I really dislike what HOTD has done with Nettles and Rhaena, and I hate that whenever I criticize it people immediately assume the complaint is “Black people shouldn't be in Westeros.” That's not my problem at all. I'm Black. I WANT Black characters in fantasy. My problem is how shallow the representation feels.

I actually like the idea of the Velaryons being Black. What bothers me is that the writers seemingly had no interest in making that change part of the world. Give them Summer Islander ancestry. Give us some history explaining how this branch of an ancient Valyrian house came to look different from the Targaryens. Explore what that means in a society obsessed with bloodlines, ancestry and physical appearance. You could do so much interesting worldbuilding with it.

Instead they basically say “it's fantasy, there are dragons, why can't Black people exist?” Which is a strawman. Obviously Black people can exist in fantasy. The question is how these people fit into THIS specific fictional society.

Westeros is incredibly prejudiced. These people discriminate over class, gender, bastardy, religion, nationality, whether you're Dornish, whether you're a wildling, what family you were born into, etc. I don't need Westeros to suddenly have American-style racism, but pretending skin color wouldn't even be acknowledged feels bizarre. Especially in a story where who your parents are and what you look like is literally central to the plot.

And that's what makes Nettles bother me so much.

I'm not claiming I know why the writers merged her storyline with Rhaena. I'm talking about how the OUTCOME looks.

The show race-swaps the Velaryons, making Rhaena a young Black woman, and then apparently decides we don't need Nettles anymore and gives one of the most important parts of her story to Rhaena. So somehow a decision praised for increasing Black representation results in us LOSING an entire female character who could have also been played by a Black actress.

And Nettles and Rhaena aren't interchangeable! Rhaena is a princess. She's Daemon's legitimate daughter, raised in one of the most powerful families in the world and has unquestioned Valyrian ancestry. Nettles is a lowborn outsider whose ability to tame Sheepstealer raises fascinating questions about who can actually claim dragons and whether Valyrian blood is even necessary.

Giving Sheepstealer to Rhaena completely changes that.

It also just leaves a bad taste in my mouth that apparently two young Black female dragonriders can't simply coexist as separate characters. Again, I'm not saying that was consciously the reasoning. I'm saying that's the result we ended up with, and I think Black fans are allowed to find that uncomfortable without being told we're racist for criticizing “representation.”

What bothers me even more is how easily criticism from Black fans who DON'T like these decisions seems to get dismissed. If you're going to defend changes by saying they're important for people like me to see ourselves represented, then our opinions can't suddenly stop mattering when some of us say, “Actually, this doesn't make me feel represented.”

Black people aren't a monolith. Seeing someone with my skin color doesn't automatically make me connect with them. I can connect deeply with characters of any race or gender because that's literally what storytelling is supposed to allow us to do.

And diversity shouldn't just mean Black people either. Why does American fantasy casting so often seem to treat “white cast + some Black actors” as the default definition of diversity? Where are the Indigenous people? South Asians? East Asians? Middle Eastern people? Pacific Islanders? There are so many ways to build a genuinely diverse fantasy world.

I don't want fewer Black characters. I want MORE thought put into them.

Don't just change a character's race, collect praise for representation, refuse to explore what that change means within the world, and then cut another character whose role could have gone to another Black actress.

That's not the kind of representation I find empowering. It feels incredibly surface level, and I wish people would stop treating Black fans who say that like we're somehow arguing against our own existence on screen.

I Want Black Characters, Not Token Representation