12 ‘House of the Dragon’ Couples, Ranked
In HBO’s House of the Dragon, romance is not the only thing in the air in Westeros.
Dragons are the primary source of sparks in the brewing battle between the members of House Targaryen in the Game of Thrones prequel series. But there is no shortage of couples who have tried to find love in the hopeless place of intergenerational warfare.
While many of those couples are related or arranged by their parents to consolidate power, some of the most misguided relationships have become the most impactful in the line of succession in the Seven Kingdoms.
With the conclusion of Season 2 on the horizon, we are charting some of the most important couples in the series and ranking them from best to Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Criston (Fabien Frankel).
We will ignore the fact that this could also be a family tree.
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12. Alicent & Criston
The situationship between Alicent and Criston is what happens when the two worst people you know get together. Forged in the aftermath of Team Green seizing the throne, Alicent’s new status as the dowager queen allowed her to consummate her long-simmering flirtation with Criston. In all honesty, this should have been a mutually beneficial alliance born from pillow talk for these two equally hot people. But it has spiraled into a match made in tragedy after Criston abandoned his Kingsguard post to roll around in Alicent’s bed while Blood and Cheese killed Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen.
Now their coupling is forever tainted by what their desire cost them. If we have to say something good about the couple, it is that Alicent finally took something for herself after spending her teens and 20s in bed with a man whose body parts were literally falling off day by day.
11. Daemon & Mysaria
In Season 1, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) was the embodiment of Daemon’s rebellious streak against his brother King Viserys (Paddy Considine). She was the woman whose arms he fled to when his big brother was mean to him, and the woman he took to occupy Dragonstone after he was cast out of King’s Landing. But when he abruptly announced that they were to be married and that she was pregnant (untrue), the man she thought would steal her away from the dangerous street life suddenly showed his only priority was himself. If anything, this relationship in time led Mysaria to establish significant power for herself as the White Worm and a place as Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) advisor.
10. Aegon & Helaena
Brother and sister. Husband and wife. Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Helaena (Phia Saban) never had a chance at forging their own path in life. Forced into an arranged marriage to horde power within the family, they could not be more different. Sweet Helaena is sensitive, perceptive and the best bug watcher in the Seven Kingdoms. Aegon is indulgent, easy to fly off the handle, and has been building a reputation of sexual aggression. They are barely a couple, if only in marriage bonds and offsprings. They showed just how disconnected they were in the immediate aftermath of their son Jaehaerys’ death, when he walked past her with nothing to offer her broken heart.
9. Rhaenyra & Criston
One of the show’s many instances of age-inappropriate relationships is the closest thing Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) had to a rebellious romance in her youth. When she wasn’t preoccupied with the allure of her Uncle Daemon (Matt Smith), Rhaenyra managed to find intimacy and temporary safety with her own hand-picked Kingsguard royal protector. While she viewed their affair as a distraction, he started seeing two-point-five kids and a white picket fence in their future, and even asked her to run away with him. When she famously spurned him, it set him down a path of simmering hatred for Rhaenyra that he’s fed by leading the charge against her claim as the King’s Hand under Aegon. So yeah, they didn’t make it.
8. Alicent & Viserys
The second marriage for King Viserys was doomed from the start, even though it started from a place of gentle friendship. Alicent (Emily Carey) was instructed by her opportunistic father Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) to worm her way into the life of the grieving king, even though he was the father of her best friend. She did it, at least initially, simply by showing him some kindness and attention. (Remember when this show had multiple conversations around his model of King’s Landing?)
It was a quiet start for a couple that would become strained by bigger issues in time — his dire health concerns, their troubled children, and the little issue of succession. Their ill-fated union was punctuated by a fateful misunderstanding in his final minutes that, under less fraught circumstances, might have been dismissed as the frail mind of a dying man. But here, it plunged the realm and their family into war.
7. Rhaenyra & Laenor
In the end, it was pretty incredible just how well Rhaenyra and Laenor (John MacMillan) worked, considering the arranged nature of their union and their, let’s call it, similar interests. As partners, they worked well, giving each other the space they needed to find satisfaction and love in the ways they couldn’t offer each other. She had Harwin Strong (Ryan Corr), and he had Qarl Correy (Arty Froushan). But understandably, a relationship built for the benefit of others was always going to have its limitations. Rhaenyra’s risky parentage of children with Harwin put a strain on Laenor to defend a marriage he had increasingly less stake in. It also drove him into the arms of the man he loved more and more. In a story of self-serving people, it was a tremendous show of love that Rhaenyra helped fake Laenor’s death so he could live his true life — and she could marry her uncle.
6. Rhaenyra & Mysaria
The most unexpected couple of Season 2 is also one of the most welcome surprises, especially since it was never mentioned in George R. R. Martin’s books. In the absence of a pouting Daemon, his ex-paramour Mysaria and current estranged wife Rhaenyra have found comfort in their shared membership in the “Survivors of Daemon’s Ego Support Group.” While Rhaenyra is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, she lives an increasingly isolated existence at Dragonstone, waiting for news of those waging war in her honor.
Mysaria’s slow ascent from political prisoner to confidant and companion gives Rhaenyra the type of intimate sounding board that she’s never had. While the true extent of this relationship is not yet known, even if it is just a momentary harbor for Rhaenyra in this stormy sea, it could prove to be among the most fruitful couplings on the show.
5. Rhaenyra & Daemon
Sure, House of the Dragon is about House Targaryen cannibalizing its own legacy and power, but Rhaenyra and Daemon’s love story has always been at the center. Nothing about these two should work. In fact, in our reality, it is legally forbidden to work. But thanks to D’Arcy and Alcock’s chemistry with Smith, there was an undeniable charge between the two from the beginning. He instilled an ambition in her that’s helped fuel her tireless fight to reclaim the throne today. Their partnership should be formidable, considering how long they orbited each other before consummating their love. And to be honest, they are one of the few couples on this show who can actually say they chose each other. That being said, what made them so attracted to each other in the first place is what is tearing them apart now.
Season 2 has proven that Daemon is not ready to relinquish his belief that he is the rightful heir to the throne, even as he supposedly fights to shore up support for Rhaenyra’s claim to it. Can they survive intermarriage fighting for the pointy chair? Only time will tell. But it may all be for nigh because if one more person at Harrenhal calls him the King Consort, he might just burn the entire kingdom down.
4. Daemon & Laena
Rhaenyra may be the great and complicated love of Daemon’s life, but Laena (Nanna Blondell) was the steadiest woman who ever stood by his side. Ironically, the pair first shared a connection when they danced at Rhaenyra’s wedding to Laena’s brother. They eventually wed and welcomed two daughters, Baela and Rhaena. Laena’s tragic and premature death while carrying their third child ended what was a rather amenable partnership. Unfortunately, it likely never would have worked out in the long run for one reason — she wasn’t Rhaenyra.
4. Rhaenyra & Harwin
So much of Rhaenyra and Harwin Strong’s relationship happened in the blindspot of the 10-year time jump in the heart of Season 1, so audiences didn’t get to see its early years or lighter moments. Nor did we get to see what made it worth risking everything for, not only to be together in secret but to produce three strikingly brunette sons.
It seemed to have been an open secret that Rhaenyra and Harwin were together, but the controversy of their romance has long since overshadowed what seemed to have been a loving and formative relationship cut short by his own brother Larys (Matthew Needham) burning him alive. It lives on now in parentage rumors about Jace (Harry Collett), Luke, and Joffrey, and in the infamous family spat when such rumors cost Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) his eye and the Targaryens any hope for peace.
2. Corlys & Rhaenys
The sturdy love between Rhaenys (Eve Best), the Queen Who Never Was, and Corlys (Steve Toussaint), the Lord of the Tides, remains an enduring pillar of support even after one of them is gone. When they disagreed, there was a respect that grounded them and carried them through more than a few challenging tides — the death of their daughter Laena, Corlys’ near-death in the Stepstones, Rhaenys’ commitment to Rhaenyra’s cause. But the first real fracture in their relationship came in the moments before her death in Season 2, when Rhaenys confronted him about his extramarital dalliances and the two sons that sprung from them. The unfinished conversation lingers like a cloud over their story, but it doesn’t darken the otherwise beautiful love they shared.
1. Jace & Baela
The youngest couple on this list is also the healthiest pairing, and it’s not even close. While Jace and Baela (Bethany Antonia) were yet another arranged coupling to strengthen the bond between Houses Targaryen and Velyaron, the two teenage dragonriders have come to count on each other for moral support, including strategic council and battling the everyday angst of being a kid whose parents and siblings are dropping like dragons from the sky.
In many cases, Jace and Baela have proven they can truly be themselves with each other – Baela talking about her estranged father, and Jace mourning the loss of his brother. In the long run, that kind of bond is something you can’t buy in the Seven Kingdoms, and it is something worth fighting for. But it is also one that the cruelty of this world has proven it will likely try and snuff out.
Matt Smith
Emma D'Arcy
Rhys Ifans
Steve Toussaint
Eve Best
Sonoya Mizuno
Fabien Frankel
Olivia Cooke
Phoebe Campbell
Ewan Mitchell
Tom Glynn-Carney
Harry Collett
Bethany Antonia
Phia Saban
Jefferson Hall
Matthew Needham
Abubakar Salim
Freddie Fox
Simon Russell Beale
Kieran Bew
Gayle Rankin
Clinton Liberty
Jamie Kenna
Tom Bennett
Tom Taylor
Vincent Regan
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