‘House of the Dragon’ Enters Its Woman War Criminal Era 

In an otherwise anticlimactic season finale, Alicent and Rhaenyra reunite one more time, and both emerge as more ruthless versions of themselves.

By Kylie Cheung  |  August 5, 2024 | 1:56pm
Photo: HBO EntertainmentTV
‘House of the Dragon’ Enters Its Woman War Criminal Era 

Welp. With Sunday’s irritatingly anticlimactic House of the Dragon Season 2 finale, all we really have to tide us over for the inevitable two-year gap before Season 3 are enduring queer sexual tension and an abundance of Reddit conspiracy theories. (My favorite is that Aemond Targaryen’s reanimated corpse is the Night King.) The finale sees Aemond fully fly off the deep end after being bested by Rhaenyra; the physically and mentally broken King Aegon flees King’s Landing with his ever-sneaky ally Lord Larys; Tyland Lannister mud wrestles a gal in Essos; and in the episode’s climax, Rhaenyra and Alicent partake in one more reunion—the intimacy of which has surely already fueled no fewer than 10,000 Archive of Our Own fan-fics.

In the scene, Alicent—who recognizes Team Green is squarely defeated now that Rhaenyra’s in possession of three more dragon riders and a land army—sneaks onto Dragonstone to offer a semi-apology, concede the game of thrones, and asks only for safe passage for her and her daughter Helaena to flee King’s Landing. “Come with me,” she even asks Rhaenyra, in a clip that is currently dominating my Twitter feed alongside captions calling it, and I quote, “gayer than actual lesbian sex.” Alas, Rhaenyra reminds Alicent that she can’t truly win the war without very publicly taking Aegon’s head—“a son for a son”—to which Alicent responds that Rhaenyra is “much changed.” 

This—Aegon’s execution—is, indeed, a brutal demand from Rhaenyra, but to be clear, she and Alicent are both “much changed” from the hapless children and perennial victims they were at the beginning of the series. As the two women begin their reunion by bitterly venturing down memory lane, the finale similarly prompts the audience to reflect on the last two seasons, and what it took for a show stacked to the brim with male war criminals to inspiringly enter its woman war criminal era.

As part of her rambling half-apology for usurping Rhaenyra’s throne, Alicent admits she always envied Rhaenyra for bucking with patriarchal authority and doing whatever she wanted in their youth. Alicent, by contrast, did everything her father and husband asked of her, thinking this would accord her safety, or respect, or something—instead, all it’s brought her are sociopathic sons, self-loathing, and misery. But on Rhaenyra’s end, even in shrugging off the patriarchal demands imposed on her all her life—taking lover(s), legitimizing bastard children, and generally being a lovable menace—she, too, hasn’t exactly been having the time of her life. Much of the show has zoomed in on the illusion of free will as women in Westeros (and, might I ponder aloud, IRL???), including women like Alicent and Rhaenyra, are pretty much screwed no matter what: Whether you defy or embrace patriarchy, you’re still doomed to some degree of misery as women.

And we’ve watched this misery harden both Alicent and Rhaenyra throughout the series. First, Alicent betrays and usurps Rhaenyra’s throne. Obviously, to an extent, she’s driven by the urgency of protecting her children, who could never really be safe in the shadow of the throne. But even after Rhaenyra clarifies that King Viserys’ rambling about “Aegon” on his deathbed actually had nothing to do with Alicent’s son and the succession, Alicent presses on in the war, regardless. Again, surely she’s compelled by a desire to protect her children, but time and again, we watch as she seems to actively dislike her sons (which, fair—they’re awful!).

Rhaenyra’s path to becoming a budding war criminal is a bit more difficult to stomach because we’ve spent the entirety of the series rooting for her against these infuriating forces of misogyny. At the beginning of Season 2, she’s guided by her aunt, Princess Rhaenys—the first woman to almost ascend the throne—to exhaust all options to avert war before making any moves. But after Rhaenys dies on the battlefield for Rhaenyra, there’s a gaping void in female mentorship in her life. In the penultimate episode of the season, we watch her sacrifice the lives of dozens of Targaryen-bastard peasants to find two more dragon riders, and appear almost indifferent as she watches most of them burn alive. Then, of course, she looks Alicent in the eye and refuses to spare the life of her childhood best friend’s son. This, I understand to a degree—Aegon and Team Green inevitably would have killed Rhaenyra; this entire civil war has been something of a kill-or-be-killed situ. But Rhaenyra’s unflinchingness in this demand for Aegon’s head is a pretty pointed shift, nonetheless. 

The episode ends as we watch both women accept their fates: Alicent, having surrendered the life of her son (or so she thinks—he’s actually fleeing King’s Landing while she’s on Dragonstone!) and given up everything, really, finally appears to be free. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra, once determined to stave off bloodshed, stands among her library of ancient texts and appears to accept her place in history as—for now—the victor of a bloody, brutal civil war for her birthright. 

It’s all pretty bleak, a reminder that often enough, surviving injustice and oppression can make us crueler rather than gentler. And as the final shots of the episode are all in service of setting us up for Season 3—Rhaenyra’s army marching, dragons soaring, sailors sailing, et cetera—surely we’re in store for no shortage of war crimes, with many likely to be committed by noted woman, Rhaenyra Targaryen. But at the end of the day, I still maintain that the ultimate war crime is making us wait two years for the next season.

 
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