Eve Best Saw Rhaenys’s ‘Kamikaze Mission’ As a ‘Relief’
“To me, that’s pure whatever she is — Arthurian knight, Lancelot, samurai.”
Spoilers follow for House of the Dragon’s fourth episode, “The Red Dragon and the Gold,” which premiered on HBO on July 7.
Bodies have been dropping all throughout this second season of House of the Dragon as the war intensifies between Teams Black and Green over the Iron Throne. But no death has been quite as impactful — or literal — as Princess Rhaenys Targaryen and her dragon Meleys falling to their deaths at the end of the fourth episode.
No disrespect to Princes Lucerys or Jaehaerys; a murdered child is an indisputable bummer. The loss of Eve Best’s Rhaenys, though, hurts on a different level. One of the few actors who has inhabited their character since premiere episode “The Heirs of the Dragon,” Best gave the Queen Who Never Was layers of capability, vulnerability, and discontent as she doubted whether the realm would ever accept a woman as their ruler while also urging Rhaenyra and Alicent to pump the brakes on a war amplified by the men surrounding them. She diplomatically aligned with Team Black despite both her daughter and son dying while married to Rhaenyra and Daemon, respectively, and served as a thoughtful and authoritative leader on Driftmark while her husband Lord Corlys Velaryon spent years in battle. And no one put Daemon in his place quite like she could.
But all of that responsibility (and her increasing knowledge that Corlys might not have been entirely faithful during their marriage) has weighed heavily on Rhaenys, Best says. When she volunteers to face new Hand of the King Criston Cole, Aemond, and his dragon Vhagar at Rook’s Rest in the Crownlands, “she knows full well that it’s very likely to be a suicide mission, a kamikaze mission, and that’s why she proposed herself to do it.” For as tragic and shocking Rhaenys’s death is against Aemond and surprise attacker Aegon, Best points out that there’s a full-circle quality to it given Rhaenys’s experience as a warrior and how she avoids retaliating against Team Green in season-one episode “The Green Council.” “She thinks, If somebody’s going to start it, then it has to be me, because it will be done in the most efficient way with the least bloodshed while at the same time making it look effortless. That was just classic Rhaenys.”
The Rook’s Rest sequence is so complex: You attack Aegon, you’re being attacked by Aemond, you’re leaving, you’re turning around, you’re flipping and flying. What went into filming it? Was it all one day, or did you split the different segments of the fight up?
My God, one day, are you kidding me? It took two weeks. [Laughs.] I was on that buck for two solid weeks — just me, because everyone’s doing their bits individually. The boys had maybe five days each. For me, it was this big block of time because Rhaenys has to span the whole sequence. She had to be hanging upside down at one point and then doing spins and rolls; they had to plot each separate move, each little tiny one. So I was on that thing for two weeks, and I was in agony. I kept asking for more cushions, because I was feeling like my bum wasn’t padded enough. It’s a real workout on your thighs and on your core, and I felt very ill-equipped. The boys, especially Ewan, love it. I remember meeting Ewan the first time in season one, and he’d just done his buck work, and he was sitting outside his trailer and we bumped into each other. He was sitting there just kind of glowing, like he’d just taken drugs. And he said, “Are you gonna do the buck soon?” And I said, “Yeah, what’s it like?” And he said, “Oh my God. It’s life-changing.” [Laughs.] And I thought, Oh my God. Is it gonna be life-changing? I’m not so sure about that. I feel like it’s just not going to be my comfort zone at all. And it wasn’t. But I was incredibly impressed with myself because I actually did manage to do it.
Well, it looks really good. And it’s called the “buck”?
They built this thing that I’ve been told is like a bucking bronco. I’ve got no idea, because I’m so much more chicken than Rhaenys. There’s no way I can even think about going on things like roller coasters or bucking broncos, but apparently, if you’ve been on a bucking bronco, it’s similar, but it’s like a massive version. It’s bigger than an elephant — like a small house, really. You have to go up a flight of steps to get on it, and then there’s this saddle and you’re strapped onto that, and then the steps are taken away and everybody gets off, and you’re left on this house, and it starts to move, doing all these different moves. It’s very surreal and it’s so opposite to what is then cut together with all the CGI.
Rhaenys is also going through a lot emotionally in this sequence. She looks determined. She looks exhausted when she turns back around. How did you chart what she’s going through?
I did very much want to tell that emotional story. Rhaenys knows full well that it’s very likely to be a suicide mission, a kamikaze mission, and that’s why she proposed herself to do it. Somebody described her to me as Rhaenyra’s Lancelot — she’s their best fighter, and she knows that she’s the one that has to go in. She’s the one who, of all of them, understands the weight of what she’s about to do, which is effectively start a nuclear war. And she’s the person who, in episode nine, very consciously did not start a war, and all along she’s done everything she can to prevent them going in with dragons. The younger generation, they’re all hot and desperate to start playing with guns, and she and Corlys are basically the only grown-ups left in the room with deep, deep experience and knowledge of what they’re potentially facing. They’re standing on the edge of the abyss, and it’s a weighty, weighty decision.
There’s something very beautiful, to me, that happened, and it was one of those lovely last-minute things: That scene when Rhaenys is proposing herself to go, when they’re making the choice to do this and she steps forward and says, “You must send me,” initially that line was “Send me.” Sara Hess, one of the lead writers, said, “Should we try making the line, ‘You must send me’?” Which is so brilliant, because “Send me,” that’s still a kind of suggestion. There’s a possibility in there. “You must send me” is an instruction. And it was like suddenly that became Rhaenys’s final piece of wisdom to Rhaenyra: This is how you are a good ruler. This is what you do. You don’t go in yourself. You send in your top people. This is leadership. This is what Rhaenys has been doing, to the best of her ability, all the way through the season — teaching Rhaenyra in spite of all her personal feelings about Rhaenyra. They have a very complicated relationship. She thinks, If somebody’s going to start it, then it has to be me, because it will be done in the most efficient way with the least bloodshed, while at the same time making it look effortless. That was just classic Rhaenys.
During the fight itself, Aegon and Aemond both say “dracarys,” but Rhaenys tells Meleys to “attack,” which is an interesting distinction. They’re going for maximum firepower, while “attack” isn’t as violent of a command.
That’s well spotted, because exactly right. They’re just like boys with guns; they want to maximize the amount of carnage. And there’s something very … I don’t want to generalize, but, you know, it’s very male. Whereas she’s very specifically going for the dragon: Let’s take out the weaponry, and don’t burn everybody else randomly. There’s a gritted-teeth-ness about it, because these guys are her nephews, however appallingly badly they’ve behaved and are behaving and however dangerous they are. Aemond is responsible for Lucerys’s death. At the same time, they’re her family, too. There was a lot of reluctance and the knowledge that they’re effectively pushing the red button. The responsibility of that is so huge that it has to be a kamikaze mission, because how can one live with it? And that sort of samurai thing of when she comes back in — she could have escaped, and she turns around. To me, that’s pure whatever she is — Arthurian knight, Lancelot, samurai. It’s the noble warrior thinking, No, I’m not just going to save myself. I’m going to finish this.
Meleys being attacked was actually one of the hardest things of all, because Meleys by the end has become the only person — the only being — with whom Rhaenys can really connect. They are absolutely umbilically linked. She’s felt increasingly isolated because she’s felt like she’s losing Corlys through the season, and that steady rock of their marriage is shaking with the news of what’s going on with him. That moment of vulnerability with Meleys — that connection was so important, and seeing her being destroyed by Vhagar was so hard. That’s it for Rhaenys. It’s not a giving up, because that implies reluctance. It’s a surrender. She’s been letting go and letting go and letting go, and becoming more and more detached through the whole arc of the two seasons: after blow, after loss, after grief, after death, after abandonment by her husband. Rhaenys has been holding it all together and holding everybody else together and holding it in, and always rising above it and always seeing the bigger picture. It was this unbelievable weight, and she could just let go in that moment. And their final moment felt intensely peaceful, like a relief.
As you’re filming this on the buck, are you seeing the image of Vhagar attacking Meleys on any screens around you, or are you imagining it?
I was shown a little mockup of the sequence, so I knew this is what happens. It’s a rough, cartoon-style thing. The boys aren’t there, Vhagar isn’t there, Meleys isn’t there. You’re just doing it all as bite-size chunks. It’s weird, but it’s amazing as well because you’re imagining it, so it’s in your head and it’s in your heart.