House of the Dragon's Rhaenyra-Mysaria relationship rights one of the great wrongs of Game of Thrones

We're nearing the end of House of the Dragon season 2, and things are heating up in a number of ways. Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) is about to elevate a bunch of new dragonriders, while Prince Regent Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) orders his forces to march on the crumbling castle of Harrenhal. The stage is being set for another explosive showdown.

Amidst all the larger, world-shattering stakes in this war, there are also quieter games of the heart at play. In "Smallfolk," House of the Dragon gave viewers a huge surprise for Rhaenyra in the form of a budding new relationship with Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), her de facto Mistress of Whispers and the ex-lover of her husband, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith). Throughout the season, Mysaria and Rhaenyra have been gradually coming to know and trust one another; when they finally kissed, it felt earned and organic. Rhaenyra embraced Mysaria after they shared their vulnerabilities...and it lingered until the hug became something more.

The other reason Rhaenyra's kiss with Mysaria came as a surprise is because it's not drawn from the pages of Fire & Bood, the source book by George R.R. Martin. There, the two characters are never explicitly said to have a romance. But Rhaenyra is strongly hinted to have had a romance with a different woman in the novel, which the show chose to cut during season 1. The choice to have Rhaenyra grow closer to Mysaria instead not only fits with what's going on, but it brings back a part of Rhaenyra's character that looked like it wasn't going to make it into the television adaptation of Fire & Blood. In doing so, it also rectifies something that's always bugged me about Game of Thrones, and Rhaenyra's distant descendent, Daenerys Targaryen.

In order to discuss, we're gonna have to break into SPOILERS from Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Fire & Blood.

A brief history of the love life of Rhaenyra Targaryen, from Fire & Blood

Let's start with Rhaenyra. In Fire & Blood, it's suggested that Rhaenyra Targaryen has a relationship with her cousin, Laena Velaryon. Laena was the second wife of Daemon Targaryen; during the course of their marriage, it was said that Rhaenyra “became fond and more than fond of her good-sister Lady Laena.” As WinterIsComing writer Federica Bocco notes in her own reflection on how House of the Dragon confirmed Rhaenyra was queer, this is a phrase author George R.R. Martin uses to deliberately hint that there was something more to Rhaenyra and Laena's relationship than mere friendship.

There are other clues, such as the outsized amount of time Rhaenyra and Laena spent together despite living on different islands, that their dragons laid clutches of eggs together mirroring their own relationship, or the fact that Rhaenyra lingers by Laena's bedside for three days after she dies. Fire & Blood is told from the perspective of a maester in Westeros sifting through historical records, and because of that we never find out all the exact details of Laena and Rhaenyra's relationship beyond a few cryptic clues. Fortunately, we know George R.R. Martin loves a good cryptic clue, so it's unlikely any of this is by accident.

House of the Dragon took a very different approach with Laena Velaryon and Rhaenyra's relationship, because it simply did not have time to portray it. We only got a single episode with Laena as an adult, where she was played by Nanna Blondell. That episode, "The Princess and the Queen," had a lot of ground to cover. That was the only episode where we saw Daemon married to Laena, while Rhaenyra was married to her brother Laenor and engaging in an affair with Harwin Strong. Lanea dies in the same episode, and it also introduces the children of all these characters and more. Looking back, it's obvious that there was just no way to fit an extra relationship between Rhaenyra and Laena into the mix over the course of that single episode.

Losing Rhaenyra and Laena's relationship took away an important female relationship in Rhaenyra's life, which more than likely had a romantic element. Many fans have pointed out that House of the Dragon seemed to replace this with some latent tension between young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and her childhood friend Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey), but since Alicent and Rhaenyra are on opposite sides of the Targaryen civil war, any romance between them is pretty much destined to go nowhere unless the show makes some drastic changes from the source material.

Having Mysaria represent this sort of romance for Rhaenyra is a great substitute, and according to actor Sonoya Mizuno, it's something the writers of House of the Dragon had in mind before she was even cast for season 1. It sounds like they always knew they weren't going to be able to include the Laena romance, and made contingencies so that they could still explore this important part of Rhaenyra's character.

Plus, there's the added benefit that Mysaria and Daemon have a fraught history. Later in the book, Daemon and Mysaria rekindle their romance with Rhaenyra's blessing; Daemon is still married to Rhaenyra, but she gives him leave to spend most of his nights with Mysaria. That storyline now stands to be far more interesting in the show, since Rhaenyra's own past with Mysaria will be in the mix.

Will Rhaenyra and Mysaria's romance just be a passing moment? Will it lead to a complicated polyamorous arrangement with Daemon once Rhaenyra takes King's Landing? We don't know yet, but there's no doubt to me that the romantic situation between Rhaenyra, Daemon and Mysaria is a great opportunity for the series. To my eye, this decision is a really good one. It also rectifies a misstep that Game of Thrones made when presented with a similar situation.

Daenerys Targaryen and the bisexual erasure of Game of Thrones

There are no shortage of queer characters in the Song of Ice and Fire book series, and many of them, such as Loras Tyrell, Renly Baratheon, and Oberyn Martell, made the leap to the screen more or less intact. But there is one character who explored her sexuality much more in the book than in the show: Daenerys Targaryen.

In A Storm of Swords, the third book in the series, Daenerys is still grieving the death of her husband Khal Drogo as she heads to the slave city of Astapor. There, her loyal knight Ser Jorah Mormont makes the fateful decision to kiss her without her consent, which irrevocably complicates their relationship. It also awakens something in Daenerys. She thinks multiple times about how she doesn't necessarily want a romance with Jorah and he shouldn't have kissed her, but her body responds in ways that make it obvious to her that she's been lonely during the long months since her husband died.

Later, Dany's handmaid Irri notices her queen pleasuring herself in the night, and aids her. This scene with Daenerys and Irri isn't passionate or romantic; it reads much more like a servant providing stress relief to their master. But it's an important moment for Dany. It allows her to reflect even more on the fact that she's really just mourning her husband, Khal Drogo, by finding solace where she can. It also signals the beginning of an important shift in her mindset when it comes to using her servants for her own ends.

If it were just that scene alone, I think Thrones might have been right to cut it. However, Dany continues to sleep with Irri all the way through the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons. After Dany begins her relationship with Daario Naharis and he eventually leaves for battle, she similarly finds a cold sort of comfort in the dutiful arms of Irri. It's hinted that this is only one of many nights the two have spent together over the intervening months.

There are definitely issues with Dany's plotline with Irri, not the least of which is that it shows the erosion of Dany's understanding of what consent means. There's a cold irony to Daenerys Targaryen freeing all the slaves in Slaver's Bay without thinking through the implications of using her own handmaid for sex. She doesn't much consider Irri's feelings, only that her kisses "tasted of duty" when Dany craves passion. But it is a repeat affair, which means that it's also telling us important things about Daenerys, both in terms of how she's completely okay with sleeping with both women and men, as well as how her mentality as a ruler is evolving in ways that foreshadow her eventual decline. There's no denying that Dany's type is dangerous men, but flattening out the fact that she's also spent nights with a woman makes her character less rich and nuanced.

The times have changed...but maybe not too much

Ultimately, we can only speculate about why Game of Thrones made the decision to cut out Dany's storyline with Irri. I remember being surprised by those scenes when I first read them; they are somewhat controversial among fans of the books, but to me they add an interesting layer to Daenerys' character that was missing from the show.

Perhaps HBO feared the backlash of including that plotline for Daenerys? After all, Thrones first started airing back in 2011; Hollywood has come a long way in the years since when it comes to depicting queerness onscreen. Yet even now, "Smallfolk" currently stands as the lowest-rated episode of House of the Dragon after being review bombed on IMDb. The fact that it also happens to be the first episode to openly confirm Rhaenyra Targaryen as queer by having her kiss another woman is probably not a coincidence.

Fortunately, House of the Dragon followed through with Rhaenyra's new romance, haters be damned. While Thrones was able to work around the lack of Dany's bisexuality without much trouble, I think House of the Dragon would have been diminished if it didn't explore this important part of who Rhaenyra Targaryen is as a character. I'm grateful that the writers behind House of the Dragon didn't balk, and instead showed they cared enough to find a way to incorporate it even after cutting the romance with Laena Velaryon from the show's first season.

All that remains to be seen now is what happens next for Rhaenyra and Mysaria. Hopefully we'll find out more in the final two episodes of House of the Dragon season 2.

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