To me, the funniest thing about this production isn't even that its franchise is already stone-dead thanks to the decline and ultimately catastrophically bad ending to Game of Thrones, nor that GRRM is involved with this rather than even pretending to still give a shit about the still-unfinished main series 11 years after the publication of its last book.
It's that the Dance of the Dragons (as elaborated upon in worldbuilding materials World of Ice & Fire and Fire & Blood, which Martin also shat out rather than work on the next installment of the main ASOIAF series) is basically everything people came to increasingly dislike about GoT, condensed and ramped up to 11. Among other things...
=====================Here be spoilers, for anyone who cares=====================
The core conflict pits two factions of extremely unlikable characters - ambitious usurpers, child-killers, rapists, sadistic war criminals, all-around unpleasant jerks, etc. - against each other for the right to sit on the world's pointiest chair.
Of these, we are meant to sympathize with the leader of the 'Black' faction: Rhaenyra Targaryen, the subject of the quote in the title. A casual adulteress and mother of multiple obvious bastard children who her partisans maintain is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne because her dad King Viserys said so, despite this blatantly contravening all the laws & traditions of the Seven Kingdoms. She will go on to sign off on war crimes, including the murder of her infant nephews and bloody purges of her enemies.
Rhaenyra's chief supporters include her uncle-husband Daemon, who resembles an Oblivion character in his portrayal by Matt Smith, and who is a ruthless warlord on top of being an all-around dick. Also the Velaryons, the family of her first husband (who she cheated on, but everyone was cool with it because he was gay), who have been made black in this show despite the paternity of their supposed children being a major complication for Rhaenyra's claim: in the books she had a little plausible deniability, not so on the show thanks to said race swap.
The other faction, the Greens, is spearheaded by Rhaenyra's half-brother Aegon II, a fat lazy slob who is nevertheless legally the heir to the Seven Kingdoms by every actual law & custom in the land. He eventually becomes a bloodthirsty, vindictive psycho after being severely injured in battle and having his sons assassinated by Rhaenyra's partisans. The true brains of the Green clique is Aegon's mom (and Rhaenyra's stepmother) Alicent Hightower, who can be best described as a sane Cersei (or IOW a moderately intelligent and immoderately ambitious scheming bitch, if you haven't read the books or watched GoT).
Aegon's chief supporters include Criston Cole, a knight who leads the Kingsguard (royal bodyguard comprised of seven elite knights) and was Rhaenyra's jilted ex-lover, and his middle brother Aemond, the most violently unstable & assholish Targaryen prince around who's also the rider of the most powerful dragon still alive. He & Aemond also had a third brother in the books named Daeron, who was one of literally three named adult Targaryen royals from this timeframe to act like a decent (even heroic) human being on top of being a badass and reasonable leader. (The others were Aegon's sister-wife Helaena, a body positive princess, and Rhaenys, a cousin of their father the old king who is also the token heroic Black) Naturally, unlike the diverse and good Blacks, the Green lieutenants are all vile white men and Daeron seems to have been written out of the show entirely - notably nobody has been cast in his role, unlike his brothers.
The story ends with the Blacks and Greens obliterates each other entirely. Like her distant descendant Daenaerys does in Season 8, Rhaenyra caps off her reign with a murderous rampage and an assortment of atrocities aimed at innocent people & hostages that turns just about everyone against her - in other words, setting the realm to the torch herself. Aegon takes his chance to kill Rhaenyra, then is himself killed (by a cast of second-rate characters including random lords literally named after Sesame Street characters) to make way for Rhaenyra's older surviving son with Daemon, Aegon III, to take the throne as a child. Also, the Seven Kingdoms agree to ban women from the royal succession unless all male heirs have died first, which seems like an eminently reasonable thing to do considering what the various powerful women of the setting (again, with like two exceptions) get up to over the course of the books/series.
Tl;dr Martin and HBO have elected to adapt a part of the former's worldbuilding that is guaranteed to either piss off woke feminist watchers already mad that their heroine Daenaerys turned out to be a fairly realistic portrayal of a SJW handed ultimate power, even if the way it happened was insanely rushed (if they stick to his source material), or the people still naive enough to keep a flame lit for The Winds of Winter and/or to count themselves a part of the ASOIAF fandom (if they deviate to 'update' the story for 'modern sensibilities', even though Martin first published it in 2014).
Either way, I look forward to the fallout of GRRM basically Picarding his work at least as hard as Patrick Stewart did Picard and TNG.
To me, the funniest thing about this production isn't even that its franchise is already stone-dead thanks to the decline and ultimately catastrophically bad ending to Game of Thrones, nor that GRRM is involved with this rather than even pretending to still give a shit about the still-unfinished main series 11 years after the publication of its last book.
It's that the Dance of the Dragons (as elaborated upon in worldbuilding materials World of Ice & Fire and Fire & Blood, which Martin also shat out rather than work on the next installment of the main ASOIAF series) is basically everything people came to increasingly dislike about GoT, condensed and ramped up to 11. Among other things...
=====================Here be spoilers, for anyone who cares=====================
The core conflict pits two factions of extremely unlikable characters - ambitious usurpers, child-killers, rapists, sadistic war criminals, all-around unpleasant jerks, etc. - against each other for the right to sit on the world's pointiest chair.
Of these, we are meant to sympathize with the leader of the 'Black' faction: Rhaenyra Targaryen, the subject of the quote in the title. A casual adulteress and mother of multiple obvious bastard children who her partisans maintain is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne because her dad King Viserys said so, despite this blatantly contravening all the laws & traditions of the Seven Kingdoms. She will go on to sign off on war crimes, including the murder of her infant nephews and bloody purges of her enemies.
Rhaenyra's chief supporters include her uncle-husband Daemon, who resembles an Oblivion character in his portrayal by Matt Smith, and who is a ruthless warlord on top of being an all-around dick. Also the Velaryons, the family of her first husband (who she cheated on, but everyone was cool with it because he was gay), who have been made black in this show despite the paternity of their supposed children being a major complication for Rhaenyra's claim: in the books she had a little plausible deniability, not so on the show thanks to said race swap.
The other faction, the Greens, is spearheaded by Rhaenyra's half-brother Aegon II, a fat lazy slob who is nevertheless legally the heir to the Seven Kingdoms by every actual law & custom in the land. He eventually becomes a bloodthirsty, vindictive psycho after being severely injured in battle and having his sons assassinated by Rhaenyra's partisans. The true brains of the Green clique is Aegon's mom (and Rhaenyra's stepmother) Alicent Hightower, who can be best described as a sane Cersei (or IOW a moderately intelligent and immoderately ambitious scheming bitch, if you haven't read the books or watched GoT).
Aegon's chief supporters include Criston Cole, a knight who leads the Kingsguard (royal bodyguard comprised of seven elite knights) and was Rhaenyra's jilted ex-lover, and his middle brother Aemond, the most violently unstable & assholish Targaryen prince around who's also the rider of the most powerful dragon still alive. He & Aemond also had a third brother in the books named Daeron, who was one of literally three named adult Targaryen royals from this timeframe to act like a decent (even heroic) human being on top of being a badass and reasonable leader. (The others were Aegon's sister-wife Helaena, a body positive princess, and Rhaenys, a cousin of their father the old king who is also the token heroic Black) Naturally, unlike the diverse and good Blacks, the Green lieutenants are all vile white men and Daeron seems to have been written out of the show entirely - notably nobody has been cast in his role, unlike his brothers.
The story ends with the Blacks and Greens obliterates each other entirely. Like her distant descendant Daenaerys does in Season 8, Rhaenyra caps off her reign with a murderous rampage and an assortment of atrocities aimed at innocent people & hostages that turns just about everyone against her - in other words, setting the realm to the torch herself. Aegon takes his chance to kill Rhaenyra, then is himself killed (by a cast of second-rate characters including random lords literally named after Sesame Street characters) to make way for Rhaenyra's older surviving son with Daemon, Aegon III, to take the throne as a child. Also, the Seven Kingdoms agree to ban women from the royal succession unless all male heirs have died first, which seems like an eminently reasonable thing to do considering what the various powerful women of the setting (again, with like two exceptions) get up to over the course of the books/series.
=====================End spoilers=====================
Tl;dr Martin and HBO have elected to adapt a part of the former's worldbuilding that is guaranteed to either piss off woke feminist watchers already mad that their heroine Daenaerys turned out to be a fairly realistic portrayal of a SJW handed ultimate power, even if the way it happened was insanely rushed (if they stick to his source material), or the people still naive enough to keep a flame lit for The Winds of Winter and/or to count themselves a part of the ASOIAF fandom (if they deviate to 'update' the story for 'modern sensibilities', even though Martin first published it in 2014).
Either way, I look forward to the fallout of GRRM basically Picarding his work at least as hard as Patrick Stewart did Picard and TNG.
Yes.
holy lolol. matt smith looks like the discount brand witcher in that pic.
I wish for more than one upvote to give when nerds lay down lore like this.
Great post, this is why I read the comments lol