{"id":2622089,"date":"2026-07-01T09:53:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/house-of-the-dragon-swung-for-the-patriarchy-and-ruined-its-female-leads-instead\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T09:59:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:59:20","slug":"house-of-the-dragon-swung-for-the-patriarchy-and-ruined-its-female-leads-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/house-of-the-dragon-swung-for-the-patriarchy-and-ruined-its-female-leads-instead\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;House Of The Dragon&#8217; Ruined Its Female Leads"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhouse-of-the-dragon-swung-for-the-patriarchy-and-ruined-its-female-leads-instead%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2622089&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>&#8220;House of the Dragon&#8221; is portrayed as a feminist series by its showrunners, emphasizing stories centered around two women, Rhaenyra and Alicent, amidst a backdrop of political machinations, armies, and dragons. However, the narrative largely depicts these women as powerless pawns manipulated by male characters, which contradicts the feminist themes suggested. rhaenyra and Alicent are portrayed as flawed individuals driven by personal shortcomings like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/professor-falsely-accused-by-serial-liar-of-providing-grades-for-sex-hes-suing-school-that-broke-contract-to-investigate-him\/\" title=\"Professor Falsely Accused By Serial Liar Of Providing Grades For Sex. He\u2019s Suing School That Broke Contract To Investigate Him.\">poor judgment<\/a>, pride, and insecurity, rather than solely by sexism, challenging the showS depiction of patriarchal oppression. The series focuses heavily on male dominance, with women frequently enough failing too demonstrate strong, autonomous agency, ultimately leading to a story where the women are destined to lose in a patriarchal society.Critics argue that a more compelling story would have highlighted women&#8217;s empowerment thru influence and strategy,rather than their helplessness. The show\u2019s tendency to depict women as victims of a ruthless patriarchy and the inconsistent characterization of its female leads diminish its feminist aspirations, favoring a narrative of tragedy and powerlessness.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>House of the Dragon<\/em> is a feminist show. Don\u2019t take my word for it: showrunner Ryan Condal described the <em>Game of Thrones<\/em> prequel as \u201ca true feminist story that explores the strengths and shortcomings \u2014 warts and all \u2014 of the two women at the center of it\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2022\/tv\/news\/house-of-the-dragon-female-gaze-sex-scenes-queer-rhaenyra-1235462483\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">in an interview<\/a> with Variety. The other lead showrunner, Sara Hess, echoed that statement, saying in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=g3dkn1RR9jg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a behind-the-scenes video<\/a>, \u201cthere are armies, there are dragons, there\u2019s castle strongholds and political maneuvering, but at the end of the day, it comes down to these two women trying to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why, then, are all of the best characters men?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a contradiction that\u2019s worth examining closer because it sits at the heart of the series. The first episode of season three, which released on June 21, featured a massive battle and was generally well received. But more quietly, the beginning of that season made it clear the character rot that began in season two will continue to fester.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not wrong to say that two women, Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, are at the center of the \u201cDance of the Dragons.\u201d But what Condal and Hess have done is change a story where two women are the paramount political actors to one where they are impotent moral compasses. Olivia Cooke, who plays Alicent, told The Hollywood Reporter that she and Rhaenyra are \u201cboth surrounded by [male characters] being idiotic. And we know if all these men just f\u2014-d off, and it was just us two, the realm would be fine. It\u2019s the meddling and the peacocking and egos that completely muddy everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Creator George R.R. Martin\u2019s versions still face prejudice because they\u2019re women, but they\u2019re also driven by recognizably human flaws \u2014 anger, pride, spite, vindictiveness. If there\u2019s a feminist reading of the story, it\u2019s that they help drive history rather than merely endure it.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Powerless Women<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The problem with <em>House of the Dragon<\/em> is that it needs Rhaenyra and Alicent to be benevolent and capable, but it also needs to deliver on the fundamental premise of the show: a bitter civil war in which dragons fight dragons and the Targaryens nearly wipe themselves out. The only way to make those two things work is by making Rhaenyra and Alicent effectively powerless compared to the bloodthirsty men surrounding them, and at the mercy of a series of unlucky and unfortunate coincidences.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what the creators settled upon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, \u201cWhen shaping the first season, the showrunners realized a theme was coming into focus \u2014 one they hadn\u2019t expected: The patriarchy would rather destroy itself than see a woman on the throne.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thus, what was a <em>Game of Thrones<\/em>-esque story \u2014 family versus family, the human heart in conflict with itself \u2014 had \u201cwomen vs. patriarchy\u201d drawn on its forehead whilst in a drunken stupor on the couch. There\u2019s a significant problem, though: the show\u2019s telling is inconsistent with its own past.<\/p>\n<p>To begin with Rhaenyra, to say that opposition to her becoming queen was driven purely by sexism simply doesn\u2019t square with what we see. For starters, she fathered three obvious bastard children and purported to pass one of them off as the next heir to the throne. In order to avoid ridicule, she fled the court and left it in the hands of Alicent\u2019s faction. In other words, she displayed extremely poor judgment that made a challenge to her rule inevitable.<\/p>\n<p>This <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >poor decision-making compounds<\/a> in season two. With <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/desantis-wants-to-clear-florida-of-unauthorized-aliens-amid-biden-border-crisis\/\" title=\"DeSantis Wants To Clear Florida Of \u2018Unauthorized Aliens\u2019 Amid \u2018Biden Border Crisis\u2019\">battle lines drawn<\/a> and Alicent\u2019s son Aegon proclaimed as king, Rhaenyra dithers and refuses to commit to the unavoidable war that\u2019s now facing her faction. Her council is uncooperative and patronizing \u2014 but who could blame them? They\u2019re risking their lives for her while she \u2026 smuggles herself into King\u2019s Landing to ask Alicent for a peace she would have no ability to authorize.<\/p>\n<p>And the most frustrating thing: the show recognizes none of this. To the writers, Rhaenyra is a good leader being unfairly held back by sexism. If anything, the writers\u2019 insecurity about Rhaenyra\u2019s fitness to rule bleeds into the character. This comes to a head in the first episode of season three, where she rashly proclaims that she will fly to battle. When her son Jacaerys tells her this will be a bad idea, she flippantly says that he\u2019ll be king if she dies. She doesn\u2019t seem to understand that if she dies, many of the lords who support her won\u2019t support Jacaerys because he\u2019s a bastard \u2014 which is, again, her fault. Further, it\u2019s a complete shift from Aegon\u2019s arc from season two. To assuage his own insecurity he wants to ride into battle with his dragon, everyone tells him not to, he does it anyway, and is horribly maimed as a consequence. But when it\u2019s Rhaenyra, it\u2019s suddenly a great idea?<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Alicent\u2019s Failures<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Alicent is no better. The series creators told Cooke to portray Alicent as a \u201cwomen for Trump\u201d style character. Essentially: she\u2019s the Bill Kristol of Team Green. The show\u2019s perspective on Alicent is that she\u2019s \u201cthe good one,\u201d and that she\u2019s made a lot of mistakes but is well intentioned and fundamentally a good person. Rather than put her son on the throne because he\u2019s the first-born son and that\u2019s how things work, Alicent buys into an obvious misinterpretation of her husband\u2019s last words that\u2019s so feeble that nobody else in the story buys it. And like Kristol, the defining moment of her character is when he stabs her team in the back. In the finale of season two, she offers to surrender to Rhaenyra and let her kill her sons Aegon and Aemond. In return, she can be free and do as she pleases.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s not mince words: Alicent\u2019s son Aegon II is a bad guy, and it was incredibly irresponsible for her to push him onto the throne. And yet, he only did it because she made him. She blames herself for not raising him right and not preparing him to rule, and she\u2019s obviously extremely guilty about how he turned out \u2026 and we\u2019re supposed to believe that she\u2019s going to offer up his head on a platter? And that this is some sort of redemption for her, and not another despicable betrayal of everything she stands for? Ditto with Aemond, whom Alicent has a scene with in the premiere of season three, in which she tries to manipulate him into flying to his certain death at Harrenhal. Even Tywin Lannister, perhaps the worst parent ever, wouldn\u2019t have done that.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Other Poorly Written Women<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Other women in <em>House of the Dragon<\/em> don\u2019t fare any better. Unfortunately, there is not a single female character that\u2019s actually well-written. By contrast, several of the men are: while they\u2019re all varying degrees of bad people, Aegon, Aemond, Daemon, and even Criston Cole are all fascinating to watch and have a lot of depth. I\u2019m mostly still watching for their sakes. But for a so-called feminist series \u2026 ouch.<\/p>\n<p>Making the series into women versus patriarchy is also a bizarre choice because, spoiler alert, the women lose. If you\u2019ve seen <em>Game of Thrones<\/em>, you\u2019re aware no queen has sat the Iron Throne before. Knowing that, how do you think this show is going to end? Barring a completely off the wall change, Rhaenyra and Alicent do not get happy endings. Is the message that women are helpless victims and get crushed by the patriarchy no matter how competent they are? What sort of demotivational claptrap is that? Say what you will about the girlboss archetype, at least it aspires to something.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also a diversion from what actually worked in <em>Game of Thrones<\/em>. Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen were deeply morally flawed and yet were loved, iconic characters all the same. Even Catelyn Stark was shown to not be immune to personal vices. More importantly, <em>Game of Thrones<\/em> recognized that these were flaws, and they made her feel more human, and thus more relatable.<\/p>\n<h2>A Better Story<\/h2>\n<p>There was a better story you could have told if you really wanted to make <em>House of the Dragon <\/em>about women\u2019s empowerment. Alicent, for example, gains a large amount of power by being the mother of a future king. Consider that she\u2019s the third child of a lord\u2019s younger brother: even if women inherited on the same basis as men, she\u2019d almost certainly never be lord of anything. But by influencing her family, she wields vastly more authority than would have ever been possible elsewise. But the message of Martin\u2019s series <em>A Song of Ice and Fire<\/em> has never been \u201cpower is good, and the more power you have, the better you are.\u201d Alicent has that power in theory, but because she\u2019s more focused on power than caring for the human needs of her actual, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/report-dhs-believes-family-groups-to-form-next-phase-of-migrant-crisis-nearly-a-million-immigrants-expected\/\" title=\"Report: DHS Believes \u2018Family Groups\u2019 To Form Next Phase Of Migrant Crisis, Nearly A Million Immigrants Expected\">existing family<\/a>, she loses control of them. It\u2019s that sort of tragedy that a better version of <em>House of the Dragon<\/em> would have focused on telling. It\u2019s just not something that lends itself well to political philosophies that are obsessed with power.<\/p>\n<p>I liked the first episode of season three. But I liked it explicitly because Rhaenyra and Alicent were mostly sidelined and powerless. The world and the characters \u2014 the real characters, the ones that actually feel like people \u2014 were able to take over. But as <em>House of the Dragon<\/em> progresses, the toxic Rhaenyra-Alicent relationship looks set to poison everything else.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Stephan Kapustka is development associate at The American Spectator. A native of Glastonbury, Connecticut, he graduated from Quinnipiac University with a degree in political science. He enjoys writing about elections and culture. Follow him on X at @SteveKapustka.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>House of the Dragon claims feminism but centers men<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3600,"featured_media":2622090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/throne-1-e1782758309416.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[7375,9792,17326,4685,39943],"class_list":["post-2622089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-criticism","tag-drama","tag-fantasy","tag-gender","tag-tvshows"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/throne-1-e1782758309416.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2622089"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2622093,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622089\/revisions\/2622093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2622090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2622089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2622089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2622089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}