Raachel2008

I meant that Viserys being decript - and weak in more ways than one - is not an obstacle to ruling because he has an easy reign, without real major troubles. No famine, no war, etc. Westeros can afford a weak king and Viserys can afford being weak because he doesn't have a winter coming or is going bankrupt or even has some distant relative with a dragon marching with 8,000 thousands soldiers from across the sea.

But on the other hand, Visery is not declaring war to anyone or having to deal with a huge famine or a secession of any form. It is a pretty easy reign.

You are looking at it backwards, the implication is not that she was cast because of her skin color and not her talent. Her talent is implicit; the idea that the redress of balance was to be made with talented actors is pretty obvious. What she is saying is what any black actor out has been saying for ages, from kids at Mickey Mouse Club to Viola Davis: I have talent, I just need you casting/directing/producing people to understand that almost all roles can be played too by black/POC. Her talent is what gave her the role. If she had none then another black and more talented actress would be playing Disa. To presume that any show is casting POC just because they are POC and not because they have talent is, with all due respect, extremely narrow minded. Elves are not real. Dwarves are not real. Dragons are not real. Sirens are not real. They can be white, black, purple, green and it doesn't matter at all.

I don't even think Rhaenyra cannot forgive his choice of wife, just how it was done. Rhaenyra, IMO, never had any lesbian feelings towards Alicent, she just wanted to live her life as she wished. She didn't want the duties, but she wanted the freedom. There is a reason Daemon is so appealing to her: he does as he pleases. Sure, a lot of that comes from being a man, but she craves that kinda of freedom. Yet, she is dumb; as Rhaenys pointed to her, she was serving coffee while the men talked about the real issues, she acted like a brat in front of the entire court when she needed to project the image of someone fit to be the first real queen; she shouldn't have lost her virginity because she knows - she knows - it is a problem to any woman in these lands, never mind the princess an heiress of the throne. Alicent is incridibly jealous of Rhaenyra. And when Rhaenyra did everything Alicent could not, she felt betrayed, bedding Criston Cole AND lying being the last straw. Viserys should have handled the marriage better. But he couldn't even tell Aemma that she was going to die, so...

I think it is a mix of both. The writing does her no favors, but if 3,000 years old Galadriel is going to act like this, her impulsivity has to be shown on screen as the fruit of fear, despair etc. That's not on my screen.

This. I don't mind folks joing the 'let's save Middle Earth' bandwagon, but we were not shown why they would do that. That speech about 'the elves are going to take your/our jobs' was as stupid as it gets; we have yet to see any elf doing any real ordinary work (I know they do) and that is not what shouldn't scare humans, but the fact that elves can live very very very long lives and outlast any of them. It would haver worked better for me if in that scene the words were something like 'the elves may come and take our island, our lands, our shores, our buildings, blah blah blah' and then others would have pointed 'she is a castaway, she doesn't want to be here, elves don't want to be here or they would have come ages ago'. And while at that, they could - and should - have shown how people really really really belive in profecies/stuff like leaves falling from an ancient tree. I really like the show and I'm okay with some cannon divergence. However, I cannot with the lazyness.

Agreed. I bet they will have Alicent saving him, but that is insane. He should be dead.

All that and I would add that there is a sort of love/hate thing going on there, too. I don't think for a moment that Alicent has romantic feelings for Rhaenyra, but she loved her friend - who, apparently, was her only friend. Said friend had way more freedom than Alicent, what with Viserys bending almost all rules for her, she could have a saying on who she was going to marry, which is something Alicent couldn't. There is a lot of envy going there too. Daemon is like that brilliant student, best of the class, who is never going to make it really big because he lacks the discipline and the control to do so. He could have married Rhaenyra if he had three our four of Otto's brain cells. Criston Cole is a dick; he fucked up Rhaenyra life for real, and committed murder for no reason other that he is a dick. He would never have lived ever after killing a guest honor in the royal wedding. Any other other king would have killed him with his own sword, but it is Viserys.

Likes what they see and are offered a ton of money. I would love to know how much they paid to have the rights to what we are watching on screen and if there is some sort of veto on the final script etc.

Well, each own its own. They look okay for me. They look like elves. I don't like Robert Aramayo but he sure doesn't look like a perv picking someone at a con.

I may have expressed myself poorly here, I meant that I saw people complained that they dared show older - and in old - elves on screen. Apparently there are folks on social media who only want to see the like of Legolas on screen.

I thought it was a clear sign that she would never get to sit on that throne.

My take on this is not that Rhaenyra is against an arranged marriage per ser or that she doesn't get she will have to marry, but rather that her entire life she felt like the second best -- or no good at all - and since Aegon was born she was relagated to side but then times worse. Viserys is a weak king and also a dumb one, he decided Rhaenyra was going to be his heir but did nothing to enforce her claim or preprare her to really sit on the throne. He also doesn't get that he needs to talk to her. All she wants, like any teen feeling discarded, is to feel cared, loved and cherished. Had Rhaenyra killed that magnificent animal she would have done more to her claim to the throne than Viserys ever could. I'm so ready to see Alicent just getting fed up with all that and say fucky you all, I'm the queen and I'm son will be king. Otto suggesting Rhaenyra marries Aegon was actually an extremely smart move, because in a patriarchal society like this one he is counting that one way or another the boy ends sitting on the throne. By getting these two bethored he appeases Viserys, postpones the problem and secures his grandson lineage. Note that Viserys wasn't against the half-siblings marriage, his problem was the age gap. I assume they spent so much money on the dragons GCI that they couldn't pay someone to took care of continuity and keep track of Laeonor age in the first episode and this one. That was ridiculous. You know what else was ridiculous? That with two dragons they couldn't just destroy these caves. This is why Idetest most of the dragons related war/battle stuff: in order to drag plots people it doesn't make sense. Daenerys could have taken King's Landing waaaay before she did - and without commiting mass murderer -; the final battle against the NIght King was extremely poorly executed and the dragons used the wrong way so our heros could suffer more, etc, etc. Just give me the wolves any day. Daemon works better when he is not speaking, lol. Maybe it's Matt Smith's body type, maybe it is how they shoot it, but I totally bought Daemon's athleticism during the beach scene. The Crab Feed could have been any pirate there. His mask, feeding his enemies to the crabs, war against the 'crown', whatever, meant nothing without the mininum of backstory. I don't buy for a second that all those pirates would be anywhere close to someone with greyscale. They went full retcon on this one.

Ok, so what exactly is the problem with series Elrond? The short hair? Celebrimbor - his age? And Gil-galad?

Rhaenys wasn't saying to Rhaenyra 'that's her place', she was telling her that she lives in a men's world and men will never allow a woman to sit on the throne; they will put her in her place, in fact they already did and she is basically serving coffee for them now. These are two very different things. I'm going to agree with you though, on the 'typical royal family power struggle story'. I know it has been only two episodes, but I'm already bored by the Targaryens. One of the reasons GoT succeed, IMO, was that you had very different groups of characters. It is a court, but you don't see the courtisans. You don't see the other nobles. This show is, so far, extremely self-contained on the Targaryens. As for Allicent x Otto x Viserys, the most absurd thing there is that six months after Aemma's death nobody's talking about the King's Hand's daughter visiting the King's chambers at night. Am I really supposed to believe that the court isn't talking about it? As if. On a side note, Rhaenyra not knowing - or knowing and not understanding what it means - is proof that she is not even remotely close to be "apt" to sit on the throne.

To be fair movie Elrond is exactly like that.

The Books, The Movies, The Show: Compare And Contrast: It has been aaaages since I've read the books, I rewatch the trilogy once a year and I enjoyed the two episodes. I'm extremely glad they decided to have POC in several roles. I don't care if Tolkien was writing about Medieval England and if he was crazy about Celtic and Norse mythology, all kids watching The Rings of Power have the right to watch the screen and see themselves on the screen. Period. That's it. It rubbed me the wrong way that the only black elf we saw so far on screen was a low rank patrol elf - and we are clearly supposed to see the elves as superior. I also think they went to hard with the old black Harfoot, who, IMVOHO, was this close to look like an Uncle Tom, though not meant to be one, not sure if I'm being clear here. I think they captured the general feeling of the trilogy, I totally felt like watching something straight from there. As for the books, like I said, it has been ages, but the general idea is there, the "texture" feels right. It is not a copy and past and I'm ok wit that, even more so because they don't have the Simarillion rights. They need a better grasp on the dialogues, tough. They are not aaaawful, Durin's little speech to Elrond was wonderful, but they need to improve. Last but not least, I saw a ton of people complaining about Celimbribor being played by an older actor, because the elves don't age after they 'mature', yadda yadda yadda. Fuck that. They needed someone older to explain why five seasons from now Galadriel will look older.

Harfoots.

I can't see rats, I'm 110% phobic and I was hyperventilating watching Arondir in the tunnel. That was my nightmare. I loved the episode. Khazad-Dum whoaaaaa. Durin and Disa are my faves, power couple for the win. I was never a fan of the hobbits - sorry -, though I enjoyed Frodo and all just fine. I'm also not keen on the Harfoot, but Nori and Poppy are fucking amazing. The scene with the fireflies and the Stranger was just magic and this is coming from someone who doesn't care about these 'magic' moments. LOVED it. The constellation the Stranger was making with the fireflies, was it the same Galadriel was seeing at the sea?

Khazad-Dum whoaaaaa. Durin and Disa are my faves, power couple for the win. I was never a fan of the hobbits - sorry -, though I enjoyed Frodo and all just fine. I'm also not keen on the Harfoot, but Nori and Poppy are fucking amazing. The scene with the fireflies and the Stranger was just magic and this is coming from someone who doesn't care about these 'magic' moments. LOVED it. The constellation the Stranger was making with the fireflies, was it the same Galadriel was seeing at the sea?

I loved it. It is GORGEOUS. I don't think I have ever seen such a beautiful show on TV/streaming ever. Loved Galadriel jumping on the sea and watching the gates to Valinor closing. Fucking wonderful.

One of the reasons the Targaryens are the Targaryens is the incest. I'm going to be surprised if they don't go there. We already had it in GoT (Cersei/Jaime) so, I don't think it will be a big deal for whoever is watching. I mean, it is a big deal, but in a scale of 0 to 10 this show has done much worse.

In my corner of the world a few jouralists were able to see the first six episodes (provided by HBO, all legal and such) and they said it is all I take that these folks didn't like all that for me made GoT: the scenes/plot that didn't realy advance the story but settled that universe.

For me it was b. How come everyone in that square was a criminal? At first it looked to me that it was just your regular market with a few vendors left but then suddenly everybody was a rapista or a thief. It didn't look - for me - like there was some serious detective work going around.

I could be mistaken, but GRRM was inspired by medieval Europe, and the concept of one marriage at time. Other than that, heirs coming only from the queen solve many many problems, namey internal wars that weaken the family/house/dinasty on power. A marriage to a king is a political alliance, the queen's family/house gains power from that and woudn't want to see a bastard 'usurp' the throne.