“Rhaenyra Triumphant,” this week’s episode of House of the Dragon, takes place almost entirely within the Red Keep at King’s Landing. Most of it focuses on the newly ascended queen as she realizes the realm she’s fought so hard to reclaim is, well… it’s in a bit of a shambles. It’s a sort of messiness she’d never even considered, and in a new interview, Emma D’Arcy talked about Rhaenyra’s headspace as she awakens to the difficulties she now faces.
The Queen of the Seven Kingdoms has been troubled by a lot of problems in season three so far. She lost another son. She had to behead her first victim in front of a very judgmental audience. The previous king, Aegon, is MIA—as is his brother, Aemond, who has a dangerous dragon in his corner. Then, there’s the whole “Ormund Hightower is now a power player” situation.
But while Rhaenyra expected the Dance of the Dragons to include scheming and sea battles and armies being set on fire, she didn’t think she’d discover the crown’s treasury is flat broke. No money for her fancy coronation, much less to fund even basic necessities. Also, there’s a serious rat problem in the castle.
“I think there’s something nice that at once Rhaenyra is a monarch taking up her premiership, and at the same time, she is a person going back to the family home,” D’Arcy told Variety. “And I like the idea that even in a case such as hers, there’s no immunity to the sort of forced regression of the family home. It speaks to something that’s very exciting about the show broadly, which is the sort of fundamental entanglement of the personal and political here.”
As episode three begins, we see the queen remarking about how the Red Keep is full of ghosts, especially her father’s. It’s a psychic burden that grows more oppressive as she starts to really feel the responsibilities that come with sitting on the Iron Throne.
“For Rhaenyra, there are different visions of her premiership, one being something that looks a little like her father’s, that of the sort of moderate, kind of peaceful ruler,” D’Arcy continued. “And, certainly, I think the weight of that is made all the greater by having to sleep in her late father’s bed, or not managing to, as the case may be. I loved it on the page. I love that amid a broader battle and desire for legitimacy, you get to see a person on the first day of the job, coming in as the equivalent of the CEO finally getting to have a look at the balance sheet. I like the pragmatism of that detail that [Sara] Hess wrote in there.”
Rhaenyra’s biggest triumph in an episode pointedly entitled “Rhaenyra Triumphant” comes when she assembles a group of nobles and rich merchants suspected of hoarding supplies during the scarcity in King’s Landing and serves them roasted rat. As D’Arcy explains, there’s more going on there than just shaming the greedy.
“Partly because of the lack of financial resources in the court, there is a really important optics game to be played by Rhaenyra’s council,” they said. “So I would describe the dinner as a publicity stunt, and a choice one, at that.”
House of the Dragon drops a new episode Sunday on HBO.
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