Love Calling Men Pretty. Ur Not 'handsome' Ur The Prettiest Little Princess I Ever Did See

I bring to you a wee comic for the yokai AU i cooked up a bit ago~~

I also did this for the August event on the Nart Art server! Following the arranged marriage/enemies to lovers prompt, if my shitty dialogue isnt enough to get that across lmao

May i speak, please?

I got blocked by an opponent mid-argument on Twitter, which… isn't really surprising. I had the nerve to disagree with a TB stan that holy Rhaenyra suffered terribly for the month or two she spent trying to squeeze sperm out of Laenor for a Velaryon baby, and then jumped on Harwin like he was the last man on earth. No joke, a wedding to Laenor in 114 AC, and the birth of Jace in late 114 AC - and I'm told that poor Rhaenyra thought she was infertile because Laenor couldn't ungay himself.

So since I wasn't allowed to say it there, I'll say it here: Ways Rhaenyra could have avoided the war, or at least won against the greens AND the patriarchy.

1) Pick someone other than Harwin, because are you fucking serious?

Laenor can't have kids? Spend more than a few weeks trying. Unite with him in grief after the death of "good friend" Joffrey and give Laenor time to recover. Afterwards, invite a man to bed to "warm up" your husband. Or ask him to jerk off and finish inside you. Or find dragon seed on dragonstone. Or leave the poor man alone and visit his parents.

Corlys wanted Velaryon's blood on the throne? Let him find a candidate willing to fuck the princess twice - for the throne and for Driftmark. He has a dozen cousins ​​and nephews, man, is it really that hard?

And if you like it, take the boytoy as a permanent favorite and have a couple more children, apparently this is your hobby or something.

Yes, it sounds horrible and dehumanizing, like breeding show dogs (which I consider as animal cruelty, by the way), but that's the nature of arranged marriages, especially in Westeros. If the goal is to have babies that look like Velaryons, there are other ways than sleeping with the most fisrt man-looking human alive.

2) Do you have heirs? Make convenient marriages!

Now that Alicent can't find fault with your babies' looks, betroth the boy to Helaena, or the girl (if you have one) to Aegon. Either way, green blood will be on the throne, and Otto can stop his shitty scheming.

Or, if you don't like that option, make arranged marriages. Since there's no need to appease the Velaryons by marrying Jace to Baela, and Luke to Rhaena, you have two excellent sons to trade with. Baratheon has plenty of daughters - the Stormlands are yours. The Lannisters have daughters too - the Westerlands are ready for an alliance.

And in the end the greens are left with a part of the Riverlands and the Reach - well, let them fight you, it will take about a week or two to win.

3) Daemon as a lover? Why not. As a husband? Never, fucking, ever in my life.

Laenor can live, considering that there is no need for his fake death - after all, your children are Velaryons, aren't they?

Uncle is hot as hell, but considering that he is the reason you were named heir in the first place - let him stay in your bed, and not claim the crown and the title of king consort.

4) Dragonstone? No need, I'm fine here.

Yes, you are the princess of Dragonstone, that's true. And you have every right to go there and learn to rule. But when your stepmother is plotting and trying to put a reluctant son on the throne, why make her life easier?

Visit Dragonstone as much as you want, but make it clear that your place as heir and next queen is by your father's side, helping him, learning to rule, and keeping your finger on the pulse.

5) Learn to lie, or remember that greens are related to you too.

Aegon never wanted to be king until he was reminded that Rhaenyra was a danger to his family. So don't give him reason to think so.

You may not like greens and you have every right, but creating enemies from scratch, only to fight them twenty years later, sacrificing children, dragons, allies, and the crown - why?

6) The Dance of Dragons? Seriously?

Aegon doesn't want to be king, and he won't be talked into usurping it, knowing his older sister wouldn't hurt him or his family. If Jace is betrothed to Helaena, Otto won't mind if not his grandchildren, but his great-grandchildren take the throne. No one can stand against you, the first queen of Westeros with powerful alliances in the North by oath, the Vale by blood, the Stormlands and the Westerlands by children's marriage.

You win, Rhaenyra, wear your crown with pride.

Oh, wait, that's not how it's happened in canon. Well, shit.

if my hypothetical child was permanently injured and the culprit got off with a slap on the hand, I would rage like wildfire and not calm down until this bastard begged for mercy

Alicenta is a better person than me

alicent regretted her actions after she charged at luke, she apologized to viserys after he ignored her pleas to show some concern after aemond lost an eye, and she rejected larys’ offer to take an eye from luke….honestly she’s a saint because that couldn’t be me.

I don't know if I'll find any supporters, but this has been driving me crazy for three years now, and I have to say it.

The scene from season one with Luke and Rhaenyra where Luke expresses his insecurities as the heir to Driftmark is bullshit, and a litmus test for what's wrong with this show.

It all starts out relatively normal, with Luke again expressing his insecurities as the heir of Driftmark and offering to give the position to someone else, and this personally pisses me off because Luke could have said this at any time, there was a whole trial about it, but it's ok, at least kid gets some kind of personality, cool.

And then fucking Rhaenyra goes on about how she realized that ruling takes work, and she had a duty and must earn her inheritance. Like she's ever done anything unselfish in her life, really.

And then that line. No, not like that. THAT FUCKING LINE. Luke, breathlessly muttering, "I'm not like you. Not so perfect."

OH MY FUCKING GOD I HATE THIS SHIT SO MUCH

That sounds just as fake and useless as half of TB's lines extolling Rhaenyra's greatness, because God forbid we forget for a second that that woman is about to be canonized by Twitter any day now. TB's characters are underdeveloped, they feel fake and hollow, designed to kiss the ass of the one woman the audience is allowed to love, because if you like anyone else, you're obviously sexist and deserve to be publicly humiliated.

Luke is already an unpleasant little shit, he hasn't shown a single redeeming quality. He's selfish, arrogant, spoiled, and privileged even among royalty. And you take away his two miserable minutes of screen time to praise Rhaenyra again, and remind us that it turns out she actually sacrificed and worked for something in her life, and didn't just expect things to go her way because she's daddy's special girl. And she's perfect. Perfest, perfect, perfect. Love her right now, or you will be canceled on every social media.

Those two minutes should have gone to Luke and Rhaena. That's his fiancée, for God's sake! Those two haven't said a single damn thing to each other! Instead of whining about Driftmark again, let Luke comfort Rhaena when she expresses her concerns about the upcoming marriage - at least then I'll know he cares about his betrothed!

But no, that would be too complicated. Instead, we have someone praising Rhaenyra again, because what if not everyone realized that she's *gasping* perfect.

never getting over aegon's face expression upon seeing his own brother's dong so close to his face

comedy GOLD

Rewatched Viserys dinner speech and Alicent and Rhaenyra look sad and like they believe him. Aemonds not even listening because he stopped thinking of him as anything to him the night he lost his eye. Aegon and Deamon look at him with doubt and irritation when he says he loves them all so dearly and apparently Haleana does too but her shot was cut.

The only people listening carefully are Rhaenyra and Daemons kids because they have been living in I’m so sheltered land for the past 6 years on Dragonstone and they believe his words at face value.

Also luke started that dinner fight. Aemond was literally staring into space and luc started laughing at him rudely. I loved the fight sequence because Aegon stopping luc and baela from intervening was like no 4 on 1 this time bitches let’s see how Jacey can do 1:1. Aegon clearly did feel guilt for the night Aemond was maimed weather his mother shamed him or not.

Team Green kids are mad but god damn are the Team Black kids spoiled entitled brats.

How did Alicent not create and further a hostile environment when she essentially forced Rhaenyra to present her baby immediately after childbirth, and acted with mocking concern that Rhaenyra walked all the way to her. Even while Alicent KNEW her mother died in childbirth. Alicent furthering rumors that her children are bastards, Alicent making Rhaenyra’s life hell and dangerous so much that she left to Dragonstone, Alicent leading to Harwin’s death. By your logic Cersei didn’t create any hostile environment either since they’re all just blameless women who don’t have power. Cersei couldn’t stop Joffrey from doing anything so Sansa has no right to hate her then

Alicent asked the baby be brought to her sometime after birth, and Rhaenyra chose to maliciously comply by carrying the baby herself, so people would see how bad Alicent was for making her go all that way when in reality Alicent just asked for a servant to bring the baby to her. Why did both of them do this? Well, it's clearly established that at this point there's been a decade of back and forth shot-taking at each other. The green dress moment, this incident, the contrasting opinions at the small council, the petty comments... all of this is indicative of the two of them trying to power play each other out because they didn't like each other. In this case, Alicent wanted to confirm for herself the third bastard, and Rhaenyra knew this and decided to accompany the baby despite Alicent not asking her to in order to shift the focus onto Alicent's request being unreasonable and away from the idea that she was requesting to see the baby so soon to confirm its parentage in the first place. It's them playing with perception of others here and trying to control the situation better than the other. Again, because there is a mutual dislike each other and there are competing interests between the two women.

None of the women in this story are wholly powerless, but there are women who have more or less power than others. Rhaenyra always had more power than Alicent, point blank. Rhaenyra is a Targaryen dragonrider, in the king's eyes his favorite and "only" child, and named heir to the throne. Alicent is the non-Valyrian dragonless daughter of a second son, and even though she became Viserys' second queen, clearly the king did not value her, setting her aside, laughing at her in public, calling her the wrong name in front of others, and he clearly did not care at all about their children together. The power level between the two is uneven, and it's crazy that people seem to think somehow Alicent is this all powerful villain who could have one-sided outright bullied a poor, powerless, helpless Rhaenyra. The power difference is clearly seen at Driftmark, when Rhaenyra gets the king to do everything she asks while Alicent begs him for any care about her son just to be ignored. All along Rhaenyra could wield her father's favoritism to benefit her, and she did, in that moment and again when Vaemond Velaryon came to court.

It's also important to acknowledge that the bastard "rumor" was not solely a Green creation that Alicent decided to make up with the purpose of making Rhaenyra look bad or something. As Aegon put it at Driftmark, everyone had eyes and could see that these white skinned brown haired boys clearly looked more similar to the white skinned brown haired man always at Rhaenyra's side than her husband, with his dark skin and white hair, who spent less time with Rhaenyra and the family than Harwin and more time with his squires. This plain fact is damaging and dangerous to Rhaenyra, but Rhaenyra is to blame for this. Her and Laenor tried maybe once before she immediately became pregnant with Jace by Harwin, according to the timeline, and as Margaery and actual history shows us it was definitely possible for queer men to have gotten a woman pregnant with the purpose of producing an heir. However, Rhaenyra was just interested in acting to their arrangement of dining as she pleased, and then proceeded to recklessly have not one but three clear pieces of evidence to her breaking her vow to her husband (which maybe is less scandalous to us, the modern viewer, but oath breaking is pretty serious in Westeros, especially for women). And before there's an argument of how she was forced to marry a gay man... Rhaenyra (and Daemon) did that. She left her marriage tour to pick her own match among hundreds of suitors early and then was seen in a brothel with Daemon, tarnishing her reputation and forcing her father to quickly marry her to a Velaryon (and of course Daemon brought her there with the purpose of sullying her reputation enough so Viserys would just let Daemon marry her). The funny thing here is that Harwin himself could have been a marriage candidate as the heir to Harrenhall and an active member at court, and he was certainly an option to consider! But she lost her chance. As heir to the throne and a Targaryen woman, there was no situation where she would not have needed to get married and make an heir, and Rhaenyra should have known this and considered her options while she had them. Then even when she was married to Laenor, there were ways around his queerness. Try to have a baby, or petition that he's infertile and the marriage should be absolved on that grounds so she can marry someone else. But Rhaenyra wanted to have her cake and eat it too; she wanted the Velaryons on her side to support her claim to the throne and a son of hers to one day inherit Driftmark, and she wanted to only have sex with Harwin and have his babies. Both were impossible at the same time if she wanted to avoid conflict.

Essentially, all of this put together, it was through her own choices that Rhaenyra had three obvious bastards that weakened her own claim and put herself in the middle of a political scandal. And even when Alicent talked about it at all, it was only with Viserys, Criston, and Larys in private (and she potentially told her children, likely to warn them of the further succession crisis this would cause when Rhaenyra or her sons try to come to power despite their weak claims and bastard status in this society that despises bastards). Obviously all of them already had eyes and knew the truth, and Criston had also already known the truth of what was going on because Rhaenyra explicitly had told him about the arrangement, and it was clear that Harwin was the one who filled that role for her. So when the third bastard is born, he goads Harwin into fighting him, exposing his role in the situation, and the attention on Harwin this causes results in Lionel Strong sending him back to Harrenhall. Then, Larys takes advantage of the situation to kill them both and become Lord of Harrenhall. He says he did it for Alicent, to get her father back, but realistically there's no reason to expect Viserys should have even asked Otto back as Hand after firing him (and he really shouldn't have, if he was trying to help Rhaenyra consolidate power). All of this considered, it's a pretty big step to say that Alicent is to blame for Harwin's death. I personally say it was Harwin's decision to be Rhaenyra's lover and father to her children that got him sent away from court, and then it was his own brother's decision to kill him for power.

Not exactly sure what your point is trying to bring up Cersei when the contexts are pretty different... like sure she was a lady married to a king who didn't love her and then she fought for her children's rights ruthlessly. But Cersei has a closer parallel in Rhaenyra, to be honest: a mother to three bastards who uses them to usurp thrones they have no real claim to and who ignores their misdeeds completely and/or weaponizes them against their victims. The obvious parallel here is Joffrey threatening and cutting the butcher's boy, getting attacked by Nymeria, and Cersei immediately pushing her own version of events that unquestionably paints her son as the ultimate victim and demanding the king take action against the others, and the Strong boys ambushing Aemond with a knife, beating on him four on one, cutting out his eye, and then Rhaenyra immediately pushing her own version of events that unquestionably paints her sons as the ultimate victims and demanding the king take action against the others. Cersei definitely did create hostile environments through her actions, as did Rhaenyra. Cersei could have tried to control Joffrey better, but she was unwilling to acknowledge his flaws or try to hold him accountable when he had done wrong. Almost like how Rhaenyra never talked to her boys about jumping a kid and cutting his eye out because she was unwilling to acknowledge their role in the situation or hold them accountable for their actions. Both mothers saw their children as largely flawless and were unwilling to confront them with their mistakes or misdeeds.

It’s hilarious when TBs cry “Rhaenyra TRAINED to be heir” because that honestly makes her look worse. Wdym she spent 20 years training and managed to fuck things up more than Aegon, who got pulled out of the trash 2 days ago?

Legitimately and it's why nerfing the Greens was such a dumb choice 😭

Like what do you mean you apparently trained your whole life (which btw spending years away from court hiding from bastard rumors "managing" Dragonstone is not really training for ruling an entire kingdom, especially when it comes to navigating political realities when in power) (but then again that's something she no doubt figured she could ignore in favor of ruling with hardcore fire and blood and fear of dragons and Daemon)

Like apparently you "trained your whole life" for this and you're somehow the only one divinely ordained and suited and qualified enough to rule...

AND YET SOMEHOW up against these apparently incompetent, short-sighted, impulsive Greens, who are made up of:

- a drunk dude who's apparently never been trained to rule despite him ruling being the plan since he was a baby, who appoints his unqualified and unnamed frat boys to Kingsguard, bullies his brother in public, drunk flies his dragon to battle, and executes a dozen dudes for "no reason" causing a "PR disaster"

- a kinslayer attempted kingslayer who took out one of his side's only dragons and rider because he got bullied :( and now he hates his brother and wants power and also he's gonna nuke a village for no reason except to feel powerful and manly I guess... also he unfairly does nothing about Rhaenyra's blockade and it's HIS fault people are starving from the blockade apparently and that's why the common people LOVE Rhaenyra SO much

- the dowager queen who converted to Team Black out of sapphic longing for a woman she was friends with decades ago for a couple of years, who willingly sells out her entire family to the enemy, including the son she crowned, two other sons fighting for the war she started, her father who was her only ally at court, her brother who was the only one to sympathize with her position, her sworn shield who lives to serve her and protect her family, her uncle and his men leading the Hightower host out of Oldtown, most of her family's dragons who will die defending their riders... all for the chance to win the favor of a woman who never showed any ounce of care for how her life turned out and the sacrifice she made (in fact the woman who was remorseless about her son's eye getting cut out, who blatantly pushed lies that endangered her whole family, who married a man who hates her whole family and wants them dead) (she fails in winning her favor) but girls stick together - girl power! And she's finally free from the confines of medieval feudalist patriarchy :) (except there's nowhere for her to go and no way to live her life as a free woman in any capacity as the wife of the former king and a highborn lady, unless she wants to try to be a survivalist in the wild or go to Essos and join a pleasure house, which, again, not really "free" and sustainable long term options for her)

- a poor helpless infantalized neurodivergent woman who can't even ride her dragon because she doesn't like it for some reason and she's incapable of acting outside of autistic stereotypes, also she's totally fine about her 6 year old getting murdered in front of her very eyes now, and actually she's gonna use her visions to condemn the brother who's always had her family's back up until this point and instead help the man responsible for her child's death, because she's seen the Grand Design and wants to help Team Black now :)

- "misogynist incel" but somehow also at the same time "Alicent worshipping and unreasonably Rhaenyra hating sex toy" (don't think about why he might have valid reasons to hate this particular woman) who doesn't think ahead and is apparently the most violent terrible hypocritical person in this show (don't think too hard about the show making him Dornish and casting a brown actor and the implications it has for this character on and off screen because the show and mainstream fandom won't!)

- offscreen brother nobody barely remembers who only just started riding his dragon apparently

- former Hand of the King immediately fired and sent away and captured off screen after doing nothing to help the war effort apparently

- Lannister twin off to Essos to fuck several wives and mud wrestle LOL!!

- foot fetishist shadowy creep (don't think about how they made a disabled character have a fetish involving their disability for no reason)

AND YET SOMEHOW against THESE villains... she can't even beat them 😭 she can't beat THESE guys who at this point are actively helping her out... she can't take and hold the throne against THESE Greens...

Like way to just completely make her and her team look equally incompetent by failing to take on THESE foes and instead elect to... mope... complain... do nothing except what others tell you to do... basically make no real decisions of your own except... dress as a nun and sneak into enemy territory with no real plan, leaving nobody in charge while you're gone despite a war looming... and burn a group of people alive for no reason to get dragons that you immediately refuse to use... ride dragon... speak a foreign language... cry... kiss your advisor immediately after she opens up about being violently assaulted and mutilated and never bring it up again... girlboss 💪💅

Truly astounding how badly they managed to fumble the bag with the show. Like. My god 😭 THIS was your vision for the historic Dance of Dragons aka the worst civil war in Westerosi history where both sides were Targaryens with dragons who destroyed each other and the Realm in their quest for power? Like THIS is what the singers in mainline ASOIAF books were singing about? 😭😭😭 bruh 😭😭😭

Sometimes I hate this show, and then I come to my senses and just despise it

I'm a feminist because I'm a woman and deserve all rights and opportunities. But this show, I swear to God, does everything it can to make me feel like a terrible person.

The show's adult Rhaenyra is just…ugh. There were a thousand ways to transfer her personality, actions, and decisions from page to screen, and the writers chose the worst possible one. Somehow, they managed to strip her of her personal qualities while simultaneously filling her to the brim with other people's accomplishments.

Young Rhaenyra was practically perfect, given the changes the writers made to the book plot. She was a young, capricious, selfish girl whose world collapsed in an instant, and she had to find her way on her own. She was unpleasant, nasty, mocking, charismatic, charming, sweet - and very real. Her actions could be condemned or supported, she was interesting to watch, and I loved her. Not everything Rhaenyra did was to my liking, but when she was on screen, I watched her without taking my eyes off.

Adult Rhaenyra is literally Frankenstein's monster, assembled from incomprehensible junk from the attic of Condall and Hess. She does not have a drop of the charm that young Rhaenyra had, as if they were written by completely different people. Every questionable action of hers is whitewashed, 90% of her decisions and achievements are recycled and reused plots of other characters from the books, any actions are extolled to the skies. It's like eating cold unsalted French fries, you feel punished for some unknown sins by tasteless crap.

I want to love Rhaenyra, I really tried the entire half of the first season and whole second to feel at least a little love for this homunculus, but it is simply impossible. Just when I'm starting to sympathize with Rhaenyra grieving so heartbreakingly for her son and wanting justice, and getting involved in show, the writers decide to indulge their nun fetish and have Rhaenyra dress up as a septa and go talk to Alicent about some useless bullshit. One minute she's not afraid to defend her opinion, the next she's playing Mother of Dragons 2.0 (Vermithor scene was indescribable cringe, as was posing with a goofy grin with three dragons while Aemond scampers away with his bloodthirsty granny). Here's Rhaenyra having a great dialogue scene with her son, and here she is kissing a SA victim who just shared her tragic backstory, but don't worry, it's very romantic and everyone is happy.

And it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it feels if Rhaenyra were like young Rhaenyra, whose flaws were real and not smoothed over by the constant reminder that this woman was the best thing to happen to the world since the invention of latte macchiato. Young Rhaenyra, if she were in the sept with Alicent, would have yelled at the woman, risked getting caught, and wouldn't have been shy about reminding Jace who was in charge and that he had no right to scold her. Would she have been right, or smart in her actions? Still no, but she wouldn't be hailed as fair, peaceful and perfect - she'd be a selfish, confused, grieving woman who'd lost so much and was desperately trying to figure out how to salvage what was left and take back what was taken.

The show does everything it can to make me despise Rhaenyra. She's selfish, self-righteous, smug, arrogant, delusional, self-important, dumb as a rock, spineless, one-dimensional cheap knockoff of Daenerys from the early seasons of Game of Thrones. And the worst part is that all of these qualities would be interesting if the show would just stop holding me by the balls and demanding that I must love and adore her for every little thing because Rhaenyra is always right, the best girl in the world, worthy of all praise, and perfect to the core. Let me decide for myself whether I want to like a character or not, because unlike some people, I have an IQ above room temperature and can empathize with a complex, ambiguous character with adult morals, not just Bloom from Winx in a white wig.

I constantly have to remind myself that it's okay to dislike a female character if she's written terribly, and that doesn't make me a bad person.

Ps. Still not native speaker and dgaf about mistakes, english can suck my imaginary dick; apparently somehow part of text was translate in my native language wtf

Viserys and Rhaenyra doomed everyone to War during The Driftmark Incident, and so many viewers completely missed the point of what happened and blame Alicent for being “crazy”. Alicent’s children’s safety is already in a dangerous position once it’s time for Rhaenyra to claim the throne to almost certain backlash, the only way to avoid War is for them all to have strong bonds of trust. Alicent’s son, one of the possible threats to Rhaenyra’s claim, had just been mutilated and disabled by Rhaenyra’s son. This was the chance for Rhaenyra to show that she is willing to be a family with her half-siblings even though she has never made any effort towards that before. She’s so arrogant she doesn’t even seem to understand that she should do that. Instead, Rhaenyra’s response was to not even apologize for her son’s behavior and not propose any possible consequence (obviously not cutting Luke’s eye out, but literally any consequence for example having to do grunt work for the Maesters and/or lose access to weapons until he can be responsible with them). Rhaenyra made it abundantly clear she doesn’t care at all about Alicent’s children and has zero remorse about them being harmed. Of course Alicent isn’t going to lay her children’s lives at Rhaenyra’s mercy by letting her take the throne after that.

And Viserys is even more to blame. His behavior in this scene is utterly abhorrent. Does he even make one single attempt to comfort or console his severely injured child? Nope. None. Viserys himself said he doesn’t think of Aemond (or Aegon or Helaena) as his children and that couldn’t be more clear than it is here. Instead of comforting or consoling Aemond, Viserys blames and interrogates the still bleeding and in pain child (starting by telling him to look at him, I know that’s a thing adults say when they want to have a serious conversation with children but… really? In this particular situation that’s what you go with?) for the sake of Rhaenyra. The full grown adult who is not injured as of now. All he cares about is Rhaenyra. And as if that’s not apathetic enough, he then threatens that “ANYONE” (meaning including Aegon, Aemond, or Helaena) who points out the obvious fact that Rhaenyra’s bastards are bastards will have their tongue cut out. He threatens his own mutilated, freshly disabled child with further, even more disabling mutilation all for the sake of protecting Rhaenyra’s lies and misdeeds (even though he could just admit they’re bastards and legitimize them but that’s another issue). And Rhaenyra thanks him for this direct threat to Alicent’s children, they’re both just beaming in their agreement that they can do whatever they want to Alicent’s children because they’re not really Targaryens, not really their children or siblings.

Alicent didn’t just “go crazy” because she’s an evil, vengeful character. She’s consistently one of the least vengeful and most level-headed, practical characters in the show overall. Alicent lost her composure in complete desperation in this moment because her children’s safety was just compromised. The King and his heir made it clear in front of everyone that Alicent’s children mean nothing. If one of Rhaenyra’s illegitimate crotch goblins had their eye cut out, no doubt Viserys would be enraged and demanding at least some kind of punishment. We know that because even over an “insult” (aka the truth literally everyone knows) towards them, he threatens grievous bodily harm. But Alicent’s children can be harmed without any punishment, not even a slap on the wrist, they’re not worth anything and no one will defend them. Alicent needed a show of force to say someone will defend these children and Rhaenyra cannot just do whatever she wants to them and smirk “Thank you, father” like a spoiled brat who tattled on someone and got them in trouble (tbh I’d cut her more than Alicent did for that line alone, it is so infuriating). Alicent isn’t a fighter but she tried every other option and found she’s the only one who will fight for her children.