The show ignores the fact that both Alicent and Rhaenyra are both villains, who tear the realm apart and destroy their families' power.

Honestly, Daemon's vision in Harrenhal about Daenerys ruined it for me. It reminded me of how fucking stupid and pointless GOT was at the end.

I personally think nowadays.These writers need to be supervised when trying to redapt a book into a tv show

The show started jumping the shark when they refused to portray Alicent or Rhaenyra is a negative light in any way. In the books, they're both two ruthless women vying for power and hating each other.

In the show, they are afraid to show the kweens as evil in any way. They're unrequited lovers pulled apart by all the ambitious men around them. They always have good intentions, but gets ruined by the patriarchy. It became completely ridiculous when they secretly visited each other for peace during the war.

The writers are trying to turn the story into something it is not.
Doesn't help that their attempts are clumsy and poorly executed. Example: in their attempt to make Rhaenyra "good", they made her incompetent and, more importantly, BORING. In their attempt to absolve Alicent of any wrongdoing, they made her a stupid hypocrite. In their attempt to "re-educate" Daemon, they have completely ruined his character.
Don't get me started on the shoehorned "prophecy" side plot. Why would you WILLINGLY remind your audience of GoT Season 8?!

I don’t understand how anyone could look at the ASOIAF fandom, see how many people love Cersei, and then refuse to let rhaenyra or alicent truly be bad, villainous, or nasty at all. Cersei’s hatred and misogyny is a huge factor of why she’s so interesting as a character.

I think their handling of Alicent in season two is inherently bad not just in execution. It starts at the end of season one when they had her usurp Rhaenyra because of a prophecy its so stupid and belittles her actual motives that they spent the whole season building. That being 1.Protecting her children 2.Jealousy of Rhaenyra 3. A false sense of duty/her needing to make her sacrifice(wedding viserys) worth it.

It feels all three of those motives are completely forgotten. She don’t give a damn about her kids anymore. Does not care that her grandbaby got murdered. For whatever reason doesnt hate Rhaenyra. And they have her talking up Viserys. She’s banging Ser Criston off rip which to me felt like that should of been a climax of her arc and built up to. Her finally letting go of this veil of propriety and religion. I think her arc should’ve been the opposite of what it was. After lukes death she should feel guilty snd conflicted and by the end I feel she shouldve been more firm on her side and willing to commit the evil acts that they must in order to win and survive.

The best answer ive heard to what the problem with season 2 is "They refuse to paint Rhaenrya or Alicent as villians, when the point of the conflict was that there was NO GOOD Guys on either side." Each side had its Moments of Heroism and black deeds that only deepened the abyss the Kingdom would descend into.
They refuse to potray the downfall of Rhaenrya's reputation in the wake of her alleged murder of her husband Laenor,her obvious bastard children,and her marriage to the Prince of Fleabottom had plummeted significantly on top of her being shown to be very selfish and ignorant of the people's needs.
Alicent on the other hand is absolutely Butchered in the show because they need to push the message "women have it rough" when in the books she is absolutely shown to be the spearhead for the Green Faction. Her betrayal of every male member of her family has made her a less respectable mother than Cersei Lannister

After Aemond lost his eye, Alicent and Rhaenyra should have nothing but enmity towards each other. They were enemies longer than they had been friends. It makes no f-ing sense, especially in a place like Westeros, that Alicent still “loves” Rhaenyra after everything that happened. Aemond lost his eye. Luke lost his life. Jaehaerys was mvrdered in cold blood. I’m gonna say it, this show was ruined by Condal and Hess’s refusal to let go of Rhaenicent. What should have been a friend to enemies story has become a convoluted, unrealistic, illogical fanfic. There’s no f-ing way this show is tied to or even in the same universe as GOT. The tone, feeling, and story are so off the mark it’s not even funny. It really boils my blood that these great actors have been wasted on a Wattpad tier on-screen fanfic. In conclusion, the GOT season five special feature about the Dance is the real canon, not this hot mess of a fanfic.

Nettles was also rumored to be Daemon's lover, and those rumors reached Rhaenyra. First she reacted like "she has plain features, my husband won't choose someone like her"(which showrunners couldn't do, because it makes characters racist, which they were, but how can they make their girlboss not saint), and then she started to be paranoid and ordered to kill Nettles because of it. Nettles wasn't killed, she ran and took her dragon. I

t's how Rhaenyra lost Sheepstealer, that's why Daemon went alone against Aemond and they both died. Rhaena could't be Daemon's lover, she won't run from her home, from her family, Rhaenyra won't order to kill her, showing her allies that's she's going mad and start betrayals. They're changing to much, and it stops working.

They literally take away all agency from the 2 main women characters and claim it’s for “equality” and make both them act so in realistic. Then making it so no women characters can be seen as bad or evil and make them into these unrealistic benevolent people who want nothing but peace and it’s all the men doing the bad things and the women (who no one listens to) are the ones with the only good ideas

51:25 yet another reason why the Rhaena/Nettles swap doesn’t work. There’s no way a princess is being allowed to run around the wilderness with a wild dragon on the loose without Lady Arryn sending squads of men to track her down and bring her back.

A thing that I don't understand with this show is that they are able to create a real depth and story arc for Aegon and Viserys (who is close to non-existant in the book). But failed with characters that are already pretty well developed in the source material ...

Damon's arc would have been gripping if it was shorter or more nuanced. It's portrayed as peeling through his layers but there were barely any layers. The arc is a very simple narrative and we rarely learn anything new about him. Imo it should either have been an episode long, or Damon should have had a more nuanced reason on why he wants to become king; maybe he believes house Targaryen is falling he wants to go back to the glory days of strength and power. He saw Viserys as a weak king who set the house even further back and wanted to be with Rhaenyra so they could set things right together; after all she was fiery in her youth, but now he's seeing her turn into Viserys the man he thought was weak, hence his desire to claim power for himself for the "good of the house." Of course there's still going to be his own desire for power, glory and acceptance, the love for his family, his inferirority complex, his regrets etc. All these factors interplaying would have made for a more interesting season long arc. Damon grappling with the genuine love he has for Rhaenyra and his aim of restoring the house to what he believes were the golden ages of Targaryen history, when they were feared. While he grapples with this he also grapples with whether he really believes this narrative or does he simply want power and is creating his own justification; maybe Otto was right to distrust him after all, or maybe he's lashing out because he never got the approval he wanted from his brother. There were so many questions to ask that would reveal new things about his character

The problem with the show is A) they've gone down the route of one side = good and one side = bad, completely missing the point of the book. And B) they're desperate to push this narrative that Rhaenyra and Alicent are strong, powerful women who'd be overseeing sunshine and rainbows if it weren't for the stupid men ruining everything. They're not willing to portray them as the book does; to power hungry people vying for dominance.

The nadir for me was the audience being invited to point and laugh at Aegon losing his dick to dragonfire (nevermind that his exposed eyes are fine while his dick was pretty well protected but sure, whatever, lol dickless) while Alicent offered him up to Rhaenyra, who then acted like it was a child for a child, completely forgetting that her side has Aegon's child beheaded infront of his mother.

TL;DR. All the Targaryens suck but the writers are too cowardly to show women being arseholes (and I say that as a woman) and so have pushed this blacks = good, greens = bad narrative that cripples the story.

The biggest issue is, that the showrunners try to pretend they're writing strong female characters, while they simply don't.

Rhaenyra didn't make a SINGLE decision since she was like 13 lol. Men around her have to do everything , they want the war, they want to fight for her throne, they do the killing, they do the diplomacy, they do it all. She is passive, while hse should be the MAIN leader of her faction, who drives most of the plot from her side.
Rhaenyra in books did much much more herself. Some of it was dark, evil, sure. But some of it better. By getting rid of ALL of her agenda, they don't make her a good, strong character. They make her boring, bland. And they make someone who IS NOT true Rhaenyra.

And then ppl say Rhaenyra is politically terrible with zero experience, when in books she won over great houses by her political cunning only (for example she understood Greyjoys way better than Greens and that's why she won them over - her political intelligence.) And it's stated again and again she was brave and smart since she was little (youngest dragonrider in known history btw - not something daddy gives you because you asked nice)
So they dumbified and whitewashed Rhaenyra... which only made her less interesting and worse overall.

And then Alicent... the damage they done to her is also insane. In like 4th episode of 1st season she is all about Aegon getting the throne, then she is all about Rhaenyra being great. Then she attacks Rhaenyra with a knife, then she toasts to her being a good future queen. And then she's surprised her father, who told her multiple times, tries to coup Rhaenyra.
Like every second conversation she has with Otto is ABOUT GREENS TAKING OVER AFTER VISERYS DIES, yet then she's shocked and didn't know? Stupid, stupid whitewashing.
She again doesn't know what she wants (which in season 2 is clearly visible and so different from the books) or what to do. She lost her political influence she had in the books, she lost her agenda, her wants and goals.

These showrunners simply do NOT know how to write the 2 main characters and it's super clear. And since the two main characters suck, everyone will. The season 2 was ruined before it even started as season 1 was extremely flawed, yet people refused to see it because of nostalgia.

They really messed up with no introducing Daeron. He has no connection to the Greens or his entire family whatsoever.

The first season wasn't that good. I could tell with how they chose to handle certain things, like Alicent not actually carrying out the coup because she believes her children's lives are in danger and that her son should be king regardless of what Viserys wanted but only because she believed he changed his mind before he died.

How can they market this as team against team when in the show it's made very clear that no Rhaenyra is the true heir, the greens made a mistake. So of course Alicent can so easily betrayed her faction the greens where never a thing the writers gave them no real motivations. The blacks are already the determined in the right as far as succession is concerned.

This is why when season 1 aired and I saw the glaring issues back then and was called a hater and that this was on par with seasons 1-4 of game of thrones I just laughed. That season was the foundation because it set up character motives, alicent's motives where ruined in s 1 ep 8 so the greens motives are also. I doubt they can fix it, it's already too damaged.

These writers just like Dave and Dan don't understand cause and effect

30:50 - You know, something I thought they were going to do with Rhaenyra initially but hasn't borne fruit (and may or may not eventually) is her being paternalistic when it comes to class. Like they obviously want to portray Rhaenyra as being sympathetic to the common folk. I think that's potentially fine. But it would give it a more interesting dimension if she was sympathetic from a paternalistic lense. As in "Yes, she wants what's best for them but she is also the one who decides what's best for them, and doesn't really care what they have to say about it." That would make perfect sense for someone who cares, but was also raised as a literal royal. In the first season I thought they were going to go with that with stuff like how she said what the common folk thought was of no consequence in episode 4 to Daemon. But so far, at least, they haven't really done much if anything with that.