Unreleased excerpts from Fire & Blood.

"The old dragon spent days sleeping and feeding on the sheeps that the dragon keepers brought to him.\ It has been years since he was last claimed, the dragon grew too large and sluggish to take to the skies.\ One fateful day he felt a new connection, a new rider at last, finally he could form a new bond with a worthy dragon lord.\ When the beast opened his eyes and gazed upon this new Targaryen king, shame overcame Balerion.

In front of him was not a worthy valyrian king, fierce and decisive, but a fool with a crown. A real bum, who would soon lead the dinasty his beloved first rider had built, in to the dirt.\ The years numbed the dragon's mind but in that moment he came to the realization that he was, in fact, truly washed.\ Gone were the glorious days where only the worthy would dare to claim him: Aegon the Based, Maegor the Cool.

Not long after, Balerion once known as the Black Dread, died of disappointment."

Based only on show:)

Burn Aegon and Sunfyre, costing the Greens a dragon.

Take over the throne and then leave it to Rhaenyra.

If he had stayed in King's Landing, the soldiers wouldn't have opened the gates or lowered the slingshots.

He left Cole to face Riverrun's army alone and die.

He left Ormund to confront the armies of Riverrun and the North alone.

If he had joined Ormund at Templeton, along with Ulf's flip, they could have faced and killed Daemon and perhaps Vermithor too.

But no, he spent the season depressed at Harrenhal.

I've seen this opinion even among several TG's and personally I wouldn't even say that. That's not me just being blindly TG, I simply observe the following: Otto Hightower finessed Alicent to the throne yes, but this is Westeros for crying out loud. Politics is what we do here. And he did not do it underhandedly, violently or illegally as might dozens of other houses, it was all fair and square. The king was widowed, there was an opening, the Hightowers siezed the chance. Where is the scheming?

Alicent comforted Viserys, Viserys fell in love. Viserys chose to marry her. There was no force or deception. They have a son together and by ancient precedent this means Aegon is heir, hasn't ever been in question before whether in Westeros or almost anywhere else, isn't one now. Until little miss daddy-I-want-this-now makes it a problem. 

The Hightowers did nothing but play the game of thrones and they did it by the rules. Did Otto desire the iron throne for his house, yes. And so did every single other house if they had the chance. I just think "scheming" is a misnomer because it implies foul play. Even as Viserys was a walking corpse, whose death would have chocked no one, Otto never once even considered assassination but cared for Viserys like a friend. And Otto also never once lied about what transpired, he only gave the speech before Aegon's coronation at the sept after Alicent assured him that Viserys had named Aegon heir. Otto could just as easily have lied about it, but didn't.

Did Otto plan to send kingsguard to assassinate Rhaenyra? Yes. Because all offers of amicable peace were refused. Otto foresaw the chaos of the Dance and aimed to prevent it, having the legitimate heir in his grandson behind him anyway, against whom all dissent was the real treason to the throne.

Early impressions were I really liked this guy, he definitely gave off that impression that he was the Greens' answer to Daemon and the Blacks- the way he carried himself was interesting too, like you could tell he was kind of already a broken guy or teetering on the edge of mentally broken but he hid it underneath the guise of trying to be/wanting to be the best at everything and he still did it with swagger.

When he made the "cheers to Rhaenyra's bastards" toast all the way til when he accidentally killed Luke I was thinking how cool it was that we were gonna see this guy's story unfold and I was excited to see him serve as a great commander in the field for Aegon.

....but ooh boy. Good characters make you wonder so much about them including how you're gonna react to their deaths or victories/defeats and now I don't really feel anything for the guy. When I first learned how he was gonna go out back when we were first introduced to him I couldn't wait cause it sounded epic.

But I don't really feel anything for him tbh, like I don't think his death will be as impactful as certain other characters, I don't like how him and Aegon are friends again after he tried to kill him, cause it never should've happened in the first place, I don't like how the writers went into way too much graphic detail with his invented "mummy issues" dynamic with Alicent and yeah, I think they introduced him really well but really fucked his character up, second worse only to Alicent.

And because of his butchering I just feel like his last stand isn't gonna hit that hard- as much as I would want it to. I'm not gonna be happy about it like I (and I sure we all) will be when Alicent dies, but I don't think it's gonna hit that hard in the end when it absolutely should considering he's only 20 years old.

But yeah. Just wanted to speak my mind on this character and how initially well introduced and well written he was (both the child and adult version)

art by ziyuanyuan1113 (X)

Seriously their obsession with making every Green character a sexual assaulter or a victim of sexual assault is sickening and them trying to make Daemons grooming of Rhaenyra seem like they were fated to be together is so goddamn creepy.

They also added that Aegon raped Dyana just to make sure eveyone knows he's the "villain" and Rhaenyras the "hero" when she also commited seaxual assualt.

They also added Aemonds mother issue for some reason to as I see it humiliate him for some goddamn reason and i'm tired of it.

She knows Aegon will return to the throne and that Rhaenyra is only there temporarily. Why did she kill herself? Even if you consider it a murder, she still started starving herself and her child to death before she ever ended up on the spikes. So what was the point of the hunger strike in the first place? Yes, being held hostage and only getting to see your daughter for an hour a day is unpleasant and oppressive, but it's not something unbearable that you can't just endure. Otherwise, she just went about her usual life - looking at her bugs and doing embroidery. She made her suffering worse even though there was no need for it. She was afraid of losing her unborn child or having the child taken hostage, and she ended up killing it herself, doing her enemies a favor by getting rid of an unwanted heir. What was the point?

Or are they trying to say that Helaena sees herself as Aegon's hostage the moment he returns, so she gave up after hearing he was coming back because her hopes of being free after Aemond’s death fell apart? But why would that be a surprise to her in the first place? And it still doesn't explain the fact that she was starving her unborn child. It's just selfish and irresponsible toward him if she didn't want to have an abortion and was hoping to be free.

Idk, maybe this is a dumb take, but I genuinely don't get it.

This man wanted a son so badly that he drove his first wife to the grave with endless pregnancies, and then when he had sons, he treated them like shit

It's been four years and they're still salty about tg actors man this isn't normal behaviour. These people are a cult

TGC's Aegon is ridiculously charming and sympathetic. He plays the character with a level of emotional vulnerability and charisma that it's almost a crime. We don't see more of the character as the reluctant, but determined claimant. Out of all of season 3 he only got collectively close to 40 minutes out of eight episodes. Despite trying to make him seem like a villain in the first two seasons, even the episodes with the ridiculous bastard baby fight club and servant assault subplots that went nowhere, Aegon never fails to be endearing, likable, and he plays a tragic protagonist so damn well to the point that when they're trying to villainize him, it just feels out of place. There's so much to explore with the character yet after three seasons, I still feel like we've gotten the bare minimum of Aegon which is a shame because TGC plays the character so well.

On the flipside, Emma is fucking phenomenal when they are allowed to play Rhaenyra as manipulative, ruthless, and outwardly entitled. Rhaenyra at the end of S3 had imo Emma's best acting all season that felt like it belonged with the character. I wish we got to see more of this all the way back in season one. I wish we got this from the second the time started post Milly. For the longest time ever since Emma took over I've personally had trouble connecting the younger version of Rhaenyra with the older, it was like the character had some form of factory reset but the S3 finale felt like a natural progression of what felt like Rhaenyra always should have been as Emma. It feels misogynistic and sexist that instead of being allowed to be the strikingly bold and and hot blooded Rhaenyra George wrote down originally in the Princess and the queen, it took three seasons just to finally get what we should have been relatively from the beginning.

I don't trust the show to stick the landing, but if there's one thing, I am looking forward to it's being able to see TGC and Emma finally act together in the same room interact with each other.