"sister. daughter. infant death."

“You don’t need around you what does not need you anymore.”

[O]n the one hand, Rhaenyra is expecting to execute Aegon and preparing herself...to take a life by her own hand for the first time. [...] That already is a frightening prospect but...there is a demand as a requirement. In a way it’s political theater. But what she gets instead is her dad’s best friend, someone who watched her grow up, who knew her as a girl, and I think it’s the worst-case scenario. It completes the regression to childhood that happens when we return to the family home. The gaze of someone who probably still perceives her as a child does a lot to rob her of her power. So, I wanted to see her fear, I wanted to see her defiance, but most of all, I wanted to trouble the journey to the throne as much as possible so that by the time she gets there, she’s robbed of her triumph and is regressed to childhood.

I think [with] Alys, it’s almost as if she’s like a 12th-wave feminist or something. She is able to look at the masculine and embrace it in a complex and hopefully forward-moving way. A way to get to “the other” and reach them. I think that’s really cool whilst also getting something for herself, too.