House of the Dragon loves its ambiguous characters, but not this one.

In the first season of House of the Dragon, viewers fell in love with young Rhaenyra, played by Milly Alcock. Her headstrong and sometimes daring character reminded fans of Daenerys and Cersei. The main feature that many viewers noticed was Rhaenyra’s great inner freedom – a rare bonus for female characters in medieval fantasy.

Rhaenyra Was a Much More Complex Character in Season 1

Like many of George Martin ‘s characters, Rhaenyra was not perfect, at least in the first season. There was a lot of arrogance and pride in her, like when Rhaenyra said on the way to the brothel that the opinions of the smallfolk were not important. In Rhaenyra, we saw the desire to fight for her right to the throne and her fearlessness in achieving that goal.

In the first season, Rhaenyra was clearly a lot like Cersei from Game of Thrones, a character you either loved or hated because of her ambiguity and deep development. With her beauty and intrigue, Cersei got everything she wanted – we saw such a manifestation of feminine power in Rhaenyra when she seduced Criston Cole.

Once on the throne, Cersei had little regard for the needs of the people of the Seven Kingdoms – she undermined morality, didn’t care about the order of succession, and genuinely enjoyed the process of wielding her power.

However, She Completely Lost Her Grip in Season 2

However, by the end of the first season and the entire second season, the House of the Dragon writers seemed to have forgotten all the ambiguous and dark sides of the leader of the Black Party – Rhaenyra behaves insecurely and makes decisions that are too soft, as if to make the viewers empathize with her.

And the fans are unhappy with this development.

“The show is making it very obvious who we should root for. They seem allergic to complexity in women. They’re pushing this narrative that women can be put through hell but will always choose the least destructive path,” Reddit user jesterofgotham wrote.

Such character development is not only inconsistent with the original book, but also with the on-screen Rhaenyra we saw in the first season. From an arrogant, determined, and to some extent power-hungry young woman, she has become a shadow of her former self, afraid to take a bold step just to avoid losing a few points of approval from her circle.

Perhaps the subsequent tragic events of the Dance of the Dragons will harden Rhaenyra and bring her closer to the book’s image, but for now, her development causes only confusion and disappointment.