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‘House of the Dragon’ Is Finally Doing Justice to Its Two Best Characters

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Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 3.For two seasons, House of the Dragon has positioned Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) as the series’ main romantic dynamic. Within the taboo context of their House, they’re made for each other: cut from the same elemental cloth, and just contradictory enough to be complementary. Yet twin flames destined to burn together can either fuse into a strengthened inferno or overpower and extinguish their closest ally. After hungrily circling each other during Season 1’s first half, when Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) was young, D’Arcy and Smith’s intense chemistry suggests their characters enjoyed a happy marriage offscreen after getting married.

However, the combined pressures of war, traumatic grief, and unresolved animosities swiftly fracture that harmony, until Daemon and Rhaenyra spend Season 2 separated by an emotional chasm as vast as their physical distance. Now, in Season 3, House of the Dragon gives us the payoff the Black Queen and her King Consort deserve as two halves of a unified whole.

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Daemon’s Actions Back Up His Vow in ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3

Rhaenyra grapples with her lingering insecurities throughout Season 2, but it’s Daemon who must be forced into a corner and psychologically shattered before he can reconcile with the vicious consequences of his impulsivity, let alone his major Achilles’ heel — how deeply he both resents his family’s judgment and craves their respect. Armed with stakes far bigger than a wounded ego or a guilty conscience, Season 3’s opening three episodes see Daemon putting his vow to serve Rhaenyra into practice.



















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Collider Exclusive · Game of Thrones Personality Quiz
Which Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To?
Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Baratheon · Tyrell

Five great houses. Five completely different answers to the same question: how do you hold power in a world that will take it from you the moment you stop paying attention? Eight questions will determine where your loyalties — and your nature — truly lie.

🐺Stark

🦁Lannister

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🐉Targaryen

🦌Baratheon

🌹Tyrell

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01

Someone powerful is acting dishonourably and everyone knows it. What do you do?
In Westeros, the answer to this question has ended more than one great house.





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02

What is the source of your power?
Every house endures because of something. What is it for yours?





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03

Who do you truly fight for?
Strip away the banners and the words. The honest answer tells you everything.





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04

How do you deal with your enemies?
A house’s method reveals its character as clearly as its words ever could.





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05

What kind of ruler do you believe in?
Westeros is full of answers to this question. Most of them end badly.





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06

You suffer a devastating loss. How does your house respond?
How a house handles defeat tells you more about it than how it handles victory.





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07

Which of these truths about Westeros do you most believe?
Every house has a philosophy. This is yours.





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08

The Iron Throne is within reach. What do you do?
The answer reveals not just your ambition — but your character.





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The Maester Has Spoken
Your House Is…

Your answers point to the great house whose words, values, and way of surviving in Westeros match your own. Bend the knee — or don’t. That’s very much up to you.

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Winterfell · The North

🐺 House Stark
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Winter is Coming — and you have always known it. You prepare not out of fear but out of duty, because the people who depend on you deserve someone who takes the long view.

  • You lead with honour even when it costs you, because you understand that a reputation built on integrity is the only one worth having.
  • Your loyalty to family and people runs deep — not as sentiment but as a code that doesn’t bend when things get difficult.
  • The North endures because Starks endure — not by being the cleverest players in the game, but by being the kind of people others are willing to follow into the cold.
  • You are that kind of person. The pack survives. The lone wolf dies. You already know which one you are.


Casterly Rock · The Westerlands

🦁 House Lannister
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You understand the game — its rules, its exceptions, and exactly when the rules become the exception. You play it without illusions and without apology.

  • You are sharper than most people realise, and you have learned to use that gap to your advantage.
  • A Lannister always pays their debts — and you always keep your word, because your word is an instrument of power, and instruments must be kept in working order.
  • You love your family with a ferocity that sometimes blinds you, and you know it, and you do it anyway.
  • The lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep. Neither, in the end, do you.


Dragonstone · The Iron Throne

🐉 House Targaryen
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You carry a sense of destiny that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore — the feeling that you are not simply participating in the world but meant to reshape it.

  • You are capable of extraordinary things, and you know it, and that knowledge is both your greatest strength and your most dangerous quality.
  • Fire and blood are not just words to you — they are a philosophy about what change requires and what it costs.
  • The Targaryens at their best were transformative rulers who broke chains and defied the limits of what anyone thought possible.
  • At your best, so are you. The dragon has three heads. You are one of them.


Storm’s End · The Stormlands

🦌 House Baratheon
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You are a force — direct, powerful, and difficult to ignore when you enter a room or a conflict. You do not negotiate with challenges. You meet them.

  • Ours is the fury — and yours is a kind of intensity that commands attention, respect, and occasionally fear from those who underestimate what’s behind it.
  • You value strength and straight dealing. You’d rather know where you stand in a fight than navigate a web of courtly whispers.
  • The Baratheons built their house on the back of one of the greatest military victories in Westerosi history — and then struggled with what came after.
  • The lesson of your house is that winning is not the end of the story. Governing is. You are learning that too.


Highgarden · The Reach

🌹 House Tyrell
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You understand that power does not always announce itself — that sometimes it arrives with flowers, good wine, and a smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.

  • Growing strong is your house’s motto, and you live it: patiently, strategically, always investing in the relationships and resources that will matter most when it counts.
  • You are charming by choice and calculating by nature — a combination that makes you one of the most effective players in any room you enter.
  • The Tyrells fed King’s Landing and shaped its politics without ever sitting on the Iron Throne — and they were arguably more powerful for it.
  • You know that the person who controls the food controls the kingdom. And you always know where the food is.

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No longer does he undermine her claim by accident or intent. With unquestionable commitment and absolute focus, he wholly supports Rhaenyra as her right hand, her loyal defender, and her obedient subject. He provides her with everything she requires — a sworn-sword, a brief laugh, a warm embrace when grief keeps her from sleeping in her father’s bedchambers — for no desire of his own, save ensuring her birthright. Daemon willingly walks in the length of her shadow, spurs her from staggering grief into decisive action, and is amply prepared to protect her until his death. And while an unconventional diplomat at best, he comprehends the political optics and hands over Otto Hightower’s (Rhys Ifans) execution — a kill the earlier Daemon would’ve seized with relish. In a rigged misogynistic game that no powerful woman can easily (if ever) win, Daemon becomes his wife’s Queenmaker.

Now, they’ll certainly continue to disagree on tactics. Their debate in Episode 3, with Rhaenyra advocating for securing King’s Landing while Daemon’s underlying predisposition for Targaryen supremacy gives him conquest eyeballs bigger than their dragons’ stomachs, proves as much. Nevertheless, they literally and figuratively move as a synchronized unit. They confer and confide, rely on and admire, make fair concessions and stand their ground with ferocious conviction. Daemon provides a stabilizing anchor and a warrior’s ruthless, countering perspective to Rhaenyra’s kinder ideals. The latter can’t survive in Westeros, no matter how much Rhaenyra resists the assertion that ruling means rescinding some of her fundamental values.

Rhaenyra and Daemon Are Their Most Unified in ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3

Of course, it’s unlikely the reunited Targaryen power couple and their ascension into their healthiest, strongest, and most towering moment in the sun will last for long. Even if they avoid collapsing into direct conflict, House of the Dragon remains an inevitable tragedy. Too many forces conspire against them: Rhaenyra’s cumulative anguish, Ormund Hightower’s (James Norton) deception, tossing accelerant onto her volcanic wrath, the truth about Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) and Sheepstealer awaiting Daemon in the Vale. If Rhaenyra develops a degree of paranoia, justified or not, then Daemon may realize that protecting his daughter runs counter to carrying out his queen’s cries for vengeance. For now, at least, they’re aligned and blazing — stronger partners than ever before.

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House of the Dragon

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Release Date

August 21, 2022

Network

HBO

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Showrunner

George R.R. Martin

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Directors

Clare Kilner, Geeta Patel

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  • Fabien Frankel

    Ser Criston Cole

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