Seeing young Alicent holding her babies will never not make me emotionally devastated. Because look at her.
She’s so small. So young. Her small frame is swallowed by her infant children. You can actually see how truly young she is in these moments. She’s just a child forced to be a mother. And she does it dutifully though she’s unprepared. Bouncing and holding her children to love and comfort them as best she can
And in these moments you can see how worn out she is. She’s tired and alone. Her eyes are sad and dull and she looks into nothing as if she’s dissociating and seeking comfort away from reality.
She’s a shadow of the girl she used to be. A girl who used to laugh and smile and dream. And it was all stripped away from her to satisfy men much older and powerful than her.
And despite it all. She loves her children. She protects them and fights for them. She’s just a child forced to have children and care for them alone. And it’s so sad because she deserved so much more. She deserved to be a girl for longer. To find love and peace and joy. And she deserved to find motherhood in her own time. But she didn’t.