‘House of the Dragon’ Boss Explains That Alys Rivers Change

House of the Dragon Season 3 created its own answer for a long-lingering burning question from George R.R. Martin‘s Fire & Blood: the identity of Alys Rivers, the mysterious witch of Harrenhal. After Alicent (Olivia Cooke) tried to kill her son, Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) in House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 7, the finale revealed Alys’ history in a moment of connection with the Targaryen prince. Here, series co-creator Ryan Condal explains the idea behind their decision.

Alys’ identity is left ambiguous in Fire & Blood. She’s described as a wet nurse and a potential bastard of House Strong, the family that ruled Harrenhal in the time of the Dance of the Dragons. Like in Fire & Blood, Alys and Aemond become romantically connected in House of the Dragon Season 3. She has ulterior motives for ingratiating herself with the powerful Targaryen family (she first tried to create a beneficial relationship with Matt Smith‘s Daemon Targaryen), but Rankin told TV Insider that Alys’ romantic feelings for Aemond are real and coexist with her attempts to manipulate the princes for her benefit.

Alys Rivers has only been seen in Harrenhal since her House of the Dragon debut in Season 2. She wants Harrenhal for herself, and before the reveal of her true identity, it seemed like an outlandish ask of Daemon and Aemond, given her social status as an apparent servant of the ancient, crumbling stronghold. Condal told journalists in the House of the Dragon finale press conference that they created their answer for Alys’ identity when breaking the story for Season 2, knowing that the reveal would come in the third season.

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Alys, in the HBO series, is the former wife of Lord Harren, the man who was king of the Riverlands and occupied the seat of Harrenhal before the first Targaryen king, Aegon the Conqueror, conquered the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

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Aegon destroyed Harrenhal with his dragon, Balerion the Black Dread, during his original conquest of the realm, killing Lord Harren and his and Alys’ sons. Alys and one son survived, but the boy was badly burned. Alys desperately tried to save him by resorting to magic from the forest to no avail. When Alys tried to die alongside her last living child, she learned her magical efforts backfired, cursing her to live forever.

“In giving Alys, and thus Gayle Rankin, who so delightfully plays her, across these two — and coming four — seasons, the idea was [that] she’s the witch character that seems to know more than anybody else in the room. But how do we underpin that with an understandable humanity that grounds the character?” Condal said. “For sure, it’s a crazy story, but it fits into the lore of the A Song of Ice and Fire world, and we wanted to give Alys a real underlying motivation.”

Condal explained that Alys, in her wisdom, was able to recognize what Daemon and Aemond needed and knew that fulfilling those needs could help them and herself in turn. She has been the only character capable of making those violent men see the big picture of their place in the world and change accordingly. However, she couldn’t only exist to impact these men.

Theo Whiteman/HBO

“This is something we actually broke for her going all the way back to Season 2, because we knew the role that we wanted her to play in the story as this kind of guru figure for the opposite sides of the Targaryen coin, Daemon in Season 2, and then Aemond in Season 3,” Condal continued. “But what does she actually want? And what does she want from them? I think she approached Daemon in a totally different way, but with Aemond, it’s a much more intimate relationship. They’re two cursed people, feeling left alone in the world, and they bond over all of that. Alys sees what Aemond [needed] — she saw what Daemon needed, too, and gave it to him — but she saw what Aemond needed, which is a similar kind of spiritual growth, but in a much different way.”

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“It just felt like she herself, she wants Harrenhal, why?” Condal added. “She needed this underpinning. And it just felt like the best card turn that we had for her character. If you go back and look at everything that happened in the past now, it all falls into place and makes sense. It’s a very satisfying reveal.”

Rankin told us that Alys, with her magical abilities and long life, represents a woman’s instinct. “I think it’s amazing,” she said. “I feel really honored to get to do it because I think people are mad about it. They’re mad and pissed. They have a lot of thoughts about it, and they turn it into manipulation or evil or red flags or whatever people want to do with female power and intuition. Go with whomever your god is. I think it’s really cool that this show is exposing that.”

House of the Dragon, Season 4 Premiere, 2028; Seasons 1-3 Streaming on HBO Max