Here’re all the actors in House of the Dragon and who they’re playing

Yesterday, HBO confirmed what we’d already known for a bit: production has begun on House of the Dragon, the network’s follow-up to Game of Thrones.

Set over 100 years before the original series, House of the Dragon tells the story of the Dance of the Dragons, a brutal Targaryen civil war that tore the realm apart. Brother fought sister, dragon fought dragon, and Westeros bled.

We even got a behind-the-scenes production still of the expansive cast reading the script, all of them properly socially distanced:

But who are all these people? Since the marketing push is ramping up, we thought we be a good time to recap who’s in the cast and who they’re playing.

Who’s who on House of the Dragon?

Let’s go around the circle, starting from the bottom left and traveling clockwise:

• On the very bottom left looks to be Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys Velaryon. A Targaryen princess and wife to the great mariner Corlys Velaryon, Rhaenys was at one time considered a candidate for the Iron Throne, but was passed over for another family member because she was a woman. A dragon-rider and warrior, she is known as the Queen Who Never Was.
• The guy sitting next to him is officially unidentified, but resourceful Redditors have identified him as actor John Macmillan. We’re also not sure who he’s playing, but I agree with speculation that he’s probably Laenor Velaryon, son of Corlys and Rhaenys Velaryon.
• Next to him we have Fabien Frankel as Criston Cole, a knight of the Kingsguard under King Viserys I Targaryen. Word is he gets involved with Viserys’ daughter Rhaenyra, although the exact nature of their relationship remains elusive. We’ll have to wait for the show to learn the details.

• Next to Frankel is Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower, the second wife of King Viserys. Speaking of the king, next to Olivia we have…

• Paddy Considine as King Viserys I Targaryen, who’s on the throne at the start of the series. A jovial man, Viserys rules the realm well, more or less, although he’s not really a detail guy. The main conflict of the story arises when he dies and his family faces the question of who will succeed him on the Iron Throne. Will it be his daughter by his first wife, Rhaenyra Targaryen, who he formally named as his heir when she was still a child? Or will it be his son by his second wife Alicent Hightower, Aegon II? The answer is long and bloody.
• The next two people seated at tables are Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, the showrunners of House of the Dragon. Game of Thrones fans will remember Sapochnik as the guy who directed Game of Thrones episodes like “Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards” and “The Winds of Winter.”

• Skipping over the guy sitting in a chair on the wall, who I assume is a member of the crew, next we have Doctor Who and The Crown veteran Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen, brother to King Viserys. Where Viserys is bright is gentle, Daemon is kinda violent and dark. The brothers respect each other but have a difficult relationship.

• Next to Matt Smith we have Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen, who you already know. Like Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon doesn’t really have one main character, but Rhaenyra might be the one who sticks out as the most memorable. Her faction, the blacks, fights tooth and nail against those who support her half-brother Aegon, the greens, to sit her on the Iron Throne. But it’s far easier said than done.
• As for the final guy…I don’t know who he is or who he’s playing. Maybe he’s playing Aegon II, or possibly Harwin Strong, reportedly the actual father of Rhaenyra’s first three children. Officially, their father is Rhaenyra’s husband Laenor Velaryon, although it’s pretty well known that Laenor is gay. There’s is a marriage borne of politics, not of love.

There are also some people in the room who didn’t appear in the released photo. For instance, we have Steve Toussaint as Corlys Velaryon, aka the Sea Snake, who becomes a prominent supporter of Rhaenyra:

There’s also Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower, the father of Alicent Hightower and Hand of the King to King Viserys, and later to his son Aegon. Obviously, he’s in Aegon’s camp.

The actor for Aegon II may or may not be there. There’s no way not to include him in the story; he’s too important. We also don’t see any sign of Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria, a common-born paramour of Daemon Targaryen’s who rises to become Rhaenyra Targaryen’s unofficial mistress of whispers. Her casting has already been announced, so I imagine she’s around somewhere. Finally, we have evidence that the show is casting Arryk and Erryk Cargyl, twin brothers of the Kingsguard who end up on opposite sides of the war, but I don’t see them here.

It’s a big cast for a big story. We don’t have an exact date yet, but House of the Dragon is due out on HBO sometime in 2022.

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