For much of House of the Dragon, Rhaenyra Targaryen (EmmaD'Arcy) has been a woman fighting against a world determined to deny her what she believes is rightfully hers. A realm under the rule of "The Realm's Delight" would be one in which people could prosper, live in peace and continue the legacy of fairness and virtue shepherded by her father, Viserys (Paddy Considine).
At least, that was the idea.
But the final shot of Season 3 tells a very different story. After Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban) jumps from a window to her death, Rhaenyra approaches that same window, and then closes it. Helaena had been the moral heart of the series, a rare figure of kindness and compassion in a Westeroes increasingly consumed by cruelty. Faced with what that world had become, Helaena could no longer bear to look at it. Rhaenyra, meanwhile, simply chooses to shut out the warning her sister's death represents and continue down the path she has chosen.
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The episode, "The Treasons at Tumbleton", offers several characters opportunity to call out Rhaenyra for her wicked nature. Halaena calls her ugly, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) tells Halaena that the baby in her belly is a hostage for Rhaenyra to gain power, and Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antoine) tells the Queen that she abandons those who are not useful to her. It's the clearest the show has been over three seasons that even the people who wish to see Rhaenyra rule now recognize how thoroughly her pursuit of the throne has corrupted her.
Perhaps even more chilling is that Rhaenyra hears these criticisms and chooses to continue down this path anyway. She is no longer blind to what her pursuit of the Iron Throne is turning her into. She sees it, understands it and decides the crown is worth the cost.
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Some fans, including myself, have wished to see this complicated version of Rhaenyra on our screens earlier. The assuredness that she would be a competent and fit ruler has always been a character trait she's held. In Season 1, she has a conversation with Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best), a woman who knows better than most what Rhaenyra is up against. Rhaenys had seen her own chance to rule Westeros taken from her at the Great Council, where the realm chose Viserys over "The Queen Who Never Was." It was this experience that led her to warn Rhaenyra that the men of Westeros would sooner destroy the realm than see a woman sit the Iron Throne.
But Rhaenyra never accepted Rhaenys' warning. Rhaenys told Rhaenyra that once Viserys had a son, the realm would see a male heir as "the order of things." Rhaenyra's response was, "When I am Queen, I will create a new order."
The Princess believed that she could remain who she was and still become a ruler that men would bend the knee to. Season 3 has forced her to confront how naïve that belief may have been.
After finally taking King's Landing in Episode of the season, Rhaenyra turns to Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) for advice about something Alicent understands better than almost anyone: how to actually govern. For years, while Viserys' health deteriorated, Alicent helped rule in his stead. Her advice to Rhaenyra cuts directly against the young Princess who once promised Rhaenys that she would create a new order. To rule, Alicent tells her, Rhaenyra will have to become someone else.
Rhaenyra doesn't want to believe it. She will not change who she is to become who she believes she has always been destined to be. But the irony is that the pursuit of that destiny has already changed her. The harder Rhaenyra tries to prove that she can rule without compromising who she is, the less recognizable that person becomes.
This season's long arc has been about the dilemma Rhaenyra has faced regarding Tumbleton. Ormund Hightower (JamesNorton) had barricaded himself inside the city, propping up Daeron Targaryen (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. But removing that threat meant confronting a question Rhaenyra has wrestled with throughout the war: How many innocent people is she willing to sacrifice to win it?
That question gets increasingly complicated when you add dragons to the mix. Sending them into Tumbleton means accepting that the people trapped inside the city will burn alongside her enemies. Ormund makes that moral calculus even more horrifying by using children as human shields, forcing Rhaenyra to confront the human cost of unleashing her greatest weapons.
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I worried that the version of Rhaenyra we would get throughout the show would be one who refused to make these choices. Earlier in the season, when she first takes the throne, Ormund uses a network of spies and instigators to stir up unrest in King's Landing. At times, it seemed as though the message was that Rhaenyra would be a good ruler if only the men around her would let her.
My own worldview is a bit more complicated than that. It's fun to debate who should eventually sit on a throne made of swords and rule Westeros, but to actually believe yourself entitled to rule over other people requires a certain degree of ego. To believe that your judgment should supersede theirs, that your claim is worth fighting and dying for, and eventually that other people's lives are an acceptable price for your power is something darker.
Rhaenyra does face misogyny. Her claim was stolen from her. The obstacles placed in her way because she is a woman are real. But none of that inherently makes her a good ruler. And it certainly doesn't make the pursuit of absolute power virtuous.
And so, in the season finale, she chooses again and again to put her own rule above the well being of others. She sends Daemon to Tumbleton to slaughter innocent children to eliminate the threat of Ormund Hightower. She has Alyn (Abubakar Salim) kill the High Septon (Simon Chandler). And perhaps most damningly, she chooses to learn nothing from the death of Helaena.
That is what makes this version of Rhaenyra so much more compelling. The question is no longer whether she has a legitimate claim to the Iron Throne or whether Westeros has treated her unfairly. Both things can be true while Rhaenyra also becomes someone increasingly unfit to wield the power she has spent her life pursuing. Season 3 finally allows those ideas to coexist. Rhaenyra can be the victim of a deeply misogynistic system while also becoming one of its most dangerous products.
The young Rhaenyra once promised that when she became Queen, she would create a new order. Three seasons later, it seems that in order to rule, she has to participate in the same order that props up mad Kings. Children can burn. Religious leaders can die. Family members can become hostages. And when Helaena's death forces Rhaenyra to look directly at what her pursuit of power has wrought, she closes the window. Rhaenyra has finally become the complicated, frightening and deeply compelling ruler she always had the potential to be. The tragedy is that she still believes she's the Realm's Delight.
So what does Rhaenyra's transformation mean for Season 4?
As we enter into the next season of the show, it seems likely that the version of Rhaenyra from Fire & Blood is finally going to come fully into focus. In the book, her rule over King's Landing is what turns her from a beloved princess into a ruler despised by the very people she believes should embrace her. "The girl they once cheered as the Realm's Delight had grown into a grasping and vindictive woman, men said, a queen as cruel as any king before her," writes George R.R. Martin.
Now, the book is written as a historical retelling, pieced together from the accounts of maesters and other chroniclers who bring their own biases to the story. Therefore, there is a way in which you can argue that the version of events in House of the Dragon are still in line with the way the book was written, but for many, Rhaenyra was a character whose ambition was at least a priority for her desire to rule.
The show has chosen, thus far, to depict Rhaenyra as someone whose pursuit of the throne was rooted as much in duty as ambition. She believed Viserys chose her for a reason. She believed the realm would be better under her rule. And she often framed her restraint as proof that she was fundamentally different from the men around her.
But it seems that the show is linking her character far more closely to the one depicted in the books. Without getting too much into spoilers, it's safe to say that her rule does not continue to go all that smoothly. She will have to deal with the betrayer Ulf the White (Tom Bennett), the rumors that will swirl about how Halaena died and the fact that Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) is alive and has reunited with his brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell).
The Rhaenyra we will see deal with these events is likely to be less interested in proving that she is different from the rulers before her and instead resolute in casting down any potential threat to her rule. Just as importantly, the seeds of paranoia are already there. Betrayal by Ulf, uncertainty around Helaena's death and the renewed threat of Aegon and Aemond give Rhaenyra reason to see enemies everywhere. In Fire & Blood, that suspicion only deepens, pushing her toward harsher judgments and increasingly destructive decisions.
Her transformation into the bitter queen depicted in Fire & Blood now seems ready to be completed on screen. Season 3 has finally allowed Rhaenyra's ambition, resentment and belief in her own destiny to exist alongside the injustice she has suffered. Season 4 can take the next step: showing how a ruler who believes every threat is existential can begin to justify almost anything in the name of survival.
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