House of the Dragon & The DESTRUCTION of Alicent Hightower (reupload)

#houseofthedragon #gameofthrones #hotd #videoessay #alicent

This video is about Alicent Hightower from HBO's House of the Dragon. Let's analyze Alicent and see why her portrayal in HOTD season 2 was by far inferior to her characterization in season 1.
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comment section below.

Alicent in season 1: 00:00 – 02:56
Alicent in season 2: 02:56 – 06:38
Alicent’s 2nd meeting with Rhaenyra: 06:38 – 09:50

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Find more of my House of the Dragon video essays HERE:

[LanaMarie]

This originally uploaded video got copyright claimed by HBO - in its entirety (no option to trim out the copyrighted audio/part). I filed a dispute against the claim, citing fair use... buuut it got rejected. 🙄 so that's why I "fixed" & reuploaed it. I'm sure the 30 eur I (would have) earned with the original video would have been life changing for HBO, lol.

Anyway, thank you all, my dear community, for your support (especially if you're here rewatching) - you're the best! Just the fact that over 12k of you is interested in the content I make is amazing to me and means the world 💙

[Scruffynerfherder]

The writers are blatently team Rhaynera. So many times she could’ve and should’ve lost, but didn’t. Why, plot convenience. They want Rhaynera to win. It’s biased.

[khfanlife]

Sweet Jesus, season two isn’t even consistent with season one, let alone the book. No wonder George jumped ship.

[jjosifovic]

Alicent is not the same from the books or the previous season. They make all the changes to make Rhaenyra better to what she actually is…….instinct like

[greenknightofwar]

Yea personally I like Alicent more than any other female character in the show in season one. And that’s for two reasons one she’s sympathetic. She’s been put in a situation she doesn’t want to be in, but she holds to her convictions and soldiers on any way. The second is she’s an incredibly flawed person. She is very poor parent and ultimately perpetuates the cycle of parental neglect like her father did to her. For these reasons I can be pulled in by the character. But season 2 threw that in the trash. I swear it’s like, I’ve finally been handed some decent entertainment only for the writers to think their hot shit and say “we can do it better than the original author” and turn it into a shitty modern day female power fantasy where they crush the patriarchy. At least I have the half way decent fan fics to compensate.

[nalublackwater]

Giving you views and a like just because the claim was unjust. You rock, girl.

[cyberpunkdarren]

I just love this channel. Smart, thoughtful content and sometimes fashionable!

[miguelsantos-cdtu]

Season 2 would have been much better if Rhaenyra and Alicent had waged war out of revenge for deaths of Luke and Jaehaerys.
Instead, we have them driven by a desire for peace.
It's doesn't make sense.
Can you imagine if Catelyn Stark want to make peace with Lannisters after Jaime paralyzed her son?

[berserksouls]

Spent two season with this character and I can’t even tell you what her main motivation is that drives her character and informs her choices. In every episode it seems to be different. Poor Olivia Cooke must have whiplash after all that.

[LordFleaBottom]

I have zero confidence in HBO in ever getting anything GRRM wrote right. Not that Fire & Blood doesn’t have it’s share of flaws. It’s one of the lowest rated and lowest selling books GRRM ever wrote.

Rhaenys vs. Aegon/Aemond: Zero interaction until Rook’s Rest.

Daemon vs. Aemond: Zero words to each other until Gods Eye.

Aemond vs. Jacerys: Zero interaction during the war. Aemond did kill Jace’s brother.

Daemon vs. Criston: Zero interaction in the war.

Rhaenyra vs. Aemond: Zero interaction after Aemond killed her son.

Daemon vs. Aegon and Helaena: Zero interaction after the latter couple’s son was killed.

This is all in the book. There’s no build up to their matchups. What beef did Rhaenys have with Aegon and Aemond prior to when Rhaenys was killed? Nothing. We have characters getting mixed up with each other but none of them had much prior history with each other. In the show, zero interaction between Rhaenyra and her half-siblings. The show covered a span of 20 years and we never saw Rhaenyra say a word to Aegon, Helaena, or Aemond.

The only things HBO created that wasn’t in the book was having Rhaenyra and Alicent meet up twice. In the book, they’re not friends. They hardly interact with each other during the war. Rhaenyra is jealous of Alicent’s beauty and not Alicent was jealous of Rhaenyra’s liberal lifestyle. But the worst thing HBO did was make them close to the same age and make them have a lesbian romance with each other. This lesbianism holds back the show.

Who is the showrunner for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms next year? Ira Parker.


You’re confident Ira Parker will get The Hedge Knight right? I don’t. Will probably turn Dunk and Egg gay for each other. HBO can do a series of Aegon the Conqueror who is the ultimate Gary Stu and all he will do is beat everyone except Dorne with his dragon and it probably still end up a disappointing series filled with one-dimensional characters.

The best we ever got was Game of Thrones S1-S6. That’s it. Don’t expect a prequel spin-off on the level of Better Call Saul. Same old shit. Just a bunch of rich white people getting into wars to sit on the throne. Aenys and Maegor is Viserys and Daemon done in reverse as if Daemon had become a king and became paranoid and insecure from his advisors. They’re so similar to each other as if Viserys and Daemon are time variants of Aenys and Maegor or whichever characters GRRM wrote first.

[cattraknoff]

It's just bad writing. Here's the answer: They chose to sideline George and write it themselves and push modern politics at the expense of the story like modern hollywood writers can never resist doing. They thought with the foundation of season 1 they could do what they wanted and everyone would love it. But they didn't learn the lesson of Game of Thrones' latter seasons: Hollywood writers who are good at adapting stories are not suitable for creating as high-quality stories as written by a real author out of thin air. They chose to break the story in spite of George's instructions on how it should go. Now he's not even going to be involved at all going forward. Hollywood writers aren't good at being creative. When they create anything everything always has to be connected to their politics and self-identity. This becomes the core of whatever they write. It overwrites whatever essence used to exist before in something like Star Wars, Star Trek, or Game of Thrones. Without someone to keep them in check, left to their own devices, they will turn everything into imitations of their own shallow and miserable existences and worldviews.

[angela_merkeI]

My favourite scene was when Rhaenyra asked Alicent what she's supposed to do with Alicent's sons and Alicent answered: "I dun won dem."🥰

[abandonallhope.]

Many scenes in Season 2 threw me off like it gave me the same vibes when I saw Arya come out of nowhere and kill the NK and when Rhaegal was shot by Euron just wtf??

[anac]

I also really disliked what they did to Helaena, she, her children and Rhaenyra's little children were the only characters that were completely innocent, but what they did by showing Helaena in the visions was basically giving her a lot of power and influence in what will happen next because the last visions cause Daemon to be ready for the battles to come, i dont get why the did that, the season in general was very poorly written, it is a shame, well at least we didn't watch 5 seasons for it to start to show this type of problems 🤷

[jennifera.]

Tbh I'm seriously starting to think Olivia had also a tiny part of blame in all this mess. I saw a print on twitter and it shows how Olivia asked the showrunners to go to Spain because apparently she was bored of studio scenes? She said "If you don't ask, you don't get it. They wrote it in and I HOPE IT WORKS FOR THE PLOT". This answer is glaring, even more after we know how Tom and Phia had to beg to have a scene, Emma and Matt complained they wanted more scenes too (but honestly I'm glad emma and matt were ignored), when Olivia apparently just needed to ask. And then we have that print where she says she has no idea how rhaenicent scene ended up because she has no ideia how it was edited. I have no ideia which set is the one in Spain, but whatever scenes were written and filmed there to accomodate her demands, she had also a fair share of the blame for how Alicent arc ended up. Not to mention she's also a staunch rharnicent supporter, I saw a print where people said "say amen for rhaenicent dungeon s3x scene" or something similar, and she joined the crowd saying amen. I'm sure she doesn't give a damn about how Alicent is written, as long as she has some sort of creative control over it.

[garlantyrell]

Alicent Hightower is no mother nor a true queen. Her children are her victims rather than her babies and she nor Viserys deserved them.

[pbh]

Alicent willing to surrender the thrown is the equivalent of Zuko joining Aang on season 2

Without that pro-antagonist dynamic your story collapses on itself

[islasullivan]

Also if she wanted so badly to escape why go to Rhaenyra and not Larys. Dragonstone should be covered with guards on high alert from the assassination attempt on Rhaenyra, they would arrest or kill Alicent on sight. The logic to go to her just doesn’t make sense.

Larys has also been disrespected by Aemond and denied power. As long as he doesn’t know her plan is to disappear into the wilderness he has a reason to be in her favor. Did she just stop showing him her feet for information?

[deannaeasy]

Great video! Just a note that the 'Un-alive' term isn't needed here. Youtube doesn't punish videos that use the words 'death' 'killed' or 'died'. That was an old Tiktok rule.

[MagisterEpistularum]

I'm glad I tempered my expectations.
The show just makes me appreciate George more. For all his faults, he doesn't infantilize women. He lets them be as evil and as good as appropriate.
If I were to rank my favorite ASOIAF characters, only Vizzy T from HOTD can break into my top 20. Every other HOTD character just doesn't measure up.