In the Flesh: House of the Dragon S1E08: The Lord of the Tides (Patreon)

It’s interesting to note how much of ‘Driftmark’, House of the Dragon’s eighth episode, revolves around the twin axes of mistaken identity and willful self-deception. From the destruction of the fragile rapprochement between Rhaenyra and Alicent by Viserys’s poppy-addled deathbed ramblings to the matter of Jace and Luc’s bastardy coming to, ahem, a head during the hearings to determine the next Lord of the Tides, truth and lies are two edges to the same lethal blade. The dying Viserys is king, but his will is openly ignored by his queen and hand. Luc is heir to Driftmark, but other claims are entertained in the Red Keep itself. At dinner, Aemond sits with his missing eye facing his nephews, at once a reminder of their offense against him and a refusal to see the kind and generous young men now grown and seated before him. It’s a delicate line to walk, relying on the power of commonly held truths without proclaiming your own belief, but if we’ve learned anything from our time in Westeros it’s that power is often about manufacturing your own “truth”.

The confidence House of the Dragon has shown in taking time to build toward its more shocking spectacles and moments of explosive violence pays off in spades in this slow, melancholic installment. Images like the neglected model of Old Valyria draped in dusty cobwebs hammer home just how much time has passed since we met Rhaenyra as a fiery young girl. Now she has a loving husband, adoring children — things to lose, in other words. At her dying father’s bedside she weeps over the burden he’s given her by naming her his heir, a tragic reminder that virtually every participant in this escalating conflict was press-ganged into it at birth. The episode’s one flicker of hope, as Alicent and Rhaenyra seem to remember their childhood closeness for a moment after an emotionally charged family dinner, is over nearly as soon as it’s begun, smothered by a complicated moment in which the dying Viserys tells Alicent about the prophecy of Aegon’s dream, mistaking her for Rhaenyra — whose second youngest child shares a name with Alicent’s eldest.

What goes through Alicent’s head as she sits listening to her husband’s dying words? It’s a complicated moment, and the show trusts the viewer to parse ambiguous signals and make connections to previous conversations. Olivia Cooke plays the scene with a dead-eyed, almost dissociative affect, as though the mere possibility that what she’s just heard relates to her son consigns her immediately to the familiar path of joyless, repressed compliance with the will of the men around her. Yet to believe it, she would have to reconcile not only the clear fact that Viserys has mistaken her for someone else but his encroaching senility and drugged state as well. Is a man who clung stubbornly to his one controversial decree for the entire length of his reign going to offhandedly mumble that he’s changed his mind for a reason he’s known his whole life? It’s a self-deception, then, but in Alicent’s world the truth is a dangerous thing, sharp and slippery and painful. Easier to flinch back into the familiar twilight depression of the life you’ve already sacrificed all your joy, all your chances at joy with a woman you loved and want to love again, to build.