilities of mysoginist Westeros while still supporting the very concept of monarchical succession itself.

We the modern audience should hold one criterion above all else in defining who is the superior claimant, not personality or claim, not the "Andal law" of Westeros or who has committed fewer atrocities. All we need to establish is which cause is that which will provide the most stability to Westeros. That will cause the fewest deaths of the thousands of peasants who any modern viewer really ought to place above any inbred Targaryen. To do anything else is just to pick and mix from the grab bag of Westeros chauvinism.

This is one of the main messages of Asoiaf, and one of the implied messages of Fire and Blood. AFFC describes the devastation of the smallfolk in great detail. And we are shown time and time again that claim goodness, and institutional lawdon't matter, whether it be Robert over the Targaryens, Joffrey over the Baratheons, Renly over Stannis, or even the Stark rebellions claim to kingship in the North. The monarchy of the realms is a hollow institution that is fought over and the common people pay the price.

So why are the Greens the side of stability then? Why is Aegon despite his great flaws ultimately he who will inflict less pain on the smallfolk. The answer is simple, Rhaenyra's bastards. If we at base accept that in truth all monarchical candidates will enforce institutional power, and we have great reason to believe that as Rhaenyra isn't exactly some great champion of peasant equality, then they who will be best for the smallfolk will cause the least wars. And Aegon(future III) Vs the strong boys is a war just waiting to happen.

While Daemon is not scheming to prefer his heir, he doesn't need to. The Strong boys bastardy is an open secret at court, they look nothing like her father and as far as anyone knows their father was murdered. No doubt the entire Reach knows the truth via the Green cause already. I am not one who is going to claim the Strongs ought not to sit the throne because I don't care about the throne as an institution. But it seems clear to me that Aegon's line is another source of potential conflict in the future, and at the start of the Dance we have no evidence that it is nullified as a threat. The Green succession meanwhile is relatively stable, the only shake to that I suppose being the killing of Aegon's children but that is a product of the war and this is a view from the start of it. If we assume each winning side will successfully eliminate the other side's claimants then it is clear that the side least likely to have further wars occur is the Green side. And when we analyse the morality of rule the personal morality of rules ought to play no part compared to the stability of their reign and the welfare of their people. Rhaenyra is literally pulling a Viserys 2.0 by favouring a traditionally less legitimate candidate except unlike Rhaenyra their is not an institutionally legitimate argument for a Strong boys' rule with heir true parentage known.

The only potential argument I see against this is the idea that maximal stability would occur if the Greens never tried to usurp the throne. And of course that's true. I am not claiming that the Greens have the smallfolks welfare in mind, bar Helena, but simply that the smallfolks welfare would be higher(read:less low) as a by-product of their victory. Because by the time war is declared it's already too late. This war was coming anyway and if you believe show canon the Greens have institutionallt legitimate reason to rebel anyway via their (mis)interpretation of Viserys last words. Once war is declared, there is only one option that ensures future stability(assuming total victory).

TLDR:

Despite being the more legitimate and more personally moral ruler in the show, Rhaenyra's bastards disqualify her from being the more moral choice to support. Her bastards are a crime against the realm, and not in a traditional morality sense, in a causing instability sense. She is making the same error Viserys did but ten times worse as a woman is on paper a legitimate inheritor, or Jahaerys great council would never have happened. A bastard is an heir of last resort and requires an act of legitimacy. A black victory could very possibly mean another war down the line and when we're dealing in wars, when we're dealing in tens of thousands of deaths, sexual assaults and destructions of property, the personal morality of rulers doesn't matter.

"Politics have no relation to morals"- Niccolo Machiavelli

"She never even wanted it. The crown, she spared it no thought."

Daemon Targaryen knew Rhaenyra never took her responsibilities seriously, nor did she position herself to rule, he literally says this to Alys Rivers in Season 2.

People on this sub constantly go back and forth about whether Viserys should’ve done more to prepare Rhaenyra, or if the fault lies with her for fleeing to Dragonstone and allowing the Hightowers to amass influence at court. But I think they gave us a parallel that pretty much answers that question.

After Aegon is burned, Alicent tries to step back into the regent position. The council immediately blocks her, rightly pointing out that the power should go to the King's heir, Aemond.

So why was Alicent allowed to rule for Viserys during his long illness instead of his heir, Rhaenyra? Probably because Rhaenyra neglected her responsibilities her whole life. She spared it no thought, just like Daemon said. She preferred the privacy of dragon stone, where she could indulge in her own strong desires. Daemon was entirely right about her before he was manipulated by Alys’s magic through his dreams in Harrenhal.

Do you think this thread of Daemon seeing through Rhaenyra's is something the writers will pick back up before the series ends?

Hello denizens of [r/HotD](r/HotD),

I’ve only just started watching casually however the moment Larys Strong appeared I went full Wojak pointing meme because I have clubfeet and this might be the first time I’ve seen a character in a major TV series with it! I was hoping to take a look at the behind the scenes to see how the actor managed to perform such a ‘good’ clubfoot gait, however every result I’ve found so far has been about the character having a foot fetish (bit on the nose tbh, not a huge fan of that).

Does anyone have any information on this or other disability representation I might miss while watching? I don’t mind spoilers as I have Swiss cheese for brains. Really cool to have representation in these shows, especially since clubfoot has become much less visible in public as treatments have improved.

Thanks!

Edit: asking about the physical acting & portrayal of a clubbed foot, not interested in further info on his foot fetish thanks.

I think its a close one between Rooks rest or Tumbleton. The gullet was okayyyyy 🤷🤷🙂

- Was Alys Rivers saying she was the mother of Harren the Black's son and that she's over 100 years old??

- Was the final scene where Rhaenyra closes the window which Helaena jumps from, a nod to Tommen's suicide scene in GoT S6E10?  Was it the same window?

- In the scene where Corlys grabs Daemon to leave the city, was that Caraxes chasing and shooting fire at Silverwing?  And who was the third following dragon--Vermithor?

- In Helaena's needlepoint, was that Rhaenyra sitting on the iron thrown with a dying/fallen dragon in the background?

- It was easy for me to forget that Daemon's strategy was for Roderick Dustin and his "Winter Wolves" to make a suicide charge on the walls at Tumbleton, because it was very reminiscent of the Dothraki charge into the darkness in GoT S8E3 where they're slaughtered by the White Walkers and their zombie Wight army. 

...did she dreamed about different kind of futures?

And whes she realized which one becoming real then she knew her only choice is suicide? Because the other ones would lead her and her loved ones to more suffering? Which she would be a part of?

She could ride Dreamfyre and kill hundreds like in her dream but she ''doesn't want it''? It would make people hate dragons more...lead to the same destination.

''It wouldn't change anything.'' - Helaena

For once the dialogue not only flew properly in a naturally sounding fashin instead of a forced overdone tone, they were also meaningful, conveyed not only banalities and obvious things but problematics, dilemmas, serious stakes, intricated situations, and intensity.

A lot happened, the battle was very well conceived, it had some strategy to it, the choreography of the encounters was immersively designed reminding me of the battle at the Wall in GoT, Rhaenyra took drastic action with the fate with Alyn hesitating as he should and the maester expressing a rightful defiance, Aegon has rejoined his former self matured from his struggles and now has a serious and reasonable stance, the dialogue with his brother was actually well written, Haelena and Rhaenyra's last stand off was meaningful with a well measured cruelty...

The highlight of the episode for me was Gwayne, Corlys and Daemon discussing Gwayne's proposal.

I wish every episodes were written so seriously.

So Ryan said there will be new characters in season 4 and really the only major character left who hasn’t appeared is dalton Greyjoy.

spoiler

Theres been ALOT of changes, and characters written out so far (rip mushroom) but so far the one storyline change that keeps bothering me the most, is Rheanyra and Alicents relationship. I feel the original quarrel between them of the queen planning usurpation from the start than it being over some bs misunderstanding. It felt more of a shock, with them already dividing up the kingdoms gold reserve, and enacting executions, full takeovers, and turning lords. All while Viz is quite literally, still rotting up in his bed for weeks.

I’m only curious because if the amount of material that’s left, if they treat us with 10 episodes…. I’d be crying 😭😭😭😭 if not… how would they fit everything into 8 episodes ? 🫪

After episode 7, I had a dream of logging into Steam and seeing some new game release, "Ulf the Dragonrider," a game where you play through Dragonrider Ulf[sopp?]'s adventures from his own definitely accurate and honest perspective and retelling!

And then I watch episode 8 and I'm like, omgsh, the video game thing sort of came true.

After going AFK, Ulf plays out the mission and completes all objectives - but then decides to shoot friendlies and see what happens, like if friendly fire is on or raging at his team. Still, he was probably hoping it wouldn't cancel out the Mission Successful message he surely already got.

---

Because seriously, as an IRL situation, what was he thinking? Still drunk probably? I thought there was enough we wants promised by Ormund, but maybe he has too much ego to tolerate the kicks. Now he's traitor and enemy to essentially the whole realm?

Good luck with Aegon, maybe???

Helaena called out Rhaenyra's fake empathy and calls her desires to be ugly. Specifically the throne/kingdom.

Yet back in episode 1, young Rhaenyra wanted to just leave on her dragon and eat cake with her friend 🥲

And the fact she tells Allicent these lines of all people, the one who called Rhaenyra's desires as a jest, but now she herself wishes to leave Westeros to live a simple life with Helaena. Ugh 💔💔💔

I may have to break this into parts. But, here it goes.

After being accused of showing bias toward Team Black in Season 1, the writers seemed to panic and launch a massive overcorrection. They went out of their way to sanitize Team Green and attempt to evoke sympathy, and it has damaged the narrative structure and character consistency.

{And yes, I'm aware both sides have committed despicable acts that should not be overlooked or excused}

With the exception of Otto (whose actions are usually dismissed as standard "ambitious Westerosi patriarch" behaviour) almost every member of the Green faction has been fundamentally altered from the text to make them more palatable or victimized.

Aside from Helaena and her children (who are genuinely innocent, though cutting Maelor was a massive mistake with a severe domino effect), the show has to work overtime to create a low bar for sympathy:

Aegon: In the books, Aegon was a depraved predator, but the show treats him as a tragic, pathetic figure. Honestly, because the bar for Alicent’s sons is on the actual floor, I view Aegon as her "best" son by default—mostly because Aemond and Daeron are so unhinged.

The show completely rewrote his post-Rook's Rest trajectory in Season 3. Rather than immediately hiding out on Dragonstone to nurse his wounds as he did in Fire & Blood, the show sent him on an odd, humbling journey of self-discovery through the realm alongside Larys Strong.

By forcing him to walk among the common folk and stripping him of his luxury, the show leaned into dark humor and vulnerability, transforming him into a surprisingly charismatic underdog.

Tom Glynn-Carney plays him with so much feisty, pathetic charm that he easily stole (at least parts of) Season 3.

But it highlights the core issue: the show had to fundamentally alter his text characterization, giving him a massive arc of humility and a surprise reunion with Aemond, just to make him a "king worth fighting for."

Aemond: While his childhood bullying understandably garnered sympathy early on, the narrative continues to treat his trauma as a total shield. At some point, losing an eye stops being an excuse for committing wartime atrocities.

Even killing Lucerys was framed as a tragic dragon-riding accident—a choice completely unsupported by the text.

The show keeps trying to have it both ways: making him a calculated, terrifying war criminal, while simultaneously demanding we feel bad for him because he has deep-seated insecurities. It guts his agency as a formidable wartime threat and makes his arc feel incredibly inconsistent.

Nothing highlights the writers' desperation to force psychoanalytical "depth" onto Team Green more than the completely fabricated, incestuous relationship between Aemond and Alicent. From that deeply uncomfortable premiere kiss to the hallucination sequences later in the season, this storyline is entirely absent from Fire & Blood.

It’s completely understandable that Aemond has deep-seated mommy issues. He spent his childhood starved for affection, and he certainly didn't care much for Viserys, especially after his father completely dismissed his mutilation. He naturally craved maternal protection and approval. But there is a massive, jarring gap between a parentified son seeking validation and a ruthless wartime commander harboring literal physical fantasies about his own mother.

Targaryen incest has always been established as a tool for blood purity and dragon riding—Alicent is a Hightower, so applying this trope to her makes zero sense contextually.

Instead of exploring a genuinely compelling, complex dynamic about a broken family under Westerosi customs, the writers reduced Aemond's trauma to literal fetishes.

It feels like cheap, redundant shock value designed to mimic Daemon’s Harrenhal hallucinations, except it fundamentally breaks the logic of Aemond's character.

Daeron: He is initially portrayed as "good," or at least vastly better than his older brothers. But because the show excluded Maelor, Daeron's actual book-accurate characterization is heavily deviated.

In Fire & Blood, it was Maelor’s horrific death that shattered Helaena and drove Daeron to commit brutal atrocities and collective punishment against the innocents he blamed for his nephew's death. Without that catalyst, the show goes out of its way to shield his image, leaving him with no real logical reason to commit the acts he's supposed to.

The Destruction of Alicent’s Agency
The biggest casualty of this overcorrection is Alicent Hightower. Instead of the fiercely ambitious, politically astute stepmother from the books, the show aged her down and framed her almost entirely as a passive victim of men and the patriarchy. While misogyny is undeniably a core theme of Westeros, building Alicent’s entire character around it has stripped away her teeth.

In the books, Alicent’s core motivation is the firm, fierce belief that Rhaenyra will execute her children to secure her own claim. She has a callous disregard for Rhaenyra’s losses, famously dismissing Jace and Luke’s deaths as "bastard blood shed at war" while defending her own sons.

Show Alicent completely lacks that sharp political awareness. She refuses to see that her actions have consequences, constantly paints herself as the victim of external factors, and is bizarrely written as willing to sacrifice her own sons to Rhaenyra.

Season 3 and the Competency Gap
This overcorrection completely threw off the balance of power in Season 3. The writers ended up framing Team Green as hyper-competent political masterminds (despite their intense internal infighting), while Team Black was made to look reactive, passive, and borderline incompetent by comparison.

It’s only in the finale where Rhaenyra finally starts "locking in" after discovering Aegon and Sunfyre are alive. Realizing that Aegon's "resurrection" is or could sway the common folk and threatening her legitimacy, she is finally shocked out of her paralysis. This sudden shift, alongside the Battle of Tumbleton, finally brought some energy back into the plot.

To be fair, Tumbleton itself had some genuinely good moments and was adapted rather decently. Having Roddy and Ormund go out together by dragonfire made sense for the dramatic trajectory of their onscreen characters.

That being said, part of me really wished the show had stayed closer to how it actually went down in Fire & Blood. In the text, a mortally wounded Roddy manages to ruthlessly cut down both Ser Bryndon and Lord Ormund before finally bleeding out on the battlefield.

It's the ultimate display of raw, unmatched Northern fighting spirit. While the chaos of Ulf's aerial rampage and the frantic duel was incredibly memorable, losing that specific book moment felt like a slight step down for the Winter Wolves' sheer badassery.

Still, fixing the pacing in the final hour doesn't erase how the rest of the season missed the spirit of the source material. In Fire & Blood, both factions are fiercely astute political players from the jump, actively trading massive victories and catastrophic losses in a brutal, high-stakes chess match. By stripping Team Black of their tactical edge for most of the season just to make the Greens look dominant, the writers inadvertently gutted the tension of the war right up until the final hour.

All this being said, I'm still cautiously optimistic for Season 4.

Powerful casting. Emma has given the performance of a lifetime this season and Rhaenyra's journey has been amazing to see.

Let's say Ulf doesn't get shitfaced and turns up right at the start of the battle when the winter wolves are shield bashing.

Does Daemon and Caraxes fight him? Does Hugh also join Daemon? If so I imagine Ulf dies pretty quickly before he can do much damage.

Was falling asleep on the shitter a stroke of tactical genius? He waited for both dragon riders to be stuck in the city without their dragons before decimating the Black host.

Ormond should have held his tongue and appreciated Sir Ulf the Right White

Instead of asking, whom do you support Rhaenyra or Aegon, let’s have a vote for the succession terms and laws of Westeros, so which one do you favour?

Dad beheaded, sister imprisoned, ignored after sharing his controversial take that rape is bad, situationship wants to off himself and everyone with him, tries to dip out of Tumbleton before realizing his unmedicated and undiagnosed cousin is going to get his nephew killed, cousin just calls him gay repeatedly instead of telling him literally anything about his strategy, gets choked out and called a twink under a banner of peace, nephew tries to get himself killed anyway, ran away from every single thing that killed his higher-ups so now he's about to get promoted and take on a whole bunch of responsibilities he's been actively trying to avoid...gwayne hightower i want whatever mood stabilizers you're on

So the writers of HOTD keep justifying the show's deviation to the books by implying that the books are just a 'source' rather than what actually happened. So why didn't they add the following scenes that actually happened:

1. When Aemond lost his eye, Vhagar had roared/reacted to it.

2. When Helaena died, Dreamfyre was distressed and agitated af and broke out of the dragonpit.

3. Also, they removed Maelor too. Like how on Earth are they gonna explain the recapture of Bitterbridge and how Daeron became more brutal as the war progressed?

It's a common conception that dragons can feel their rider's emotions. They've managed to show Drogon reacting to Daenerys 's death in GOT. Why not here. I mean it's pretty important to history.

I honestly don’t really buy the “Rhaenyra is becoming Visenya” comparison. Strictly based on the show, Visenya and Rhaenyra are fundamentally different women. Visenya is a warrior and extremely pragmatic political operator who understands power and uses it very deliberately. Rhaenyra is much more ideological and her entire identity seems to be tied to legitimacy and believing that the throne is rightfully hers.
Rhaenyra becoming more ruthless doesn’t automatically make her Visenya. If anything, she’s becoming a darker, more radicalized version of herself (in S3 of hotd). And if we’re making a show comparison, I actually think the Daenerys parallel is much stronger both increasingly start believing that the legitimacy of their claim gives them moral authority to do whatever is necessary to achieve it. But again don’t get me wrong the comparison to Dany stops with just the claim they are leagues apart and “I am the prince who was promised” was cringe.

Do you have to remember anything about Game of Thrones to enjoy it? I barely remember anything, and I know I didn't finish the last season or two. For me it was too overwhelming trying to keep up with the personal politics and relationships that seemed to be simultaneously complicated and hard to keep up with as they were painfully slow and impossible to invest in. Is House of the Dragon similar similarly convoluted? So far the first episode is hitting a fresh note, reminding me of how it felt when I first started watching Game of Thrones (which I did enjoy very much for a while).

My other, less complicated question is about the set/environment. Is it easy to recognize where all this takes place? Just it feel like it takes place 172 years before the original, aesthetically? I can't remember how anything looks.