Fans of the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon were treated to a fun visual between Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) in the form of a sword handle standing in for a, well, something else.
Over on the subreddit r/HouseOfTheDragon, one intrepid user posted a screenshot from the latest episode “The Princess and the Queen.” The phallic sword handle in question is either intentional, which I wouldn’t put past the show runners – or accidental, which is even more hilarious.
So it looks like Ser Cole has an erection while he talks to the Queen. Fans of course had a field day with this, including Competitive-Oil4136.
“Subtle?? There’s a huge, gigantic d*ck standing there on the right,” they said.
User babalon124 remarked that they thought something else was going to happen in the scene. Something that would make sense considering his … umm, well you get it.
“When she paused and then he paused…and then turned to each other, I thought for a millisecond in my delusional mind something else was gonna happen and then I remembered who these two characters are… but they had objectively good chemistry even though I hate them both,” they said.
Konfliction thinks that the scene is foreshadowing something happening in the future. “When the King finally dies I guarantee they hook up,” they said.
Others also hate the characters and want them to suffer and never live happily together, like Vmasi, who said “I was so scared they’d kiss or something. I don’t want them to be happy together. They don’t deserve it.”
This is a pretty common theme in the thread. User MorseCode00 said “This scene made me freeze, I legit thought something’s gonna happen. Please. Don’t. Get. Together.” VMasi said: “I was so afraid of them getting together and being happy together. I wouldn’t be able to handle it, I hate them too much. They must be miserable!”
User fineburgundy thinks there’s more going on than just a Queen and her guard chatting it up. “Some of the language too, like how they had to stick together, sound much more… intimate than Queen-guard interactions normally would.”
Not everyone agrees that this is intentional. BakedWizerd said that’s just how swords work.
“Yeah, how else is his sword supposed to rest? Even during the wedding, when he actively had his hand resting on the hilt, it was angled the same way, and he had to lift the hilt out of Joffrey’s way when he walked past him. They were walking beside each other in a hallway, stopped and turned to face each other in front of the camera, and he didn’t adjust his sword so now it’s “phallic imagery?” I understand that sex is a big theme of the show but not everything has to be pertaining to everyone’s genitals.”