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SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 3 of “House of the Dragon,” now streaming on HBO Max.
Rhaenyra Targaryen has taken her (rightful, if you’re on the “Blacks” side) place on the Iron
Throne and is now faced the realities of ruling — and cleaning up the mess left behind by her half-brother, Aegon II.
On this week’s episode of “House of the Dragon,” Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) is dealing with rats in the Red Keep, a starving population, trivial demands (like ordering more candlesticks for the palace), trying to balance the freedoms given to her prisoners of war, Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Helaena (Phia Saban), a very consequential case of mistaken identity and, ultimately, the choice of whether to battle her enemies in a location that will harm many innocent people.
As if that weren’t enough, Queen Rhaenyra is put in a position no king in Westeros has ever faced when she begins menstruating unexpectedly before taking on her first day on the job.
“I love that amid a broader battle and desire for legitimacy, you get to see a person on the first day of the job, coming in as the equivalent of the CEO finally getting to have a look at the balance sheet,” D’Arcy tells Variety. “I like the pragmatism of that detail that [Episode 3 writer] Sarah Hess wrote in there.”
Throughout it all, Rhaenyra is being supported by her husband-uncle Daemon (Matt Smith) with “pure Targaryenism” passion, as D’Arcy puts it, as he’s encouraging her to conquer more of the world while she’s still getting her footing in King’s Landing.
But that possibility goes completely out the window by the end of the episode, when Rhaenyra finds out that she and Daemon been tricked by Alicent’s cousin Ormund Hightower (James Norton), who has handed over an imposter in place of Alicent’s youngest son, Daeron (played in this episode by Charlie Gordon). Now she’ll need to set fire to a village full of her people if she wants to fight Ormund for the real Daeron (who will be played by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), who remains a potential usurper to Rhaenyra’s throne.
Below, Variety speaks with D’Arcy about the latest episode and what is to come for Rhaenyra.
What do you think is going on in Rhaenyra’s head after she finds out Daeron is an imposter and she’s been tricked by Ormund?
I think there’s something interesting happening with the Ormund deception broadly and I think it marks the beginning of a kind of paranoia for Rhaenyra. Ormund is a totally unknown quantity; he’s this kind of erratic element. And I think increasingly, and we see this as we go forward, he sort of becomes the boogeyman for Rhaenyra, and fuels a broader distrust of her council, her allies, her court at large. There’s something wonderfully theatrical, I think, about that scene, about a case of mistaken identity, about a plant and discovering a stranger inside the castle walls. I think, again, that act does a lot intensify a distrust that Rhaenyra is feeling. A lack of stability in her position.
Rhaenyra has returned home to the Red Keep and King’s Landing and she’s faced with memories of her father and her childhood while dealing with all the problems — the rats, the lack of funds — left by the Hightower regime. How did you view her behavior in this episode?
I think there’s something nice that at once Rhaenyra is a monarch taking up her premiership, and at the same time, she is a person going back to the family home. And I like the idea that even in a case such as hers, there’s no immunity to the sort of forced regression of the family home. It speaks to something that’s very exciting about the show broadly, which is the sort of fundamental entanglement of the personal and political here.
And for Rhaenyra, there are different visions of her premiership, one being something that looks a little like her father’s, that of the sort of moderate, kind of peaceful ruler. And, certainly, I think the weight of that is made all the greater by having to sleep in her late father’s bed, or not managing to, as the case may be. I loved it on the page. I love that amid a broader battle and desire for legitimacy, you get to see a person on the first day of the job, coming in as the equivalent of the CEO finally getting to have a look at the balance sheet. I like the pragmatism of that detail that Sarah Hess wrote in there.
She’s still grieving the loss of her eldest son, Jace, and has a vision of him walking through the Red Keep. Then later, she makes the bold choice to feed cooked rats to the city’s nobility during a “feast” to punish them for hoarding food amid the war. How would you view these actions in regard to her mental state right now?
I think there’s a lot of different things going on. I think Rhaenyra’s feeling of instability, of having no safe harbor, no psychic safety, and the accompanying desire for legitimacy, a growing obsession, actually, with sort of legitimizing her standing — I think that’s quite possibly the workings of grief. I think it’s possible that if Jace were at her side, she would feel steady and at home and in control.
I never want to guide interpretation too much, but I think with regards to the feast, it’s the first sort of propaganda exercise of her tenureship. And increasingly, partly because of the lack of financial resources in the court, there is a really important optics game to be played by Rhaenyra’s council. So I would describe the dinner as a publicity stunt, and a choice one, at that.
Many viewers have been excited to see Rhaenyra and Daemon’s romance rekindled this season after their estrangement in Season 2. There’s been several intimate moments where they speak High Valeryian together — what’s largely been considered their “love language” by fans — including in this episode, where Daemon proposes they go conquer the rest of the world together. What has it been like for you to return to working with Matt and playing out this aspect of their relationship?
For me as an actor, it’s been a total delight getting to work with Matt again. I’ve said it before, but he is my sparring partner, and so much of the foundation of this character was created in dialogue with him and with Damon. So I have been delighted. I think that there’s like an energy that they bring when they’re together that speaks to a pure Targaryenism that, when Rhaenyra is on her own, she maybe doesn’t have quite the same access to. For my money, that’s really exciting.
At this point, it seems Daemon has fully and publicly accepted Rhaenyra as queen and supports her completely as the ruler. Would you say that’s true, and that their positions are firmly in place now?
I would say that there are power struggles in every relationship, and that Daemon and Rhaenyra are no different.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
