After the season premiere brought the long-awaited Battle of the Gullet, House of the Dragon kept the momentum going with this week’s “Queen’s Landing.” We saw some major reunions—and some striking displays of grief.
At a recent House of the Dragon press day attended by io9 and other journalists, cast members Matt Smith (Daemon Targaryen), Emma D’Arcy (Rhaenyra Targaryen), Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower), Steve Toussaint (Lord Corlys Velaryon), and Abubakar Salim (Alyn of Hull) talked about the monumental moments facing their characters in episode two.
Maybe the one truly uplifting moment in the entire episode was when Corlys—who managed to survive the Battle of the Gullet, though his castle, High Tide, did not—cemented his relationship with Alyn and Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), his illegitimate sons that he’s finally now embracing. His granddaughter, Baela (Bethany Antonia), who lost her fiancé—Rhaenyra’s oldest son, Jace—in the battle, is also part of this newly formed family unit.
“I think in a sober moment … Corlys would be pleased,” Toussaint said of the Sea Snake forging relationships with his formerly estranged relatives. “I don’t know that he’s there yet when we have that scene. I think he’s still grieving his loss, not just of his wife and so forth, but also of [High Tide],” Toussaint said.
“But I think for someone who at this stage now is learning the importance of human, familial connection, I think he would be pleased. I mean, he did offer the ‘heirdom’ to Baela initially in season two, [but] she says, ‘I’m not right for that.’ So I think that he does crave a connection. I think after Rhaenys passes, he’s flailing, just looking for something to hold onto. So I think for him, he would like that. It would be ideal, I think, to create something new.”
Salim thinks Alyn has a similarly optimistic feeling. “I think for Alyn, there is a sense of not necessarily peace, but I think it’s a step towards peace. And I think that there’s a real acknowledgement to that, an acknowledgement to, like, ‘Look, it’s still a journey, but what a journey to be a part of now … at least we’re not doing this alone, me and Addam; we’re doing this together for what we’ve gone through,'” he said.
“I think also just as an audience, as an actor looking at it, it’s the one peaceful family, the one family that is united, a hopeful family, [out] of all of these other horrible families that are dotted around Westeros. So yeah, it’s really, it’s a really hopeful and beautiful moment.”
Far less hopeful in episode two is Rhaenyra, whose quest to become Queen of the Seven Kingdoms takes yet another detour when she discovers that Jace has been killed. Sure, he defied her and forced her to remain locked in her room while he went off to battle, but it’s a huge blow losing another son.
In “Queen’s Landing,” D’Arcy gets a lot of space to inhabit Rhaenyra’s grief. Still, that didn’t make it any easier for them to perform the scene.
“If I’m honest, it’s the only scene in the series that I sort of dreaded shooting and was quite avoidant about for a while,” D’Arcy admitted. “But a part of that is because the relationships that we have on the show and the friendships that we form are very real … There is always a life-imitating-art aspect to a character death because we lose a company member, and so those days have an atmosphere necessarily. I think for Rhaenyra, Jace’s death is an insurmountable loss, honestly. I think it’s unprocessable, and I think there’s something very brutal about her paying the highest price for her ambition before she’s even sat [on] the throne. It feels like a particularly harsh sentence for the character. But I think actually grief sometimes simplifies things, and in the scenes that follow, I think it offers her a sort of nihilism in that final part of the journey.”
Another big Dragonstone moment comes when Daemon, Rhaenyra’s perpetually absent husband, returns from Harrenhal to support her in her plan to take King’s Landing. He’s been gone so long he doesn’t realize that his former paramour and conspirator, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), is now deeply entrenched in Rhaenyra’s inner circle.
For his part, Smith was delighted to further explore the inevitable tensions that arise once he realizes Mysaria and Rhaenyra now have their own special relationship. Is Daemon jealous of this development? Suspicious? It’s a little of both, Smith said.
“I was always really pressing the writers to explore that particular trio of a relationship because I think it’s really entertaining dramatically,” Smith explained. “And I think Sonoya is such a beautiful, acute actor that I just love being on screen with her. And I think, weirdly, Mysaria really dragged Daemon out of his grief with his brother in a way and really empowered him, and there was a whole world in which he could have just run away into the mountains with her. There’s a deep, deep, deep affection for her even though there is this sense of betrayal. So I think it’s a many-edged sword—it’s not even double-edged, it’s triple-edged, you know what I mean? It’s really complicated, and there’s a charge about the energy when all three of them are in the room.”
Speaking of energy changes in the room, io9 had to ask Cooke exactly what expression that is on Alicent’s face at the very end of “Queen’s Landing.” She’s just been brought into the throne room and sees, in quick succession, Rhaenyra sitting on the Iron Throne… and her long-missing father, Otto, lying dead on the floor with his head freshly separated from his body.
What’s Alicent feeling in that moment? It’s simple, according to Cooke.
“I think just white-hot anger, really,” Cooke said. “Alicent doesn’t know if Otto has been Rhaenyra’s prisoner this whole time, and this is the first thing that she’s done as the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, this big, showy political act. She’s got no idea. And she doesn’t know if the bargain that she made [with] Rhaenyra has been fulfilled on her side either—has she just been another pawn in someone else’s game? So I think she’s just like, ‘Okay, well, fuck you, it’s on.'”
We’ll find out what happens next on Sunday, when a new episode of House of the Dragon arrives.
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