We hoped, we speculated, and now it’s (more or less) confirmed! Alys Rivers will be appearing in season 2 of House of the Dragon. Casting for her is currently underway and Emily Beecham is a contender for the role. **Spoilers for Fire and Blood and season 2 below**
Redanian Intelligence has published two videos of Emily Beecham, best known for playing the mysterious Maura Frank in Netflix’s 1899, reading for a character codenamed AR, who is … very obviously Alys Rivers.
In the first video, Alys is serving as “[Harrenhal]’s closest approximation” to a physician (ergo, the title of the video) and speaks with Daemon Targaryen after he’s “squabbled” with Rhaenyra. She dishes out some cool exposition on Harrenhal and offers Daemon a sleeping draught, which he apparently accepts because in the second video he asks her what she put in it. In both dialogues, Alys pokes at Daemon’s fragile ego and questions his loyalty to Rhaenyra.
I find the presence of sleeping draughts in these scenes interesting because in Fire and Blood Alys was rumored to have “used her poisons and potions to bind men to her, body and soul.” The fact that she’s giving Daemon herbal remedies that are having some sort of effect on him suggests that House of the Dragon intends to play into these rumors, or at least explain how they got started.
That said, fake scripts are typically used for audition scenes to avoid leaks, so we shouldn’t read too much into the precise wording of these dialogues (though boy, would I love “I’m no woman at all, I’m a barn owl. I was cursed to live in human form. Hoot-hoot,” to make the final cut). Still, this is our first look at any iteration of House of the Dragon‘s Alys Rivers and I, for one, am ecstatic.
I wondered if they would leave her out since her role isn’t clearly significant to the overall Dance. But including her is a good sign that the show is going to give us some of George’s more interesting “magical” characters.
GeekFurious,
I think she is pretty significant. Bloodlines in future and all….
Everything I have to stay on this is spoilery though.
Some is speculation with decent backing, some is book spoilers:
Alys eventually has a son with Aemond. If we look at the various offspring of the Greens, we know that both of Helaena and Aegon’s sons die as do they and their brothers, and their daughter eventually also dies without issue, though much later. This means that the acknowledged legitimate line of the Greens dies out.
But, Aemond and Alys were in fact rumoured to have been married, and even if they were not, a bastard would still be the only surviving Green. His story in the book ends with a stalement and this child of Aemond and Alys still in place at Harrenhal. Their rebellion is never resolved because of the great sickness, and then “history” just simply stops tracking them. We are perhaps meant to believe that maybe they died of the sickness too, but that is never actually given any specific mention, so maybe they did, maybe they did not.
Let’s suppose that Aemond’s son survived the Dance. What then? The Kingdoms were exhausted and then sick and noone was willing or able to fight for his claim. However the Greens did have important supporters in the Riverlands, including but not limited to House Bracken. So if the son of Aemond did survive he was hidden and then absorbed into a Riverlands house, and may have contributed to some interesting bloodlines there. He may, for example, have been an ancestor of Barba Bracken.
I think a continued presence of a Green bloodline in the Riverlands may have been a factor in how the eventual Blackfyre rebellions played out, and who supported who.
Just want to announce I’ve agreed to be the surrogate for Karsa and TormandsWoman. Feeling pretty fertile, hope to have good news <>
GeekFurious,
So, when George finished in your mouth – is there any moisture in it? Or is it more like talcum powder?
Bro, full aproval to keep surrogating me. Not much more to do for this fandom anyways. Maybe shill some Wild Farts. Another book coming soon. Or so.
I’m making haste slowly with the ‘Princess and the Queen’ novella and Alys hasn’t come into play as yet (if indeed she does feature in the novella). I haven’t seen any of Emily Beecham’s work but her hair colour is kind of reminiscent House Tully hair (especially in the ASOIAF novels). Perhaps having read some of the entries upthread am I reading too much into things to think perhaps Alys’s descendants intermarried with House Tully at some point?
flintstonewielder,
The board does seem somewhat moribund at present. Perhaps it will galvanise into life when season 2 of HoD starts filming.
She is said to have very dark hair in the books, so either the hair colour will be changed in the show, or whatever actress is chosen will dye their hair or wear a wig. I am not sure EB’s natural hair colour is much of a clue.
That said, I do have a bit of a hobby of tracking bloodlines, particularly the FEMALE line, and I do tend to agree that some interesting ones do feed at various points into House Tully.
Because of the way things play out in the Dance, I doubt very much that Alys Rivers’ child factors into the Tully bloodline in the next few generations, but the Brackens certainly marry into the Tully family before the events of ASOIAF so even if it is not immediate, EVENTUALLY I do tend to agree she may be an ancestor of Catelyn.