‘House of the Dragon’ Star Tom Glynn-Carney Explains How He Balances the Comedy and Tragedy of “Aegon the Magnanimous”: “I Genuinely Think He is Quite Funny”

One of the most exciting surprises awaiting fans in House of the Dragon Season 2 was the revelation that Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) wasn’t actually cut from the same sociopathic mold as Game of Thrones‘s mad child king, Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson). Sure, we knew from Season 1 that Alicent Hightower’s (Olivia Cooke) eldest son by Viserys (Paddy Considine) wasn’t a paradigm of virtue. However the Aegon we meet at the start of the new season of the HBO hit seems to earnestly want to improve. He dotes on his son and heir, Jaehaerys, and attempts to indulge the requests of the smallfolk who come to petition him. Moreover, there are times when “Aegon the Magnanimous” is just plain funny.

Whether we’re laughing at or commiserating with Aegon II this year, it’s a testament to the layered, nuanced work that House of the Dragon star Tom Glynn-Carney is doing in Season 2. By making Aegon more human, even more likable (?), Glynn-Carney is making the HBO show’s swift descent into apocalyptic violence all the more electrifying to watch. But, like us, you might be wondering: Did Tom Glynn-Carney intend to make Aegon so hilarious?

“Well, look, I find him quite manic,” House of the Dragon star Tom Glynn-Carney admitted to Decider during a recent roundtable interview. “And I think, rather than playing humor — which is always a terrible idea because it always ends up not being funny when you play humor — I want to sort of bring this sort of frantic energy of him and kind of the nonchalance of his approach to being king these days.”

“I think it’s important to find levity at the beginning of something. You know, we’ve got to give him somewhere to go. And I genuinely think he is quite funny.”

In just the first two episodes of House of the Dragon Season 2, Aegon certainly has had many places to go, emotionally-speaking. We’ve watched him giddy over his little boy’s hijinks in the Small Council, confused over why he can’t just give one poor dude his goats back, and utterly destroyed by the murder of Jaehaerys. In House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 2, Aegon is consumed by fury. He destroys his father’s massive replica of Old Valyria while screaming, “I DECLARE WAR!”

“The loss of Jaehaerys is huge. It’s momentous and it’s one of those things that just stains. It affects you on an atomic level now. It’s something you don’t ever fully digest and make sense of and kind of shake off,” Glynn-Carney said. “So, yeah, it informs a lot of his decisions going forward.”

Jaehaerys, of course, was murdered by two lowly assassins hired by Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) in the House of the Dragon Season 2 premiere. The killers snuck into the Red Keep with orders to murder Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), but if they couldn’t find him, any male Hightower would do. “A son for a son,” was the order.

While Daemon might have seen killing Jaehaerys as vengeance for his stepson Lucerys Velaryon’s (Elliott Grihault) death at the end of Season 1, the vile act of beheading a small child in his bed has far more insidious reverberations. Besides painting Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) as a heartless villain, it destabilizes Aegon at the worst possible moment.

“I think he saw in Jaehaerys a part of himself,” Glynn-Carney said. “I always had it in my head that he was kind of rebuilding the person he would have wanted to be through him.”

The actor explained that Aegon wanted to give Jaehaerys the “love and attention” that perhaps his parents didn’t. “He saw elements of himself in [Jaehaerys] and it was a kind of a new start for him in a way. And now it’s been snatched from him.”

Without Jaehaerys, Aegon leans into his worst impulses. He takes out his grief on his son’s killer by gleefully bludgeoning the man to death and ignores the pain his sister/wife Helaena (Phia Saban) is also going through. Aegon accelerates war plans, hanging every ratcatcher in the Red Keep in the hopes of nailing the one who abetted Jaehaerys’s death and firing his cautious grandfather Ser Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) as Hand. Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) will now be Hand, ensuring more blood will be spilled.

Nevertheless, Tom Glynn-Carney’s descent into Aegon’s dark state of mind is never without a hint of humanity. You understand that it’s grief propelling these choices. Grief for Jaehaerys, Aegon’s son and heir, grief for the “good” king Aegon could have been, and grief for the way his family has failed him.

One of the most chilling scenes in House of the Dragon Season 2 so far comes when Alicent walks in on Aegon sobbing by a fire. Instead of comforting her son, Alicent wordlessly leaves him.

“There’s a great poem: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.’ It goes on with it. But, yeah, it reminds me of that,” Glynn-Carney said, quoting Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse.”

It’s a poem that, like George R.R. Martin’s books, bemoans how, “Man hands on misery to man.” Trauma begets more trauma, a theme House of the Dragon‘s interpersonal drama is excavating this season.

“Sure, if [Alicent]’d showed up more and gave him the love and the time,” Glynn-Carney mused. “And again, it’s all about communication. That moment where she walks out of that scene where he’s crying in front of the fire says everything. It’s just, I mean, it’s a silent, dialogue-less scene. It says everything that you need to know about that relationship.”

Whether he’s working with no words, a lazy seat on the Iron Throne, or House of the Dragon‘s intense, profanity-laced dialogue, Tom Glynn-Carney knows how to make Aegon II a different kind of messed up Game of Thrones character. One who is incredibly fun to watch unravel.