The second season premiere of House of the Dragon, "A Son for a Son," aired the other night, and like most episodes of this show, it contained its fair share of surprises. One of the biggest was the revelation that Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and Ser Criston Cole of the Kingsguard (Fabien Frankel) have started having sex. We check in on them during a private moment, when Criston has his head up under Alicent's dress. It seems to be having the desired effect.
Now, we can talk for a while about what's driving the characters to do this, whether they're being hypocritical given their puritanical stances on relationships, and so on. And we will. But first, we have to mention the hilarious prank Cooke played on Frankel during this scene. “The opening scene between Olivia and I in episode 1, when I’m under her dress, she was wearing...do you know what a merkin is?” Frankel asked Elle.
A merkin, for those who don't know, is a pubic wig. “So, she was wearing a hairy ginger merkin that was genuinely quite shocking. It looked like she had a sort of furry animal between her legs. And I went down there and screamed, and threw myself back, and threw myself out from under her dress. Anyway, there is a photo."
This feels like a genuinely traumatic memory for Frankel. He covers his face with his hand as he talks about it. “I wish I hadn't told that story...I’m so annoyed that Olivia told you to ask me that.”
Why are Alicent Hightower and Criston Cole suddenly getting it on?
So that might be one of the funniest things I've ever heard; way to keep thing light on set. Because the reality for Alicent and Criston is a good deal less fun, given that they've both been sexually repressed for years. “I think for her, it represents teenagedom. It’s passion. She’s never had that,” Cooke said. Remember: Alicent was married off to the dying, middle-aged King Viserys when she was still a teenager, and immediately went about having his children. She's probably never had satisfying sex once in her life, until Criston.
“And this is someone that she’s fancied since she was a kid that Rhaenyra got to have,” Cooke continued. “He became this loyal guard dog who was always by her side, who protected her fiercely. And then Viserys died and I don’t know, you never see it, but I’m imagining in the throes of grief and despair and also confusion, Criston Cole has always been there, and I think something just blossomed from that."
"I think when someone dies, it’s almost quite life affirming as well, in a way. Because you’re like, ‘Fuck, everything’s just so finite.’ And I don’t know if the passion was born from that and just being like, ‘Let’s just seize the moment.’ But it’s something that I think she’s probably fantasized for a long time in a really naive, juvenile way, and you can see that in just the way they act around each other....I don’t think Alicent knows where to put all these feelings."
We can see in the trailer for the remaining episodes of season 2 that Alicent and Criston's relationship will continue. In fact, Cooke says that there's at least one sex scene between them that got cut. “I think Ryan [Condal, the showrunner] said we weren’t learning any more about the characters, which I disagree with slightly, but it’s okay. It’s his show,” she said.
According to Condal, this relationship “was always something we wanted to pursue” even though it’s not a part of George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, on which House of the Dragon is based. “This is a guy who, despite his pious honor, always finds himself in the same pitfall, and he has this one core weakness, and it gets him into trouble. And this is the thing, he falls in love with the people that he’s meant to protect, and we always knew we were going to go there.”
"[I]t’s an interesting secret that they have to protect, but also it’s this moment of just a pure expression of human desire for these two people that are so bottled up and repressed. And for Alicent, who we’ve never seen enjoy herself, ever, to come in on that moment, which is again, before all the hell breaks loose, it’s just nice to see."
Are Alicent Hightower and Criston Cole hypocrites?
Now let's return to the hypocracy question. One of the things Alicent and Criston always had in common was a shared antipathy towards Rhaenyra, and that antipathy was always based at least in part on sex. As a teenager, Alicent envied Rhaenyra her youthful freedom and sexual adventurousness, something she couldn't have while she was saddled with an old husband and three kids. And Criston never forgave Rhaenyra for sleeping with him and then refusing to run away with him.
At the time, Criston balked at Rhaenyra's proposal that they continue sleeping together in secret while she married someone else for political advantage. But now he's having a secret sexual relationship with another member of the royal family and breaking his Kingsguard vows to do it. He's a lot older than he was when he rejected Rhaenyra nearly 20 years before, and it seems he's come around to the idea that secret intimacy is better than no intimacy.
In subsequent years, both of them built their identities around the idea that they were pious and pure, better than that wanton Rhaenyra...but in both cases, this was probably a cope for the fact that they couldn't find the pleasure and happiness they actually wanted. So yes, they are being hypocrites, but they're also doing what they've wanted to do this whole time, under the weirdest possible circumstances.
We'll see how things develop as the second season of House of the Dragon continues; new episodes drop Sundays on HBO and Max.
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