New York Magazine’s Vulture has good coverage of House of the Dragon. In addition to their recaps, they do pretty good previews and analysis, and they do interviews with the main actors after significant episodes. After Sunday’s season finale, Vulture published a conversation between one of their writers and the two leads of the show: Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke. In the discussion, the two leads discussed their characters’ season-long arc with one another, their characters’ roles as women in a male-dominated world, and the mid-season tipping point between the two.
There’s so few women in this world that I think there’s a feeling of gleefulness when men identify them as special.
OC: They’re not immune to the feeling of a powerful man bestowing his light on them. They live in this society that rewards [them] when that happens.Did you approach scenes with other female characters, like Eve Best’s Rhaenys, differently than scenes with male characters?
OC: When I had that scene with Rhaenys, there was an equity that hadn’t been there before. Speaking to a woman who was also fucked by this system and trying to appeal to that was unifying. There’s a different quality to it. You can’t really quantify it until you see the scene on television.
ED: The irony is, we don’t get that many scenes solely with another female character. In Rhaenyra’s scene with Rhaenys, she’s far more intimidated by the conversation she’s about to have than she would be were it a male character, because all of her tools have been built to manipulate and navigate men. She feels transparent. It’s a very revealing and uncomfortable conversation.
That’s the other irony, I suppose: When women do manage to protect some corner of power within a patriarchy, they can become skeptical and fearful of other women with power because their tools are not made specifically to navigate that type of power. And/or, we have the same skill set, and suddenly there’s a rivalry that is very different from the rivalry felt with male colleagues.
In episode seven, “Driftmark,” Alicent’s son Aemond and Rhaenyra’s son Lucerys fight after Aemond calls him a bastard. Luke slashes Aemond’s face, causing him to lose an eye. Alicent boils over in that moment and attacks Rhaenyra, but Rhaenyra has to keep her guard up.
ED: It’s such an interesting scene, right? My sympathy is fully with Alicent. On the page I was like, Well, she’s f-cking right.
OC: Someone’s lost an eye.
ED: Someone’s lost an eye! I’m so amazed every time Paddy basically tells you to let it go. Simultaneously, Rhaenyra is playing quite a basic game: Lie hard, do not back down, and weaponize this word “treason.”
OC: Alicent’s being gaslit massively and she f-cking explodes. In friendships or relationships, when it gets to the point where you feel you’re going mad, there’s no route out other than complete volcanic annihilation.
ED: There is something resentfully delicious in it for Rhaenyra, in that she so rarely gets definitively the backing of her father. Early on, she loses both her best friend and her father because they get married. These moments where she gets publicly chosen, and chosen instead of you — there’s a really violent quality of vengeance for her.
Truly, the relationship between the two women on the show is fascinating and compelling. (I am aware Emma is nonbinary, but the character is not so I will switch accordingly). The relationship and all its prior closeness and tension was fascinating when the characters were younger and is all the more so now that they’ve reached adulthood and have their own families and simmering resentments. I appreciate that Emma and Olivia are cognizant of the deeper implications of the dynamic their characters with one another and then womanhood and the patriarchy and general. Yes, the story is about a feud between two specific women, but there are universal themes about being chosen and women operating within the patriarchy that are extremely relevant to this day. Emma has a point that women can become skeptical and fearful of other women with power because we’ve observed that to be true even in present day. All too often, women want to be chosen and identified as special by men, and work against other women to be preserve their own place as power-adjacent within the patriarchy. Of course other women are fearful of that. And who would have thought we’d have so much in common with fictional Westeros, forced deadly births and all.
But back to Dragon shenanigans, I was interested to hear their take on the eye for an eye scene. I was sympathetic about the lost eye up until the point when Alicent wanted her cop to extract the eye of an 8-year-old with his mother, brothers, and grandparents just looking on. That was nuts! Little boys viciously fighting is one thing, but a grown man (probably gleefully, considering his bitterness toward the mother) removing a child’s eye as payback is just no. Of course Viserys didn’t agree to that. And of course Rhaenyra wants the backing of her father and to be publicly chosen. He should have chosen her for her whole life, but spent too much time trying to make everyone happy. God, I can’t wait for the second season of this show.
“There’s just something about her I don’t trust.” – lots of people about lots of powerful women.
Okay, do what you will, just dont come to me and complain about how this story´s gruesome and misoginistic ending…
In westeros, this is what you will get all the time, but I guess the thrill of it is ” compeling”
I mean, yeah, it is compelling for me. I love the story, I enjoy this world, I prefer this storyline to the main ASOIAF Game of Thrones but I enjoy the Westerosi drama.
It has a gruesome misogynist ending. Sure. 90 percent of the stuff we consume (and that culture dictates is “great art”) is like that because the world we live in is pretty gruesome and misogynist. No need to watch if you don’t want to of course. I enjoy what Olivia and Emma have done with their characters and each other in the show.
Nobody else has to like it if they don’t want to but I find a lot of criticism of people who do like it a bit grating. There were like 9 thinkpieces the week this premiered that basically boiled down to “I had xyz problems with the previous show so nobody should watch this one”. Ok I guess.
I know what happens in the books cuz I’m on a million threads. The show will probably water it down a bit, but honestly we know that women in Westeros are still powerless 200 years later, so I would hope no one went into the prequel hoping for a feminist victory. What the show does really well though is illustrate the impact of women of being pawn’s in a man’s war game. Neither Rhae nor Alicent went into this vying for power. Alicent was satisfied with her role as a noble woman who would marry an equally noble man, until her ambitious father pushed her into a dangerous game. Rhae already wanted independence, but not necessarily the Iron Throne. Once named as heir, though, she could no longer so easily accept the injustice of a less qualified boy being chosen over a more badass woman. Good on her for fighting.
I make a point of giving compliments to colleagues to their manager, including female colleagues and especially when I feel they’re undervalued.
Maybe that doesn’t make me a strong contender in some devilish rat race where you’re supposed to stomp on others to get ahead, but I don’t care.
I so enjoy how thoroughly these two actors have explored their characters motives and how articulate they are in explaining them now the season is over. It’s so refreshing to hear rather than just the director’s take.
What’s interesting in the show is that the women in power are shown to be reasonable if that’s what keeps the peace, but the men in their lives won’t let it go. Rhaenys accepted that she was passed over for her younger male cousin, but it’s her husband who can’t accept it. Alicent would have been “ok” with Rhaenyra taking the throne, but her father poisoned her against that idea. And Rhaenyra seemed resigned to letting Aegon have the throne if it would keep peace, but her husband Daemon won’t let her go that route. I wonder what would happen if the three women were free from the male influences in their lives, and sat down to decide what was best for the kingdom. I suspect Rhaenyra would be crowned, and there would be additional inter-marriage among the families. But that wouldn’t be “Game of Thrones.”
HotD will always mean Hair of the Dog to me! (it’s my favorite burning man bar camp, lol)
I agree that anyone coming to this show expecting anything but violence, misogyny, and misogynistic violence must not have seen the first series. great hair and costuming tho.
Unfortunately,, that’s never been the meaning of “eye for an eye.” Taken in context, it’s talking about recompense not revenge. It’s the value of what you owe someone – equal value to the loss in money or goods or land.
This is such a great interview with Emma and Olivia. I have been loving HotD, and it’s been ultra refreshing to see a show that at least acknowledges the patriarchy, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, so I have no complaints.