As Expected, Now That Ep 1 With B&c Will Be Aired In 2 Weeks, People Are Getting Weird.

“Rhaenyra was right, now they really see Alicent as she is. She’s such a hypocrite! Where is duty and sacrifice, huh?”

Here, let me show you:

Twenty consecutive years of this woman suffering, performing her duties, sacrificing herself and picking up the broken pieces of everyone around her was just not enough for you, huh?

But no, let’s collectively shit on her for sleeping with her guard after her job as a queen, mother and wife was completed and this action affected literally no one outside of her and Criston, because she scolded Rhaenyra, not for having sex out of wedlock, but because her lies broke her family apart and she failed to perform every single one of her duties, yet still somehow remained the most entitled and demanding person in HOTD.

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!

"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

Running theme here is: The Time-Jumps fucking suck. We went from „I do not want children“ to „Oh look! I‘m giving birth to my third child!“ without ANY build-up and then went from tortured longing that can never be to „Quickie in the middle of the day“ without any explanation on how the fuck we got there.

the fact that we are going to have to sit through multiple alicent/crispy scenes this season and didn't even get ONE harwin/rhaenyra scene last season is a crime

"Do you support Israel?"

I don't know - what do you mean by "support Israel"?

Do I support Israel's current war in Gaza? No.

Do I support Israel's right to get its citizens back? Yes.

Do I support Israel's settlements in the West Bank? No.

Do I support Israel's right to exist? Yes.

Do I support Israel's current government and leaders? No.

Do I support Israel's right to defend itself? Yes.

So I dunno, do I "support" Israel or not? What about Palestine?

Do I support reparations for Palestinians in the West Bank? Yes.

Do I support Hamas? No.

Do I support Palestinians in Gaza being free from war? Yes.

Do I support Hamas' violence against Israeli citizens? No.

Do I support Palestine's right to exist? Yes.

And then there's this...

Do I support the destruction of Israel? No.

Do I support the destruction of Palestine? No.

Do I support a world where Israelis don't fear death? Yes.

Do I support a world where Palestinians don't fear death? Yes.

The only way to achieve actual peace in the region is to support peace between Israel and Palestine. You cannot get this if you destroy Israel OR Palestine.

This meme is inescapable on French insta so I'm posting it here for all to enjoy

In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.

P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3

Alicent’s relationships with her children can never be perfect and healthy because they’re objectively broken from their onset. And I’m so tired of seeing brain dead takes comparing the “superior” relationship Rhaenyra has with her kids to Alicent and her kids as some sort of gotcha.

Alicent’s exposure to motherhood isn’t on her terms in any conceivable way. Her children are the products of marital rape and coercion. They are conceived and born when she is a young teenage girl 15-18, well before she is ready to have them. They are born in quick succession with no opportunity for her to recover. And, they are from a man that not only does she not love but who neglects and belittles her.

All these factors severely damage Alicent’s ability to connect with her children in their infancy. And can you blame her given the circumstances?

She’s not ready to have them at all, so she doesn’t know how to properly mother them. And she likely resents them at least a bit in the early stages because they are the physical manifestation of not only her rape but the life she is trapped in. And that likely compounds with severe guilt because these are her babies, why doesn’t she feel the love and joy she’s supposed to?

And yet. She still loves and cares for them. She holds them as babies (despite being a baby herself) and dutifully cares for them even though she could simply dump them off with a nursemaid. She charges with a knife at Rhaenyra for them. She stands between them and a dragon from them. She betrays her closest companion of her childhood for them. She defies the king and their father for them.

I know that Alicent makes some crucial mistakes that ends up hurting her children. And I know that the scenes we see with Alicent and her kids often show her lack of connection to them. But despite the fact that her relationship to them can be nothing but fractured at the onset. There is so much passion and love and devotion she has for them.

These are not scenes of a woman who is a bad mother. These are scenes of a mother who adores her children and would do anything for them. But who can only love them roughly because she never had an opportunity to love them gently. Their very existence was never gentle for her and never fostered through love.

Alicent’s relationship with her kids may be broken. But it’s not her fault that it is. And no matter what there is love and it is her motivation. So stop acting like she is a bad mother when she’s fighting like hell to breed a relationship with them that is fostered in connection.

Alicent and Criston have every right to be together.

I’ve read a lot of posts regarding their non-existent hypocrisy and I’d like to clear some things up.

First and foremost, stop using Alicent’s “Where is duty, where is sacrifice?” line against her or Nyra’s outrageous “Exhausting, wasn’t it?” speech because you think you’re eating when you’re, in fact, starving. Alicent has done her duty and sacrificed herself. It’s the only thing she’s been doing for the past 20 years. She gave the man she was forced to marry four children and she took care of him despite all the shit he put her through. She has lived all her life based on her principles and now her husband is gone. She mourned him, she buried him, it’s been more than 10 days since his death (confirmed that E1 S2 takes place 10 days after Lucerys’ death) and she is finally fucking free. She deserves a sliver of comfort. Alicent is the only one in this series that’s been faithful and dutiful to a T, yet look where that got her. If someone has the right to break the law a little bit, it’s definitely her.

That being said, I don’t know when it was decided that Alicent is a pious saint that can do no wrong, but I need to remind y’all that following a religion does not magically prevent you from sinning. Is she committing fornication? Obviously. However, you are all under this impression that this is hypocritical on her behalf because she berated Rhaenyra for it when they were younger, without considering that her anger was justified for a myriad of other reasons, such as (but not limited to): 1) the fact that Rhaenyra’s freedom to marry whomever she pleased was a privilege granted to her thanks to Alicent’s efforts, who supported her even if Rhaenyra hated her, yet her friend casually threw that away, 2) the fact that Rhaenyra lied to her by swearing on her morher’s grave and never even mentioned Criston, 3) the fact that Rhaenyra had the guts to call her “sister” while lying to her face, 4) the fact that her lies resulted in Otto getting fired since Rhaenyra misled Alicent so that she speaks to Viserys in favour of her friend and betraying her own father by siding against him (a decision she wouldn’t have made if she knew the truth), leaving her completely alone and friendless at court, even if he was right all along and finally 5) the fact that Rhaenyra is the most sought after bachelorette in the whole world and by having sex she undermines herself (Rhaenyra knows this well, hence why she denies these accusations) and literally endangers herself, because had she been married to any other man but Laenor and had this man found out his wife and future queen is not a virgin, imagine the fucking horrors she could have been subjected to. Like, I hate to break it to you, but a 40-year-old widow, who’s had four kids and has completed her duty to the point where she is actually no longer needed and could leave the palace to go live the rest of her life in peace somewhere else and no one would notice her absence (literally though, she has birthed heirs, her husband is dead, her son is a grown adult king, her job is done there), having sex, is not the same as an 18-year-old princess and future heir in her prime, whose purity is linked to her worth, getting caught drunk in a brothel, hooking up with her uncle and losing her virginity to her guard, all in one night. Viserys himself was outraged. There’s lows and then there’s lows, y’all.

By the way, the crazy assumptions that Alicent has been cheating on Viserys with Criston for a while now need to stop. When Olivia Cooke said that they had filmed a messy sex scene with Fabien Frankel in a recent interview, she never said this was for S1 of HOTD. I don’t know where y’all got that from, but even if it was true, that scene has been scrapped so it is not canon. And don’t make me laugh about Daeron, a dragon rider who canonically has Valyrian features, potentially having brown hair. You’re all so blinded by your hatred for Alicent that you want her to be a lying hypocrite in order to make yourselves feel better about Rhaenyra’s mishaps, that you don’t get that the whole point of her and Criston getting physical is that she is a tortured woman who is finally able to break free, not that she has been a hypocrite all along. You’re heavily misunderstanding her arc.

Finally, when it comes to my good man Criston, y’all have lost it completely. No, Alicent is not raping him, unless he tells her to stop and she closes the door behind her like Rhaenyra did that is. No, Criston did not lie about how important his honour is to him. There’s a whole article on how Clare Kilner, the director of E4 S1, decided that Cole removing his armour slowly was necessary because it symbolises his inner conflict and uncertainty over breaking his vow: should he soil his cloak for the sake of the woman he loves? And he does soil it, because he thinks she loves him back. But that honourable man dies the day Rhaenyra tells him that he’ll never be anything more than a side piece to her. This man stops giving a flying fuck about his honour, oath, position and life. He is trying to kill himself. And you know what stops him? Alicent. Alicent is the only thing between him and death, the only person to show him kindness and understanding, to pull him up from the lowest point in his life. I don’t think you heard Alicent in E7 S1: “No, you’re sworn to me!”. Y’all. His life is hers. He doesn’t care about Rhaenyra, his job, Viserys, anyone else at this point. Only Alicent exists in his mind, Fabien himself has said time and time again that his loyalty to her is unwavering. He only exists for Alicent’s sake. He’s who you wish Daemon was. Crying that “Criston is a bad knight and a liar because he broke his chastity oath yet again!” is so pointless because that knight has been dead since Rhaenyra’s marriage to Laenor. What does an oath mean when you find out the people you swore it to have betrayed you?

If he commited a war crime than there must have been a war. You kind of need one to have the other. Otherwise it would have been a „crime against peace“, but at a cursory analysis of the facts that does not seem to fit the bill either, and is very rarely used.

You are contradicting yourself.

European Union Agency for Asylum

6.2.1. Crime against peace, war crime, or crime against humanity

The European Union Agency for Asylum - EUAA is an agency of the European Union mandated with supporting Member States in applying the packag

Otto being there to prevent war from spreading does not negate war having broken out. It merely means that the Greens are willing to avoid further bloodshed. I will admit however that me calling Rhaenys‘ massacre of Non combattants (which according to our standards should have been protected from the hostilities) the first act of war, was somewhat debatable. It could just as well be regarded as an act of Terrorism.

In any case the Greens were justified acting as if at war, because the blacks did the same:

Her first act was to declare Ser Otto Hightower and the Dowager Queen Alicent as traitors and rebels. (G.R.R.Martin, Fire and Blood, Dublin 2018 this edition 2020 p. 408) (Highlights mine)

That is as formerly a declaration of war as we ever got. And it did not come from the Greens.

As with regards to what Alicent and Otto thought on the matter:

„Queen Alicent went pale when she heard what he had done crying „mother protect us all.“ Nor was Ser Otto pleased „You only lost one eye,“ he is reported to have said „how could you be so blind?““ (G.R.R.Martin, Fire and Blood, Dublin 2018 this edition 2020 p. 422) the word warcrime does not appear on the page once what does appear however is the term kinslayer, and that seems to be what Alicent is so horrified about, as no crime is so accursed in the eyes of both gods and men. Otto meanwhile seems to be of the Fouché-mindset „This is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.“ (Yes, I know the quote is sometimes attributed to Talleyrand or others)

And later we have this line from Alicent with regards to Lucerys‘ death:

„Bastard blood, shed at war“ (G.R.R.Martin, Fire and Blood, Dublin 2018 this edition 2020 p.483) (Highlights mine)

So in what capacity was he there then? Into which category does he fit? Was he trying to surrender? Was he trying to arrange an exchange of prisoners? and how was Aemond supposed to know that from what was spoken?

Calling an envoy, a soldier and a threat, is quite literally the dumbest thing you can say. They are basically postmen with diplomatic immunity. It really sums up the extent of intelligence I have come to expect from team green fans. Lucerys was innocent and he will keep being it, murdering him was a war crime + king slaying being a taboo.

You can take your stupid posts somewhere else. Him saying "I will not fight you" isn't a joke, he is representative of borros's enemy and his only Job is to take a letter and bring back an answer, if he joins in fighting he starts a war.....like aemond did.