Queen Alicent and Ser Otto Hightower raced to find Aegon in an effort to be the first to influence the young prince who was set to be king.
House of the Dragon is the prequel to the events that happen in Game of Thrones, 172 years before, to be precise. The show focuses on the events that led to the Targaryen civil war for the succession of the throne after the passing of King Viserys.
In season one, episode nine, Queen Alicent and Ser Otto Hightower raced against each other to find the missing Prince Aegon.
The race to find Aegon first was driven by the need to be the biggest influence on who was going to be King of the Seven Kingdoms in Westeros, as both daughter and father saw the young prince as a pawn.
Understanding the early relationship between Alicent and Otto
During the first episodes of House of the Dragon, young Alicent was a demure young woman who worked as Princess Rhaenyra’s best friend and aide, and who had no desires outside earning her father’s favour.
Ser Otto Hightower, on the other hand, did not even seem to like his daughter aside from how he believed he could use her as a pawn to elevate his family’s house to the most powerful family in the Seven Kingdoms.
As such, he instructed Alicent to gain the king’s favour after the passing of Queen Aemma, and it worked, as King Viserys married Alicent as his second Queen.
House of the Dragon: Why did Alicent and Otto race for Aegon?
Season one, episode nine titled “The Green Council” focused on the events that took place in King’s Landing following the death of King Viserys during the last scenes of the previous episode.
In the episode, Queen Alicent revealed that the king’s dying words were that he wanted Aegon to be king instead of Rhaenyra.
However, she misheard the king, who at the time was heavily medicated on milk of the poppy and believed that he was talking to his daughter about Aegon the Conqueror rather than Aegon his son.
Upon finding this out, Ser Otto revealed to the queen that he had already been working on usurping the crown from Rhaenyra for his grandson, Aegon, through the small council which inspired the name of the episode, as the small council was created in support of the Hightowers whose house colour was green.
However, upon discovering that Aegon was missing, The Green Council sought to find him before Rhaenyra found out about her father’s passing and came to claim the throne for herself.
But upon finding out that Ser Otto was in cahoots with the White Worm to find Aegon first, Alicent realised that her father intended to use Aegon as a pawn to increase his own influence and power, just as he did with her.
She subsequently states that she will ensure it will not happen.
What was the breaking point between Alicent and Otto?
For most of her life, Alicent had no ambition of consequence but to gain her father’s favour. However, in episode nine of season one, she finally came to terms that she will never have that favour.
This was when Ser Otto wanted to have Aegon under his influence, as he did his daughter, to command the death of Rhaenyra and her six children. This was to prevent any challenge to Aegon’s throne and the rise of the Hightowers.
Realising that her father was planning to use Aegon as a pawn made Alicent realise that she too was a pawn in his grand scheme as in the episode she states, “Our hearts were never one”.
Why are Alicent and Otto the same?
“The Green Council” reveals that Queen Alicent and Ser Otto are two sides of the same coin.
While Ser Otto was cold and unfeeling and used his daughter and his grandchildren as pawns to elevate the Hightower name into the most powerful seat in the Seven Kingdoms, Alicent treated her sons the same way.
This is seen through how strict and hard she was on Aegon because she groomed him to be king, but forgot how to love and support her son, who was already yearning for his father’s love, which he did not get as King Viserys barely spent time with his eldest son and had already named Princess Rhaenyra his successor to the throne.
Do Alicent and Ser Otto get their happy endings?
Given that House of the Dragon has already taken some liberties from its source material by George R.R Martins’ novel, Fire and Blood, which inspired the prequel, it is safe to say that in the series, it is uncertain how Queen Alicent and Ser Otto’s fate will go.
But in the books, they do not get a happy ending. Queen Alicent is imprisoned and eventually takes to talking to herself before she dies of Winter Fever in 133 After Conquest (A.C), and Ser Otto is beheaded after losing favour and influence in the royal house and council.
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