House of the Dragon Recap: Femininomenon

Yes, Rhaenyra and Mysaria locked lips on last night’s episode of House of the Dragon. In a move suggested by the actors Emma D’arcy and Sonoya Mizuno themselves, Rhaenyra and Mysaria share one of those sapphic hugs that turns into a neck nuzzle, then a neck kiss, then a kiss-kiss, and then a steamier kiss, and, as always, it ends with someone walking into the room and killing the mood. 

It’s more than a bit of queer fan service, though. This single on-screen kiss changes the past, present, and future of House of the Dragon. Alicent and Rhaenyra’s story has been, since the very beginning, a queer-coded (or baited you might say) tale of tragic unrequited love. But what happens now that the subtext is text?

It should go without saying that this post contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 6.

Looking Back

The performances in season one lend themselves easily to a queer reading of the relationship between Rhaenyra and Alicent. It’s a curiously close friendship any queer person will recognize immediately: the more-than-friendly physical and emotional intimacy, the gut-wrenching betrayal Rhaenyra feels when she finds out her own father is going to marry her best friend, the similar pain Alicent feels when she discovers Rhaenyra lied about details of her own intimate relationships. They’re tangled up in their own feelings for each other. And they live in a world that only allows them to express those feelings within the claustrophobic constraints of not just heterosexuality, but a literally medieval heteronormative marriage. 

It could still be argued that Rhaenyra and Alicent loved each other but were not in love. Any queerness we saw in the performances and the narrative subtext was something we, queer people, made up. Don’t get me wrong, finding queer subtext in otherwise straight media is a long and storied tradition, and sometimes it’s the only way some queer stories can be told openly. But we wouldn’t have to do that if there were more canonically queer stories for us to see ourselves in, canonically queer stories like House of the Dragon.  Rhaenyra and Mysaria sharing a kiss canonizes the queer reading of House of the Dragon as a whole. It’s a welcome change, but a complicated one.

It’s important to note that the kiss was not in the script. Actors Emma D’arcy and Sonoya Mizuno pitched it because it felt right for the characters. It does feel right, obvious even, but it’s not surprising that the kiss didn’t occur to the writers or current showrunner, Ryan Condal. 

Watching the behind the scenes tie-in show The House That Dragons Built, the shortsightedness of the largely white, largely male, largely cis production team is a recurring theme. Nearly every actor playing a female character complains about how they never get to do anything fun, or they do only rarely, and they’re right. The actors are trapped just like the characters they play. Condal is really driving that home this season, informing us at every turn that being a woman is terrible, you can never escape, you will never matter as much as men, and that’s just the way things are. But the now-canon queerness of Rhaenyra’s, Mysaria’s, and, by extension, Alicent’s, stories, chafes against that bleakness, and shows us how these characters might escape their trap after all. 

Let Rhaenyra Keep the Sword

In season two, we’ve seen Alicent and Rhaenyra’s stories get whittled down to the barest of minimums. We’ve seen them de-centered in their own narratives, stripped of more and more of their agency each episode. Not because of events in the story, mind you. These faults are purely the work of shoddy writing and a lack of imagination. 

We all know about the gender politics of Westeros. We’re doing medieval, we all know the tropes, we get it. But in season two, in very nearly every scene with Rhaenyra or Alicent (for real, go watch) they either lament being helpless women, or a man tells them they are helpless women. It happens so often it almost seems like a running gag. Take a shot every time someone says you need a penis to know about war (a war penis). Oppression can be an omnipresent, stifling, and terrifying villain without being verbally invoked in every other scene. In fact, it’s more effective if it’s not so on the nose. 

Neither Rhaenyra nor Alicent would or could ever forget about the bars in their invisible prison, so why do we constantly need to see them reminded? It’s sloppy, it’s boring, and it does these characters (and us, the audience) a monumental disservice. 

(Don’t) Take Me to Church

Rhaenyra and Alicent can be trapped by the prison of patriarchy and still do more than just sit at a council table, stare longingly at the sea, or go to church. Let them do things! 

The Rhaenyra and Mysaria storyline does a decent job of letting these characters have any agency at all in their own narratives, but it comes too little too late. We should’ve gotten the whole Spymaster Mysaria storyline way earlier in the season. The show hinted at Rhaenyra and Jaecerys doing some research in the Dragonstone archives, but we never actually see that happen. At the end of episode 5, it’s hinted at and then and then we skip right over it in this episode. Where is the Rhaenyra who went soaring off on her dragon to defuse a confrontation between Daemon and Otto Hightower? Where is the fearsome, vengeful queen we saw turn toward the camera at the end of season one, rage burning in her eyes?

Giving Rhaenyra more to do can and should be echoed by expanding Alicent’s story in a similar direction. Or at the very least, give her more to do than get belittled by her sons, and Criston Cole. Alicent and Rhaenyra’s stories have always had some rhyming couplets, plot elements that complement, contrast, and sometimes mirror each other. Let’s see more of that. Let Alicent use the lifetime’s worth of education in subterfuge and statecraft she’s learned from her father Otto Hightower and husband-old-enough-to-be-her-dad Viserys. Unique among all the houses of Westeros, House Hightower has deep ties to the Citadel — the school and repository of history and knowledge that trains Maesters. Let her pull some of those levers, maybe via Grand Maester Orwyle. 

But Jaina, I can hear some of you typing, Maesters are sworn to neutrality, sworn to serve the realm, they don’t get involved in affairs of state! Well they’re sworn to celibacy, too (looking at you Pycelle), and so are the Kingsguard. We all know what an oath is worth in Westeros. 

Alicent also has ties to the Sept, as we know because of how often she’s at church lighting candles and having a bad time. Historically (in the real world) court clergy have often served as unofficial backchannels for royals or other influential nobles to communicate, plot, and scheme. She’s desperate, cornered, sidelined at court, she should be pulling all the levers she can reach, using every avenue at her disposal rather than just going to church and getting fish guts thrown at her in the street. 

It’s bad enough for House of the Dragon to so badly misuse its lead characters, but now that they’re canonically queer, it stings just a little extra. Even more so if the show plans to have their story end the same way it does in Fire and Blood, which is to say (without book spoilers) with monstrous cruelty. And we get enough of that thrown our way in media and in real life. Rhaenyra and Alicent can have a tragic queer love story that doesn’t end well for either of them, without indulging in the tropes the book inevitably does. Season one and the performers themselves have given the House of the Dragon production team everything it needs to right the ship, and I sincerely hope they do. 

Other Notes on Episode 6: 

Please hire a drag queen to make y’all some halfway decent wigs. These wispy hard-fronts are killing me. 

Ser Steffon volunteers to be a human s’more. 

Helaena has a bad time at church, again.

Alicent gets catfished. 

Corlys is just happy to be included.

Rhaena is Netty now.

Aegon looks like one of those bits of batter that gets stuck at the bottom of a deep fryer.

Seasmoke makes a friend. 

Fun fact, when we visit the Lannister army, the score plays a few notes of the Rains of Castamere, which would be a fun little nod if I weren’t too pedantic to fully enjoy it. The whole House Reyne eradication happens way later, during Tywin Lannister’s lifetime. So that song and the Lannisters’ brutal reputation aren’t really a thing yet, and the Lannisters we see in HOTD are kinda just puffed up punchlines so I don’t know what we’re trying to do here.