Spoilers ahead. Throughout House Of The Dragon’s run, we’ve seen Rhaenyra Targaryen’s (Emma D’arcy) journey from heir to Team Black’s Queen, and she’s always been depicted as straight. She birthed three children through her lover Harwin Strong and had three more through her marriage to her uncle Daemon (Matt Smith), though only two survived. That is, until now. Sunday’s episode revealed a surprising twist of events when the Dragon Queen and Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), a former sex worker who has become a trusted adviser, find themselves closer than ever — with a romantic kiss.
Fans have long speculated that Rhaenyra’s interest for a different brown-eyed woman was more than platonic, but now that her sexuality is confirmed to be more fluid than we thought, the Rhaenyra-Mysaria kiss has further fueled fans’ fervor for shipping Rhaenyra and her childhood friend-turned-complicated foe Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and reveals a wider thirst for messy depictions of queerness on TV.
Turns out in the world of fantasy television, there are still some real-world scenarios that are impossible to escape, like a formative homoerotic friendship that never got to fulfill its potential. Though their relationship isn’t canonically queer — in George RR Martin’s book Fire and Blood, which details the Targaryen civil war featured in HOTD, Alicent is nine years Rhaenyra’s senior and their acquaintance is cold and formal from the start — that hasn’t stopped fans of the show from reading into what they see as sapphic undertones in “Rhaenicent.” There are popular fan-made TikToks of the two women appearing to long after one another and the friendship they had set to various songs by your favorite artist’s favorite artist Chappell Roan.
The Rhaenicent ship is popular for a multitude of reasons. House Of The Dragon’s premise is centered around picking apart the unfairness of a heteropatriarchal society. In Season 2, Alicent is continuously undermined by the men sitting on the small council despite the fact that she had been ruling in Viserys’ name for years while her husband was bedridden. She’s then kicked out of the small council by her second son Aemond after he’s chosen to rule as regent in Aegon’s place. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra has had to discipline her own council who think of her as the “gentler sex” with little knowledge of war, despite the fact there has been 80 years of peace, so the men advising her haven’t seen much war either. Season 2 has Daemon largely MIA, hallucinating and still chafing at the idea of not being his brother’s heir, so is it any surprise then that Rhaenyra finds comfort quite literally in Mysaria’s arms? If they had not been positioned against one another through Team Black and Team Green, would it have been Alicent’s instead?
From the unabashed intimacy between the two girls when they were younger, to the jealousy fueled cat and mouse games when they’re older, the ship has fans captivated by the sheer wild potential viewers see in it — even if it’s unlikely to yield a happy ending. We already know the Dance of the Dragons is an ill-fated historical event that forever weakens House Targaryen, making the relationships within HOTD’s lore feel doomed from the start. As we watch Rhaenyra and Alicent grow up, their push-and-pull friendship crashes and burns as both women seek to find some semblance of control. Fan interest in romantically linking these two characters is not just because, in a Westerosi world, an intimate relationship between the two is forbidden but because they go on to choose against each other time and time again. It may not be canonically queer but it is canonically messy.
It makes sense why fans enjoy juxtaposing Rhaenyra and Alicent as the “sun and moon” or “black cat and golden retriever” — opposites attract, basically. They represent the suppression of sexual exploration and reflections of what could have been if only they had an opportunity to explore their feelings honestly when they were younger. The characters mirror, yet also are the complete opposite of one another, and we’re watching them continue to make choices that drive the wedge between them deeper. All the while both women are connected: they keep each other’s letters, wonder out loud about the other, and try to appeal to the other’s kindness and fond memories of the past. It’s clear that despite pain on either side there is a longing there. The sapphic subtext practically writes itself. Add the huge potential for a lot of unhinged violence (both women pull a knife on the other in each season) and the fact their core personalities bring out the best (and worst) in one another, well, it’s ripe for angsty edits on TikTok.
Though the Rhaenicent ship isn’t real in the show (at least, not yet), it speaks to a wider change in LGBTQ+ representation in film and television. Depictions of queerness are no longer being forced to be “perfect” or saccharine, and instead are becoming more and more unhinged. Alicent, in particular, displays a jealous, self-loathing side to female queerness that is particularly captivating — whether it’s grabbing a Valyrian dagger to attack Rhaenyra in Season 1, or asking the small council whether Rhaenyra has answered her letters sending condolences after her son Aemond killed Rhaenyra’s. Outside of HOTD, chaotic queerness is breaking through to the mainstream, from Margaret Qualley’s performance of “fuckboy” Jamie in Drive-Away Dolls to Kristen Stewart in just about everything. We have Nicholas Galitzine’s George in Mary & George, where a love for violence and a lust for one another morph into a compelling gay pairing which isn’t all that healthy. Similarly, Season 2 of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire is full of messy, manipulative queer pining over the ages that wouldn’t be out of place in a House Of The Dragon episode (we can see Aemond as a vampire, to be honest).
Appetites for dynamics such as Rhaenicent show we desperately need more queer characters in all variations, including amoral, messy sapphic situationships. Especially in a high fantasy show where oftentime queer characters don’t have much opportunity for screen time, let alone allowed to be as feral as audiences would like.
So let it be said: Long live the sapphic situationship destroying Westerosi geopolitics.
New episodes of House Of The Dragon drop Sundays on HBO and Max.
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