I have to ask regarding “The Princess and the Queen”, where many of the fans see Rhaenyra as proto-Cersei without parsing through the text and Gyldayn’s obvious misogynist PoV. I am seeing many fans reading it and saying that Viserys II was wrong in trying to make a woman a heir and the like. Do you think we are supposed to take Rhaenyra’s reputation as “Maegor’s teats” or that the Iron Throne cut her while she was wearing armour at face value?

randomfactgirl:

racefortheironthrone:

Rhaenrya had her good qualities and her bad. I think chiefly among her bad qualities was an early-Stannis-like inability to let anything slide, thus the moment she actually gets into power she spends more time taking revenge than actually ruling. Hence, mass arrests and executions and torture, and people side-eyeing her because of putting Alicent in chains and poor Haelena committing suicide over the death of her children, hence completely counterproductive orders to execute her own dragonriders. 

I’m sure we can chalk some of it up to propaganda, but some things are historical fact – Rhaenrya so alienated the people of King’s Landing that they rose up against her and killed her dragons, breaking the power of her House. That on its own discredits her as a politician.

But ultimately, Viserys II’s mistake was that he couldn’t make up his mind. If Rhaenrya was going to be his heir, he shouldn’t have remarried and had more children. 
 

I think this is really good analysis, but kind of disagree with the last paragraph. I don’t have WOIAF on me, but there are plenty of reasons beyond having heirs for Viserys to remarry – though yes, back-up heirs are generally a good idea. That said, Viserys made it very clear that Rhaenyra was his intended heir, including granting her Dragonstone.

We have a really strong history of male-preference primogeniture in the modern western world, but at this point in Targaryen rule (as far as I remember), that hadn’t been firmly established. Viserys may seem like he was being unclear to us, but in his mind he probably thought he was doing everything necessary to ensure Rhaenyra’s succession.

If you’re looking to blame someone other than Alicent and Aegon for the Dance of the Dragons, I’d say Criston Cole is your best bet.

What I was more getting at was that, regardless of gender, remarrying and having children from an entirely different dynastic alliance is a terrible idea because it creates a huge incentive for the relative families to see the other as a rival/enemy. 

You don’t need male preference primogeniture to get siblings to try to kill each other for power.