The Realm's Delight, The Realm's Ruin: Rhaenyra Targaryen’s Battle with Patriarchy and Pride

Westeros is a deeply patriarchal society. Men like Aegon, Aemond, and Otto can wage brutal wars, burn towns, and execute people and the realm views it as standard, expected behavior. When a woman takes power, however, and is then forced to use aggression to defend herself, she is immediately judged through a much harsher lens. Her anger is labeled "hysteria" or "paranoia," while her tactical ruthlessness is viewed as unhinged cruelty. Rhaenyra is held to an impossible standard: she's expected to remain peaceful and embody a nurturing mother figure while simultaneously fighting a brutal war.

The tragic reality of the common people in Westeros is that they don't understand the nuances of ruling, banking, treasury logistics – or who collects and manages (or in this case steals) the gold. All they know is when the Hightowers ruled, despite the blockade, there was still food. Now that Rhaenyra is on the throne, prices are skyrocketing and they are starving. It is profoundly unfair, but the crown bears the brunt of the people's misery, regardless of who caused it. (See Alicent and Helaena in S2 E6).

The show vividly highlights the hypocrisy of the Green Council by contrasting the chaos, selfishness, and corruption of the Greens with the impossible, hyper-scrutinized constraints placed on Rhaenyra. While the Greens are allowed to burn the realm down out of petty spite, Rhaenyra is expected to rule perfectly over the ashes they left behind.

The Green Council framed their usurpation of the throne as a necessity to "protect the realm" from a female ruler. Yet the moment they take power, they fracture the kingdom, spark a bloody civil war, and allow members of their own family to commit horrific atrocities. They claim to care about stability, but they destroy the realm's foundation simply to keep a woman off the throne.

Obviously, Rhaenyra has made some bad calls since taking King's Landing. The point is she was already in an impossible position from the moment she set foot inside her former home.

Rhaenyra is a victim of a rigged system, fighting an enemy that stripped the kingdom bare before fleeing and leaving her to take the fall for its sabotage. Combine that stress with the heartbreak of losing her eldest son and heir – her third child to die as a result of the Dance – along with being constantly undermined due to the inherent misogyny in Westeros, which contributed greatly to the loss of said heir, and one can easily understand how she might devolve into a state of paranoia and begin increasingly relying on Daemon for support.

What could she have done differently?

(Ignoring the fact she wasted critical weeks holding back her dragons and even risked her own life sneaking into the capital – or that she allowed the Black Council to openly disrespect and undermine her because she's a woman rather than making a public, brutal example of the first lord to do so, much as Daemon would've done – I'll focus solely on what she could've done differently after taking King's Landing.)

Much is outside of her control, but when she discovered the coffers were empty she allowed the resulting panic to become public. She should have immediately and publicly blamed the Hightowers for stealing from the people. To address the crisis, she could have asked wealthy Black loyalists – the Velaryons, Celtigars, etc. – to heavily subsidize the city's food supply, thereby turning a structural crisis into a public-relations victory.

Letting Mysaria walk away with a mind full of crown secrets was a massive blunder. If Rhaenyra couldn't bring herself to execute her – though after Mysaria purposely concealed Helaena's pregnancy and failed to discover Aegon and Sunfyre were still alive, I don't see why she wouldn't – she should have at least kept Mysaria comfortably but strictly imprisoned in the Red Keep "for her own protection."

Beyond Mysaria, Rhaenyra should have purged the Red Keep's remaining servants and guards immediately upon taking the castle to root out Larys Strong’s lingering spy network.

The dragonseeds gave Rhaenyra absolute military supremacy, but she failed to manage them. She handed two previously powerless men weapons capable of destroying cities – without simultaneously constructing a political structure that gives them something substantial to lose. She should have heavily policed them and held their families hostage as insurance for their loyalty – with the exception of Addam, of course. She dramatically changes the balance of power without adequately accounting for the fact that they now possess independent military power. She also should've carefully managed their public image so that the nobility wouldn't feel insulted and the smallfolk wouldn't see them as undisciplined tyrants.

Rhaenyra takes King’s Landing militarily but doesn’t take control of its information ecosystem. Larys’s agents, Mysaria, hostile servants, rumors, public perceptions of the dragonseeds, the treasury narrative – all of these are variations of the same problem. She possesses the capital without fully controlling the political narrative within.

One of her most detrimental follies, however, is her refusal to legitimize Lord Corlys's two sons.

She is fighting a brutal civil war. To win, she relies almost entirely on her most powerful ally: Lord Corlys, who has sacrificed his fleet, his money, his home, and his family for her cause. He asked her for just one crucial favor: to officially legitimize Alyn and Addam so they could inherit his estate and preserve his family lineage. Her refusal is a massive, self-sabotaging mistake for several reasons.

It exposes her intense hypocrisy: The queen’s own children are widely believed to be illegitimate, yet Lord Corlys not only spent years lying to protect that secret and keep her family in power – he embraced those children as his grandchildren and made Lucerys his heir. Denying him the same privilege for his own flesh and blood is deeply insulting.

She isolates her most vital supporter: Lord Corlys has already lost his wife and his fleet to this war, not to mention his trueborn children beforehand. By refusing his request, Rhaenyra breaks his spirit, pushes him to his absolute limit, and drives him to resign as her Hand – fracturing their alliance precisely when she needs it the most.

She acts out of panic instead of strategy: Rhaenyra refuses because she is terrified that legitimizing these men will draw attention to the fact that her own children are widely believed to be bastards, threatening her family's claim to the throne. But in attempting to protect her family's future, she alienates the one man who could actually help her win the war in the present.

Ultimately, it’s a tragic mistake – she allows her personal fear and double standards to destroy the loyalty of her greatest ally. I honestly hate this deviation from the text, though I know their relationship breaks down either way. The text version is, at least, slightly more understandable.

What are your thoughts? Anything you would add, remove, or change?

Did I omit any of her major errors after taking King's Landing?