Alicent’s Storyline Needs To Change in ‘House of the Dragon’

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 Episode 7 of House of the Dragon.

“The Red Sowing”, the seventh episode of the second season of House of the Dragon, is a pretty eventful episode of television. Sure, this season of the show isn’t as fast-paced as the previous one, in which whole years passed between one episode and the other, but there is still a lot going on. And, in “The Red Sowing”, absolutely everyone had something going for them. Well, okay, nearly everyone.

We’re talking, of course, about the queen mother, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), to whom the writers decided to give a much-needed break. Or maybe they simply did not know what to do with her anymore. Either way, Alicent didn’t do anything in “The Red Sowing” apart from going camping to blow off some steam after getting kicked out of Aemond’s (Ewan Mitchell) small council. Feeling that she might be a bad mother, as her only child, who seems to have grown up nicely, is the one that was raised away from her, she’s undergoing a proper crisis of conscience. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be much waiting for her on the other side. In the end, Alicent’s little camping trip is evidence of something bigger. When we really look at her story, it becomes clear that it has become stagnant. If all the queen mother has now is feeling bad about her kids, then, well, we feel bad about her character’s prospects.

Alicent Started ‘House of the Dragon’ as a Counterpoint to Rhaenyra

Played as a teenager by Emily Carey, Alicent Hightower was introduced in House of the Dragon as a friend and a kind of dark mirror to Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock). There were problems with how this parallel between the two characters was handled, but the show’s writing wasn’t shy about making the thread that connected the girls. Both were pawns for their fathers, albeit in very different ways. While Viserys (Paddy Considine) named his daughter heir to avoid turning over the crown to Daemon (Matt Smith), while Otto (Rhys Ifans) used Alicent to take advantage of Viserys’ grief and push his family further up in society. Rhaenyra embraced her destiny with a force of will expected of the first female queen of Westeros. Alicent, in turn, marched to her fate with resignation. Rhaenyra took many lovers and even had her fair share of bastards, and Alicent suffered through many nights with her old, diseased husband. When the time to rise to power came, Alicent claimed the throne through her son, and Rhaenyra did it for herself.

As the Dance of the Dragons developed, though, the waters separating the two continents that are Alicent and Rhaenyra became muddier and muddier. Alicent became a powerful figure in her own right, first as a regent, then as a member of Aegon’s (Tom Glynn-Carney) small council. She began an illicit relationship with Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), who was once Rhaenyra’s very own lover and servant. Over the past few episodes, she has started to question the way she brought up her children, especially now that they are soldiers in a brutal war, as well as her own view of who should be on the Iron Throne. After an illuminating conversation with Rhaenyra , Alicent now has to contend with the fact that the Aegon’s rise to the throne was not about keeping to Viserys’ final words, but a conscious choice to usurp the throne from Rhaenyra.

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There is no shortage of elements to turn Alicent into a great character in House of the Dragon. She’s a woman trying to navigate a society that sees her as inferior without actually doing anything to change it. She had her childhood taken away from her and is now trying to make up for lost time in any way she can. She raised her own children and now feels that she has done a bad job, especially in light of the fact that Aemond definitely burned Aegon on purpose to seize the throne for himself. And, yet Alicent seems to have vanished in the background. What exactly is going on there?

Alicent Lost All Her Power in ‘House of the Dragon’

It’s pretty safe to say that the problem started when Alicent lost her power in the small council. This was a long process that culminated with Aemond kicking his mother out when he took over as prince regent. What started as Alicent being ignored during meetings eventually turned to making her character feel devalued. After everything she’s sacrificed to get her son on the throne and keep him there, from marrying Viserys to making a public spectacle out of his grandson’s funeral, it feels like Alicent’s own story is now rudderless.

The problem is that Alicent has lost her power not just as a member of the small council, but as a character in House of the Dragon as well. The latest episode of the series is not the only one to show just how weak her presence has become: in Episode 6, “Smallfolk”, she did little more than accompany her daughter to the Sept and run from an angry mob. She has, of course, an inner life, and we can see that in her few scattered scenes, how she fears Aemond and pities Helaena (Phia Saban) and Aegon, but we don’t get to spend enough time with her to understand the intensity of her feelings nor properly care about them. While Alicent played as a strong foil to Rhaenyra in Season 1, right now, her character just doesn’t have enough to build on.

‘House of the Dragon’ Needs to Give Alicent Something to Do

Alicent needs to be given something to do, even if that something is just having an argument with Ser Criston or having a heart-to-heart with Helaena. Anything that reveals her inner turmoil so that it isn’t just something that we can infer from seeing her take a trip to the woods. The sad thing is that there isn’t much about Alicent to invite identification, sympathy, or hate. She’s just sort of existing, complaining to people who either don’t care about her hardships or have larger concerns to tackle.

Of course, the eighth and final episode of House of the Dragon Season 2 is fast approaching, and with it might come with something more for Alicent to do, a new purpose for her to find. If her story has simply reached its natural end and we will only see her watch as her children continue to make poor decisions after poor decisions, that would be a disservice to the character. A character that started the show as such a powerhouse, one of the series’ very own protagonists, deserves a better ending. She deserves to go out with bang not a whimper. That doesn’t mean that she has to fall to her death on dragonback, Rhaenys (Eve Best) style. It just means that Alicent deserves her own interesting story that will power through until the end. Right now, looking at Episode 7, Alicent simply feels like dead weight as she disappears against the green backdrop of the Kingswood.

House of the Dragon is streaming on Max in the U.S. New episodes come out every Sunday.

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