alley_skywalker

“I’m happy/mad that HOTD aged Alicent down.”

Guys. Seriously, the amount by which they aged her down is pretty negligible. It’s not stated explicitly, IIRC, how old she is in the show, but assuming she’s the same age as Rhaenyra (15ish in E1), she was only aged down by 3 years. Like, ok, sure in real world terms there’s some difference between an 18 yr old and 15 yr old marrying a man pushing 30, but this doesn’t seem to be the main/only issue for everyone, and in every other way the 3 years difference is functionally negligible. (And in any case, the 18/29 age gap is still significant, and Alicent is still a very young and, likely, inexperienced woman at that age who wouldn’t have had much more agency in this society than at 15-16.) Given than adulthood in Westeros occurs at 16…again, the aging-down is kind of *shrug*

You know who’s age got changed in an ACTUALLY significant way though? Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra who was about 9 when her father remarried and about 10 when Aegon was born. (Funny enough, she was close to the same age as Catelyn was at Edmure’s birth. Cat had also been raised as Hoster’s heir until then - he just didn’t make any formal announcements about it.)

So if you want to be happy/mad about someone’s age change, it should be hers, not Alicent’s. Because 9 and 15 is a big difference in a very functional way. And it affects a LOT of things. Even re: Alicent - a 15 year old and an 18 year old can be friends. It’s different if the age gap is closer to 10 years. But also things like…of course it sounds a lot more ridiculous to propose marriage between Rhaenyra and Aegon when their age gap is closer to 15-16 years than 10, instead of Viserys making a political blunder because he’s playing favorites with his children. Of course it make sense for an ailing Viserys to cling to his choice of heir, who is already an adult (vs a toddler), for practical reasons, and not just because he loves only one of his children way more than the others. As an older-teenager/in-universe adult, Rhaenyra can do badass #Girlboss moves like the confrontation with Daemon (which would not have really been a possibility in book canon).

Like regardless of whether you like or dislike the changes the show is making, I don’t really get the fixation on “aging Alicent down” when that’s not really the impactful age-change here.