You know something really horrible? In the show, Alicent is unintentionally the reason Aemond lost his eye.
Now hear me out. After the initial scuffle with the kids, Aemond emerges gripping Luke by the neck, holding a rock above him, before threatening to kill them in dragon fire, calling them bastards. It isn’t until Aemond mocks Luke for not knowing of his parentage and refers to Jace as “Lord Strong” that the knife comes out. We can talk about hypotheticals all we want, and how Jace could’ve pulled the knife out later, but the fact of what we’re shown is that it’s pulled out after Aemond threatens both of the boys with very dangerous claims, regardless of their truth.
When all the children are explaining what happened, the one telling that gets the largest reaction is the bastard one. Because it is a serious claim, and if not true, to say such things is high treason. And we all know how Viserys feels on the matter. We see Alicent visibly react when Jace says that’s what Aemond did. Almost as if she’s surprised, but also like she can’t believe this is the result of her son saying something true. She tries to deflect it, but Viserys doesn’t have it. In that moment, when Aemond is being questioned by Viserys about who spoke of these lies, Aemond looks right at Alicent. For a noticeable period of time. So much so that every person in that room turns to look at her. It’s at that moment where Alicent realizes truly how much Viserys doesn’t care about the truth of the bastard claims. That he considers it treason, a terrible insult. She’s spread it around, talked about it to anyone who would listen to her, Cole or her children, and now because of her words, her son has been damaged beyond repair.
Aemond could’ve revealed it was Alicent who told him these things, but he doesn’t. While it’s enough for Viserys, it isn’t for everyone else. Alicent knows this, and seeing Aemond defend her, even after her words led to this very fate, makes her reflect on her actions. It’s why she’s in her almost daze like state for the remainder of the episode, why she changes to become so pious. It doesn’t help that Otto literally tells her that Vhagar was worth a hundred of Aemond’s eyes. She sees this situation as her fault and her failure, and she’s unfortunately correct. The adults really failed to prevent this (let’s just choose to ignore Criston was supposed to be on evening watch and it was Westerling to find them). Overall it’s just an ugly situation.
