House of the Dragon’s Season 2 Finale Introduces Alicent Hightower, the Queen Unchained

Let them think what they must. I am at last myself, with no ambition greater than to walk where I please, to breathe the open air, to die unremarked, unnoticed, and be free. 

Throughout House of the Dragon’s entire run, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) has arguably been the most layered and intriguing character on this complicated chess board. Strikingly different from the Daemon’s unabashed violence and cockiness (Matt Smith), Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) charming ferocity, or even Otto’s (Rhys Ifans) cunning logic, Alicent has always been governed by a strong sense of duty alongside an undeniable survival instinct. During the series’ second season, she bemoaned her role in denying Rhaenyra her rightful place on the Iron Throne, found herself disillusioned with both her family and her closest conspirators, and ultimately decided to renounce it all in the finale’s most enlightening moment—removing herself from the chains of duty, all while making the ultimate sacrifice. Of course, it’s been a long journey for Alicent, one that culminates in a fateful 10-minute scene that ties together her series-long arc in Season 2’s finale, “The Queen Who Ever Was.”

In Episode 3 of Season 2, Alicent was confronted by Rhaenyra in the sept, where she was told that Viserys (Paddy Considine) wasn’t, in fact, talking about her Aegon (Tom Carney-Glynn) being “The Prince That Was Promised,” but instead was rambling about Aegon the Conqueror and the Song of Ice and Fire on his deathbed. From that moment on, the Alicent that we once knew (the one that followed her father’s orders; the one that continually questioned the legitimacy of Rhaenyra’s children; the one that stormed towards Rhaenyra with a knife), slowly but surely crumbled away. In the absence of her father, her husband, and the illusion of virtue, power, and order that she strove to maintain, Alicent slowly but surely has allowed herself to move on from the chilly, duty-bound queen she once was. Episode 7, in particular, marked her true rebirth, baptizing herself in the waters outside the walls of King’s Landing. The Alicent we see on that trip is stripped of her Hightower Greens, her queenly duties (courtesy of her son’s dismissal), and her political power, all ultimately leading to that pivotal moment in the finale: Alicent standing in Rhaenyra’s chambers on Dragonstone, offering the realm in exchange for her freedom. 

In a striking parallel to their reunion in Episode 3, Alicent and Rhaenyra find themselves desperately trying to connect once again, but this time, the roles are flipped. Whereas Rhaenyra sought peace and a swift end to the conflict earlier in the season, the woman that came to Alicent in the garb of a septa is no more, replaced with a dragonlord messiah prepared to secure her claim at (nearly) any cost. But Alicent is different herself. She has become weary by the constant politicking and pressures of King’s Landing, and instead seeks to slink away into the wilderness with her daughter Helaena (Phia Saban) and her granddaughter. While their exchange still features shades of the petty bickering that has long defined their relationship, this conversation highlights just how much both Rhaenyra and Alicent have changed; Alicent’s bid for freedom is the ultimate indicator of her newfound attitude and outlook. 

Alicent has always been a steward of men’s will. For her entire life, she has been forced to brace the brunt of the consequences, forced to carry the torch for various men’s calculated power plays as little more than a pawn on their board—once Otto, then Viserys, then her own sons. By seeking out Rhaenyra and making one final attempt to save her daughter (the only member of her family not truly despicable, save for the still-unshown Daeron) is her true act of reclamation. In Episode 7, she reclaimed her body, reborn in the lake; in Episode 8, she has reclaimed her agency, no longer enacting the will of men and instead placing her own will first and foremost. 

As Alicent lays out her plan to her former friend, Rhaenyra responds with agitation, asking Alicent directly what any of this has to do with her. But for Alicent, everything has to do with Rhaenyra. In this scene, loaded lectures on duty and virtue and sacrifice and hardship are stand-ins for the deep-seeded, antithetical resentment and attachment Alicent feels towards Rhaenyra. In trying to get her message across, she begins chewing on her fingernails again (reverting to that nasty habit from her childhood) before using Viserys as a conduit to express her true feelings and plead her case to Rhaenyra. After getting married and shattering their relationship, Alicent would always extend an olive branch under the cover of Viserys’ wishes, and it’s no different here as she recounts her husband’s undying love for his first wife. 

“She was the vision that sustained him,” she explains, but it’s the wording of her next comment that shows her hand: “even after she slipped from his grasp.” Viserys’ wife Aemma died, but instead of plainly evoking that imagery, Alicent speaks as if she was sent away, just out of reach but still lingering. This, pointedly, was actually Alicent’s experience with Rhaenyra, and the vision that sustained her for many years was the relationship that they shared in their childhood. Rhaenyra was the one person in her entire life who saw her as an individual, saw her as a human being rather than a ploy for the throne or a wife to provide heirs or a queen to conquer and bed; of course, Alicent would hold onto that relationship, even long after it had rotted to the core. 

And it’s these undercover confessions that define this entire exchange, that allow Alicent to move out from under the shield of queendom and wifely duties to instead center her own wants, desires, and feelings. Rhaenyra asks Alicent again why she’s come to Dragonstone, but isn’t it obvious? She has arrived to push on that purpled bruise once more, to check that it still stings all these years later, counting on that sharp reminder as a way to maintain her own convictions, lest she slip back into the comfort of virtue, duty, and shame that once governed her actions. And, hopefully, to inspire Rhaenyra to remember their shared history and heed her request. “I cast myself on the mercy of a friend who once loved me,” she sighs, resolute in her sacrifice and shameless in her feelings. 

When Rhaenyra actually smiles at her, her truest confession essentially bursts forth from her body: “Come with me.” This moment, between her own stuttered breaths and the tears that have welled up in Rhaenyra’s eyes, is the first time Alicent is allowing herself to speak plainly, to voice her own desires outside of the confines of duty and freed from the charade of Viserys’ wishes or thoughts. She is just Alicent, standing in front of a woman she once loathed, once loved (and, truthfully, still does), begging her to grant this one bit of selfishness; her single request. Even if she knows it’s a fool’s errand to ask this of Rhaenyra, Alicent is beyond shame at this moment, instead hoping that her childhood something will join her in forsaking everything they’ve each been groomed to want. It’s the ultimate act of selfishness, but isn’t she deserving of that after making the ultimate sacrifice?  

She’s not seeking absolution here, as Rhaenyra herself jabbed early in the scene. No, she’s finally here, unburdened by the starred chain that once hung around her neck like a manacle, to sink further—selfishly—into this sin. By approaching Rhaenyra in this way, Alicent is allowing herself a moment of bastardized holy deliverance. The Seven cast their eyes down upon her, but when Alicent wishes to set herself free, the only grace she seeks is Rhaenyra. After Episode 3, critic Kaiya Shunyata wrote for The Daily Beast that “Rhaenyra is a form of religion to Alicent,” that “she is just as important as prayer.” This scene undeniably confirms their interpretation by stripping Alicent of her once-fervent religious zeal, allowing her a symbolic rebirth in Episode 7, only to find herself at Rhaenyra’s doorstep when she has finally decided to take the reins of her life for herself. “A son for a son” may be a steep price to pay, but it is ultimately her toll to exit the fiery pits of self-inflicted damnation and start anew. And she pays it; a sacrifice made.  

In the heart-wrenching, agonizing moments after Rhaenyra asks Alicent to choose between the realm and her son, Otto’s warning haunts like a specter. Alicent’s worst fear—the very weed that was planted at the center of this relationship in the first place—has come true: Alicent must sacrifice one of her sons to see Rhaenyra ascend the throne. And while the choice does not come easily, as beautifully portrayed by both Cooke and D’Arcy, there was never a chance Alicent wouldn’t pick the realm, her daughter, and her freedom over the child that was manifested simply to be a pawn for her father’s twisted power grab. In her deliverance, Alicent knew that being in Rhaenyra’s presence would lead her down her desired path (“I had to see you,” she says when entering her chambers), that she would stand tall to set things right across from the one person who can understand all her wrongs. She needed the presence of the only person who’s ever seen her as she truly is—for good and ill—to hold strong in her conviction.

Shortly after, Rhaenyra warns Alicent that “history will paint [her] a villain, a cold queen grasping for power then defeated.” It’s cathartic to see Alicent, a woman forced from childhood to worm her way into houses she viewed from afar and chained to council chairs against her will, accept that she would rather just fall out of the history books—the woman whose story has repeatedly been written for her has finally reclaimed her voice by wishing to become voiceless in the maddening echo chambers of the written timeline. And in doing so, House of the Dragon brilliantly plays with the source material, challenging clued-in audiences to further question everything they read in the fictitious history book Fire and Blood, and allowing Alicent to become so much more than the vicious stepmother and power-hungry queen she was portrayed as in those pages. House of the Dragon’s Alicent is not humiliated and humbled in defeat, not some “Queen in Chains,” but rather freed and untethered from her duty, finally her own (at least, for now).  

In the final moments of the episode, as everyone marches on their orders, Alicent fortifies herself, too. As she makes her own trek through Dragonstone and out towards the water, she sheds the weight of her past onto those stone floors and stops to stare out at the wide open sea. We end, of course, with Alicent and Rhaenyra. One framed through the walls of her study, literally and metaphorically trapped into the boxes of duty and history. The other, wrapped in blue and now unencumbered, staring out at the endless possibilities that await her—no longer chained to duty, Alicent Hightower is free of her shackles. 

Anna Govert is the TV Editor of Paste Magazine. For any and all thoughts about TV, film, and her unshakable love of complicated female villains, you can follow her @annagovert.

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