Before they were mortal enemies on opposite sides of the Dance of the Dragons, Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower were best friends. It might seem a lifetime ago, but the duo were once each other's closest confidants.
By House of the Dragon season 2, though, there's a whole lot of fire and blood separating them. For one thing, Alicent married Rhaenyra's father Viserys, and she later helped her son Aegon usurp Rhaenyra's throne – though she was under the impression that this was King Viserys's dying wish. Then there's the murder of Rhaenyra's son Lucerys by Alicent's son Aemond, which itself was an act of (accidental) brutal revenge for Lucerys blinding Aemond in one eye when they were children. And that's just scratching the surface of the turbulent history.
As showrunner Ryan Condal explains when we meet with him in London, Alicent and Rhaenyra have been at the heart of the show since the very beginning – and, despite all that's separating them, they'll continue to be connected in season 2.
"We very much framed this particular history around Alicent and Rhaenyra. The history books of Fire and Blood, the fake history as George [R.R Martin] calls it, of this world that this is all based on, is more of an objective history," says Condal. "You're covering the events in the story, so characters come in and out of the narrative as the history needs them to be present. But we're making a television show. And so in the framing of this, we had to figure out how to frame this history around the set of characters that we're going to follow from the beginning to the end: or to the end of them, because as we know, this is a very bloody period in the history and life expectancy comes shorter and shorter as we march deeper into it."
There were two natural choices for those core characters. "It was early on in the breaking of season 1, the idea was always to frame this history around Alicent and Rhaenyra, because that's who we start with: these two young women, basically girls, that we meet as barely teenagers, who are both, in their own way, political pawns of their fathers," continues Condal. "And then seeing them grow up at court with these tremendous pressures around them to rise and succeed and take these positions of high power, and then they end up in a competition for whose bloodline is going to sit on the throne. So, it felt in the telling of that, that they would always have this interlinkage. But we knew they would be separated by distance and by conflict. So the idea became, 'How do we keep them together?' in a way."
Even though they're separated in season 2, then, we'll still feel that bond between Alicent and Rhaenyra. "And I think we've done that with the storytelling showing how each woman is experiencing their own journey through this terrible conflict and continually examining their position in it," Condal adds. "We'll cut from Alicent going through something to Rhaenyra going through something entirely different, but we understand that these two women are connected and experiencing the fallout from these decisions that they've either made themselves with their own agency, or been forced to make by the influence of their fathers."
House of the Dragon season 2 launches on Sky and NOW on Monday 17 June in the UK, and HBO and Max on Sunday 16 June in the US. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming new TV shows to get excited about.
For more from our chat with Condal, see our pieces on:
- House of the Dragon season 2 showrunner on why Blood and Cheese is nothing like Game of Thrones' Red Wedding
- House of the Dragon season 2 showrunner doesn't feel the pressure of following the controversial Game of Thrones season 8: "Our challenge comes from within"
- House of the Dragon showrunner teases season 3: "You don't want to end up in that place where you're doing the same thing again and again"
- House of the Dragon season 2 showrunner breaks down the complicated relationship between Daemon and Rhaenyra: "Conflict is the order of the day"
