D'Arcy: Rhaenyra's Paranoia Deepens After Daeron Swap
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Emma D'Arcy tells Variety the Ormund deception marks the beginning of paranoia for Rhaenyra, with Ormund becoming a 'boogeyman' who fuels 'a broader distrust of her council, her allies, her court at large.'
- Rhaenyra faces her first day as queen contending with rats, a starving population, prisoners Alicent and Helaena, and an unprecedented moment — she begins menstruating unexpectedly, 'a position no king in Westeros has ever faced,' per D'Arcy.
- Daemon (Matt Smith) urges Rhaenyra to conquer more of the world with 'pure Targaryenism' passion, though D'Arcy cautions 'there are power struggles in every relationship' between the two.
- Rhaenyra feeds cooked rats to hoarding nobility at a feast, which D'Arcy calls her first 'propaganda exercise' and 'a publicity stunt' — an optics play driven by the court's lack of financial resources.
- Rhaenyra is still grieving her eldest son Jace and envisions him walking through the Red Keep; D'Arcy suggests her growing obsession with legitimizing her standing is 'quite possibly the workings of grief.'
- The Daeron imposter was played by Charlie Gordon; the real Daeron will be played by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, and Rhaenyra may now need to burn a village full of her own people to fight Ormund for him.
Why it matters: The Ormund swap reframes a single plot twist as the ignition point for Rhaenyra's character transformation — her grief over Jace and her distrust of court compound into paranoia that will shape every ruling decision going forward. D'Arcy explicitly flags ongoing power struggles with Daemon, undercutting any read that their Season 2 estrangement is fully resolved and keeping the alliance's instability in play for the arc ahead.
