Emma D'Arcy wonders how "unsympathetic" Rhaenyra can be in House of the Dragon season 3

Emma D'Arcy has won acclaim for playing Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen on HBO's Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon; if you need proof, just look at their recent Golden Globe nomination.

Over the course of the first two seasons of House of the Dragon, we've watched Rhaenyra grow from a young princess (played in the first half of season 1 by Milly Alcock) to a queen in abstentia, ruling the Seven Kingdoms from Dragonstone even as her half-brother King Aegon occupies the Iron Throne. But she's making plays to take what she sees as rightfully hers. Towards the end of season 2, she drafted a bunch of peasants into her ranks of dragon-riders and now has an opportunity to take back King's Landing with the help of Alicent Hightower, who somehow visited her on Dragonstone and brokered an alliance.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Emma D'Arcy mulled what this could mean for Rhaenyra in season 3. "In terms of what happens next, something that struck me recently is in both series circumstance means that she's quite often a reactive character, she's in like a reactive position," D'Arcy said. "And at the end of Series 2 is maybe the first time when she’s in a sort of superior position politically. So I sort of don't know the answer to the question of what happens when she is in a position of genuine power, not being sort of undermined left, right and center by her own council, she has this strategic advantage, this is like a really new set of conditions."

As a fan, a fear I've had watching House of the Dragon is that the show is "on her side," so to speak. the book on which the series is based, Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin, doesn't really make value judgments about whether Rhaenyra or her rivals are "correct"; it describes their actions and lets us come to our own conclusions about the brutal internecine conflict that has divided the Seven Kingdoms. However, the show has generally painted Rhaenyra as being in the right, stymied at every turn by things beyond her control, while her enemies are drawn as bloodthirsty or incompetent. Even Rhaenyra's nominal enemy Alicent has come over to her side, and her husband Daemon — with whom Rhaenyra had been in conflict — is brought back to her side with a divine vision. I worry this could simplify a story that's very ambiguous and knotty on the page.

However, there were some elements to Rhaenyra's journey in season 2 that caught my eye. For instance, when she recruited all those peasants to try their hand at taming and riding a dragon, she basically locks them in a room with the beasts and watches creepily from a balcony as they're roasted and eaten. The idea of a Rhaenyra who believes her own hype to the point where she loses perspective is very interesting to me, and it sounds like D'Arcy is interested too.

"I think the thing that we saw towards the end of the second series is a person who for the first time had to make a really distinct choice about her own destiny…And I think that's where we see her suddenly lean towards her faith, the sort of historical legacy of her family, and there's something kind of fanatical about her behavior as she sort of takes up her own name," D'Arcy said. "She like ordains herself towards the end of the second series, and that too I think is frightening in a way that I really like…I think we're approaching the realm of fanaticism where faith starts to beget faith, and that becomes quite a sort of frightening character. I want to test the audience's loyalty. I wonder how unsympathetic she can be. I mean, I don't know, I'm not writing the thing, but I'm excited to test those relationships."

And I'm excited to see it, even if we'll likely have to wait until 2026 to watch new episodes.

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