HouseofthePigeon

I think both conclusions fall short.

I never expected HotD to give Rhaenyra and Alicent a happy ending - this is simply the wrong story for that. Sure, maybe along the way I let myself get carried away a little by various interviews, promo shoots, and certain moments in the show, allowing myself to hope for something more… But my original hope for these two women was always smaller, and far more tragic: That eventually, when almost everything has been lost, there will be a moment in which they finally acknowledge what they have meant to each other.

I admit - Season 3, and especially its ending, has shaken that hope. With both women together in King’s Landing, the chances for some kind of reconciliation had never seemed greater. And there were moments that gave us reason to hope. And then? Alicent wants nothing more than to escape. Rhaenyra completes her transformation into Rhaenyra the Cruel, sends Alicent off to kill Aemond regardless of the danger and with a certain cruelty of her own - and then Helaena dies while under Rhaenyra’s protection. Emma D’Arcy said in an interview that this moment marks the end of any relationship between Rhaenyra and Alicent.

And I don’t want to be delusional about it. But there is an important distinction: The end of their relationship (and honestly, what kind of relationship even was it…?) is not automatically the end of their story.

I remain convinced that Rhaenicent still needs a point of resolution - and that Season 4 will give us one. Not because I ship Rhaenicent… But because House of the Dragon itself has been building this narrative arc from the beginning.

The series began with Alicent and Rhaenyra. Two girls whose relationship was imbued from the very start with an emotional intimacy that went far beyond their friendship merely serving as a foundation for the civil war to come. Ever since, the show has repeatedly intertwined their stories. They mirror each other. They are juxtaposed through parallel editing. They seek each other out across political and physical divides, and even when they are completely separated in space, the narrative continues to connect them.

They have repeatedly been described as the emotional heart of this story. And remarkably, the show does not abandon that structure even now. After a season in which their relationship has been damaged perhaps more severely than ever before, the story does not simply end with Rhaenyra. Or with Alicent. Once again, it ends with both of them. The finale places them side by side in its closing montage. Even now, at the lowest point their story has ever reached, the narrative refuses to sever the connection between these two women.

Perhaps their relationship as we knew it really is over. Perhaps Rhaenyra has destroyed something Alicent can never forgive. But the end of a relationship is not automatically the end of its narrative arc. Because there is one question HotD has never conclusively answered:

What, exactly, were Alicent and Rhaenyra to each other?

For three seasons, they have gone to remarkable lengths to avoid having to answer that exact question. They talk about Viserys. About Otto. About Daemon. About their children. About duty and war and peace and the realm. Even when they try to communicate something personal to each other, they often take the detour through someone else. “Your father wanted…” and “My father believed…” We see it again this season, when Rhaenyra says of her council: “To them you are the enemy!” And Alicent asks: “And to you?”

An astonishingly direct question - to which Rhaenyra has no direct answer.

Almost everything between them is expressed through proxies. And yet, the show gives them away again and again. Through glances, silences, and subtle touches. Through the way the camera lingers on them. Through the fact that these two women keep turning away from each other - only for the story to keep turning them back toward one another.

There have already been more than enough moments that could have marked their definitive end. So many points of no return… So many ruptures, cruelties, and deaths. And perhaps Helaena truly is the point at which any hope of reconciliation dies.

But even then, something is still missing:

An acknowledgement of what they mean to each other. Of how deeply their lives are intertwined and how profoundly they have shaped one another. An acknowledgement that beneath all the fathers, children, husbands, crowns, and wars, there is still the memory of two girls who once believed their lives could turn out entirely differently. Those girls are not merely backstory… They are the measure of the tragedy.

That is why I cannot believe that the final statement on Alicent and Rhaenyra will simply be hatred or indifference. Not because the show owes us some form of romantic Rhaenicent endgame… Honestly, it does not owe us any particular ship endgame at all.

But it does owe the story it chose to begin a conclusion.

Perhaps that conclusion will consist of nothing more than a conversation. Perhaps a memory. Perhaps even just a look carrying everything they have been unable to say to each other all these years. It is entirely possible that they will never find the right words and that we’ll all spend the final season yelling at our screens, “JUST TELL HER YOU LOVE HER ALREADY!!!” Maybe that will never happen.

But one thing feels certain to me: Before this story ends, the narrative arc between Alicent and Rhaenyra needs to be brought to a close. And to me, that means that at some point, finally, Alicent and Rhaenyra will stop talking about everyone else - and truly look at each other.

Not as queens, mothers, wives, or daughters, or any of the other roles that have been imposed upon them. And not as Black and Green.

But as Rhaenyra and Alicent.

Perhaps that recognition will come far too late. But after all these years, after so much has remained unspoken between them, simply acknowledging what they were - and still are - to each other would be a form of resolution in itself.