HOTD Daemon Character Appreciation
I just wanted to express how much I love Daemon in HOTD. He perfectly encapsulates the total meaninglessness a younger prince feels.
The sheer political issue that his own brashness runs up against Otto Hightower's conciliatory style of rule: a style of rule Viserys favors and leads to Daemon being marginalized.
A guy who suffers sheer indignity fighting the Crab Feeder, using his symbolic crowning to show his devotion to his brother, and then literally no one caring after. All of his glories turning into ash because none of the fighting or political gains matter under the autocracy. Especially to Daemon, a man who is cloaked in privilege, who literally can't gain materially anymore.
Trying to isolate himself from the court nonsense, run away from his feelings, and dick around Pentos before watching his wife die. Realizing there's no meaning or end there either.
And because of his own sheer pride and political weakness, he fails to express the love he has for his older brother: or be there to support him when it counted.
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I'm in the minority when I say I like the Harrenhal stuff in S2 (to be clear I don't like season 2 as a whole), because I feel it's a natural extension to his general absurdist characterization. Nothing he does amounts to anything. He looks cool, he is masculine by his society's measures, but he keeps fucking things up and betraying the love and trust of those around him.
So I love that he essentially gets cloistered in Harrenhal, going insane as dark magic keeps seeping into his psyche and he views the life he didn't lead and his niece-wife's life he might've ruined, while also getting jump scared by the consequences of his careless actions in the riverlords.
Realizing that this civil war is just.... violent. Realizing he's stuck in someone else's tragedy. His own relationships are ruined, and his life is going to amount to nothing, except >!a violent end, the death of everyone he knows, and the ruin of his house!<.