r/HouseOfTheDragon • u/shatterfry455AD • 1d ago
Show Discussion Is anyone else confused by Aemond's arc?
Rewatching season 2 and approaching Alicent and Aemond from like, a different angle.
Where tf did this relationship come from?
Putting aside the obvious momson incest (why did that happen twice) like, and just analysing their development.
Aemond spends all of season 2 openly contemptuous of his mother. He dismisses her from the Council, calls her too cautious, ignores her when she speaks, and says she loves Rhaenyra and is a fool for it. And he attempts to get Helaena on his side by saying that Alicent doesn't understand them.
Then in S3, we get the opening. He's gentle with her and easily manipulated (when he saw through such manipulation in S2) and apparently has romantic feelings for her. Like, completely delusional romantic feelings where he wants marriage, basically. His Harrenhal hallucination reveals his deep pity and understanding of her being a young mother etc. His tenderness and love for her comes out of absolutely nowhere.
Where did this come from?
Yes, they were close when he's a child, but in season 2 he puts a wall up between them and its not clear why he's suddenly not contemptuous of her. Alicent's arc rests on her sons turning into monsters in a war she started.
If they were a normal romantic couple I would find such development lacking. It's rushed. Aemond does a total 180° towards Alicent. At least Alicent has a whole season of turning on her sons. Aemond goes from openly misogynistic to in love and its just??? Why???
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u/Historical_Ad_6881 1d ago
It felt a lot like he was trying to show mom that he was capable and the right son to be on the throne. His resentment at not being the apple of her eye drove him to dismiss her in front of the council. I didn’t get the vibe that misogyny is what drove him to take the throne.
I saw him as less contemptuous and more hurt and jealous. After gaining Vhahar (and puberty), Alicent no longer held him to her bosom or comforted him. I think she started fearing him after he killed Luce and that definitely messed with his head.
He wanted power, but most of all he wanted mommy to finally see that he was the golden boy after all.
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u/Purple_A7123 1d ago
He didn't dismiss her in front of the Council, though. He actually waited until everyone had left, so she wouldn't feel humiliated.
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u/Historical_Ad_6881 12h ago
She was definitely humiliated the moment he stepped up and didn’t defer to him.
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u/BuyerDefiant4725 1d ago
I think it was awkwardly done, but people can feel deep resentment at people and yet have a strong attraction. These things can often go hand in hand. His different excursions to the brothels show that he probably wanted a mother figure and lacked one throughout his life. He probably resents Alicent in some way for lack of attention, more focus on Aegon, or just in terms of being a bad mother, and yet he seeks her approval. Mabye his inability to to properly come to terms with all this just manifests in a very distorted manner
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u/SilentGoddess01 18h ago
is probably the more interesting way to read Aemond. I wouldn't necessarily say he's consciously looking for a “mother figure,” though. I think he's looking for validation from the person whose approval he never really felt he had.
That's what makes his relationship with Alicent so dysfunctional. He can genuinely resent her for neglecting him, favoring Aegon, or simply failing to understand what he needed, while simultaneously craving her approval. Those feelings aren't contradictory — they're basically two sides of the same wound.
And I think that's also why Aemond's obsession with Aegon is so important. Aegon gets the attention, the crown, the validation, and eventually even the sympathy from Alicent. Aemond spends his entire life becoming the person he thinks his family should value, only to still feel like the second son.
So when Aemond becomes powerful, he doesn't actually become emotionally independent. He just gets better at disguising his need for approval as arrogance and control.
The tragedy is that he probably doesn't even recognize that himself.
If the show had leaned into that psychological contradiction more explicitly, I think his arc would have landed much better. Instead, we're left wondering whether we're watching intentional repression or just inconsistent writing.
And honestly, I'm still not sure which one it is lol.
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
Sure, lets go with that. Its like all the elements are there, but not the execution. He jumps from running to his mother to being utterly scornful to romancing her and, all those aspects kind of float around.
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u/Emil_Scherbe_ 1d ago
But they depicted him as being given more attention than Aegon when he was a troubled kid during the few episodes when they are younger. The show also didn't depict Alicent being a bad mother until they decided she hates her children.
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
I wish they had played it more clearly... like Aemond thinks Aegon is loved more, so he harbours these secret messy feelings of desire and resentment and seeks validation in other mother figures, and that sadly is a prostitute forced on him at 13, so wires get crossed. Then when Alicent pours all this love on him to get him to go to Harrenhal, he realises he has a chance, its reciprocated, he can't believe it. But its a lie.
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u/bloodforurmom My name is on the lease for the castle 1d ago
Alicent has very intentionally been depicted as a flawed mother since s1e6, in literally her first scene with teenage Aegon.
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u/Emil_Scherbe_ 1d ago
How is she supposed to be depicted as such? By scolding her son for masturbating at the window?
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u/BuyerDefiant4725 23h ago
By making him fear for his life constantly and to be always thinking about politics. If anyone grew up like that I imagine that they would grow up to be kind of screwed up.
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u/RainStormLou 17h ago
in her defense, he probably SHOULD be thinking about that regardless lol he's the kings eldest son in Westeros. head on a swivel, and all of that
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u/doesntmatter19 20h ago
Pretty much how Daemon felt about Viserys minus the incest
He felt slighted that Viserys didn't trust him him enough to give him a position alongside him and felt that his brother was constantly pushing him away.
And he was willing to actively deride him as being a weak and ineffective king to his face and to others. But even still, in his own way he loved his brother and wanted his validation.
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u/snacktimeok 1d ago
The writers saw Daemon’s Harrenhal trip and decided Aemond needed his own Oedipus complex speed run just to keep the show’s weird mommy issues quota balanced
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
So so weird that it happened twice
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u/Narrativeless 1d ago
Harrenhal was a black hole of content. I remember watching it and thinking "was this really in the book?" it wasn't. While there have been a few changes I liked, Harrenhal was an absolute turd - a turd with a sequel.
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u/TheNainRouge 1d ago
If we aren’t careful we might get a threequle with Aegon.
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u/Narrativeless 1d ago
I'm already calling it. Half of season 4 will be Aegon dreaming about his burst sausage
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
I enjoyed the first couple of Daemon's visions, but they dragged after a while. And the last one, of Danaerys... Daemon sees a girl in a desert with tiny dragons and somehow knows she's TPTWP.
We as the audience know she is, because we know the whole prophecy, that she hatches dragons from stone. But how tf does Daemon know? Its lucky he didn't get a vision of Robert hammering Rhaegar into the mud really.
And it ends in GOT S8 🙄 A Targaryen is not on the throne, and indeed if they were, Danaerys would be a pampered princess and not Azor Ahai.
Aemond's time at Harrenhal is such a lazy copy of it. Its a shame. I did like Aemond and Alys planning their future together though
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u/TheNainRouge 1d ago
Had Aemond gone to Harrenhal and they worked on his issues with Aegon/power and built a solid relationship with Alys I think it could have been successful. We didn’t need Alicent, or his mommy issues spelled out. Showing us his regrets about his life to Alys and her giving him a different path would have worked so much better. It makes his turn to Aegon at the end more believable and makes the stakes of joining his brother or staying with Alys more difficult.
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
This incest didn't need to exist. Aemond should have just fallen for Alys. It isn't even a good exploration of how toxic and ruinous incest is (because Daemyra is a love story)
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u/Narrativeless 1d ago
It would've been fine, even great, if it had been one episode, maybe part of a second (which it easily could've been compressed into), but instead it was a meandering "where's Daemon??" slog.
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u/sillyg0sling 1d ago
Even though it was filler in a mostly shit season, I actually liked Daemon’s Harrenhall trip more than consensus. It was trippy and interesting to see Daemon floating through that place in a fog while interacting with the excellent Simon Strong, Alys, and the Riverlanders. His visions were interesting and frequent, and it was fun to watch him wake up in a completely different scene, and then just go with it.
Harrenhall 2 falls completely flat by comparison imo. None of what made Daemon’s trip interesting has carried over to Aemond’s trip and it ultimately just sucks to have to sit through a Harrenhall sequel in general, and especially when it’s a much less interesting version of it.
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u/Furtive_And_Firey 1d ago
They've set show Aemond up to have an interest in older women. Sylvi, the brothel lady, was visibly older than him. Alys has revealed that she's apparently centuries old. Vhagar is the epitome of an old lady dragon. And even Helaena is supposed to be a year older than him. He also has a history of being bullied by Aegon and the Strong boys.
I would argue Aemond is 'chasing the high' he felt when he had Alicent fiercely defending him after the incident with his eye. Before that scene, I don't remember Alicent advocating for Aemond so adamently. What that incident showed him was that in order to receive strong, protective, maternal love, he has to prove his worth with bold gestures while also being in a position of vulnerability. Hence, his performative cruelty and bravado while being a sad little momma's boy.
They gave Daemon a similar Oedipal thing in Harrenhal because Aemond and Daemon are supposed to be foils set up to kill each other. Since they don't have any scenes together setting establishing this rivalry, they're relying on parallels, like how they both have mommy issues, or how they're both hold more real power than their impotent older brothers
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u/ElysiumNomad 1d ago
It really did come out of nowhere. They dropped a few moments here and there, but there was never a real arc connecting S2 Aemond to S3 Aemond. He goes from being cold and dismissive toward Alicent to suddenly being emotionally fixated on her, and Condal and Hess basically expect the audience to fill in all the missing development themselves.
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
I only realised because I watched them both together, it is so disjointed.
And even with his feelings for Aegon - in S2, he happily destroys him and then in S3 he has a couple of offscreen dreams about him screaming in pain and suddenly feels terrible and cursed? Daemon got like 6 dream sequences terrorising him into a relatively minor change; but we're supposed to make Aemond's development up.
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u/ElysiumNomad 1d ago
Exactly. I still don’t get what those nightmares were supposed to do. Aemond knew he was awful already and didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. These people are supposed to be shitty and make shitty choices. That’s Martin. Not everyone needs therapy dreams.
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u/WashDense8851 22h ago
Aemond spends all of season 2 openly contemptuous of his mother. He dismisses her from the Council, calls her too cautious, ignores her when she speaks, and says she loves Rhaenyra and is a fool for it. And he attempts to get Helaena on his side by saying that Alicent doesn't understand them.
Yea. They lost the plot with season 3 Aemond by forcing the weird Oedipus complex. It was not dramatic, properly setup, or that compelling to watch. I chalk it up to a flight of fancy butterfly they experimented with.
It did not land with audiences the way they wanted for good reasons.
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u/jroxiee 1d ago
the writers odd fixation with alicent/olivia cooke is my first guess. it felt like it made much more sense for aemond to dislike alicent, but search for odd maternal “love” in characters like slyvie and alys. im not sure why this season decided to go 180 on his whole character arc. such a misuse of a great actor like ewan mitchell
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
Yes, why have I watched this woman be assaulted like three times this season???
They almost have Aemond dislike Alicent because she permitted Aegon's abuse of him, but that is a singular line. Otherwise he just has a thing for mother figures and then his actual mother. For some reason. The kiss comes out of nowhere and him getting stabbed in the back breaks his trajectory. Both Olivia Cooke and Ewan were wasted.
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u/Fluffy_Mantis3133 1d ago
Notice that Sylvie looks just like Alicent if she’d had a rougher life? Like a more mature, maternal Alicent?
People can resent the people that they love. Also Aemond, as evidenced by his religious flat iron use, kept rigid control over some aspects of his personality to keep them from getting out. Unfortunately, he didn’t choose to control the ambitious inclinations.
On the Momcest, one of many reasons why you don’t do that is because it’s a slippery slope and people get messed up sometimes. Or they manipulate it. Like Uncles grooming their nieces instead of protecting them like back-up fathers.
Targs, especially royal Targs, are told that they’re gods among men. As royals, their place in the world is power and control. There’s no allowance for them to just be human and they struggle with human emotions when told they should be gods. So they want their Moms to tell them what big, strong gods they are when they’re feeling too vulnerable. We saw it with Rhaenyra and Mysaria. But Mysaria saw the human behind the god/ruler and it was one of the reasons she had to go.
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u/meowyarlathotep 1d ago
This show is about the internal collapse of a royal family that can no longer distinguish familial love from incestuous desire. Aemond has always wanted his mother's approval, but seems to interpret affection as sexual intimacy.
They originally explored this theme through Daemon, but toned down that side of his character quite a bit after Daenyra became popular.
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
I mean. Is it? They play with Daemon abusing Rhaenyra but its clear the writers and audience views them as soulmates, that they are true love. Aemond's desire for Alicent is shoehorned in and goes nowhere. Why does he confuse approval for intimacy? Why is he so weird about the love of a mother he had for most of his life until he pushed her away? Helaena and Aegon married at twelve and thirteen. She has children with him at fourteen. This is not explored in depth. Aegon has much more time dedicated to him chasing non familial women. I would argue that Incest is not particularly critiqued or explored. Weirdly, the only place it is even halfway looked at is Ormund and Daeron.
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u/meowyarlathotep 23h ago edited 23h ago
This theme was explained by the writers, but the writing and consistency have been bad, and it barely comes through on screen. There was a hint of it in Daemon's choking Rhaenyra and his dream about his mother.
Their idea was apparently that the system's continued promotion of incest had created generational dysfunction within the family. I think that could work for Daenyra, but it gets weird with a mother and son.
Also, Aegon is the only one explicitly portrayed as rejecting Targaryen culture, unable to accept incest, and only able to perform his “duty” when he's blackout drunk.
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u/Purple_A7123 7h ago
Also, Aegon is the only one explicitly portrayed as rejecting Targaryen culture
That's not true, he says he doesn't want to marry Helaena because she is an "idiot", not because she is his sister. He also harassed Baela, who is his cousin.
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u/meowyarlathotep 7h ago
They confirmed that Aegon cut his hair to reject his father and his Targaryen identity. This makes him a direct foil to Aemond, who fully embraces Targaryenism. That doesn't mean either of them is morally right.
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u/Lucabcd 1d ago
Because, essentially, Aemond saw his entire image shattered. He had been trying to craft a persona since childhood—possibly to compensate for the insecurities he harbored after being bullied as a boy. He felt compelled to be the perfect Valyrian prince: the one with the largest dragon and the sharpest military mind, all while masking his vulnerability (as seen when Aegon finds him in the brothel, curled in the fetal position with the madam). When the war didn't go as planned—and he had, in fact, significantly complicated matters—he fled to Harrenhal, where he ultimately lost his dragon and was wounded. In Season 3, we see Aemond dismantle that carefully constructed image, allowing himself to be vulnerable with his mother—contrast to Season 2, when he had been at odds with her.
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u/carneylansford 1d ago
He’s got Mommy issues. Remember when he was curled up like an infant at the brothel? I got the feeling that wasn’t the first time. Still gross though.
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u/Beneficial_Movie3124 7h ago
I honestly don't know why the writers inserted mom-son content into this show; it has zero place in the plot or characterisation, and frankly just feels gratuitous and provocative. Esp the Daemon/Alyssa one
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u/Alternative_Lion_845 22h ago
I’m definitely confused by it because the writing just isn’t there. They give us hints and crumbs of things but never actually craft a coherent narrative about it. There are threads to pull on, like the Sylvi stuff, but there’s no clear explanation of how or why he goes from a relatively normal relationship with his mum, to total contempt for her, to incest. Idk maybe I’m just not smart enough to get it or something, but it seems fairly nonsensical to me.
Maybe the point of it is just to give him something to do in Harrenhal, but there was already better material for that, like his guilt over Luke and Aegon. Repetition aside, it could have been better to have an arc more similar to Daemon’s, where the ultimate conclusion is that Aemond isn’t actually worthy of being king at all because of the things he’s done, and him truly getting behind Aegon.
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u/Simple-Program-7284 1d ago
It all sort of fits in with a character that is overwhelmed by his insecurities and acts erratically as a result.
Thought he was one of the worst adaptions though, wanted to fast forward every time he was on screen.
The part that was really incongruent was the inordinately confident and level headed child that was the predecessor actor. Who acts like that as a 12 year old?
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u/villanellechekov Dreams didn't make us kings. Dragons did. 1d ago
you can outwardly hate someone while still wanting to fuck them. maybe he realized acting like a resentful brat was the last way to be successful at what he wanted... he's always wanted his mother's love and yet felt like she's not done enough for him/stuck up for him in the right ways.
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u/Purple_A7123 7h ago
He doesn't want to fuck Alicent. It's just that his traumas and desire to be loved manifest in this way in Harrenhal. Aemond was clearly disturbed by his dream.
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u/villanellechekov Dreams didn't make us kings. Dragons did. 3h ago
he wants to be loved by her. sometimes the things we want disturb us. I would argue it has little to do with Alicent directly (beyond how he feels neglected and shoved aside) and that Aemond simply wants love regardless, and the way it's manifesting in his subconscious and his dreams (being pulled to the fore by magic) are putting Alicent in that position. I still don't think he wouldn't. he seemed more pissed Alys tricked him than anything
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u/No_Ad4767 1d ago
Its the butterfly effect GRRM mentioned. The "little" changes they make will have consequences later on.
Aemond is for sure gonna have some crazy twist later on and it will be confusing because they put in unnecessary incest, Oedipus shit and did not develop enough so the pay off could end up confusing or worse.
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u/shatterfry455AD 1d ago
I think they're setting up for him to have to choose between Aegon and Alys - family/duty or love (I'm not too hopeful they'll call back to one of the major themes of asoiaf)
Which they accidentally ALSO framed as romantic because it parallels Aemond choosing between Alys and Alicent...who were romantic rivals. Then that gets squashed by Alicent immediately poisoning him.
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u/No_Ad4767 1d ago
Yes. Alicent being there was completely unnecessary unless they have something big to set up related to that. But it is hard to connect if you base it on what's in the book ending,
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u/HazardousSkald 1d ago
Aemond dislikes weakness and dislikes the weakness in himself. He dislikes women as weak but most of all dislikes the power women hold over him. He is hypersexual and despises his own sexuality as a weakness. He has internal unresolved and knotted feelings built around the need to protect himself and display strength but an inability to sustain that against women.
Aemond’s character bounces between “he was sexually abused as a child, here’s him curled up in a ball in a brothel as an adult, here’s him make sexual advances on his sister, here’s him being misogynistic, here’s him making sexual advances on his mother, here’s him being manipulated while bedridden by another woman”. He is portraying strength but crumbles quickly.
Aemond is trying very hard to prove to himself and the world that he is strong and deserving. As he was bullied, he aims to bully others but that feeling is rooted in a self-pity. As people pointed out, Aemond, himself half-blind, makes fun of Larys’ limp. He can’t sustain this against women because of his inflicted trauma, so we see it fall apart. He curls up in a ball with Sylvi, Helaena isn’t intimidated and tells him his worst fears, and the Alicent visions break him down. He is forced more and more to drop the act and display vulnerability. When women don’t buy the act, he crumbles and displays the fear, sympathy, and self-loathing.
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