don’t know if you watched the new episode yet and I won’t say anything abt it, but it is feeding into the fic in my head where I want to explore rhaenicent and motherhood and all the ways motherhood is different for the both of them and the ways in which they resent and envy each other for it because honestly the way motherhood is explored in this show tickles my brain a lot. From aemma’s death making rhaenyra scared of childbirth, yet how rhaenyra has children out of want (and the ownership she has of her kids and the image motherhood makes of her while she’s also trying to be seen more as a king). but also there’s alicent who doesn’t know what having a mother is like, but also she’s forced to be a mother from 15 and she has four of them by the time she’s twenty-ish and she loves them all, but she also hates them and she doesn’t know how to love them as rhaenyra loves her sons so she will protect them so fiercely (this season is also just reminding me of this essay I wanted to write about how alicent is so devoted to her religion and how insane and guilty she must feel to have to go against every teaching to marry the targs and follow their incest traditions and raise the next targ royalty to govern the realm. also this is ruining her life). but then there’s also halaena who loves her children so much and she had to help her child be killed and she only has her daughter and ugh I shan’t say. the fic will be legendary is all I will say.

ive talked abt this b4 i think but motherhood under context of patriarchy is suchhhh a fascinating interplay of duty and prison and ownership ohhh my beautiful show which threads those things through so well thinking recently abt the barriers between alicents closeness with her own children and the isolation of targs in that they do not speak the same language. theres so many ways she…