House of the Dragon Season 3 Pushes Its Creepiest Storyline Even Further

Westeros has never exactly been a model of well-adjusted family dynamics, but House of the Dragon is working overtime this year, shovelling bucketloads of parental misery right in our faces. This is a show utterly obsessed with mummy and daddy issues – but even in a kingdom as tangled as the Targaryens’, you’d expect some limits. Safe to say, this series has briskly stepped over those lines, especially when it comes to what’s happening between Aemond Targaryen and his mother, Alicent Hightower. If you’ve found the latest scenes deeply uncomfortable, you’re far from alone.

The Crossing of Lines – Aemond & Alicent in Season 3

By the time we reach Season 3, we’ve already had two moments where Aemond crosses all kinds of lines with his own mother. First, the premiere: Alicent is back at the Red Keep after her trip to Dragonstone (where she’s struck a deal with Rhaenyra for control of King’s Landing). She tries a bit of gentle persuasion to get Aemond to fly out and take Harrenhal. Instead of simply taking the hint, Aemond takes her words as some sort of covert flirting. He snogs her. It is, frankly, stomach-churning.

But it’s not even the worst. Jump to Episode 7: Alicent arrives at Harrenhal, where Aemond is engaged in one of those ‘look at my shirtless swordplay’ moments. She calls him her ‘special boy’ (not a phrase you want to hear, given current events), and this time – you guessed it – they kiss again. But now, Alicent actually goes along with it, and things get physical. The punchline: this is all in Aemond’s head. The sex doesn’t really happen; it’s technically Alys Rivers in the scene, not Alicent. A direct mirror, by the way, to that bizarre Daemon Targaryen hallucination with his own late mother back in Season 2. There’s something in the water with Targaryen sons and their mums, apparently.

In Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin never goes anywhere near this sort of relationship between Aemond and Alicent. The whole ‘son fancying his own mother’ angle? That is pure TV invention.

Meanwhile, Alicent Gets Nothing

If you’re hoping there’s more for Alicent to do than be a prop in her own story, think again. With this series, timelines and agency are for the birds; she’s simply moved from character to character, occasionally shuffled around to amplify their emotional breakdowns but never given any power herself. The real injustice, though, is how badly her storyline fares compared to the books: Martin’s version barely shows us anything about how she relates to her children, aside from pushing for Aegon to take the throne and defending Aemond after the infamous eye incident. No Oedipal subplot, no hallucinated or literal mother-son action – absolutely none of this nonsense.

Instead, the series keeps throwing her into increasingly grim scenarios. We’ve watched her forced into marriage with Viserys as a teenager (thanks for that, Otto Hightower – who saw her as nothing more than a political pawn). There’s the infamous scene with Larys Strong and her bare feet. And in Season 3, Episode 2, she’s assaulted by Jasper Wylde, because apparently someone in the writer’s room thinks you can’t tell a woman’s story without repeated trauma. It’s getting absurd: you could strip out every Aemond/Alicent incest hallucination, and nothing fundamental would actually change in the show’s plot. Her abuse doesn’t drive the story or offer new perspectives – it’s just more punishment for her and the audience alike.

• House of the Dragon takes place roughly 172 years before Game of Thrones, charting the Targaryen dynasty’s bloody rise.
• The main cast: Milly Alcock and Emily Carey originally played Rhaenyra and Alicent, replaced later by Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke as the older versions.
• Matt Smith appears as Prince Daemon Targaryen; Paddy Considine played King Viserys Targaryen in Season 1.