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#and the two statements about his birthright: to die and to cause death
hellsbellschime · 3 years
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Could you make a meta about jonerys storyline in s7?
LOL okay so fun story! I thought this would be a fun idea for a video and figured I’d do a scene by scene analysis except by the time I was done with 7x03 I already had FIFTEEN MINUTES of material, so I stopped there. It was interesting so I might dive more into it at another point, but I do feel like at the very least the subtext and narrative material from 7x03 is the most rich anyway.
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Most fans of Game of Thrones were looking forward to the shows main leads, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, meeting each other for years. But unfortunately once "ice and fire" finally came face to face, their chemistry and relationship was tragically lacking. However, given that the show was trying to sell an epic love story between them in half a dozen episodes, what was it about Jon and Dany that went so wrong? And in retrospect, did it even go wrong at all? One of the most interesting bricks in the foundation of Jon and Daenerys's relationship actually gets set in stone before Jon and Dany even meet, and it's set in stone by Tyrion. There is an significant miscommunication caused by him in the second episode of the season, because Daenerys commands him to invite Jon to Dragonstone specifically to bend the knee, but the message he actually sends to Jon doesn't include that vital tidbit. But the question is, why is that?
It's possible to chalk it up to just an error in writing or editing, however it's something that would have to be overlooked by everyone, and given the way the season progresses it seems unlikely that that's the case. It could have easily been edited out of the episode itself, so the fact that it wasn't means that it had to have been left in for a reason. And the fact that this miscommunication is never clarified or brought up by Tyrion afterwards seemingly indicates that it's an intentional moment too. But what matters more about this intentional confusion is not the confusion itself, but what it's supposed to tell the audience. 
This disconnect between perspectives and understanding between Jon and Dany seems to repeat itself from the literal moment that they're introduced to each other as well. Obviously Missandei listing off all of Dany's many titles while Jon Snow is introduced with such little fanfare is a moment that plays very well comedically, but despite the fact that up until this point Jon and Dany have been portrayed as two of the most heroic characters in the series, the audience is immediately meant to see them as total opposites of each other. Obviously the disparity between them will become clearer later, but given the way they've both been presented as individuals thus far, it's quite odd that the literal second they meet they're portrayed in direct contrast to one another.
Jon and Daenerys's interactions are really weird right off the bat. Not only is Jon completely thrown for a loop when he arrives on Dragonstone and is immediately commanded to bend the knee and taken prisoner, but Daenerys is her worst, least appealing self as soon as she meets him. It's not entirely out of her wheel house to play hardball with another person in power that she's just met, but from what Tyrion has said about Jon she has no reason to negotiate so aggressively with him, and yet she does anyway. 
What really sticks out in this initial conversation more than anything though, is that immediately after Daenerys meets Jon, she does quite a few things that are going to be incredibly unappealing to Jon as a character. Firstly, she disregards Robb's quest for independence, something he literally died in service of, in order to defer to the supposed last King in the North, Torrhen Stark. That might make sense from Dany's perspective given that she has very little love lost for Viserys, but to Jon, overlooking his deceased brother who was legitimately chosen to be King in the North is not something that is going to win any points with him. 
Then Dany points out that Torrhen Stark swore fealty to House Targaryen in perpetuity in exchange for his life and the life of the Northmen. Now, given what Dany has done up until this point, no one would have expected her to kill all of the Northmen if Jon hadn't bent the knee, but Jon doesn't have the benefit of narrative omniscience, so this statement after his frosty welcome to Dragonstone seems like a pretty clear threat that if Jon doesn't submit to her, he and the Northmen will die. 
She also makes it clear that she sees Torrhen's vow (if a vow can even be considered legitimate when it's given under threat of death) as still valid despite the fact that this is centuries old history that she nor Jon had any choice in. When he refuses, she levies the accusation that he is somehow breaking faith with House Targaryen, despite the fact that according to feudal law, the Mad King very clearly broke faith with House Stark by nearly executing all of the men in the family. 
This is the first moment where Jon actually pushes back against Dany's claims and points out that it was clearly House Targaryen that broke faith, and Daenerys admits some guilt on her father's behalf but asks that he forgive this crime and not judge a daughter by the sins of her father. That would be a halfway decent concession for her to make, were it not for the fact that it's buffered by two implications that Jon is responsible for an oath that his ancestor swore as well as responsible for the fact that his father was best friends with someone who attempted to kill her. 
Her next attempt at winning Jon's allegiance is even stranger. She claims that House Targaryen and House Stark were allies for centuries, when the obvious reality is that they were unwillingly subjugated by House Targaryen and the Iron Throne for the entire time. She also calls them centuries of peace and prosperity, which they very clearly and objectively were not. Westeros has never been particularly peaceful, but it's also never been as chaotic as it was during the reign of the Targaryens. She also somewhat hilariously presents him with the offer of Warden of the North, as if that were a prize to be won for him and not an obvious downgrade in terms of his status among his people and in Westeros in general. 
Jon refuses in a pretty fair retort, explaining that he isn't beholden to his ancestors vows and Daenerys isn't guilty of her father's crimes. It's interesting though, because Daenerys is frustrated by this. It's somewhat understandable that she'd be frustrated by the fact that Jon isn't bending the knee, but it's also intersting that she is frustrated by something that is an objectively fair propisition that puts both she and Jon on equal footing with one another. Throughout their conversation it's been clear that she does not see things that way, she expects Jon to bend the knee because someone who isn't him made a vow, but she doesn't expect to be held guilty for her father's crimes because it wasn't her doing. 
When Jon says that he needs Dany's help and she needs his, her response here is very telling as well. Clearly she's flexing because she wants to be perceived as intimidating by everyone she meets, but what's curious is that she automatically disbelieves that she could need Jon's help when he hasn't even explained what she needs his help for. It's extremely telling because she is already in a mental position where she believes that nothing and no one could possibly pose any kind of threat to her. 
Jon's engagement with the conversation takes an interesting turn here, because even after everything that has been said and done so far, he tells Daenerys that she is at least better than Cersei because she hasn't attacked King's Landing yet. While that is technically true and feels slightly more on par with the heroic Dany that everyone has seen so far, what the audience does already know is that she hasn't just decided not to attack King's Landing, she's been convinced not to attack King's Landing. Thus far, this is the only positive thing that Jon has said about her, and the viewers already know that it's false. 
Jon, ever the wordsmith, tries to immediately apprise Daenerys of the gravity of the situation in the worst way possible by likening the game of thrones to children playing a game screaming that the rules aren't fair. But again, it's interesting that, even though Tyrion corrects her afterwards, Daenerys is offended that Jon is calling HER a child. And it seems that honestly, Dany has no interest in what Jon is saying to her so long as it's not about her and her right to rule Westeros. 
What's also really bizarre here about Daenerys and Tyrion's behavior is that when he starts explaining what's going on with the army of the dead, they are both apathetic and disbelieving, despite the fact that Melisandre told them to summon Jon Snow because something big was coming and Jon knew more about it than almost anyone. It's possible that they were suspicious that it was some kind of trap or ruse, but it's strange that they both act so clueless and uncaring when they've both already been told that Jon was going to show up and tell them some wild shit. 
The dialog exchange gets really bizarre at this point, because instead of actually responding to anything that Jon said, Dany goes off on a tangent that essentially sums up to the idea that she believes in nothing but herself and it's her destiny to rule Westeros. It seems so off topic that it's hard to even understand what the writers were trying to convey here, but the only thing that I can possibly comprehend is that they're essentially trying to make it clear that after everything Jon has said and done, Daenerys is still thinking of nothing more than her destined birthright. 
And once again, we're all meant to see a contrast here because Davos intercedes and counters with the idea that if it's Dany's destiny to be queen, then all of Jon's accomplishments were his destiny too. This is interesting for two reasons though. The first is obvious, that Jon isn't the type to talk himself up or behave in a remotely entitled way, and that he doesn't command respect but earns it.
However, this points out something else interesting that is easy to overlook throughout this exchange. Daenerys is extremely forthcoming about herself, her accomplishments, and what she believes is her right, but Jon hasn't offered up any information about himself willingly. It's an understandable strategic tactic, there is no reason to offer up information to a potential enemy, but the fact is that this conversation clearly has confirmed in his mind that Daenerys is still a very possible enemy. 
And unfortunately for both of them, as Jon and Dany's first ever conversation concludes, Daenerys actually confirms that Jon is her enemy, claims that he is in open rebellion against her, and takes him prisoner while refusing to admit that she's actually taking him prisoner. 
Jon's conversation with Tyrion later is even more interesting. Because Jon directly calls out the fact that he's a prisoner, and Tyrion tries to claim the exact same thing that Dany did, that he's not a prisoner based on the incredibly frail technicality that Dany did not directly tell him that he was a prisoner. But even more importantly, this is an obvious instance where Tyrion could have told Jon that his message to him was intentionally misleading and Daenerys's aggression towards him may have been partially his fault, but he doesn't, nor does he explain this at any point later. 
Another interesting element to their conversation is that Tyrion tells Jon that he actually does believe him about the army of the dead. It's interesting because, if that were the case, why did he so clearly tag-team Jon in his first meeting with Daenerys? Perhaps it took him a moment of thought to actually understand what Jon was saying and come around to believing him, but it's interesting that the writers had a character who was familiar with Daenerys and Jon who could easily have mediated between them and didn't have him mediate. 
Tyrion also makes mention of the fact that children are not their fathers, luckily for all of us. While this is just a one off line and potentially means nothing, it's also a potentially very telling one because, honestly, Jon and Tyrion are very much like their fathers. Jon has idolized Ned for his entire life and desperately wants to be his father, and despite all of his attempts to distance himself from Tywin, Tyrion is clearly the Lannister child who is the most similar to his own father. So the subtext there about none of them being their fathers when even at this point two out of three of them are incredibly similar to their fathers specifically, seems like it could be very obvious foreshadowing.
But probably the most intriguing and noticeably strange aspect of Jon's conversation with Tyrion is that Tyrion explains to him that asking for Daenerys's help against an enemy she doesn't even believe is real is not a reasonable thing to ask. However, literally everything that Tyrion and Daenerys have asked of Jon so far has been wildly unreasonable to ask. Daenerys has asked a complete stranger to bend the knee to someone he's never met or even seen before, and she has essentially taken him hostage when he refused instead of just trying to convince him to do so. Jon even offers her an incredibly easy way in, he asks for her help, and if she provides it it's obvious that he and the rest of the Northmen would be much more open to the idea of her as their queen, but rather than even hearing Jon out she takes a seemingly desperate person as her prisoner with the clear intent of holding him there until he bends the knee. 
When Tyrion convinces Daenerys to give Jon the dragonglass he requires, Daenerys makes her first attempt to actually relate to Jon on a personal level. It's once again interesting that Daenerys brings up the loss of her two brothers and relates it to Jon's loss of his brothers, because Jon offers literally nothing in return. 
But what seems to be more relevant is Dany's position that everyone enjoys what they're good at and Jon saying that he doesn't. Once again, because the audience has the luxury of seeing Jon's entire journey thus far, it's easy to see why he feels this way. However, this seems to be another opportunity to point out the way in which Jon and Dany contrast each other, not to point out the ways in which they're similar to one another. 
It's interesting that Melisandre claims that she has brought ice and fire together at the beginning of the episode. Aside from being a nice nod to the original text, it also positions Jon and Daenerys as opposing forces instead of united ones. And these constant contrasts that are being brought up from the instant that they meet seem extremely relevant to their relationship to one another, but the fact that Dany enjoys what she's good at while Jon doesn't seems to be the most vital bit of information that the show conveys about Jon and Dany right off the bat. Because there really are so many parallels between what they're good at. Much of Jon and Dany's journeys thus far have been about fighting from the bottom to get to the top, winning people over, and trying to kill their enemies before their enemies can kill them. However, many of the things that Jon seems to dislike about leadership the most seem to be things that Daenerys actually does genuinely enjoy. 
It's safe to say that their very first meeting wasn't all that many fans were hoping for, however it seems like in the brutally short timeline of the final two seasons of Game of Thrones, the writers felt that the most important thing to establish between Jon and Daenerys right off the bat was not some sort of chemistry or romantic interest, but was the idea that these two people are diametrically opposed to one another in every way that matters. Despite the fact that their character arcs have had so many parallels thus far, the first episode where Jon and Daenerys actually meet seems to be designed to establish that everything about their personalities, dispositions, and overall ideals are on opposite ends of the spectrum, which was truly just the first gigantic step in establishing a romantic relationship that seems muddled, disjointed, and generally hard to follow and comprehend.
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crystalelemental · 3 years
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“kisant: I also think that if they combined 6+7 they should update the mechanics around supports and child units. Honestly, I don't think 7's supports should have been as restricted as they were in the first place, because I also missed on lore to focus on getting the pairing I wanted. A way to update the games for a remake would be to simply add more child characters in Roy's game, change Karla's recruitment to happen earlier in the game (there are other arenas before the one she appears in) and allow for platonic supports as well as romantic supports, because only being allowed to get one A support and one B support was pretty shitty. For characters like Rath, they could also add more female supports for him with existing characters.  After all, shadows of valentia also added supports between characters (there were none in the original game) and a ton of new mechanics, so a 6+7 remake should also update those.”
This is going to be a somewhat subjective take, but we are operating on entirely different wavelengths, because everything about this is exactly what I think is the worst possible outcome.
Let me start with a statement I have made before and will make again and again until I die: infinite supports are not inherently good.  I think Three Houses proved they can (mostly) be done well, but infinite supports cause you to lose things that finite supports have going for them that don’t often get acknowledged.  A big one just being a streamlined gaming experience and adding replay value.  Infinite supports don’t encourage doing anything different at any point when combined with the free battle system.  You just take like 10 hours out of your life to try and fill out to log, mindlessly beating unthreatening maps that just kind of exist for the sake of doing this exact thing.  Finite supports may mean you have to replay the game to get a different chain, but you don’t slow down your current playthrough to unlock them (unless you’re farming support by ending turn on a seize the throne map, which wasn’t the intended method anyway), and you now have a reason to play through the game again to get something different.  That hidden lore is meant to be hidden, it’s something you stumble upon in a later playthrough when you decide to go for Canas and Renault’s supports, as opposed to their other options.  There was something worth replaying the game for.  “Customizable kid units add replay value” I’ll get to that.
The other thing that’s lost is consistency.  I’ve been on and off replaying Birthright lately, and one thing that still stands out as a problem is that, with infinite supports, nothing ever comes of those supports.  When you have a character like, say, Oboro, whose main thing is hating Nohrians, and a bunch of her supports with Nohrian characters is about overcoming that, it kinda lessens the significance when you hit that A-support and she seems to have learned that lesson, only to start up the next C-support and be right back where you were before, as if nothing happened.  Three Houses also has this problem, I feel, at least when it comes to romance.  You have all these A-supports that end with shades of romance, and then you can just...not have their paired ending.  Getting a heartfelt moment that’s shared between the two characters, and then having each go on to have similar heartfelt moments with like four other romantic options, kinda cheapens the value of their dynamic.  Finite supports don’t have this problem.  When you limit supports, that A-support matters, and the fact that there’s variety aside from romance for baby purposes makes them more meaningful.
Look at Awakening, where this problem started.  Look at how vast that support log is, and tell me how much of it was meaningful, as opposed to empty joke supports or a desperate struggle to come up with a reason these characters are married now.  You have a character like Cordelia, who is decisively not over Chrom at all, marrying literally anyone but him, and you have to just deal with that throughout supports.  Or Tharja, who is obsessed with Robin but can marry other people because kid necessity, even though most of the time she barely has feelings for them at all.  Even with supports that are romantic, you get shit like Sumia just baking Chrom pies over and over and that’s enough for romance.  There’s no depth.  Awakening doesn’t have much in the same vein as Eliwood and Ninian or Nino and Jaffar.  And the reason?  Quantity over Quantity is the name of the game with kid units.
Awakening and Fates are too busy making customization for the kids that they forgot to make sufficiently meaningful supports.  It’s so severe that even the good pairings suffer.  Chrom and F!Robin is widely considered the most canon pairing, and even they have an entire support level dedicated to a joke about how Chrom walked in on her in the bath one time.  Supports suffer when you’re forcing a child system that demands variety, so adding more children characters and more support options to make children characters is going to mean support quality takes a hit.
Not to mention, again, how much that hinders the characters.  “We need more kid characters for Binding Blade, because that game didn’t have enough characters yet!  Quick, make Priscilla have a kid!”  So now, instead of the interesting dynamic she had where she rejects every possible love interest, we have to either re-write that A-support to be reciprocated (boring) or add in another S-support where she reverses that decision (stupid).  “Bartre needs to have Fir, better add other options!”  Cool, so we’re just tossing the whole aspect of Karel being her uncle, which is something explored and explained in Binding Blade.  Like why should Bartre talk to Karel at all if he didn’t marry his sister?  Oops, I guess it’s fine, we’ll just get rid of that touching moment of Bartre apologizing to him for her death.  Not like that was a great moment for character building, we have kids to make!  “We need Rath to have more options than just Lyn, let’s include Isadora as an option!”  Great!  Now the character who doesn’t have other romance options because she’s in love with Harken and believes he’ll return to her one day suddenly has the ability to just drop that aspect of her character entirely for the sake of making babies.  Like imagine turning her support with Legault from just an amicable thing where he’s reminiscent about the old Black Fang and feels the current army is comfortable around to go “Actually it was all because I want to make babies with you.”  Lame as hell.
And double lame because it removes the fact that he’s kinda flirting with Heath.  Sure, Heath isn’t reciprocating, but like...one of the nice things about Three Houses was that it could include gay pairing ending cards, because there were no kids.  You could have things like Petra and Dorothea, or Marianne and Hilda, and that’s just treated as an equally valuable and reasonable outcome.  All of that is dead instantly upon introducing kids, because you need multiple parent options or the system falls apart and stagnates.  And in making a wide enough variety of options, there’s just no room to leave a character with their gay pairing.  It just isn’t something they’d bother to include when the focus is on making children characters, so say goodbye to that.
There’s just...no good outcome with kids.  I like the Awakening kids, but ultimately it’s just not a good tradeoff with the current approach in Fire Emblem.  Genealogy kinda made it work, but only because that game didn’t even have supports.  I want the remake to include supports to develop people’s personalities, but I’m honestly worried they won’t come out that well because of the fixation on children.  Echoes added supports too, but like...okay, yeah, how well did those go?  Which ones do you really remember?  Because mostly fandom seems to remember Faye’s because of how much they hated hers, and maybe Genny and Sonya because it was cute.  Almost everything else often gets forgotten anyway.  So not exactly a great example on the benefits of adding a bunch of supports to a game that already had a strong system.
I know they’re going to add unlimited supports, though.  I know they will, because that’s been the way of things since Awakening.  I want to believe that, because they held true to a lot of the mechanics of Gaiden with Echoes, that they’ll do the same with the Elibe games.  But they won’t.  I just...really hope they don’t combine the games, because knowing that, there is absolutely no positive outcome for a combo game given the demands of a child system.
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moonlitgleek · 5 years
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How do you feel about Alicent Hightower? I used to feel some sympathy towards her, mostly because she's smarter than both Rhaenyra and her son, but she lost me with her cruel treatment of Aegon III in F&B. (Though tbh for someone who asked for peace twice, it felt OOC to have her be so petty and vengeful later on, it seemed that GRRM wanted to sideline her and couldn't find a better way to do so than turning her into a Hysterical Woman).
My feelings towards Alicent are complicated. Certainly, I’m not prone to thinking that a person who constantly refers to Rhaenyra as a whore, wishes for her death in childbed and lets her own husband rot while she plans a takeover is a good person. However, I’m somewhat bothered by how she gets discussed in fandom because more often than not, it’s Alicent’s desire to see her son succeed to the throne despite Viserys’ expressed wishes to the contrary that gets singled out as something to condemn. I get that it’s the root of a lot of Alicent’s actions thereafter, but of all the crappy things she did or said, wanting her son to be king is a weird thing to hold against her imo considering that any lady in her position would have had the same expectation. Alicent was not an outlier in either expecting or advocating for a son to come before a daughter of the same generation. It really did not matter who Viserys married; his wife was always going to expect her trueborn son to inherit ahead of his sister, though of course the way she went about it might have differed. Viserys I set up a a rather knotty succession debate then did nothing to resolve or mitigate it so a conflict over the throne on his death was always going to happen irrespective of the identity of his wife. It might or might not have been as bloody as the Dance of the Dragons, but it was assuredly happening.
That said, I disagree with your assessment of Alicent’s treatment of Aegon III being OOC. Alicent was not remotely a kind or a peaceful person by nature. I’m generally iffy on how much credit to give her for her peace offers considering she only proposed the idea of a Great Council when she was defeated and in Rhaenyra’s control - where was that willingness when she had control of King’s Landing after Viserys’ death and Rhaenyra’s loyalists were being thrown in the black cells and/or killed? The thing to note about Alicent’s peace offers is that her motives were purely personal; she tried to broker peace after the tide started turning towards the blacks and her children were in terrible danger.
Words of these plans [to kill Daeron the Daring and his dragon] soon reached the ears of the Dowager Queen, filling her with terror. Fearing for her sons, Queen Alicent went to the Iron Throne upon her knees, to plead for peace. This time the Queen in Chains put forth the notion that the realm might be divided; Rhaenyra would keep King’s Landing and the crownlands, the North, the Vale of Arryn, all the lands watered by the Trident, and the isles. To Aegon II would go the stormlands, the westerlands, and the Reach, to be ruled from Oldtown.
Rhaenyra rejected her stepmother’s proposal with scorn. “Your sons might have had places of honor at my court if they had kept faith,” Her Grace declared, “but they sought to rob me of my birthright, and the blood of my sweet sons is on their hands.“Bastard blood, shed at war,” Alicent replied. “My son’s sons were innocent boys, cruelly murdered. How many more must die to slake your thirst for vengeance?”
Alicent’s twisted logic aside, peace for her was explicitly tied to the safety of her own children, all of whom were in perilous positions at this point as far as she knew. But not only did Alicent dismiss the loss of Jace and Luke as inconsequential due to their bastardy, she deliberately misconstrued Luke’s death because Luke didn’t die at warbut was cruelly murdered by Aemond, and completely ignored young Viserys’ presumed death.Rhaenyra naturally rejected Alicent’s peace because why should she be interested in sparing her brothers’ lives when her brothers killed her sons? But Rhaenyra’s rejection of Alicent’s offer meant that the two factions continued to clash, and two of Alicent’s sons were killed by Rhaenyra’s supporters whereas Helaena committed suicide after a depressive episode suffered as a result of Daemon’s “a son for a son” vengeance. Alicent’s pleas for her sons’ lives were rebuffed and she ended up losing two of them as the third suffered permanent injuries. In that context, I find it logical that Alicent would be as uninterested in any scenario that spared Rhaenyra’s Aegon as Rhaenyra was in one that spared Alicent’s sons. Too, it is very in-character for Alicent to pursue vengeance; don’t forget that she had previously demanded that the 5-year-old Lucerys’ eye be put out as a punishment for him taking out Aemond’s eye, so the willingness to maim children as a form of vengeance and a statement wasn’t new to Alicent. The bad blood that turned this war into a circle of vengeance and violence long preceded Viserys I’s death.
I’d also disagree that Alicent’s vengeance was an attempt from GRRM to sideline her, simply because Alicent was not sidelined at this point. For all intents and purposes, she acted as a regent in her sons’s absence. She was the main political authority in King’s Landing prior to Aegon II’s return from Dragonstone. It was Alicent who negotiated the reclaiming of the Red Keep during the Moon of Madness. It was her who proclaimed a curfew, had the City Watch reformed and had the three pretender kings arrested. It was her who betrothed Aegon II to Cassandra Baratheon and accepted Corlys Velaryon’s fealty on Aegon’s behalf.It was her machinations, along with Larys Strong, that prevented Alyn Velaryon from attacking Aegon II on Dragonstone and succeeded in bringing him back to King’s Landing. Even after Aegon’s return, Alicent remained a power player in his court and a constant presence in his councils.
With his half-sister slain and her only surviving son a captive at his own court, King Aegon II might reasonably have expected the remaining opposition to his rule to melt away…and mayhaps it might have done so if His Grace had heeded Lord Velaryon’s counsel and issued a general pardon for all those lords and knights who had espoused the queen’s cause. Alas, the king was not of a forgiving mind. Urged on by his mother, the Queen Dowager Alicent, Aegon II was determined to exact vengeance upon those who had betrayed and deposed him.
Though years would need to pass before Morning grew large enough to be ridden to war, the news of her birth nonetheless was of great concern to the green council. If the rebels could flaunt a dragon and the loyalists could not, Queen Alicent pointed out, smallfolk might see their foes as more legitimate. “I need a dragon,” Aegon II said when he was told
“Your Grace,” the Sea Snake said, when the rump of the once proud green council had assembled, “you must surrender. The city cannot endure another sack. Save your people and save yourself. If you abdicate in favor of Prince Aegon, he will allow you to take the black and live out your life with honor on the Wall.”
“Will he?” King Aegon said. Munkun tells us he sounded hopeful.
His mother entertained no such hope. “You fed his mother to your dragon,” she reminded her son. “The boy saw it all.”The king turned to her desperately. “What would you have me do?”
“You have hostages,” the Queen Dowager replied. “Cut off one of the boy’s ears and send it to Lord Tully. Warn them he will lose another part for every mile they advance.”
“Yes,” Aegon II said. “Good. It shall be done.”
Alicent was not sidelined at all. The one decision she took that Aegon went against was agreeing to the betrothal between Princess Jaehaera and Aegon the Younger, and that can’t really be described as him going against her wishes because Alicent was negotiating in bad faith with Corlys Velaryon and had no intention of allowing Aegon to actually wed Jaehaera. Aegon listened to her in all else.
Finally, I wouldn’t characterize desiring vengeance as a sign of a hysterical woman, especially not in the context of the Dance where Martin had previously contrasted the reaction of men and women to the loss of a child, doubling down on his pattern of broken mothers in having both Rhaenyra and Helaena fall into depression and retreat from court in the aftermath of Luke and Jaehaerys’ death at the same time that Daemon and Aegon II swore vengeance. Because men get to act while women get to break. If there is a problem in Alicent’s characterization here, I’d say it is in her ultimate fate being an imprisonment where she “spent more time weeping than reading or sewing. One day she ripped all her clothing into pieces” which may be understandable in the context of the story but is also a part of a consistent problematic pattern in the narrative.
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inigostears · 6 years
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so how about those hints loki was dropping
i maaaaayyyy or may not have gotten carried away with loki’s statements during the newest paralogue. it seems preeeeetty damn story heavy, so here’s a little fates meta flexing/heroes theorizing for all of you.
first off, let's do a little fates recap. 
there are twelve* of the first dragons in fates. each one of them gave their blessing to a certain society within fateslandia (excluding moro and the rainbow sage, who weren't really stated to do anything like that), and thus their descendants received a certain power (for example, the ice tribe worships the ancient dragon of ice and received ice powers). anankos was a particularly special case for the first dragons, in which he dearly loved all of his people; so much so that he essentially created his own pocket universe with his most devout followers when the war between the first dragons was intensifying so they would be safe. some time after the war of the first dragons, anankos had to split his heart from his body in order to escape degeneration ("going mad" as many people put it, including anankos himself, but we all know what it really is). 
next comes zenith itself. 
 if i remember correctly, alfonse said something along the lines of "if the whole world is engulfed in war, then an evil being will arise from their slumber and plunge the world into chaos" (kind of also "a la tellius" if you ask me) in book one. since heroes is painfully obvious that it's at least loosely following norse mythology, we can safely assume that this means ragnarok is going to be a thing (you know, the huge battle from norse mythology? yeah, that one). 
despite having limited lore, i don't think that it would be a stretch to say that there might be a possible parallel between the dragons in fates and the dragons in heroes. dragon gods (or dragons hailed as gods for that matter) have been quite a staple in the series, so it's not surprising that zenith would be similar to the rest of the games in that regard. after all, zenith seems to be the captain of "let's fuck with the multiverse" train, so having overlapping themes doesn't surprise me at all. 
finally, we get to loki herself and the question of "what the fuck does loki have to do with any of this?"... so here's where the theorizing REALLY begins. 
loki's research itself can't just be a coincidence, and if i had to guess about what prompted her to do it, i'd say that she probably also noticed the possible little parallel between fates' first dragons and zenith's dragon gods. considering how she just held the leaders of a whopping four countries hostage just to get her hands on some ancient texts, she almost definitely had some other evidence to back up her own theory of "resurrecting her lord" and decided to see if anything about fates' dragons meant more than she already knew. since she learned about anankos of all things (who had pretty much been erased from nohr and hoshido's history, mind you), she had to go in pretty goddamn deep into those texts. 
regarding naglfar, if we consult norse mythology once again, it's actually a ship made from the nails of the dead that is commanded by loki during ragnarok to carry an army to fight against the gods. pretty gross, but considering how loki IS, it's pretty obvious that naglfar is paramount to her plans. all of this gives me two ideas of how loki's true role in the game will play out: 
loki turns out to be the REAL big bad in the series and just wants to fuck everyone and everything over with ragnarok and her true lord, who is very likely the same dragon/dragon god that alfonse mentions to be the one to "plunge the world into chaos". after all, it's probably not a coincidence that loki got the name of a god and surtr got the name of... not exactly a god. especially since intelligent systems appears to REALLY like the significance of names**. 
loki is actually a force of "chaotic good/chaotic neutral" and is specifically trying to get her lord out of his slumber before he completely degenerates as a dragon and fucks everything and everyone up before prophesied. it's not that she wants a fuck ton of people to die in a war, she believes that they are merely smaller sacrifices for the greater good and for a better future. naglfar will not only just serve as a carrier for the muspell crew, but also for the askr and embla crews (along with the heroes, of course). the only reason why she joined surtr's cause is because she knew of embla's ability to control the heroes, and therefore could use her ties to muspell to weed out anyone she thinks isn't strong enough to face her lord. after all, the greatest peace a degenerated dragon can get is death itself. 
if either one of those happen, i'll be thrilled and intelligent systems owes me $20 if i'm right. $20 and a character alt of my choosing if they go with the second option. 
in terms of getting actual heroes added, do i think this explicitly means we're getting anankos very soon? nah, probably not. i'll be damned if they do (and i kinda hope they do since anankos would be fucking bomb to have in heroes, i adore anankos' design), but there's still a good chance it won't happen soon. here's hoping, though. 
if you read this far, then holy shit dude congrats. but you're also probably wondering why i put some asterisks in here. so here's some small footnotes: 
*"twelve" may actually not be the correct number of first dragons in fates' history itself. there's a few interesting lines in the japanese version of the  invisible history dlc that heavily implies that the dawn and dusk dragons are really just anankos. iirc, said lines were lost in translation a bit to the english version, but the japanese lines are as follows:
Anankos: That is a dragon vein. A place where the earth’s energy is concentrated… In this world, only those with the blood of the Dragon can awaken that power. 
Severa: Hmmm. Meaning, we can’t use it. 
Anankos: No… There’s a way. I’ll give you my blood. If you drink this, your body will take in the blood of the Dragon God, and you’ll be able to use the dragon veins temporarily.
note how anankos only specifies himself having the power to activate dragon veins. there's a bit more to the theory... but if you want to read more about it, here’s the post that goes more into detail about it. 
**the first and best example that comes to mind for this is probably within fates itself. owain, inigo, and severa all had their names changed as we all know by now, but the pattern for them is pretty interesting. owain and severa, in both the english and japanese versions of fates got their names changed to gods. inigo was the only one of the three who wasn't, being named either after a jewel or a king depending on the version you're looking at. interestingly enough, inigo, the only one with the non-god name, is also the only one of the trio who dies in birthright when defeated.
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