Post by q5tyhj on Oct 26, 2022 2:00:55 GMT
Nah. Remember, it's comparatively easy for a man of any serious means (and therefore resources at stake upon his death, inviting conflict) to control a medieval woman's body, which other men she's in contact with, where she goes and what she's allowed to do. A bit harder to make her promise to survive childbirth just because the stability of the realm depends on it. Point goes to the patriarchy. At least in terms of staving off war. Not so much on the individual freedom of half the population. But sometimes you just have to prioritize.
Yeah, actually there's no way around the fact that a man can never be 100% certain whether he is the father, so motherhood is the only parental relation that can be known with absolute certainty. And it is pretty much impossible to watch or control someone 100% of the time (e.g. prison inmates, even in maximum-security prisons, still somehow manage to smuggle in/do drugs or tobacco, sleep with one another, fight/attack one another, and so on), especially if that person is a member of the royal family (and has a dragon). So I suppose we can give the show credit for showing the advantages and disadvantages of both arrangements.
In the context of a medieval setting, playing around with the succession inherently invites debate and conflict when the time comes to actually act it out, as we see on the show, which puts thousands of lives in jeopardy not just on this occasion but on all future occasions when someone might exploit the precedent you set to undermine a peaceful transfer of power for their own ends. So yeah. Objectively I'd call Viserys bending tradition for Rhaenyra a short-sighted decision even though she seemed like a much better heir than Daemon at the time. In that instance he really didn't have a lot of choice, given the cards he'd been dealt. But not reversing the decision when doing so would streamline the succession again and ensure peace to protect her completely unearned sense of entitlement was really dumb.
You're definitely right that a lot of people will probably see the whole issue through that projected 'eeek, sexism victim' lens though, and that that probably accounts for a lot of Rhaenyra's and Rhaenys' popularity at present.
You're definitely right that a lot of people will probably see the whole issue through that projected 'eeek, sexism victim' lens though, and that that probably accounts for a lot of Rhaenyra's and Rhaenys' popularity at present.
People tend to call things that quack and waddle "ducks", so I imagine most people will see it that way (since it is both explicitly and implicitly what is happening). And so hence the disparity in sympathy for the Blacks vs the Greens. But we'll see what people think of the Blacks once we get to the Blood and Cheese incident, I imagine there's going to be fewer people on Team Black than there is after season 1.