One of the most mysterious figures from both House of the Dragon and George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood book is Alys Rivers, the witch of Harrenhal. First introduced in season 2, episode 3, “The Burning Mill,” Alys shadowed Daemon Targaryen while whispering ominous prophecies in his ear. She later tended Aemond Targaryen's wounds, then seduced him with the hopes of bearing a child and returning Harrenhal to its former glory.
Although Alys told Daemon that she had taken over the duties of a maester in Harrenhal, she later revealed her origin story to Aemond in season 3. Apparently, Alys isn't just a healer, but the former wife of Black Harren, the legendarily cruel warlord who built Harrenhal over a century past. She tells Aemond about her son, who was badly burned in the attack by Aegon the Conqueror, and how she turned to old magic to try and cure him. Alys's son died anyway, and the price of her turning to the dark arts was a curse that gave her unnaturally long life, and forced her to serve whomever ruled in Harrenhal.
This intriguing bit of lore was not only a surprise to House of the Dragon viewers, but to Fire & Blood readers as well. While Alys does make an appearance in the book, much of her character's backstory is kept a mystery. So where did Alys's origin story come from, if not from the man himself, George R.R. Martin?
Showrunner Ryan Condal explains how Alys's backstory came to be
The nice thing about adaptations is the freedom to fill in the blanks when it comes to missing lore and character development from the original source. Recently, House of the Dragon co-creator Ryan Condal sat down with The Ringer-Verse podcast for an exclusive interview, wherein he revealed how Alys Rivers's origin story was created.
"I wish I could remember who pitched that," Condal said. "[It was] one of those things that it came so out of the collective. [And this] came in the course of breaking season 2, so this was something that we'd been sitting on for a while."
Condal went on to explain the motives for fleshing out Alys as a character, saying, "Alys was great fun, but just how do we just keep her from just being the creepy witch lady that seems to know the right things at the right time? She has to have her own kind of internal story and backstory and the reason that she's actually here."
According to Condal, the writers also had to approach the relationships between Alys and Daemon and Alys and Aemond very carefully with consideration to her backstory. "You definitely get less of that with Daemon, I think [she was] playing Daemon a different way. [I think] Alys sort of sees, can read people and know what they need, and definitely Daemon needed somebody more at arms' length, and Aemond needed somebody very close that could kind of get in his head, get in his soul, and really appeal to him."
Another aspect of creating Alys's story was to make sure that continuity was key. "So we really did a lot of work on that, [on] her, and we were kind of around and around about it. We had a lot of great ideas, but it's like, how do we knit all this together into a cohesive thing were you could look even back at the Daemon story and go, 'Oh, I get [what] this all was.'? But it was really exciting when all that came forward in the room, because it sort of was the grand unifying theory to sort of bring all this together, and we [now] know Alys's motivation and the wheres and whys."
Condal also talked about the excitement of fleshing out one of the biggest mysteries of the franchise, saying, "It was exciting in a way that it tied back to the history of the castle, and the great lore around that. Other than the ancient Targaryens, that's probably the most sort of wondered about character or characters, or House, right?"
Another good point Condal made was the speculation that Alys wasn't necessarily being truthful about everything, however. "Maybe her name wasn't Alys at the time, maybe she's just going by Alys now. [...] I imagine Lady Harren's name was not Alys, because people would just go, 'That's weird that they have the same name.' [...] It also kind of leaves open the idea that maybe this is also just a story that Alys told Aemond, which is also a distinct possibility."
While many have wondered what makes Alys tick, I don't think anyone would have guessed the identity given to her for the show. Now that we have more information about Alys Rivers's origins and what drives her, it will be interesting to see how her story moves forward in the final season of House of the Dragon.
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