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This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2 episode 5.
Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) has been haunted by many ghosts during his time at Harrenhal on House of the Dragon season 2. In the first half of the season, Daemon welcomed spectral visions of his two wives – the young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and the dead Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell) – into his waking and sleeping nightmares. House of the Dragon season 2 episode 5, however, introduces the strangest shade yet: his own mother, Alyssa Targaryen (Emeline Lambert).
If you’re anything like me (and I know you are because I see what you’ve all been Googling), you initially didn’t realize that the woman Daemon was making love to was his own mother. That’s because Alyssa Tagaryen actress Emeline Lambert bears a striking resemblance to King Viserys I’s first wife Aemma Targaryen née Arryn (Sian Brooke). Daemon coveting his brother’s wife is even consistent with his character as there is little he doesn’t covet.
It’s only a perusal of the credits and Alyssa’s telling lines of dialogue (“If only you’d been born first, my favorite son”) that eventually reveal this is a Freudian tryst. At first glance, Daemon’s apparent lust for his own mother appears to be just another incestuous indulgence from this already very incestuous show. After all, what’s some motherlovin’ after you’ve already married your niece? But a closer examination of the scene suggests that it’s not quite that simple. Allow us to explain.
Make no mistake: Daemon very much does hallucinate having sex with his own mother. That prurient fact cannot be denied. What’s interesting to note, however, is that this ghostly Alyssa doesn’t really resemble the real Alyssa as described by George R.R. Martin’s Targaryen prequel book Fire & Blood.
Alyssa was the fifth-born child of King Jaehaerys I and his sister-wife Alysanne. Alyssa eventually married her brother Baelon, making Daemon and Viserys the product of three consecutive generations of incest (to go along with Gods know how many generations before that). Described as having a “warrior’s heart” by Archmaester Gyldayn, Alyssa preferred to dress in boys clothing and played with swords rather than dolls. Like Viserys’ eventual wife Aemma, Alyssa would eventually die from complications shortly after giving birth to a son who also died before his first Name Day.
Right off the bat, this description of Alyssa bears little resemblance to the feminine, ethereal woman who Daemon beds in his dreams. And the dissimilarities extend even further as Alyssa was known to have distinctive features that this vision does not. The real Alyssa had heterochromia iridium (her eyes were different colors – violet and green). She also had a “crooked nose” after breaking it when she was six years old. Though Daemon’s scene with Alyssa occurs in a dark room, it is clear that this Alyssa has neither a crooked nose nor mismatched eyes.
This isn’t a case of House of the Dragon misinterpreting or changing Martin’s texts but rather Daemon bending reality to his own liking. Alyssa died when Daemon was three years old. The Targaryen Prince likely has no memory of what she actually looked like, beyond the occasional painting or drawing he saw in the Red Keep. Daemon wasn’t solely copulating with the image mother out of a twisted sexual desire, he was caressing a symbol of what he believed his mother to be. Beyond that, he was sexually asserting himself over the very concept of motherhood – which is an extremely Daemon thing to do.
The Seven Kingdoms aren’t lacking for Oedipal conflicts during the time of the Dance of the Dragons. Aemond’s (Ewan Mitchell) own interest in an older, motherly figure reveals as much. In true Daemon fashion, however, he went a step further than his cycloptic cousin by giving his mommy issues something resembling his own mommy’s face.
New episodes of House of the Dragon season 2 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
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