a douleur exquise
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in memory of all the heroes whose precious lives were taken from them 18.19 🕊️🖤
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the fandom always expects Rhaenyra to be the kindest, best, most patient, and most forgiving person, even though she was the first one in this war to start suffering so much.
Repost from Just Spain without S
If I lose two of my sons and the daughter I've always wanted in a war for something that was rightfully mine from the beginning, I can't even pretend to care about anyone else.
Repost from N/a
⋆｡𖦹°‧ “Marissa Velaryon did not want the Greens defeated. She wanted them to understand what defeat felt like.”
Marissa Velaryon was born during the long peace before the Dance and grew up surrounded by ships, dragons, and the certainty that House Targaryen and House Velaryon were bound together. She adored Rhaenyra since she was just a babe. But unlike many of Rhaenyra's supporters, Marissa did not believe the war could be won by honor. She believed it could only be won by making the enemy afraid to continue. She became one of the Blacks' most enthusiastic organizers of intelligence and reprisals. She cultivated informants among servants, merchants, sailors and septons, then used what they told her with ruthless efficiency. Her first great crime came shortly after the Greens seized King's Landing. Marissa arranged for several Green sympathizers among the city's merchants to have their ships seized. Their families slain and assaulted, while Marissa circulated accusations that the merchants had been supplying the enemy. Some were innocent. She knew it. She did it anyway. Her reasoning was brutally simple:“If they fear losing everything, they will stop feeding the war.” Instead, the opposite happened. The Green cause became more determined. Marissa understood something the dragonriders sometimes forgot: a war was fought by ordinary people. She encouraged riots against Green households. She arranged for messengers to disappear. She forged letters suggesting that Green nobles were betraying one another. And when Green agents retaliated, Marissa made certain the stories reached Rhaenyra's supporters. Every atrocity became another reason for revenge. Every revenge became another atrocity. She turned the Dance into a machine that fed itself. Her most infamous deed involved hiring a wet nurse who threatened little Maelor while his mad mother was watching. The Greens never forgave her. Rhaenyra valued Marissa's usefulness but increasingly feared her. Marissa never questioned Rhaenyra's right to the throne. Never. But she began treating the queen's enemies as though mercy toward them were itself an act of treason. Rhaenyra ordered her to stop certain reprisals. Marissa obeyed publicly. Privately, she found other people willing to continue them. That distinction eventually became infamous. Aemond Targaryen came to hate Marissa personally. She had circulated deliberately insulting accounts of him after the loss of his eye, portraying him as a mad cripple who needed Vhagar to make men fear him. When Aemond learned she was responsible, he reportedly swore that if he ever captured her, he would deliver her personally to the king. Marissa laughed when told. “Then I shall have done something worthwhile.” Their hatred became almost legendary. Marissa's morality can be summarized very simply. The Greens chose war. Therefore everything necessary to destroy them is justified. She genuinely loves Rhaenyra. She genuinely mourns the dead. She genuinely believes she is protecting her family. And yet she deliberately creates suffering that has nothing to do with winning the war. She has crossed the line from defender into fanatic. Her greatest flaw is not cruelty. It is that she eventually begins to need an enemy. Without the Greens, she has no justification for what she has become. Rhaenyra Targaryen considered her useful, then dangerous. Daemon Targaryen respected her ruthlessness, but warned that she was becoming addicted to vengeance. Corlys Velaryon considered his daughter's methods disgraceful. Aemond Targaryen considered her a personal enemy and made hunting her a priority. Aegon II reportedly wanted her captured alive and tortured just like how she tortured his sister-wife and son. Later generations remembered Marissa differently. Black loyalists called her a woman who refused to bend while dragons burned the realm. Green histories called her a butcher in silk. And Maesters gave her perhaps the fairest judgment: “Marissa Velaryon did not begin the Dance. But she learned how to keep it burning.”
