It sucks to be a woman in Westeros. This is no secret; it’s the reason a lot of Game of Thrones women are hardened against the world, and the reason many viewers started to turn against the original show to begin with. A Song of Ice and Fire is a cold, cruel place, and even colder and crueler if you aren’t a man.
House of the Dragon has always united behind that banner as one of its key themes, its second season — and its sixth episode in particular — makes the connection sharp, twisting like a knife between two characters: Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke).
After fighting a losing battle in last week’s small council meeting, Alicent starts episode 6 by getting patly dismissed — first metaphorically, as Aemond refuses to listen to her advice, and then more literally, when Aemond relieves her of her small council duties altogether. This is — in the shrewd, cunning way her son often can be — a canny awareness for the makeup of his small council, as we’ll learn later; he can have Otto on his council, or he can have Alicent, but he can’t (optically, politically, personally) have both. But it still stings Alicent deeply.
Which makes sense, when Alicent has had to strive so much to simply be seen, let alone heard by the men around her, even those she gave birth to. When she made her big play to rule as queen regent in episode 5, “Regent,” she was shot down. The reasons were woefully sound: that was peace, this is war. And yet, the underlying message was clearer than that — this is the future she fought for, a future crafted by men. And now she’s found her place in it: on the outside looking in, wondering if her third kid is better simply because he was raised far away from her.
Rhaenyra, by contrast, has the ability to push back in ways Alicent never does. Though her small council repeatedly undermines her (and Rhaenys, and Baela), she commands the kind of respect that Alicent begs for. When one man questions her ability to fight in war, she reminds him that he has only ever known the same peaceful realm she has. When a man follows after her, trying to covertly make her doubt herself, she reels around and slaps him in the face. Though she has had to repeatedly remind people that it’s good their suggestions only toed the line of treason, the room does fall silent after she does so.
House of the Dragon first filtered its feminist rallying cry through the horrors of motherhood, but that was a feint for a deeper argument. While “the childbed is our battlefield” has a ring to it, Rhaenyra’s story, the actual liberation she sought, could swell to encompass even childbirth. The arc of the pilot is Rhaenyra coming to learn she could be more; to imagine herself as queen, not princess. Everything she’s done since has been in service of the belief that she is owed that, or at the very least could handle it.
Which is exactly what makes the contrast between Alicent and Rhaenyra so interesting in House of the Dragon season 2. Neither is having a good time being a woman in Westeros, but their stories feel rich, and aptly contrasted against each other. Alicent is a woman of means; she’s shortsighted, closed-off, and harsh just as often as she is kind and meek, much like the men around her. But she is not a woman of power. And her story has been a series of cascading attempts to claim it, be it through dressing, commanding, misinterpreting, or doubling down. Her journey to authority is one marked by humiliating proffering, and desperate pleading to be listened to. Rhaenyra’s has been largely the opposite, and while she spent the first half of her life undervalued as an heir because of her gender, this civil war is her first real taste of being underestimated because of it. The difference is, people listen when Rhaenyra talks, even when she asks them to step in front of dragon’s fire.
Although they could never hope to know it, everyone in the sixth episode is facing similar problems. Across the realm we see people who are not receiving what they think they are owed. Rhaena wonders in the Vale why she can’t ride a dragon yet. Alyn and Addam Hull chafe at their distant father’s lack of acknowledgement, only for Addam to find himself seemingly hunted by it in the form of Seasmoke. Daemon stalks Harrenhal and finds his most scary ghost yet, that of his brother the king, who passed over him in favor of Rhaenyra. Though this is the least eerie these dream sequences have felt, the punch of Paddy Considine’s Viserys returning as he was in the beginning of season 1 — wrathful, wounded, distant — helps communicate how these emotional wounds can sear themselves into psyches.
A simpler tale might let these things fester as merely resentment. But House of the Dragon (and, indeed, the larger world of George R.R. Martin) is more interested in plunging to deeper depths of these considerations of power. Episode 6 feels a lot more like the original Game of Thrones than the show has been, with its ruminations on how those most fit to lead want nothing to do with it and the kaleidoscope of attempts to capture authority. But the show isn’t just playing the hits here; it’s making the Dance of Dragons a war not of big battles, but of small moments and attentive character work.
And nowhere is that clearer than Alicent and Rhaenyra, even if they’ve only shared just one scene together this season. House of the Dragon keeps them moving in tandem, shadows of each other as they each stake a claim to command the Iron Throne. Cooke’s performance as Alicent feels naturally opaque, while D’Arcy smartly lets Rhaenyra seem almost too considered. In their hands, Rhaenyra feels emotionally gangly in front of her council, and yet, she also reads as more firmly rooted than Alicent ever could be. These are two different vantage points from growing up in the court, the former a careful modulation of subtlety borne of defensiveness, the latter, privilege that must now prove itself.
And so, Alicent becomes huffy and defensive, lashing out at anyone who wrongs her, whether it’s her fuck buddy or her son. By contrast, Rhaenyra wobbles — a move that might prevent her from ever falling entirely. She builds stronger alliances, inspiring people to her cause simply by being human where so many might seek to be a god, even if it means braving a dragon or killing your own brother. Through her questioning of her birthright and her abilities (and her marriage and her war chest) she has found support, keenly bringing in Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), who has built an astoundingly successful offensive tactic of delivering food to starving King’s Landing residents, at the same time as capturing Rhaenyra’s heart, apparently. In contrast to the everpresent, fluctuating unevenness of her relationship with Alicent, Mysaria offers something to Rhaenyra beyond council. Here, she extends her own vulnerability, detailing her own gendered struggles, and Rhaenyra gets, at last, someone who understands her, not just sees her. It’s a thing Mysaria and the late Steffon Darklyn have in common, following Rhaenyra wherever she will take them precisely because she asks rather than orders; it’s a quieter leadership, a bolder one, and far more classically feminine than anything Alicent is attempting.
This being Westeros, Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s love story, exciting as it may be, is not likely to be freed from the harshness of the realm. This is not a tale of happy endings — at least, not simple ones; time will tell if Mysaria’s machinations or Rhaenyra’s regal status will get in their way. Still, it’s a revealing development, whether this is a fling or not. What little we’ve seen of Rhaenyra and Mysaria together shows us a relationship built on respect and care, a far cry from the rough power play of Alicent and Cole. It may suck to be a woman in Westeros, and you may get fucked sometimes. But House of the Dragon’s parallels make it clear that there are some who can still get something out of it.
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