Milly Alcock and Emily Carey in House of the Dragon (HBO)

Milly Alcock has added fresh fuel to long-running fan speculation about the relationship between Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, suggesting that she and co-star Emily Carey often discussed a possible romantic undercurrent between their characters while filming House of the Dragon.

Appearing on Brittany Broski’s Royal Court on 26 June, Alcock was asked whether she viewed the pair as “the original Heated Rivalry”.

She responded enthusiastically, calling the idea “a take” she could get behind before agreeing that there was “something going on” between the two women in the Red Keep.

Alcock went on to say that she and Carey had actively talked about the dynamic on set, implying they both read the characters’ early relationship as charged with more than political tension.

“We were like ‘Something is going on. Something is going on in the Red Keep,’” she recalled.

The conversation quickly leaned into humour, with Alcock not dismissing the idea that there was a distinctly sapphic energy to their scenes, and Broski joking that there were “sapphic smells” in the environment of the Red Keep.

While House of the Dragon has never explicitly framed Rhaenyra and Alicent’s relationship as romantic, Rhaenyra’s bisexuality is explicitly confirmed in Season 2, Episode 6 of the show.

Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, who portray the older versions of the two characters, have also described an unspoken romantic connection between Rhaenyra and Alicent, with D’Arcy saying in a 2022 interview with The New York Times: “That sort of erotic energy is very present in their early relationship.”

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