#I don't consider being neurodivergent/autistic mental illness. its offensive to do so in my opinion to be frank.

[dirtytransmasc]

Do you think that alicent rhaenyra and haelena suffer from mental health?

Alicent is most certainly mentally ill from the moment she is married off to viserys, while I think Helaena is neurodivergent, not necessarily mentally ill until after Blood and Cheese. Rhaenyra is more complicated, I think there were times she was faced with mental illness, I think there also times she was not and that these times were greater. (this is all within the show, I'm not sure about the books)

Alicent was being raped and forced to bear children from a very young age, that is so much pain and suffering, so much trauma to go through. from a young age she is shown to have a lot of signs of ptsd, anxiety, ppd (postpartum depression) especially after Helaena is born, it seems, and depression. there are few moments she seems truly happy and at ease, constantly worn by stress. I don't think she ever recovered from those early years, and she remains mentally ill until the end, where it festers in the aftermath of the end of the war, and she dies of insanity.

Helaena definitely came off as autistic to me, even in her little screen time. I won't discredit the possible trauma of her father's neglect or being married off to Aegon (though there is no proof he is abusive or forceful upon her, she was married off to someone some could say she did not love and did not love her), she seems mostly unaffected by this. I think her mental illness will come into play after B&C and the loss of her children.

Rhaenyra is the most complicated to me. we don't really see the aftermath of her births, so I can't say if she experienced any ppd/ppp, she might have, she might not have. she lived a relatively easy life outside of her mother's death, which did seem to cause some depression while she was young, but she seemed to move on from that in time. she does seem to have some depression and anxiety during her time at the keep, the stress weighing on her, but it never seemed to be as constant or heavy as Alicents (not to downplay, just to give a comparison). after the loss of her daughter is would be beyond cruel to deny that she would sink into a depression. she miscarried horribly essentially alone to a deformed stillborn little girl. miscarrying on it own is horrific and traumatizing, but the circumstances make it even more horrific. so while there are instances she shows signs of mental health issues, I don't believe she was wholly afflicted until after she lost Visenya.

this just my opinion on the matter, and I will give Rhaenyra credit by saying she was definitely very good at keeping up her wits and appearances, so finding moments of "weakness" or mental illness are definitely harder to spot, especially when the show tends to shy away from showing her low points and panders to her moments of strength.

#hotd #house of the dragon #I'm scared to see how Those™ TB/Rhaenyra fans will react to me saying this #they tend to be offended when anyone dare say Alicent had it harder than Rhaenyra #but we'll see #its not even to say Rhaenyra never suffered from mental health issues #but thats how some will see it #I don't consider being neurodivergent/autistic mental illness. its offensive to do so in my opinion to be frank. #but I do think Helaena was autistic and than suffered mental health issues later in life and before her death #rhaenyra targaryen #alicent hightower #helaena targaryen #pro team green #not gonna tag anti team black #but y'all better behave #I don't want to lose my head over this post