I want to ask about a potential wrinkle to your Team Smallfolk ideas. Isn’t it possible to sympathize or commiserate with Rhaenyra as a victim of sexism and misogyny from above and below (as some do for Marie Antoinette today). After all Marlowe wrote a play about an unpopular king Edward II and made him sympathetic because he was a victim of homophobia and Derek Jarman made a film of that play which made him a martyr?

I think it’s possible to recognize that Rhaenrya was a victim of sexism while recognizing that she was also a brutal tyrant. And as with Cersei, I think we can say that Rhaenrya was a victim of the patriarchy but also someone who responded to her treatment by lashing out at everyone around her, especially those below her. Calling for the assassination of Nettles isn’t exactly an act of solidarity. 

But I do want to push back on something that seems to be suggested by your question: I don’t see the Storming of the Dragonpit, by which term I meant the smallfolk uprising in King’s Landing against *both* Rhaenrya and Aegon III, as motivated by gender bias. Rather, it was motivated by the fact that Rhaenrya was a dragonrider, and dragons had been murdering smallfolk by the tens of thousands from Rook’s Rest down to Tumbleton. For further evidence of this, consider the willingness of the smallfolk of King’s Landing to follow the gender-egalitarian decrees of “King” Gaemon Palehair.