I’ve been catching up with season 2 and honestly it’s not half bad. It has cut out the worst shitty (often gross and misogynistic in nature) excesses of the original show while still retaining most if not all of the great character writing and great dialogue that the first four seasons of GoT had.
There’s all this great early GoT style political intrigue retained to it as well. All of these lords and ladies and queens and kings are just terrible, awful people for most of the runtime while we’ve been getting increasing focus on how badly the very concept of monarchy forces the dirty laundry of one inbred family with pet nukes to take shape and brutalize not only the slowly starving smallfolk of King’s Landing, but also the smallfolk throughout most of the surrounding empire.
The Lords of the Seven Kingdoms all exist in this web of familial ties that ensures their ultimate class solidarity, eventually dragging most of the continent into dragon war the aftermath of which resembles that of atomic bombs. Now we find two desperate peasants given dragons because Queen in Exile Rhaenyra needs to find someone capable of vibing with Vermithor and Silverwing, the second and third largest war dragons in existence. She ends up burning to death dozens of claimed Targaryen bastards to do this by locking them all in the Dragonmont and letting the dragons sort the rest. She watches this happen with bored disinterest, in contrast to the horror on her face when her highborn Queensguard Steffon Darklyn dies in a previous attempt to claim the dragon Seasmoke.
[Brief Spoilers for book events in this paragraph]
spoiler
In the book, after Hugh Hammer and Ulf White risk their lives to be her attack dog dragon riders, they never receive the kind of social elevation you’d expect for the people with the largest dragons on the continent. Rhaenyra does not want to deal with the political fallout of there being legitimized Targaryen bastards with bigger dragons than those of her sons, whom are also legitimized Targaryen bastards. Thus Hugh and Ulf plausibly retain some amount of class solidarity to the average smallfolk’s plight and betray Rhaenyra to declare themselves Kings. I’m hoping the show has them join some Riverlander anti-Targaryen guerilla movements once they see the kind of atrocities they are expected to commit.
I posted so I wouldn’t accidentally delete my essay, I’ve not taken out any spoilers that might be in here. Read at your own risk.
This little snippet has me hoping for a peasant revolt that takes place after the season 8 finale, as they still bring the realm into ruin by still allowing corruption to continue. Because as I’ve seen snippets of hotd, it deals with rhaenyra navigating (poorly, but she’s young and wants what she wants) around misogyny that surrounds the crown. While her being representative of a brutalizing lineage that uses ultimate force to ensure it’s existence, her rule had it remained uncontested, probably would’ve ushered in more progressive thinking, but because of immediate self interest (allicent/high towers in general) its scraped and those who are unworthy(aemonds older brother, who only got his position from being born first and was undeserving and I think died from a skirmish or something, again haven’t actually watched) or are believed to be ( wahmen) are barred from upward mobility or ousted. I suppose that even if aemond is self serving, he at least wanted the crown AND could actually rule compared to his brother, he’s still inexperienced and ignorant in areas. But yeah. More themes with battling internalized and external misogyny between female characters to show how movements can struggle when only the short term is considered, they discussed slavery but not sure if they delved into racism much or my
ass didn’t notice it, be fun(ny) to see them explain class consciousness without directly stating it or upsetting their corporate masters, more challenging blood rights (much in the way that rhaenyra has by legitimizing Targaryen bastard dragon riders [which are still Targaryen technically so still got some Naruto ass genetic ability/ built different narrative device. I get that g.o.t. deals with magic and a fun way of doing that is by using different lineages having different abilities, but then what of those without eugenic powers? Are they destined to be ruled? If it’s handled in a manner like dark souls, with the ‘powerless’ attacking and dethroning god, then maybe. Otherwise
] showing (crudely) that one doesn’t need to be an ordained highborn to ride a nuke.) to challenge the imposed hierarchy, more representation of the sexual spectrum, and just tackling more topics that challenges ‘inherent’ hierarchy, elitism, tribalism etc.