Who runs Westeros? Girls! Who runs Westeros? Girls! OK, we know that’s not true (yet). But for a brief moment in the , Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke), have a meeting where they are able to make high-powered agreements without middlemen causing a ruckus. The meeting seems to boil down to one word: .
Enough of the fighting. . Let’s fix the mess we’ve made and put the rightful heir on the throne.
The conversation sets up Season Three, which has already been confirmed. “House of the Dragon” has been following its source material, George R. R.
Martin’s “Fire & Blood,” and, based on this chat between Rhaenyra and Alicent (as well as the last scenes that wrap the finale episode), the next season is likely to open with the fall of King’s Landing. Here’s what to know about Alicent and Rhaenyra’s plan — and if it will work. The Fall of King’s Landing is recounted in “Fire & Blood” and ends with a major victory for Rhaenyra and the Blacks.
When Prince Aemond, Ser Criston Cole and the Greens have moved forces to Harrenhal, leaving King’s Landing largely unprotected, Rhaenyra and Daemon invade on dragon, with Corlys Velaryon’s fleet on Blackwater Bay. It ends with Rhaenyra seizing the Iron Throne. ? Justin Bieber said it first, but Alicent Hightower said it better when she came to Rhaenyra Targaryen in the Season Two finale and asked for an end to the mess she made by insisting her son was the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.
After Alicent’s other son , Alicent seems to have lost loyalty to her own cause. That’s reinforced in the finale, when Aemond tries to recruit gentle, peaceful Helaena (Phia Saban) into the war. Helaena resists, but Aemond won’t take no for an answer.
The interaction is charged and full of danger. It’s enough to push Alicent to make a drastic step: cross enemy lines to devise a plea and hopefully a way out for herself, Helaena and her grandchild. She goes to the grand maester — who was the only person who supported her as regent — for passage to Dragonstone.
Later on in the episode, Rhaenyra’s guard wakes her up while she’s lying awake in bed (queens get the Sunday scaries, too). After walking to a candlelit room, Rhaenyra is stunned to see Alicent walking toward her. “I had to see you,” Alicent says.
“I’ve been, I think, mistaken.” “In what?” asks Rhaenyra, skeptical as ever. Alicent doesn’t outright say she made a mistake in fighting for her son Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) to be Viserys’ successor instead of Rhaenyra.
Instead, she goes back to her own upbringing as hand of the king’s daughter and how it informed her later actions. Their friendship was part of it, she says. “I was raised to believe there was an order to things.
That there was security in following the paths laid out for us. I resented you, I think, for caring so little for any of it. For knowing what you wanted.
I did not know what I wanted. I knew only what was expected of me,” she says. Rhaenyra fires back with another question, one that she would ask again later on: “Why did you come here?” Alicent explains that she’s lost faith in her cause — or rather, the people associated with it.
“I lost my way. Or rather it was taken from me,” she says, by everyone she put her faith in, including her son, her husband and her lover. Now, she wants to act like Rhaenyra and think about what wants.
“I thought of what I would choose if not for the duty I put before all else,” she says. Rather than seek power, she simply wants “to live” and be “free of all this endless plotting and striving.” She wants to take Helaena and her grandchild and leave it all behind.
Rhaenyra doesn’t think absconding is possible. “It’s too late, Alicent. You said it yourself,” she says.
“Blood has been shed. Armies burned. You wish to wash your hands of what you set in motion?” What ensues is another edition of the blame game, as the women litigate whose actions started this fight for power.
Alicent evades blaming, saying Rhaenyra would have been “challenged regardless.” But Rhaenyra counters that Alicent’s hand brought the challenge forward. This was what she thought Viserys wanted, Alicent counters.
After that interlude, Alicent lays out a play to help Rhaenyra take power. When Aemond leaves for the Riverlands, as he plans to, Helaena will be on the throne in King’s Landing. Alicent promises to throw open the gates for Rhaenyra.
“You will enter as a conqueror,” Alicent says. “Once you take the throne, this senseless war must end.” Rhaenyra doesn’t say no, but there is still a problem: Aegon.
After in a dragon clash in Rook’s Rest, Alicent explains he is “broken beyond recognition” and not a threat. She’s confident she can convince him to bend the knee. Rhaenyra is doubtful.
“If I am to take the throne, I must put an end to the opposition. I must take Aegon’s head. And I have to do it for all to see.
You know this,” she says. She then commands Alicent to choose. “Will you shrink from what you set out to do or will you see it through and make your sacrifice? ?” she says.
The camera zooms in on Alicent’s face as she weighs her son’s life. Alicent, at first, balks. Then she subtly nods.
More than anything, this shows how the war has changed her: Alicent is willing to sacrifice a son to end it. Ironically, the is what arguably it. Rhaenyra seems almost shocked, and she lets it be known that history will paint Alicent as a “villain” and a “cold queen.
” Alicent has made peace with that. Turns out, this whole show was all for her journey toward self-actualization. “I am at last myself,” she says.
Rhaenyra is less persuaded by this dream of freedom. She knows her part; it was decided for her ( ). The plan is set.
In three days time, Rhaenyra will invade King’s Landing — and Aegon will die, or so they think. So will Rhaenyra and Alicent’s plan actually work? Probably not. The finale ends on a note of dramatic irony.
Viewers know something Rhaenyra and Alicent don’t. Earlier on in the episode, Aegon was close to giving up, but Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) talked him into believing he had a future. At the end of the episode, we get a glimpse into that future, as Larys and Aegon sit side by side in a carriage leaving King’s Landing.
Surrounded by livestock, they're clearly being smuggled out of the city to an unknown destination. Meanwhile, Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty) and the two other new dragonriders for the Blacks are strapping in for battle. The Greens are hauling their forces over to Harrenhal, where Daemon’s camp resides.
Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) and the fleet he recruited from the Triarchy to break Corlys Velaryon’s (Steve Toussaint) blockade of the Gullet are out to sea. And Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell) finally finds the wild dragon she’d been seeking, the one that Lady Arryn told her about. As for Rhaenyra and Alicent, they’re both looking toward the horizon, hopeful for their own future.
But with Rhaenyra’s foe gone, her bid for the throne is still threatened. With that, the show realigns with Martin’s “Fire & Blood." The book doesn’t include a meeting of the minds between Alicent and Rhaenyra.
Instead, Rhaenyra and Alicent interact after the Fall of King’s Landing, but Alicent seems vengeful, rather than in on Rhaenyra’s plan. “Bowing her head in defeat, Queen Alicent surrendered the keys to the castle and ordered her knights and men-at-arms to lay down their swords. ‘The city is yours, Princess,’ she is reported to have said, ‘but you will not hold it long.
The rats play when the cat is gone, but my son Aemond will return with fire and blood,” Martin writes. When Rhaenyra goes to find Aegon in the book, he has disappeared. Elena Nicolaou is a senior entertainment editor at Today.
com, where she covers the latest in TV, pop culture, movies and all things streaming. Previously, she covered culture at Refinery29 and Oprah Daily. Her superpower is matching people up with the perfect book, which she does on her podcast, Blind Date With a Book.
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