I mean, that’s how most people then would see it. It was just not a serious enough issue to warrant killing her.
I’m pretty sure that people who experienced rape took it seriously. In any case, the comment was a description of the act by a real person now, not a quote from a character.
It’s possible, but, again, ambiguous.
From a dramatic standpoint why would the show not make it clear she was poisoned if that had indeed been what happened? While the scene was happening I wasn’t sure what the Queen was going to do but when it was over it was clear exactly what happened: she paid her, gave her something to abort any potential baby and sent her away.
It wasn’t clear, because if the way the shots were edited. The sequence of frames seemed to imply that Dyanna could have been poisoned. Cinema has a visual language and they used the language of ambiguity. If they wanted it to be clear, they knew how to edit the scene to be clear. The question is why.
Yes, I agree - I didn’t get any sense of ambiguity until I came here.
Same, but the things people are pointing out which I missed do make it seem ambiguous.
Online summaries of the episode suggest the tea was an abortifacient, and I assume these authors are familiar with the books (though these may differ from a show). The Queen went out of her way to show she believed the servant and told off her son. I do not see that killing the servant would accomplish anything, and might be out of character.
Not all of them. I have read/watched some that assume that she did poison Dyanna.
For example, this review notes the ambiguity as if the ambiguity was intentional: Dyana? 'House of the Dragon' Episode 8 proves Alicent is better than Cersei
The source material is in the form of a fictional “history” written by unreliable narrators who in any case would not have been direct witnesses to any of these events behind closed doors. All the book notes is that Aegon was rumoured to have fathered at least two bastard children, one with a chambermaid.
By the way the Rhoynar have been in Westeros for about 1,000 years.
There’s just one thing I’d have done differently if I were Rhaenys. 
It was a strange scene. I think the showrunners indicated something afterwards like Rhaenys isn’t a genocidal killer and blasting the Hightowers would be like shooting an unarmed person, but still…
This was the best episode yet.
Yeah I kept wondering… if she just fries the entire royal family right now, what happens next?
Well basically the show is over 
. Even if Rhaenys tries to take the throne, she’s already been passed over by a Great Council once, and doesn’t really have many friends.
Fuck the peasants I guess though…
So what exactly was the beef between Cole/Aemond and the twins? what was the hand planning to do with Aegon?
I mean it’s been well established that the nobility doesn’t care about the common people or see them as anything other than dragon fodder.
They had different orders… whoever had Aegon would control what happened next - namely what would happen with Rhaenyra. Especially considering Aegon is basically a super impressionable person. So if Ser Cole and Aemond got to him, the Hand would work at convincing Aegon that they need to send some assassins to Dragonstone. And the Kingsguard and Aemond realized that when they saw another group trying to get the new King.
My other thought is that escaping from the rebels with your dragon is one thing, but frying a bunch of high ranking nobles without the “true” queen’s input was just right on the edge of going too far.
I still think she should have BBQed them, though. Would have saved a lot of suffering to come and it’s not like they wouldn’t have done the same if the situation was reversed.