In Defense of Daemon Targaryen

So there is a lot of discourse online about House of the Dragon, blacks vs greens, who the real bad guys are, blah blah blah. However the person I am going to ride or die for today is Daemon Targaryen. A lot of people (mostly delusional greens) want so desperately to make him a villain and today I will be refuting that. It is very clear that the show's creators want the audience to hate Daemon, that said if that is really what they wanted they shouldn’t have cast Matt Smith. George R.R. Martin himself said that Daemon is a gray character at best, he’s complicated and he is his favorite character. But a lot of the changes from the book were made in that effort. For in the book Daemon is not a bad guy, and quite frankly he isn’t in the show either.

First things first ya'll need to stop applying real world ethics to Westeros. Rape, violence, cruelty all exist. Among the Targaryen's, grooming and incest do not. At least not in a way that is unlawful or even unexpected. Uncles and nieces marrying is so normal for them that saying that Daemon groomed Rhaenyra makes you sound astoundingly stupid. No he didn’t. They love each other, let it go. I know that we were all shocked and appalled in Game of Thrones with Cirsie and Jamie but not only does that take place nearly 300 years later, that is not something that the Lannister’s did. Please remember that different houses had different customs and therefore different ethical boundaries.

Let’s address the next charge; That Daemon is a rapist. This one is so aggressively stupid, and factually incorrect. In both the book and the show he in fact castrates rapists. I believe the argument here is that he likes to deflower girls in WHOREHOUSES. I’m sorry but claiming that he’s a rapist because he deflowers young women in brothels and whorehouses is again, astoundingly stupid. I really don’t know how to explain to that level of braindead how whorehouses work. But these women get paid and choose to be there…so go ahead and get over that too. You must be getting him confused with Aegon the elder who IS canonically in both book and show a rapist. Yet that the Greens love to overlook.

Then we have the killing his wife thing. This is one of the major changes from the books in a desperate attempt to get us to hate him. In the book he is at war when his first wife dies and it's not alluded to or even implied that Daemon is in any way responsible for her death. It was a tragic accident and that’s all.

And last but not least we have the haste in which Daemon remarries after Leana’s death. In the show it is no more than a day or so in a desperate attempt to convince the audience that he never cared about her. In the book it is about 6 months, which may not be as long as you would like but up to this point we have heard over and over and over about how potential heirs to the throne need to be married and produce children so I really don’t want to hear it.

In short, hop off of Daemon’s dick. He loves Rhaenyra, they are a great couple with a firm grasp on the right to the Iron Throne. And he is a good husband to the women that he actually cares about. He also treated Leana well, to say otherwise is false and I will not be tolerating any Daemon Targaryen slander this season. I am so sure that Martin absolutely hates what they have done to his favorite character, really interested in how they pitched this because the creative team promptly ruined the story. All that said I have some relative hope for season 2, if for nothing else then to see Daemon kill some Greens.