‘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. alicent & rhaenyra's final shots. alicent, previously bound to duty and not knowing what she wanted, choosing freedom vs rhaenyra, whom alicent envied for knowing and doing what she wanted, now bound to a destiny she cannot escape. the roles are reversed & their fates are sealed pic.twitter.com/bFOT7f0ioi — lake (@claudeleines) August 5, 2024 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…