Experience Tumblr like never before
do you think alicent sees aegon as the nail in the coffin that determined the rest of her life. like she was married to viserys and that was bad enough but i wonder if she thought at the start of their marriage what reconciliation with rhaenyra would look like and how far away it was, how maybe if she was infertile or maybe if she only had girls maybe there was still something, some impossible chance that one day she wouldn’t have to face the choice that birthing a son would bring—to watch him either be put to the throne or rhaenyra’s sword. i wonder if every night of her first pregnancy chipped away at her hope. i wonder if when she had aegon she knew nothing could ever be the same and tried to bury it nonetheless. but then to watch him grow into this thing that he is and to love him because he’s her son but resent him because he’s a man who does exactly what other men did to you, and he turns other girls into the girl you once were, it’s like—when does the resentment overpower the love? how can they coexist? or do they have to coexist because every love you’ve ever had has been tinged by resentment and any other kind no longer makes sense? how else do you love? what do you have to do to deserve it? what does reconciliation look like, how far away is it????? and now on his deathbed the man who put you here, put your son here and never once cared, who hammered the nail in your coffin, tells you something that makes you believe that maybe it was all worth it. maybe the love can be bigger than the resentment, just this once. so rhaenys is standing in front of her on a roaring dragon and alicent would die for her son without question in that moment (in any moment, i think, but especially now) because despite being the worst thing to happen to her, he’s also the only evidence she has that what she went through meant anything at all.