Posted in: Game Of Thrones, HBO, TV | Tagged: Elliot Tittensor, Emma D’Arcy, Fabian Frankel, game of thrones, HBO, house of the dragon, Luke Tittensor, matt smith, ryan condal

House of the Dragon: Condal on Rhaenyra/Daemon Tension, Twins Battle

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal breaks down the Cargyll twins' tragic fight to the death, Rhaenyra/Daemon tension, and more.

Parsing through the fallout of HBO's House of the Dragon season two premiere episode "A Son for a Son," the follow-up episode ramps up the tension in "Rhaenyra the Cruel," particularly among the closest of relatives, putting brother against brother and uncle against niece. Showrunner Ryan Condal spoke to Variety about the assassination plot and potential dissension among the ranks. The following contains major spoilers.

House of the Dragon: Assassination Plot and Trouble in Rhaenyra's Camp

In a plot devised by Ser Criston Cole (Fabian Frankel) for King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), still furious over his son's murder in the previous episode, he sends Ser Arryk Cargyll (Luke Tittensor) to assassinate Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) for revenge. Foiling the plans was Arryk's twin, Erryk Cargyll (Elliott Tittensor), who fights his brother to the death. Despite his success, Erryk is grief-stricken and takes his own life, falling on his broken sword.

"We obviously spent a lot of time debating how that fight would play out. It's very different the way all the disagreeing narrators lay out that particular historical event in the book. So we're just trying to find one that felt true to the two characters. These are two guys that have sworn an oath and their lives over to protect the royal family. And as Erryk says to Daemon in the first episode of the season, 'We don't know what to do with this oath, because we swore to protect the royal family, and now they've turned against each other, and what were we to do?'

Condal continued, "It's this tragic story of two brothers finding themselves on different sides of a conflict, in a way, a great archetype that goes back to the American Civil War and Westerns and Arthurian tales. To try to see out his oath, Arryk sails to Dragonstone to try to masquerade as his brother and, infiltrates the castle and gets very close to the queen, but thankfully, Erryk intervenes. We wanted this really emotional conflict between these two brothers that deeply love each other but have found themselves as mortal enemies because of the nature of the political system they've committed themselves to. It was shot over multiple days, wonderfully choreographed, and Luke and Elliott Tittensor performed that and were in every shot of that sequence. They learned the fight, and they executed the hell out of it."

Another event that plays out is the fight between Rhaenyra and Daemon (Matt Smith) over what transpired with Jaeharys' murder, the delicate nature of public opinion, and Daemon's motivations, resulting in him storming out. "I think the end of Season 1 [the fight] is a much more sudden and visceral outbreak of emotion, whereas that great scene in Episode 2 is a full exploration of the core nature of their relationship. It's this fact that their relationship has been built on deceit and mistrust through all history and time. It's just the nature of who Daemon is," Condal explained.

"Rhaenyra desperately wants to have this intimate connection where she is very close to him and can trust him. But then she finds again and again that he doesn't open himself enough or make himself accessible enough to be trusted. She really struggles with that. It's the same frustration that Viserys always had about Daemon, that you can let him in only so far, and then he lets people down because of the impulsiveness of his decision-making. The big lingering questions coming out of that scene is, where does Daemon go? Where do his allegiances lie, and what's going to happen to this marriage? The remainder of the season is very much a study of Daemon and Rhaenyra's marriage," he added.

For more, you can check out the complete interview. House of the Dragon airs on Sundays on HBO and streams on Max.

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