Targaryen Women and Dragons vs Westerosi Values: the decadence of The House of Fire

 I remember when I was in law school more than 30 years ago, and we were discussing crimes of honour. Yes, in 1989 many men still felt that they could clean their names with blood, and more often than not the victim was a woman. Feminicide.

Fast forward to 2022 and women are still killed for whatever reason a man feels right, if they feel slighted somehow, they feel they have the right to punish women, and even kill them.

Our Professor in the olden days was a quirky old man, a very good attorney indeed, the kind who had little, if none whatsoever, scrupples. How to get away with murder? When I was 20 years I was shocked to meet someone who actually felt it was alright to get away with anything, because it was his job, so he put his morals and feelings aside and just did his job.

As much as I hated this guy, I learned a lot. Law school can have an amazing impact on you. It is not about socratic method, case law, or practice, Law school gives you an advantage point to observe and analyse people and society, and it is so no non-sense!

Women have no honour, they are part of the honour of a man. If a woman fails to meet the expectations, her failure taints the man she belongs to, father, brothers, sons, husbands. This woman must be punished so that this man, or these men, can have their honour restored in front of other men. If a woman is raped, even if she was not at fault, for example, according to the bible, or if she was taken as tribute by another country, as often occurred in wars or between vassal countries, she would be considered an outcast, or killed. Her very existence is a taint. 

There are reasons for that. Marriage is not love, it is a contract. And controlling the sexual activities of the female subject means that you make sure that any inheritance will be passed to those of your own bloodline. If a woman is widowed, it is best that she dies, so there is no risk of two different male lines being linked by the same mother, and clashing over property, for instance. A man may have multiple wives, all of them carefully guarded and secluded, but not the other way roung, in societies where the name and property rights go through the male line.

Marriage sanctions the framework for sexuality. It determines that a person can have sex and still be chaste, cause sex has a reproductive function and therefore a binding function.

Women who believe that marriage is a duty and also a destiny, and focus on their husbands success, and on producing heirs and then on securing their male heirs rights, often care not about the emotional welfare of anyone, not even of their children, let alone of their female children. They might naturalize abuse to such an extent that a daughter who is beaten by her husband is returned to the abused, cause it is her duty to stand the abuse. It happened to my great grandmother, it happened to my grandmother... my grandmother did not let it happen to my mother.

SPOILER WARNING

Alicent, as a character, is woman who stands for the patriarchy. She is a woman who have never experienced any agency, unless when it comes to opressing other women. She needs to navigate the institutions that constrain her to a tee, and in order to find some sort of agency through her children, as a regent or dowager queen, she must raise children who are unable to rule - which is already sugested by episode 6:

1. Aegon is spoiled, cruel, manipulative, weak of character;
2. Haelena is fearful, unable to connect with people;
3. Aemond is spiteful, manipulative, cruel, to say the least.

The three of them will eventually rely on her for practical matters, as she once relied on her father, but she will be disappointed when they turn to Ser Criston Cole.

She also must make sure that the institutions themselves are preserved, so anyone that goes againt them must be obliterated. Not only Rhaenyra, but her first three children - as bastards, despite they are being as Targaryen as Alicent´s children (only half) - must disappear. She does not take the peace offer that would eventually lead her own line to the throne because it is not only about the line, it is about the way things are done, it is about herself.

When later she marries her daugher to her own son, the same kind of incest she once condemned, and Aegon abuses Haelena, she dismisses the abuse. Being abused is women´s lot in life. Her duty, as mother, seems to be to protect only her son, her daugther is a pawn, as she herself once was. 

Rhaenyra takes a completely different route, more in line with the tradition of Targaryen women, who usually do not care much about rules and traditions, who dote on their daughters as much as they dote on their sons, and may be motherly and warlike at the same time. 

Alicent is Westeros baring its teeth to the Valyrian invaders. Rhaenyra is the Targaryen/Valyrian values being brutally fought into submission. If the Targaryen want to rule, a dragon pit won´t be enough, they won´t have to just tame their dragons and keep them locked or in their islands, they will also have to tame their women. In the end, they will kill all dragons, and subdue the women, and grow smaller until they are gone. 

It will take almost 200 years for another Targaryen to hatch dragon eggs and to land in Westeros again, and that will be a woman. 

Well, that is one of the reasons why I hate the last two seasons of GoT so much...