As House of the Dragon Season 2, episode 6 made clear, Harrenhal healer/witch Alys Rivers (Gayle Ranking) is not a character you want to cross.
She’s already been exerting her power over Daemon (Matt Smith) with some impressive mind games, shortly before lending him her help by (probably) killing off Lord Tully — but did episode 6 reveal another character she may already have exerted her influence over?
Who else might Alys Rivers have influenced?
It’s clear that poisoning Lord Tully, and messing with Daemon, isn’t Alys Rivers’ first rodeo. We don’t know exactly how long she’s been hanging around Harrenhal, but her actions make it clear that she’s no novice. So, which other key characters do we know that have likely crossed paths with her before?
Well, the family that resides in Harrenhal – and has done since the start of House of the Dragon – is the Strong family. Aside from the ever-amusing Castellan Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale), the only other key surviving Strong is Master of Whispers at the Red Keep, Larys (Matthew Needham).
Although Larys has never spoken of Alys Rivers, he does briefly touch on his childhood at Harrenhal for the first time in episode 6 — and he says something that could be more than a simple coincidence.
What did Larys Strong say to Aegon?
Larys Strong visits Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) at his bedside in episode 6, and shares a rare, vulnerable moment.
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“I came screaming into the world in the bowels of one of Harrenhal’s great towers,” Strong tells Aegon, who is awake but very badly (probably permanently) injured. “My lungs were strong, but my foot was so twisted that my father named it sorcery. Accusing a member of our household of casting maligned spells.”
Larys opens up to Aegon.
Credit: Theo Whiteman/HBO
Larys has club foot, a real condition that the NHS says currently affects one baby in every thousand born in the UK. Per the NHS, “in most cases the cause of club foot is not known. There may be a genetic link, as it can run in families.” In real life, there is, of course, no connection whatsoever between the condition and sorcery.
In the context of House of the Dragon, though, Strong’s talk of sorcery and maligned spells is difficult to ignore when juxtaposed with the actions of Alys Rivers — the same Alys Rivers who would likely have been at Harrenhal when he was a child.
We know Alys is a powerful character capable of changing history — she’s already shown us that. Is it possible that she also influenced a young Larys? Even if she didn’t directly use magic, maybe she got in his head in the same way she’s currently getting into Daemon’s, planting the seeds that eventually lead to him murdering his own brother and father in an arson attack on the castle.
It’s difficult to know what her motivation for this might have been, but it’s impossible to ignore that Larys’ actions have directly led to the current state of Harrenhal, and Alys’ meetings there with Daemon.
Is it possible she’s already had a larger impact on this story than any of us have realised?
New episodes of House of the Dragon air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.
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House of the Dragon
