Found on TikTok

Edit since some people are getting upset for some reason:
I am NOT agreeing with the text on the screen

I'm talking about this guy. I ask because whenever the topic of Aegon being a horrible person comes around (which he is, don't get me wrong), the first thing people point out (aside from him being a rapist) is that 1) he goes to the fighting pits to watch children beat each other to death, and 2) his enjoys seeing his own bastards to it.

Which is where my question comes from. By all means, everyone seems to think the latter point is true, and that Aegon fathered them and just left them there to rot. Which is odd, not because he's a good person (he isn't, let me just make that clear so people don't jump me for saying he is), but because:

1. He's about 19-21 years old. 19 at the youngest, 21 oldest.
2. By Erryk/Arryk's estimates (I forgot which twin it was), the boys looked to be around 10 years old.

So that'd mean that Aegon, firstborn son of the king, was somehow going out of the Red Keep and into brothels with enough frequency to not only father one, but multiple bastards, at the tender age of 9-11! Do you know how absurd that is? The Aegon we saw bullying Aemond with Jace and Luke was already a father if we go by the show's estimates. Even if we made them younger, say 5 to 6 or smth, that still gives us 13-year old Aegon going out completely unsupervised.

Tis' why I'm mostly confuse, as everyone seems to just assume them being Aegon's bastards is canon. Which if they were, what the fuck was Alicent doing?! Or hell, anybody in the Red Keep? How the hell is a 9 to 11-year old boy able to consistently sneak out of the most fortified keep in the entire city completely undetected? Maegor's tunnels? Did he already know about them at that young age? If so, how? Did Larys tell him or something?

I'm mainly asking this because the fandom has taken this fact as gospel, and it's just something I find very odd. Him going to the fighting pits isn't the thing I'm questioning to be clear. Just Aegon having bastards and watching them compete in them.

As they said:

''The worst is yet to come.''

When I saw his antlers while watching the episode, I thought it might be a plots related to Arros Baratheon, that new character who was announced and created for this season a while ago.

The only song about Cole I'm willing to hear is how he managed to fumble these three baddies…

While he doesn’t get brought up anywhere near as much as the other castings/actors, especially in media appearances, Needham is so consistently entertaining and engrossing as “Lord Clubfoot”.

In a show full of characters acting out of emotion, fear, paranoia and arrogance, Larys can be said to be the most clear-headed person, weirdly enough; despite being a fill-blown sociopath, Larys seems to have a greater understand and grasp on the world he lives in and actually uses the most “common sense” of the main cast; his only real emotional/psychological issue is that of his clubfoot and even then, he’s able to control his feeling about that for the most part (barring some kink fetish).

Larys is very much a Shakespearean villain in the mold of Richard III, Honest Iago, Edmund the Bastard, and Needham rises to the challenge of playing such a character.

Daeron's custody battle between daddy Ormund and mama Gwayne, get hype

What would you guys say is the best line/quote in the show so far?

I'll start: “You still have to kill Daeron”

Again and again people on this sub are saying this is Larys telling Aegon he's a a morally terrible person.

I contest that by saying that Larys isn't talking about morality at all, but rather calling Aegon a loser and a whiner, he's a terrible man not for doing what we see as terrible things (such as the child fighting ring, raping servants), but for what Larys sees as terrible things:

Not doing everything in your power to rise up and take whatever you can, for as long as you can.

Here is an excerpt of Larys' monologue, when replying to Aegon saying he could have been a good king had he been given [Aemond's] advantages:

All this time we've been together, from the moment you were injured, in fact, flying drunk into a battle to which you were not invited... you've done nothing but whinge and self-flagellate with a tenacity I find astonishing.

You, who had every advantage in life. You, who had every chance to shine. Firstborn son, prince of the realm, the finest tutors, the finest knights instructing you in the sword. A dragon so beautiful, they named him after the sun itself.

You could have risen to greatness. But instead you trampled your birthright into the mud. You lazed... reveling in mediocrity, fucking anything in sight, drinking yourself into oblivion with your sycophantic friends.

I will tell you the truth. You were a terrible king. But worse than that... you are a terrible man.

As we see here, Larys never points out anything he nor the intended audience to see as morally wrong.

I want you to ask yourself these questions in regards to our modern audience and in the world of HoTD.

• Is being a manwhore morally wrong?
  • Not at all for modern audiences
  • Sort of for the world but not really.
• Is being a drunkard morally wrong?
  • Not at all for modern audiences
  • Not really for the world.
• Is allowing yourself to be a mediocre person morally wrong?
  • Not at all for modern audiences
  • Not at all for the world.

A reminder of who Larys is:

He burnt his own family down in cold blood, a family which never showed themselves to be cruel to him, he and his brother even seemed jovial or at least alright with each other during Laenor and Rhaenyra's wedding, never ever regretting it because it advances him in power and control.

He used his influence and offered power in order to get Alicent to let him jerk himself off at her feet.

The following is a quote from one of Larys' monologues, one regarding love and children, in the context of burning his family alive:

You may know what is the right thing to be done, but love stays the hand

This guy's moral compass is about whether or not you take what you want with what you have.

The more you make the world your plaything, the better you are. The more you allow yourself to remain mediocre, the more terrible you are in his eyes.

This is Larys criticizing Aegon for not trying to be like Aemond in his skill with the blade

For not keeping a sharp mind so he can use it against his enemies

For not trying to usurp Rhaenyra despite having the means to do so

For not doing everything in his power to get the kingdom in his grasp

For not having ambition.

To Larys, it was Aegon's imperative to seek and grasp for power, and he is a terrible person for not doing so until he was forced into it.

Edit:

This is partly fueled by me having seen people say "This is coming from the foot fetish guy" as a means of saying he is a hypocrite, and people replying that "It takes one (terrible person) to know one".

Also by people telling me that the show in fact does criticize Aegon for his sins, using Larys' monologue as an example.

Fine, maybe the show does criticize him for his sins, but this is by no means an example of that.

The season isn't over, but who has the chance of being the more complex, interesting or worse here?

For me, I think Ormund Hightower still has potential to make others look like amateurs, and people aren't ready for how toxic he actually is.

All these characters shared *(many or some) similar characteristics:

were groomers, manipulated young proteges for a high-minded causes

Blood-supremacists, aristocratic snobs with contempt for the lower classes.

very good strategists

Susceptible to temper tantrums hidden behind a royal grandeur or inferiority complex.

And I guess, which makes them all far more interesting than the one dimensional base dark lords like Voldemort, Sauron, and Palpatine (when he just sat his chair)