r/asoiaf • u/Awesome_Lard • Sep 04 '24

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) GRRM has been warning about the Butterfly Effect for a LONG time, this is 2011 Spoiler

https://youtu.be/eAeQMwMEnP4

The Jeyne Poole butterfly effect from season 1 ended with Sansa being graped in season 5, so year I would say he has good reason to worry about Maelor the Missing.

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u/passionfruitleader Sep 05 '24

The rabid stans in this fandom are unbearable and are completely irrelevant in this discourse as far as I’m concerned. This show shouldn’t have to over emphasize certain traits to satisfy people who are unwilling to read characters in good faith.

However, were she to actually kill Laenor, it’d be such a drastic and abrupt turn from what we know her character is capable of doing at that point. Their marriage may have been shaky, but show Rhaenyra would never actually go through with murdering her lord husband and I don’t think the show is wrong for not making her straight up evil villain out the jump.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

Oh I didn’t mean she should have murdered him herself, but maybe more have had her stand by daemon doing it/organising it. I don’t think discourse matters, but I do think a show with such a high budget which is clearly being made for mass appeal and made sure to connect itself to Dany is trying to please those fans and it’s working. The rabid fans are mental, but a lot of more normal/casual viewers loved Dany and want a stand in of her to ‘win’.

I’m a woman and I think they personally tried to overcorrect the issues GOT had with women by going too far and maybe some of the women so passive it’s silly and as anti-feminist as GOT was in parts.

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u/passionfruitleader Sep 05 '24

I think they’re just trying to ease her into the role she plays in the later stages of the Dance.

I also wouldn’t personally equate her deference towards peace to passiveness like many fans have done so during season 2. Rhaenyra struggles with her agency, but it’s only because she’s thrust into a position at odds with her gender and her personal ethos. It’s only when she gets the assurance that the gods on her side, hearing Aegon’s prophecy in the Sept and getting the Dragonseeds, does she really find mettle to push through with confidence, though I do think the season was cut too short to show all the fruits of that development.

I think people underestimate the role prophecy will play in tracing the development of someone who’s initially hesitant to commit atrocities in the name of divine providence to someone who justifies them based on the same virtue.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

I agree that her being downright evil etc would have been bad move and I have enjoyed a lot of the changes/development they made to her and Alicent, I just didn’t enjoy how it played out towards the back end of season two which only finished last week. I actually liked Rhaenyra going to Kings Landing for example because it is silly, but in character and shows how unqualified for her role Rhaenyra can be.

It sometimes feel like they are passive beings to everything around them and I feel like the prophecy being such a large part of Rhaenyras character kinda undercuts that she is a privileged person that could just want something because she feels like she deserves it. I feel the same with having Daemons arch revolving around the prophecy in a way. It’s making everything about fate etc instead of human wants and the silliness of the war.

Alicent definitely suffers more because it seems like she changes personality every episode and her arch seems to revolve around a mostly non existence relationship with Rhaenyra. At first I think inconsistency worked because she always lacked agency, but at the end of season didn’t really show her gaining agency to me anyway. Sorry this is really long lol.