When Prince Daemon Sent Forth His Call To Arms, They Rose Up All Along The Rivers, Knights And Men-at-arms

When Prince Daemon sent forth his call to arms, they rose up all along the rivers, knights and men-at-arms and humble peasants who yet remembered the Realm’s Delight, so beloved of her father, and the way she smiled and charmed them as she made her progress through the riverlands in her youth. Hundreds and then thousands buckled on their swordbelts and donned their mail, or grabbed a pitchfork or a hoe and a crude wooden shield, and began to make their way to Harrenhal to fight for Viserys’s little girl.

Queen Helaena, a sweet and gentle soul, is much beloved by the people of Kingslanding. Rhaenyra was not-

after grrm blog post came out (before it was deleted lol) the above quote was one of several that i saw tb bring up to "disprove" him. and it's like nuance is dead with y'all because nowhere in his post or the text did grrm say rhaenyra was ALWAYS hated or unpopular among the smallfolk, particularly in kingslanding. obviously that's untrue. however she certainly was by the end of her hold on the city and for good reason. tb likes to say that it was "only" because of taxes to make rhaenyra a victim of them being "unreasonable" (even though that alone would have been more than justifiable, the taxes were obviously high enough that it was hurting the smallfolk and rhaenyra did not help matters by the sounds of it, not doing anything to really alleviate that pressure or acknowledge it) but in reality it was also about her being a murderer of children in their eyes. which is like a pretty solid reason to turn against someone lol. and if we go outside kingslanding you know who else among the lowborn has good reason to spit on rhaenyras name? the smallfolk of westernlands. look up or refresh yourselves with dalton greyjoy because it's not pretty.

but anyway what i found interesting about that quote about rhaenyra is that if im gonna be be brutal, in this particular instance the love for rhaenyra is because of her father and thats not really a compliment to her imo. and while im definitely not saying there was never any lords or smallfolk who never loved rhaenyra for her own sake (because she was charming!)

however grrm has made it clear that the major difference between helaena & rhaenyra is that helaena is mostly loved because of who she is as a person (she's sweet, gentle, kind. she just - had good vibes and by the sounds of it was pure sunshine) whereas it's undeniable that a lot of the love rhaenyra has comes from the loyalty/love people had for her father viserys.