House of the Dragon‘s third season began with victory for Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy)… but not satisfaction.
After being usurped by her stepbrother Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) despite being the rightful heir of their kingly father, Rhaenyra finally took the Iron Throne. Unfortunately for her, King’s Landing didn’t exactly fall in line. Mysterious attackers preyed on her City Watch, and the High Septon of the Faith (Simon Chandler) refused to anoint her as the worthy queen. In Sunday’s season finale, Rhaenyra finally set out to do something about that.
When it came time to storm the Sept and confront the High Septon face-to-face, Rhaenyra needed to look the part. So she busted out an outfit unlike any we’ve seen her wear before, an intricate black-and-red armor infused with dragon characteristics. For House of the Dragon‘s Emmy-nominated costume designer Caroline McCall, this incredible costume represents the culmination of Rhaenyra’s season-long journey.
“From Episode 1 of this season, when she rips apart her dress, that’s meant to be the shredding of the version of Rhaenyra that wears queenly raiments and embroidered dresses,” McCall tells Gold Derby. “She’s since moved into a more masculine idea. She’s got this position, but the reason that she hasn’t had it before is because of her sex, so she’s made a conscious choice to not wear dresses anymore and fine feminine details. So all of the decoration in her costumes now is either leatherwork embroidery or more armored pieces, metal jewelry, and metal epaulets.”
Let’s not forget that Rhaenyra’s conquest of King’s Landing came shortly after the death of her son and heir Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett), and she’s been in mourning all season even as she’s trying to assert her political power. Those feelings were captured via costume in Episode 7, when Rhaenyra put on a bright-red riding outfit to mount her dragon Syrax and pursue the person she thought killed Jace.
“When she goes out in her dragon-riding leathers, that color is a symbol of her rage,” McCall says. “But she also has this inner strength, and there’s a lot of strength to that particular look and the weight of the leather. She’s looking very strong in that situation. Then her rage reaches its peak in Episode 8, when she’s going to take on the church.”
To create Rhaenyra’s epic finale look, McCall drew on real-world history as well as the history of Westeros and, of course, the look of a dragon.
“We wanted her to have a Joan of Arc feeling to her, and also inspired by Visenya Targaryen,” McCall says, referencing Aegon the Conqueror’s sister-wife who was the original rider of the great dragon Vhagar.
“My interpretation of dragon armor is to make it feel as articulated as possible, so that a dragonrider feels like they would completely move with their dragon,” continues McCall, who previously won an Emmy in 2011 for her work on Downton Abbey. “So we wanted to create this coat of plates as Rhaenyra’s armor that would make her really strong in the shoulders, and then she’s got dragonglass as an element within it. Hopefully it should be a really striking image.”
Rhaenyra spent most of this season thinking that her rival Aegon was dead, but learns in the finale that he has survived after all. That motivates her to finally bring the Faith in line. But while Rhaenyra is rocking this striking outfit, Aegon is still clothed in rags. So is Rhaena Velaryon (Phoebe Campbell), the woman who Rhaenyra believes responsible for Jace’s death and who thus had to spend the season hiding in caves with her wild dragon Sheepstealer.
“I didn’t know, when I put them in those outfits at the end of Season 2, that they would then wear them for all of Season 3,” McCall says with a laugh. “I didn’t know that Aegon would never get an opportunity to change, that he would still have to work with that. But I love his costume and that hooded cape thing, and we broke it all down more as the season went on. But it also meant it was something that he had to then use as an actor, because it would fall and he would have to flip it up and that sort of thing.
“With Rhaena, we started off with that costume and I did drawings about what would you do if that was the only clothes you had?” the costume designer continues. “We ripped a lot of her hem off, which then could be her disguise. Then she gets some sheepskin, what would she do with that? We did it as practical fashion, to make it authentic to what she was experiencing, taking what she was wearing and adding sheepskin and rope and things she could find.”
While Aegon was in hiding, Rhaenyra’s main opponent for Season 3 has been Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton). Where Rhaenyra and Aegon have dragons, Ormund’s power comes from his family’s immense wealth as the rulers of the great city of Oldtown. Ormund doesn’t miss the chance to flaunt that wealth via his clothes — both his casual dinner wear, and the armor he dons in the season finale for the Battle of Tumbleton.
“He’s pretty immaculate, and he’s all about acting like the self-proclaimed Defender of the Faith,” McCall says. “So his armor is adorned with images of the Faith of the Seven. And then his gambison, what he’s wearing at dinner, is all covered in the seven-pointed star. He’s very much about appearance, that he should present himself as a lord and a man of great importance.”
And yet, clothes can only get you so far. One of the funny things about George R.R. Martin’s worldbuilding is that the Faith of the Seven is the most popular religion in Westeros, but also the one with the least impact on the reality of the story. For example, in the same episode that Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) claims that she was made immortal by the Old Gods of the North, both Ormund and the High Septon are struck down by Rhaenyra’s soldiers.
It’s enough to make you ask: Where are your gods now?
