Warning: Full spoilers follow for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 1, “A Son for a Son.”
House of the Dragon Season 2 has finally arrived, and with it comes one of the most notorious moments in the history of Westeros: the awful event known by fans of the George R.R. Martin book series as Blood and Cheese.
In Season 2, Episode 1, Matt Smith’s Daemon hatches the plot that leads to what has been described as the “Red Wedding” of House of the Dragon. After Rhaenyra’s son Luke is killed in the Season 1 finale in a dragon chase with Alicent’s boy Aemond, Daemon seeks revenge. And so with Rhaenyra in mourning, he hires a brutal member of the City Watch – that would be Blood – and a ratcatcher – that would be Cheese – to infiltrate the Red Keep. His orders, in the TV version anyway, are to kill Aemond. But when asked by Cheese what they should do if they can’t find Aemond, Daemon simply stares back at the killer… and the camera cuts to the next scene.
Indeed, what follows is not the murder of Aemond, but of the child Prince Jaehaerys, the son of Aemond’s brother King Aegon II. I spoke to Smith, Emma D’Arcy (Rhaenyra), Olivia Cooke (Alicent), and other major members of Team Black and Team Green about this startling and brutal development.
The Cast Responds to Blood and Cheese
“I think the overriding emotional effect that that has on [Daemon] subsequently is it makes him stare into the abyss,” Smith said of the child being killed instead of Aemond. “And when a man stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back. I think ultimately it triggers something that unnerves him psychologically. I think they’re sort of umbilically connected, Rhaenyra and him, and there’s something… The absence of her screws with him.”
The members of Team Black who I spoke to agreed that Daemon’s culpability in what happened to Jaehaerys does not make them undeserving of the Iron Throne, even if they feel bad for Team Green.
“I watched it only once, but as far as I’m concerned, his instructions were pretty clear as to who he wanted dead,” said Steve Toussaint (Corlys). “It’s the incompetence of the people he sent that resulted in what happened. So no, I don’t think… Other than the fact that he just wants blood for blood. We can talk about that.”
Smith also points to the loss Team Black took recently – the death of Luke. While it was last season for us, it’s only been days for the characters.
“Are we forgetting the first strike wasn’t ours?” says Smith. “Do you know what I mean? Let’s not forget that.”
When I suggest that Luke’s death was an accident, Smith says it “doesn’t matter” and D’Arcy takes exception to the theory.
“I don’t think that’s the dominant narrative at all,” they say.
‘A Living Nightmare’
Meanwhile, over on Team Green’s side of the aisle, there’s Phia Saban, who plays Queen Helaena, the mother of Jaehaerys who is forced to choose which of her children will be killed. She says that shooting that scene was scary because she wanted to make sure she did it well.
“That’s the most obvious thing in the world, but I think I had to really try to put that aside in order to focus on the reality,” she says, while explaining that everything changes for Helaena in that moment. “I think it’s a living nightmare, genuinely. I think that there’s not so much in her world that makes her feel safe. And I think that her kids being part of that, or even just simply part of her routine, it just throws absolutely everything upside down. And she needs her mom so much. That motherhood thing that they have together, it just becomes really important what that dynamic is. It’s all about what you need – needing each other.”
Tom Glynn-Carney plays King Aegon II, and while we don’t see his character’s reaction to his son’s murder in the season premiere, the actor promises that Aegon is broken “on a cellular level.”
He adds: “The first time I read the scripts, there was an option to go one of two ways, I think. Either play as if it was a personal slight towards him, or something that has just viscerally happened on an atomic, chemical level in his body. … I think it fully damaged him to an irreversible level, which fuels the rest of the narrative.”
Cooke agrees that the Blood and Cheese story will have a huge impact not just on the Team Black versus Team Green dynamic, but also on Alicent in a variety of ways.
“She feels so responsible because she was with Cole [Fabien Frankel] and he should have been making sure that castle was like Fort Knox and instead his mind was elsewhere,” says Cooke. “And so she feels so shameful and so guilty and she’s utterly, utterly devastated. And I think she lives with that guilt. And you see how that sort of manifests in the way she then operates within the castle, and she’s on damage control massively because she knows that this is just the start of what’s to come.”
The Bonds (and Cracks) Between the Families
The stars of House of the Dragon all agree that the respective teams are still a family, albeit a unique and estranged one.
“I think they are sort of fundamentally attached,” D’Arcy says of Rhaenyra and Alicent. “I think they have an attachment as siblings do, even if love and warmer feelings are hard to identify. I don’t know. I wonder if Alicent’s become quite two-dimensional in Rhaenyra’s mind. I think there’s probably a lot of imagined conversations that take place. I think it’s actually Rhaenys who counsels her to seek a more three-dimensional picture, maybe, to re-engage her empathy.”
“Just talk to your sister!” chimes in Eve Best, who plays Rhaenys.
Meanwhile, Cooke agrees that her character still has love for her old friend “somewhere subterranean” inside her. But she also thinks they’ve grown so estranged that Rhaenyra is “sort of like a phantom to Alicent” at this point.
“They’re geographically far away from each other and also their relationship has been estranged for such a long time that she is… I mean, I think she’s become almost more powerful because they barely see each other,” says Cooke. “She’s this thing in Alicent’s mind that Alicent has given so much weight too.”
Smitth says the death of Luke is the “catalyst for everyone’s behavior” on both sides of the aisle as the season starts.
“And Daemon’s behavior is arguably, at the best of times, questionable, but I think in this instance it’s particularly questionable,” says the actor, who adds that Daemon and Rhaenyra’s relationship is deeply affected by the incident. “And I think it’s broken a sort of… What? An understanding? A trust? The fibers of the bonds have been frayed. They’re about to snap, basically.”
We’ll soon see what’s to come from House of the Dragon as Season 2 is now in full swing. Let us know in the comments what you thought of how the show adapted the Blood and Cheese story.
This story was updated on June 17, with more quotes from our interviews with the cast of the show. It was originally published on June 16, 2024.
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