For the past two episodes in House of The Dragon, first with Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and now with Alicent (Olivia Cooke), the Greens are getting told to their face that their claim to the Iron Throne is not as ironclad as they think it to be.
That’s not likely to change much, but it has been fun to see their faces, hasn’t it?
Spoilers ahead for House of the Dragon season 2 episode 3!
House of the Dragon season 2 episode 3, “The Burning Mill,” directed by Geeta Vasant Patel, took away one battle (the eponymous fight between House Bracken and House Blackwood), only to give us a meeting that we had all been waiting for. Since the men were only ruining every thing they were touching, it was time for the queens to talk it out, woman to woman.
Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), cosplaying as a septa, sneaks incognito into the sept where she and Alicent had shared many a childhood moment. The sept is their zone, their space, away from all the politics and manipulations of men. And it is here that the veil of a major misunderstanding has been lifted from Alicent’s eyes. When she tells Rhaenyra that Viserys (Paddy Considine) changed his mind and said that Aegon was the Prince That Was Promised, Rhaenyra told her she’d made a boo-boo.
Thanks to the Targaryen obsession with the name Aegon, what Viserys mumbled in his dying state was’t Aegon II—his foolish, drunken, rapist of a son—but Aegon the Conqueror and his dream about the long night and how a Targaryen prince (Or princess! Hi, Daenerys!) needed to be on the Iron Throne, when that happened.
Alicent and Rhaenyra’s reunion was already giving off major “besties who still love each despite the drama” vibes, but Alicent’s face when Rhaenyra tells her she’s got her Aegons mixed up, and Rhaenyra realizing this woman she so loved has messed up big time and is going to cause a literal war that’ll annihilate their house … iconic!
As sure as there’s going to be a war born of Alicent’s utter denial that she effed up, there were memes!
The arrow’s already left the bow. Alicent Hightower is not going to be able to stop this war, and while I do agree with Rhys Ifans, who had said in an interview that both the Greens and the Blacks are genocidal maniacs so you can’t really say which one is right, it’s going to be heartbreaking to watch Alicent suffer the crushing guilt of what her one misunderstanding cost her family and the kingdom.
