GRRM is weird about Daemon, because he's adamant that Daemon is not a villain, he's more of an anti-hero (he described him once as "light and dark in equal parts"). BUT, he also wrote Blood and Cheese. LOL. Which is pretty hard to get off the villain scale as it is in the book. Still, they did something similar last year when Aemond did not purposefully kill Luke (although I don't know what the point of that was, when Aemond mostly seemed annoyed that people were mad at him over blowing any possible peace talks - it's not like we saw any remorse in the season opener). Aemond made a whole show in the book of bragging about being a kinslayer.
I think I'm more Team Black because the people I hate more are on Team Green, lol. Most notably Cole, but also Otto (although I almost felt bad for him in this episode, having to basically deal with petulant whiners every time he walked into a room, between Aegon and Aemond and Alicent). And Rhaenyra will always be preferable to Aegon for me, if for no other reason than Rhaenyra is not a serial rapist. But really, they could all fall off a cliff and Cregan could come down and be King and I'm sure the seven kingdoms would be better for it, because the Targaryens don't have a lot of...moral superiority in this tale, heh.
I do think Aegon could have been better off if Viserys had like...noticed him, heh. I felt bad for him when he was a kid. But nothing Viserys ever did explains the serial raping and child pit fighting. Being neglected by one parent sucks, but it doesn't cause that.
Daemon is still ultimately responsible for Blood and Cheese here, the same as Aemond ultimately being responsible for Luke's death. Rhaenyra never indicated or hinted she would accept anyone's head but Aemond's. "What if we can't find him?" "Come back the next night, he'll be there eventually." That's clearly not what Daemon said, and he's responsible for them deciding it was acceptable to behead a toddler in front of his mother. But the writers seemed hesitant to go in full-force, possibly just because it's so ugly and possibly because Matt Smith is such a draw for a wider audience (bringing in all those Doctor Who fans, lol).
