House Of The Dragon Is Backsliding Big Time In Season 3
Alicent deserves better.
If TV shows were measured in terabytes, House of the Dragon would demand a lot of space on your hard drive. The HBO series might have fewer threads to follow than the show it spins off from, Game of Thrones, but it nonetheless requires plenty of homework for the casual viewer. There are so many characters, betrayals, and twists to remember as the prequel moves from one season to the next — and it doesn’t help that each season is separated by two-year gaps. That mostly leaves the audience to keep tabs on the many developments in Westeros. While that focus is mostly rewarded, there are other times when House of the Dragon (rightly) assumes that we have no idea who, say, Jasper Wylde (Paul Kennedy) is — and it’s forced to reach for storytelling shorthand to remind us that A) he is bad, and B) he deserves a painful demise.
In Season 3, that shorthand takes the form of a trope that Game of Thrones zealously abused: sexual assault. And, once again, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) finds herself bearing the brunt of it.
Spoilers ahead for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2.
Don’t remember Lord Jasper? No worries, Episode 2 does the work for us.
In this week’s episode of House of the Dragon, Alicent is working hard to fulfill her promise to her childhood friend, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy). At the end of Season 2, she negotiated the surrender of King’s Landing — and, technically, the demise of her son, King Aegon II (Tom Glynn Carney) — so that Rhaenyra, the rightful queen, could claim the Iron Throne. No one else in King’s Landing has gotten the memo, and seeing as Alicent would immediately hang for treason if they did, she’d like to keep it that way. But there’s one man who suspects that the Queen Dowager is betraying Team Green so that Rhaenyra might ascend, and that’s Lord Jasper.
HotD doesn’t spare a moment to remind us of Jasper’s position at court, but he’s the Master of Laws and has a seat on Aegon’s council, so his obsession with “justice” kind of makes sense. The way he confronts Alicent about his suspicions, however, makes no sense at all. Shortly after she visits an ally in the soldiers’ barracks, Jasper enters her chambers, vaguely accuses her of treason, and promptly tries to force himself on her. He assumes that she’d be amenable to his advances because of her affair with the Commander of the Kingsguard, Criston Cole (Fabian Frankel) — though how he knows anything about that remains a mystery.
After all that went down between Alicent and Aemond last episode, Lord Jasper’s violation goes way too far.
It’s also not clear why Jasper gets the sudden urge to assault Alicent after accusing her of disloyalty. Is he trying to broker his discretion with a sexual favor? Does he believe that she forfeited her royal privileges by betraying the Crown? Neither would justify this assault in the least, but it’d go a long way in giving this jarring, mean-spirited twist the narrative weight it needs to feel like it “belongs.” It would at least make him feel like a person — a despicable person, yes, but one with actual motivations and beliefs — rather than a walking, talking reminder that women have zero autonomy in Westeros. (Trust me, we remember!)
The only other purpose this assault serves is to turn the audience against Jasper; that way, when Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) storm the castle and start mowing down dissenters, we’re happy to see his head roll. It’s a slap in the face for Alicent — who, after receiving a nonconsensual kiss from her upstart son Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) last week, has long become a lightning rod for sexual humiliation — but also for us. The series is desperate to give substance to a character that most don’t remember from Season 2, and to do it in a hurry so his demise makes an impact. And just like its predecessor, it thinks making him a rapist is the best way to do it.
It’s one humiliation after another for Alicent this season.
The audience is smart enough to draw a conclusion about Jasper without having to watch him attempt a painfully drawn-out assault. We got enough of that with eight depressing seasons of Game of Thrones. There’s a reason that the term “sexposition” is forever associated with that series: it used the act in all its forms to convey its points as quickly as possible, much to its detriment. House of the Dragon was supposed to be the breath of fresh air that challenged that norm, tackling medieval misogyny from nuanced angles. Its first season had a great handle on that, but as the Dance of Dragons progresses, the series finds itself regressing on the former front. It’s obvious that nasty men aren’t going extinct in Westeros any time soon — brutality in every form has always been baked into the fabric of this universe. But there are ways to depict the way women suffer in it without returning to the same poisoned well. House of the Dragon used to know how.
