Why are you surprised by that?

Ever seen a movie? Violence against women is portrayed as normal in movies. Especially, sexual violence. We are all indoctrinated to think it is normal. You do not know how many people I have met who told me GoT is a realistic depecition of the middle ages and how it could not have been written any other way. Or look at House of the Dragon: Alicent Hightower the original character is an unpleasant step mother figure in the original source material and very unlikable but the show writers only managed to come up with one way to make her likable to the audience: by changing her age to 15 when she marries 40 year old Viserys in the show compared to how she was 19 in the source material and married 28 year old Viserys. And in the source material she was not raped. They added a rape storyline for that character with the only purpose to make her more sympathetic and every time I bring up the fact I get downvoted and called an idiot. Ironically, the same people threw a hissy fit when Sansa was raped in the show universe.

That said: I have no issue with Alicent being portrayed as more sympathetic but hat could have done without making her a rape victim or maybe maybe the author did not want Alicent to be portrayed as sympathetic because people like her exist in reali life. Women who help men to suppress other women, who slut shame other women for not obeying the patriarchy laws. Foord for thoughts.