All-powerful Cripples.

In wait for the next pot of tea laced with rum, here is a bit of content from my Tumblr blog, I wrote this post after the «Regent» episode was released:

The most interesting and most compelling thing about the second season of House of the Dragon is that only two, of all the characters, know what exactly they want and how exactly to achieve it. And both of these characters are cripples. Everyone else has no the slightest fucking idea how to realize their ambitions and what their true ones are. Both Aemond Targaryen and Larys Strong right out of the gate had to put in much more effort and hard work to accomplish something in life. And precisely because the starting conditions of these characters were lower than those of others, they did everything to become higher than any physically healthy person. Larys has the same influence on people as John Silver in Black Sails. Aemond has the same tender yet utterly ruthless heart as Ivar the Boneless in Vikings. And both of them have the same cunning ability to out-think their opponents as Sand dan Glokta in The First Law by Joe Abercrombie. These are at once dread and greatly admired characters, because they all achieved success in spite of themselves. No one cripple can ill afford to look weak, feel weak, be weak. This is why they are so dangerous: pain for them is not a barrier, but a staircase leading above.