Vhagar Chose: Aemond Never Had Control

If Vhagar chose, then the Dance of the Dragons begins not with a murderer but with a weapon that no one controls, and Viserys' opening warning becomes the show's thesis rather than its prologue. Every faction's claim to moral high ground in the war that follows is undermined before the first battle, because the atrocity used to justify it cannot be cleanly assigned to any human will.

The strongest counterargument does not dispute that Aemond failed to stop Vhagar. It argues that the failure is irrelevant to his culpability. Initiating a chase in those conditions, with that size disparity, in a storm, against a boy he had already threatened, was itself a form of intent. On this reading, the show's sympathy toward his shocked expression is a misdirection. Aemond knew what Vhagar was capable of. Claiming he did not choose the death while choosing every condition that made the death inevitable is not innocence. It is a narrower species of guilt the show may be flattering him by obscuring.

Adjacent Reading — Not a Competing Theory