**Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, now streaming on Max**

The first time we see Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) in House of the Dragon Season 2, she’s doing something we’ve never seen her do before: experience an orgasm. Throughout House of the Dragon Season 1 on HBO, she was child bride and nursemaid to King Viserys (Paddy Considine), whose sexual advances she took with the enthusiasm of a torture victim. Now, Viserys is dead, their son Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) sits the Iron Throne, and her devoted Kingsguard, Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) has doffed his white cloak to eat her out.

Even though Alicent warns Ser Criston that they can never do that again, by the end of House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 1 “A Son for a Son,” they are full on boning. Poor Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban), fleeing from the murderers book fans know as “Blood and Cheese,” bursts in on her mother and the knight in the full throes of passion to announce, “They killed the boy.”

Instead of being with her daughter and grandchildren, Alicent was having sex with Ser Criston and instead of protecting the royal family, Ser Criston was getting railed. How did this happen, especially when we know from House of the Dragon Season 1 that Alicent and Ser Criston pride themselves on being morally superior to the likes of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy)?

More importantly, how long have Alicent Hightower and Ser Criston Cole been having sex?!?

“We don’t think anything was happening prior to Viserys’s death at all,” House of the Dragon star Fabien Frankel told Decider during a recent roundtable interview in New York City. “Olivia and I spoke about that.”

“But certainly for him, he is a principled man and I don’t think anything was going on until Viserys’s death. But I think that once Viserys’s death happened, that kind of propelled a physical thing between them.”

Frankel also pointed out that “Alicent was the first person who had a crush on Cole in [House of the Dragon] Episode 1.” (Remember, “Gods, he’s Dornish!” anyone?) “So to some extent, I guess it’s been brewing for her then,” he said.

During another roundtable interview, Olivia Cooke pointed out that Alicent has never been able to explore her sexuality before.

“Well, we’ve sort of all been there with crushes. I mean, Alicent is really teenage, you know? She’s not had this, like, obsessive crush feeling and feelings of desire ever in her life, or she’s not been able to act on them,” Cooke explained.

“She’s grieving Viserys, but there’s a duality when she sort of feels liberated and she’s finally able to act on these desires.”

Interestingly enough, the reason why Ser Criston Cole is so devoted to Alicent is because she swooped in and “rescued” him when a young Rhaenyra broke his heart. The teenaged princess, played by Milly Alcock, seduced the chivalrous knight and then stomped on his heart by proposing an arrangement where he would be her side piece while she was married to the gay Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate). Cole, instead, wanted Rhaenyra to run away with him so they could marry. She bluntly refused.

So why would Cole be fine with basically being Alicent’s secret lover, but not Rhaenyra’s?

“It’s slightly different,” Frankel said, noting that approximately twenty years have passed since then. “As a human being, your perception on life changes. Certainly in a world like this, where everything is so Machiavellian and characters are always doing these kinds of things, I think you realize everything’s not as black and white as it was.”

“But he was truly in love with Rhaenyra, I think,” he said, adding that it was a “bit harsh” of the young Rhaenyra to break Cole’s heart and then force him to stand by throughout her lengthy wedding ceremony. “I’m not justifying his actions. He’s crazy.” Frankel just wanted the audience to understand how Rhaenyra twisted the knife.

Olivia Cooke added that for Alicent, “There’s no greater propulsion sometimes than shame and guilt into self-sabotage.” Meaning there’s a part of Alicent flirting with self-destruction because of everything she’s done to put Aegon on the Iron Throne. “I think that’s what she’s doing.”

“As well as the fact that it’s just intoxicating,” she added. “You know, I think she can’t get enough, she’s never felt like this before. All of a sudden her body is working in a way that she didn’t know it was capable of, and that is, you know, it’s heady.”

“But, yeah, no, it was nice to see Alicent, you know, have some sort of a sexuality.”