House of the Dragon star Fabien Frankel thinks Rhaenyra was "disrespectful" to Criston Cole

Of all the characters on HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon, Criston Cole is the hardest to get a handle on. When we first meet him, he seems like the picture of a nobel knight, a starry-eyed boy from a family of no particular reknown who wins a place on the Kingsguard because he's the best fighter in the room...and maybe because the young Princess Rhaenyra thinks he's dreamy. Eventually, he and the princess start up a fling, but it would seem that he cares a lot more about her than she about him. Rhaenyra refuses to break her political marriage and run away with him, but does say he can stick around as her paramour. He takes this very, very badly.

I don't want to be too hard on Rhaenyra here. After all, she was marrying a gay man -- her cousin Laenor Velaryon -- and she was happy to let him continue his relationship with his lover Joffrey Lonmouth, reasoning that their political marriage had little to do with romantic love. And Laenor was willing to extend her the same courtesy. Joffrey was fine with the arrangement, but Criston was not.

Speaking to The New York Times, the actor who plays Criston -- Fabien Frankel -- chocks this up to Criston not being familiar to how these Westerosi elite live their lives. "I never felt that he was naïve. I felt that he was taken out of a life he understood into a life he didn’t," he said. "He’s a soldier. In the army, you don’t just become a sergeant or a captain; you work to become a sergeant or a captain. In King’s Landing, it’s hereditary names, titles, people who haven’t earned the right to be anywhere. You take this character, who has nothing in common with that entire world, and put him in the central circle. It takes him a beat to figure things out."

Of course, even without being familiar with this world, popping off at Rhaenyra's wedding to Laenor and brutally murdering Joffrey in front of tons of witnesses seems like a bit of an overreaction. "Then, obviously, there is a darkness within him that a certain moment triggers, and he becomes what he is," Frankel said.

"The sourness and bitterness of this world has washed off on him. You are your surroundings; you are the people you’re surrounded by. Ser Criston happens to be surrounded by an incredibly ambitious group of very Machiavellian human beings whose sole ambition is power. Eventually, you go: “Well, that’s the life I live. That’s what I am now. I’m in too deep.""

From there, Criston basically makes it his life's work to oppose Rhaenyra, later joining her half-brother Aegon in trying to steal the Iron Throne from her. And it all stems from Rhaenyra's initial rejection of him. "He’s asked a girl to run away with him, and he’s been told no. That’s the basis," Frankel explained. "It doesn’t matter who she is — they’re two kids, and they’re young, and he has very strong feelings for her. And she said, 'No, but I’ll keep you on the side, do what I need to do,' which is disrespectful unto itself."

"My justification, and this is probably somewhat controversial, was that Rhaenyra could have let him go at the end of that conversation, or at some point before her wedding. Instead, she made him sit through the whole thing. And he flips. It becomes very evident that he has a temper that we had not yet seen. That temper, for reasons he feels are profound, makes him flip."

It seems a stretch to try and justify all the terrible things Criston does because he was once rejected by a girl, although of course I get that Frankel is trying to find a way to sympathize with him; he's the one who has to play him, after all. Once we skip forward nearly two decades, it's clear that Criston still has major hangups about Rhaenyra and about women in general. When he and Aemond Targaryen visit a brothel looking for Aemond's brother Aegon, he drops this line: “Every woman is an image of the Mother, to be spoken of with reverence.”

The idea that Criston Cole -- a man who got shot down by a girl and then dedicated his life to hating her -- thinks women should be treated with "reverence" is hysterical, and very true to life. Criston has a dualistic view of women: they're perfect angels to be put on pedestals until one does something you don't like, at which point she's a demon. There's no room in this worldview to just treat women as people with their own flaws and quirks. It's a view you see among some men even today.

Frankel got a a kick out of this line, too. "I remember thinking it was hilarious," he said. "There was a conversation between Sara [Hess, the episode’s writer]; Clare [Kilner], our director; and myself when we were in Spain shooting that scene about how it should be delivered. I said it can only be funny. I mean, he’s not exactly proved that every woman is an image of the Mother."

Despite all of this, there's still a part of Criston that will always love Rhaenyra. "First love is first love," Frankel said ruefully. "I think everyone will always love the person that they fell in love with for the first time. From the first time you hear a beautiful piece of music, you’ll always love it, even if you’ve heard it a hundred times, because you remember that first time you heard it. So yeah, he will always love Rhaenyra."

We'll see how this relationship shakes out when House of the Dragon returns for its second season on HBO and Max this summer.

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