A lot of House of the Dragon fans are invested in the relationship between Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, and between the actors who play them. Actor Emma D’Arcy weighs in:
Fresh off a Golden Globe nomination for playing Rhaenyra Targaryen on the second season of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon, actor Emma D'Arcy hopped on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to discuss their career. That included talking about some of their House of the Dragon costars. When the first season of House of the Dragon aired in 2022, D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) went viral just for talking about their favorite drinks. The pair of them have become internet darlings, and it sounds like their real-life relationship is just as close as fans would like to believe.
“I feel like a slight scratch record because I do just love her and I loved her immediately," D'Arcy said. "We met , they had us over for dinner when we were both cast and it was the first time that me and Olivia met. And I sort of clung to her I think, some sort of lichen…I sort of recognized her and I think maybe she felt the same, and it didn't take long to have like a deep sort of shared understanding of her, of each other."
On House of the Dragon, Rhaenyra and Alicent have a complicated relationship with each other. That's led to many fans "shipping" the two of them, which is to say, imagining scenarios where they're together whether or not there's anything explicit in the text to suggest that. Authors on fanfiction site Archive of Our Own have written thousands of fanfics about Rhaenyra and Alicent's relationship. There are even a couple of fics about D'Arcy and Cooke.
The ethics of writing stories about real-life people has been debated, but D'Arcy sounds like they're taking it in stride. Happy Sad Confused host Josh Horowitz asked them how they feel about all this interest from shippers: “I feel that it's not for me and Liv," D'Arcy said. "I appreciate its existence. I leave it well alone. We're respectful neighbors, and that feels like the sort of appropriate way to relate to that stuff. That said, I love the sort of creativity that comes with a fan base like that of Thrones and House of the Dragon. There's so much production going on peripheral to the show itself…I would like to have been part of something like that as a younger person."
I can imagine how it might feel kind of weird to have people make up stories about your personal life and share them online, but I think D'Arcy has the right attitude here; shippers and fanfic writers do what they do out of passion for the work you've put out, which is flattering. If there are lots of fics about your show being written, it's a sign that it's emotionally resonating with people and that's not something to reject. At the same time, I think it's reasonable and healthy for D'Arcy to not want to engage deeply with that part of the fandom. Being a "respectful neighbor" is a good approach.
Both D'Arcy and Cooke will return as Rhaenyra and Alicent when the third season of House of the Dragon premieres on HBO and Max sometime in 2026.
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