![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!bUay!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2afaf41f-bda3-487f-80d8-bd8940642a6f_2160x1070.jpeg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>#TeamBlack<\/p>\nYes, we\u2019ve seen two Black characters speaking to each other alone before on this show: Alyn and Addam; Alyn and Baela; Baela\u2019s mother Lady Laena and her sister Rhaena; Corlys and Alyn. But the Black audience lost our shit this week just seeing a group of the four of them alone together, without their white spouses\/ betrothed\/ counterparts. They\u2019re regrouping after surviving last week\u2019s sea \u201cBattle of the Gullet,\u201d with Lord Corlys at the helm, expertly driving the boat like an unc with a \u201878 Coup de Ville. Though they\u2019ve won the battle, Baela has just lost her betrothed prince and her future as the queen, Corlys has lost his entire estate. But they have each other; they are officially all a family, with Corlys granting Addam and Alyn the gift of his high-born last name, Velaryon. <\/p>\n
For a fantasy series, and for one in the GOT universe specifically, the presence and significance of these Black characters is revolutionary. I didn\u2019t finish the books (but neither did the author! So, it\u2019s fine!), but as a huge fan of the OG series (seasons 1-6 only), I can definitively say that the white male showrunners of GOT, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, did not care about Black people or women. Enjoying GOT as a Black woman was like enjoying hip-hop: pay no attention to the rampant misogyny and anti-Blackness and just listen to the beat and clever turn of phrase. If you don\u2019t get hype when the GOT theme music starts playing and the animation starts going, are you even alive? And who didn\u2019t love the dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen who could birth dragons, be consumed in fire and remain unburnt, who was riding dragons bareback and setting all of her enemies aflame with one word: dracarys! Of course, they had to constantly remind their Black and female audience that we don\u2019t really belong in their fantasies beyond props. <\/p>\n
Daenerys, the only main character who kept Black and brown people around her, did so because she \u201cfreed\u201d the Black and brown \u201cslaves\u201d who then dedicated their lives to her protection. In one of the nastiest scenes of Game of Thrones, the Black and brown people literally lift her lily-white ass up to crowd surf on them<\/a> like the white savior she was. <\/p>\n The brilliant Jacob Anderson who is now killing it as Louis de Pointe du Lac in Interview with the Vampire\/The Vampire Lestat <\/a>was simply wasted playing one of those freed enslaved soldiers for Daenerys in what could\u2019ve been an interesting role if the D&D showrunners cared anything about Black characters having depth or being anything other than enslaved people \u201cfreed\u201d by white people and eternally grateful to the point of death. <\/p>\n It\u2019s because of how Game of Thrones used (or didn\u2019t use) Black characters that this week\u2019s episode of House of the Dragon was so striking. Because Black fantasy lovers are starved for such images and scenes of us together, on the same side. Yet even from the premiere episode of the series in Summer 2022, Black people have existed not just as lords, ladies and dragon riders through Lord Corlys and his family, but also as a maester and adviser to the king in Kings Landing, and as regular folks doing this and that in the background. In fact, Black people are so prevalent in HOTD that I\u2019m actually worried about what happened to them all between the time period of this show and Game of Thrones which takes place about 200 years later. I guess white folks are committed to doing 200 years of Black enslavement in every lifetime, including in their wildest fantasies. It\u2019s true, skin color doesn\u2019t divide the way having wealth and dragon-riding blood does in HOTD, but Black characters being a free and regular part of the biggest fantasy franchise, represented in all classes of nobility, while also having a moment on screen where we can just be Black together is rare and beautiful to see\u2014regardless of how race might work in their world. <\/p>\n Just as rare on screen is the exploration of patriarchy through the lens of women of different races in fantasy. Even white women main characters in Game of Thrones were constantly punished on screen through the male gaze. Though Game of Thrones had some fascinating women characters\u2014Cersei, Arya, and of course, Rhaenyra\u2019s descendant Daenerys among them\u2014it was largely a man\u2019s game told from a male point of view, with women characters filtered through a man\u2019s lens. From Dany to Cersei to Sansa Stark, the central white women characters on Game of Thrones and even random background women characters were all brutally and violently raped on screen throughout the long-running series, and gratuitously nude. It\u2019s \u201crealistic\u201d; it\u2019s \u201cperiod accurate,\u201d all the incel boys cried at any pushback from Black and women viewers for why Game of Thrones just had to treat all manner of women and Black people this way. Never mind the dragons and zombies and magic. It\u2019s realism and period accuracy we\u2019re going for here. <\/p>\n And then came House of the Dragon. <\/p>\n Three years after Game of Throne\u2019s disastrous final season in 2019, the prequel series about the Targaryen civil war with dragons premiered. Even with male showrunner Ryan Condal on this series, House of the Dragon is decidedly female and therefore a fundamentally different show. <\/p>\n It\u2019s still a man\u2019s world, but in House of the Dragon, we see the patriarchy through the female gaze. When women are centered, we learn as an audience to focus and sympathize with women as the most important people in a story\u2014something blatantly against what patriarchy conditions us to believe. <\/p>\n At its core are two women, Rhaenyra and her childhood best friend and lady-in-waiting Alicent. Both navigate patriarchy with wildly different ideas of what it takes to win the game. As a dragon-rider, the heir to the Targaryen dynasty and the future queen of Westeros, Rhaenyra was born into ultimate power. Her life\u2019s motto is \u201cwho gon check me, boo?\u201d The first woman pledged to sit the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra sees no difference between herself and her male ancestors, and exercises total agency over her body and her pleasure, as men are trained to do. She has no concept of not getting her way, as long as her father can drag his decrepit ass out of bed and remove her enemies for her. She is patriarchy\u2019s princess, and her biggest weakness is not understanding that she can only be queen if the men around her allow it. <\/p>\n Alicent, by contrast, is the daughter of Otto Hightower, a high-born second son who ascends to power by scheming and pimping out his daughter to Rhaenyra\u2019s widowed father, King Viserys. Alicent is socialized to believe that if she is a good girl for the patriarchy, she will be rewarded and happy. In a betrayal to Rhaenyra, she becomes queen to Viserys and serves men well: her father, her king husband, and then the sons that she bears for him. And she is miserable, sleeping with a decaying old man who calls her by Rhaenyra\u2019s dead mother\u2019s name. Alicent grows to resent Rhaenyra\u2019s sexual freedom and agency over her own body and the way Rhaenyra flaunts her disregard for the respectable role women are supposed to play in society. Once Viserys dies, Alicent and her father plot and install Alicent\u2019s son Aegon II on the throne instead. <\/p>\n Nonbinary actor Emma D\u2019Arcy as Rhaenyra will go down in history for their performance in this week\u2019s episode, and the quote \u201cBring Aegon\u2014the YOU-ZUR-PAH\u2014to me<\/a>!\u201d is one of those epic line readings that\u2019s gonna ring in our head for weeks. What a stroke of genius and luck, having a non-binary actor playing the role of Rhaenyra who seeks to destroy the boundaries placed around her womanhood (if not all women), who simply wants to live freely\u2014not as a man, but as men do. With D\u2019Arcy as Rhaenyra, existing as non-binary, the audience is opened to a world beyond the gender binary and can view Rhaenyra\u2019s story (and perhaps even our own) through the lens of gender-free possibility\u2014and what\u2019s lost when too many men, and Alicent as their humble servant, won\u2019t allow it.<\/p>\n \u201cYou toil still in service to men. Your father, your husband, your son. You desire not to be free, but to make a window in the wall of your prison,\u201d Princess Rhaenys (Rhaenyra\u2019s cousin) reads Alicent for filth as she\u2019s usurping Rhaenyra\u2019s throne. Alicent plays her favorite game, playing ignorant to the truth and then acting shocked when her betrayals have deadly consequences. <\/p>\n Through Alicent, House of the Dragon shows the audience how utterly unfulfilling being a foot soldier of the patriarchy is for women. Through Rhaenyra, it reveals how unwilling we are for a (perceived) woman to be free, let alone to rule. <\/p>\n After this epic \u201cQueen\u2019s Landing\u201d episode, where a grieving Rhaenyra takes her long and labored walk up to the throne, snot-crying as she goes, sitting awkwardly upon it, unsure if it was worth all that she has sacrificed, the audience called her \u201cweak\u201d.<\/p>\n Countless posts wished Rhaenyra would\u2019ve been more of a \u201cbadass\u201d in her ascent to the throne, like her descendant Daenerys. When taking what was rightfully hers, the audience said she should\u2019ve been filled with rage and determination instead of crying with grief and walking slowly up to her new royal perch. It revealed the truth that this country has long-since proclaimed in real life: we do not actually want women to lead unless they perform strength like men do.<\/p>\n Because as much as this show is about women under patriarchy, it\u2019s specifically about motherhood, and Rhaenyra is a grieving mother who behaves as a grieving mother does. <\/p>\n We\u2019re with Rhaenyra as she births a stillborn daughter Visenya upon hearing that her king father has passed and Alicent\u2019s son has usurped her throne. Just as her mother Aemma told Rhaenyra before dying in childbirth, the pregnancy bed is a woman\u2019s battlefield. It\u2019s violent, bloody, tortuous and lonely. Rhaenyra pulls her stillborn daughter out herself, as her now-husband-uncle Daemon and the men on her council ignore her screams of agony and plot the next course of action without her. But because Rhaenyra has been through this battlefield of pregnancy loss and has felt the consequences of it first-hand, she is measured in her response and slow to go to war. She knows what war costs. <\/p>\n Everyone around her doubts her leadership and her choice to try and avoid war as a womanly weakness without the stomach necessary to lead. Never mind that her father, a man, was a peace-time king and instilled in her the importance of peace in the realm above all. Never mind that she would be waging war against the other half of her family\u2014people whom her beloved father also loved\u2014not to mention the suffering of the rest of the kingdom. Every decision she makes is doubted because she is a woman. It\u2019s only after Alicent\u2019s second son Aemond kills Rhaenyra\u2019s young son Lucerys that she knows peace is impossible and is therefore ready to go to war at the end of season one. <\/p>\n Season three opens with the epic Battle of the Gullet between Team Black (which literally includes the Black characters on the show) for Rhaenyra and Team Green, which is Alicent\u2019s Hightower usurper branch of the Targaryen family. I wish I knew Rhaenyra\u2019s eldest son and heir Jacerys better as a character so that his death alone would gut me like I know it\u2019s supposed to. Like I know his little brother Lucerys\u2019 death was supposed to gut me at the end of season one. My second-major complaint about the show is its rushed and awkward pacing, leaving us little time to know secondary characters like Luke and Jace. But I know Rhaenyra, and Emma D\u2019Arcy acted their ass off as Rhaenyra seeing Jace dead for the first time. Rhaenyra yells at him as a mother would their rebellious teenager, as though he were alive and would answer her as commanded. That gutted me. Watching Rhaenyra move through denial to sheer agony, I was bawling along with her. D\u2019Arcy is so powerful in this role that I started asking why my son had to disobey me and go get himself killed in a war. Watchers, I have no children. <\/p>\n But it\u2019s with this context, wielding her dead son\u2019s sword, grieving the loss of now three of her six children to this war, that she cries as she chops the head off of her biggest op, Alicent\u2019s father and the mastermind of her usurpation, Otto Hightower. She walks heavy-footed through his pool of blood, leaving behind red footsteps as she ascends to her throne, mirroring her bloody walk through the Red Keep in season one after giving birth to her son Joffrey. The first shot we see of Rhaenyra on the throne is not head-on, but through her reflection in Otto\u2019s pool of blood. <\/p>\n Her children are what it costs for the Queen to land.<\/p>\n \u201cThe boys who clung to me, who hid their little faces in my skirts, dead. So that I could sit upon the throne of swords,\u201d she cries to Daemon earlier in the episode. Rhaenyra isn\u2019t \u201cweak,\u201d she\u2019s alive and feeling. She still handles business, yet doesn\u2019t delight in the death and destruction. Men like Daemon would rush headlong into the \u201cglory\u201d of war without a second thought to what it would cost. A matriarchy, however, must consider the children. <\/p>\n Motherhood is central not only to Rhaenyra as a character but to the overall HOTD story. Rhaenyra is a kind and loving mother who raised sweet boys\u2014a huge contrast to Alicent who, in her bitterness over being forced to marry her best friend\u2019s dad and bear his children without pleasure, has raised entitled, bitter little demon sons who rape and pillage. But, like Alicent, Rhaenyra also set her sons up for failure. <\/p>\n Because Rhaenyra\u2019s first husband, Lord Corlys\u2019 son Laenor, a silver-haired Black man, was gay, and Rhaenyra wanted sex for pleasure, not just duty, they made an arrangement to keep up appearances but sleep with whom they wanted. As a result, Rhaenyra had her first three children with a guard from the City Watch, Ser Harwin Strong, which resulted in all of her sons being white with noticeably black hair. For the silver-haired, interracial couple, that was obviously a sign that Rhaenyra and her children\u2019s legitimate claim to her father\u2019s Iron Throne could be easily challenged, against her father\u2019s wishes. At least cheat with a Black man, Rhaenyra, damn!! <\/p>\n \u201cI could father a dozen bastards if I were a man and no one would blink an eye,\u201d young Rhaenyra tells her father when he first approaches her about the possibility she had \u201clost her virture,\u201d (to her uncle Daemon, no less!) before marriage \u2014again, a conversation that would never exist if Rhaenyra were Raemond. Her father agrees with her and yet tells her that she\u2019s a woman and this is a patriarchy and Rhaenyra doesn\u2019t get a special \u201cbut I\u2019m the Queen-to-Be\u201d pass. Rhaenyra tries her luck at acting like a man anyhow. <\/p>\n Despite Alicent\u2019s best efforts, including forcing Rhaenyra\u2019s bloody walk through the Red Keep after giving birth, Rhaenyra refuses to be shamed for exercising agency over her own body. Alicent can only dream of such power over oneself and bitterly resents Rhaenyra for it (so much so that Alicent starts her own self-righteous affair with Rhaenyra\u2019s old work, the incel edgelord Drake of Westeros, Ser Criston Cole). And Laenor\u2019s father, Lord Corlys, always stood by Rhaenyra\u2019s children as his own grandchildren, even though we can all see with our eyes that they are not Black! It\u2019s hilarious and I love it.<\/p>\n upgrade to paid<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s not simply out of the goodness of Corlys\u2019 heart that he defends his legal grandchildren as his own blood. He also married off his daughter Laena to the king\u2019s younger brother Daemon. The Master of Ships is an extremely ambitious man, and if his son\u2019s legal children ascend the throne, or if Daemon usurps Rhaenyra as the male heir to his brother\u2019s throne, either way Velaryons will be kings and queens of Westeros moving forward. \u201cHistory remembers names, not blood,\u201d he tells his white Targaryen wife Rhaenys, who is over the bullshit of Corlys\u2019 ambition. It\u2019s a fascinating racial dynamic that they\u2019ve set up, making Corlys Black when he is not in the book. Because of Corlys\u2019 ambition, tangling his children up with Targaryens, both Laenor and Laena die, causing even more friction between the houses when Rhaenyra marries Daemon immediately after Laenor and Laena\u2019s deaths.<\/p>\n But in \u201cQueen\u2019s Landing,\u201d we see exactly why no one but Daemon could be by Rhaenyra\u2019s side in her moment of grief and triumph. Besides D\u2019Arcy breaking out their best acting, what really made this episode so special was how much it catered to the female gaze. When I found out that this episode was written by Sarah Hess and directed by Clare Kilner, I understood immediately why it was so effective. Women behind the scenes can make a world of difference.<\/p>\n The episode begins with Rhaenyra, sick with a mother\u2019s grief, unable to move from her bed. Only Daemon can reach her. He whispers to her in their ancient language, High Valyrian, reminds her of who she is and the greater cause they\u2019re fighting for. He\u2019s seen a vision of Daenerys Targaryen in the long-off future, and knows that Rhaenyra sitting the throne is the only way to make that world-saving future possible. (Let\u2019s pretend we don\u2019t know how Game of Thrones ends so it hurts less!) He encourages her not to let her sons die in vain. And she\u2019s up, ready to go reclaim her throne. Her small council finds it a terrible plan to fly to King\u2019s Landing with four dragons and no army but Daemon shuts them up with \u201cshe has me.\u201d HOT.<\/p>\n Then, they do in fact fly to King\u2019s Landing on dragonback, and Daemon proceeds to kill everybody in their path, and then looks back at Rhaenyra like Did you like that? and she gives him the same look we all have at home: YES! THAT WAS HOT!<\/p>\n \u201cWho else dares rise up against us in our house?\u201d He yells after slitting the last soldier\u2019s throat. I hate violence, but my god. This clip of Daemon handling big business set to Usher\u2019s \u201cDaddy\u2019s Home<\/a>\u201d has been playing on a loop in my house for several days. Thus raising the bar for men to actually be of service. Because if you\u2019re not clearing a path to my throne with the blood of my enemies, why are you even bothering me? This is ROMANCE. This is DEVOTION. This is MALE COMPETENCY. Annnnd it\u2019s also problematic as hell.<\/p>\n Rhaenyra and Daemon are very hot together; truly, they are twin flames. When they barge into the Red Keep, they do so in lock-step. When he clears a path for her to the throne, she takes his hand. When they\u2019re surrounded on all sides inside the throne room, it\u2019s his Que Dawg fraternity brothers in the gold capes that bend the knee to her, defeating the Kingsguard. And we love to see it. He is giving his all for his queen, the love of his life. But that is her uncle! She is his niece! We are salivating over incest! WE\u2019RE UNDER SPELLS!! There\u2019s literally no more appropriate song to play over Daemon hotly cutting down Rhaenyra\u2019s enemies than \u201cDaddy\u2019s Home.\u201d It works on every level because that man is literally a half-step away from being a father to her. CRAZY.<\/p>\n When Rhaenyra begs her uncle to marry her at the end of season one, we\u2019ve already seen him groom her for this when she was a child, giving her wine, kissing and undressing her in a brothel. JAIL. ELECTRIC CHAIR. DRACARYS! But, no. By the time she\u2019s begging her uncle to marry her, we cheer because they\u2019ve been in love for years and their marriage literally saves Rhaenyra and her children from speculation over their legitimacy. We\u2019re supposed to be relieved for these incestuous fan-favorites under these circumstances, which is a huge leap from the feelings we were meant to have during Game of Thrones. <\/p>\n In that series, Cersei and her twin-brother-lover Jaime were the literal villains of the show, and their incestuous bond was a trait of their depravity. This week some loser on Threads was lamenting about how he was ridiculed for shipping Cersei and Jaime back then but now everybody loves Husbuncle Daemon with his niece and it\u2019s okay. All that tells me is that, after eight years of Game of Thrones, incest has become more mainstream and normalized. That\u2019s bad! <\/p>\n<\/a>I pretend I do not see it.<\/p>\n<\/a>Iconic shot by Director Clare Kilner and DP Alejandro Mart\u00ednez<\/p>\n<\/a>Allow me to be woke for one minute.<\/p>\n<\/a>These hot people are propaganda!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<\/p>\n