‘House of the Dragon’: Olivia Cooke Knows Why Alicent Resents Rhaenyra so Much, and She Has a Point
Now that House of the Dragon has skipped 10 years, grown-up Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke) are really going at it. Their friendship was compromised when Alicent married King Viserys (Paddy Considine) and it doesn’t look like there’s any going back. The way Cooke sees it, Alicent may be justified.
Cooke was a guest on the House of the Dragon podcast on Oct. 2. Discussing the 10 years between episodes 5 and 6, Cooke described how the relationship between Alicent and Rhaenyra deteriorated. New episodes of House of the Dragon premiere Sundays on HBO Max.
Alicent has resented Rhaenyra for 10 years
It’s good to be the queen, but it’s not easy. Cooke said Rhaenyra throws some difficulty into House of the Dragon’s throne.
“She feels like a fully fledged queen,” Cooke said on the House of the Dragon podcast. “She has the ear to the king but she also shares that with Rhaenyra Targaryan which she has a huge amount of resent for, because that resent has just snowballed over the past 10 years. She feels that Rhaenyra’s unseriousness, lack of duty, and courtly conduct severely lacking and disrespectful. In her mind, the mental real estate that this resentment holds is ginormous.”
Alicent and Rhaenyra will never agree on ‘House of the Dragon’
Alicent may be queen but when Viserys dies, he’s named Rhaenyra successor. Rhaenyra is already ruffling Alicent’s feathers in Westeros.
They both hold completely different ideologies in terms of how to rule a kingdom. Those two do not blend. It’s oil and water. And I think there’s a lot of jealousy there for Alicent. You’re constantly having to look at someone who represents something you could never have. That’s freedom and power. Rhaenyra just doesn’t know how to use it and continues to flaunt that in Alicent’s face and bend the rules to what suits her. Rhaenyra’s ruling will be really, really progressive while Alicent firmly sits in the patriarchy where she feels that is the order of things and that’s how to rule a kingdom. Don’t fix what’s not broken.
Olivia Cooke, House of the Dragon podcast, 10/2/22
Olivia Cooke looks to the future of ‘House of the Dragon’
Rhaenyra would be the first female ruler. Alicent isn’t ready to change things, even though it would benefit her as a woman and queen herself. But, Cooke said, that’s about to change.
“Completely, she’s been so indoctrinated by her father, Otto Hightower, the previous hand to the king,” Cooke said. “It’s not until later episodes where Alicent remotely begins to question that authority. And also she’s starting to believe that her son is the rightful heir to the throne. His namesake, Aegon the Conqueror. It just feels like this is the path that history should take and not Rhaenyra and her conduct and her illegitimate children. That is so stark but it’s obvious. They all live in this cloud. They’re so shrouded by what’s already been written in stone that they won’t see the truth of the matter.”
That seems to be what House of the Dragon is about. By Game of Thrones there was already Daenerys, Cercei and Sansa vying for the Iron Throne. The early Targaryen kingdom is when that started to even be possible.
