Recently The Witcher fan site Redanian Intelligence, which apparently was busy watching for news not only about their own series but also about House of the Dragon, uncovered two videos on Vimeo that appeared to be House of the Dragon Season 2 casting auditions, involving Emily Beecham (you might remember her from 1889) reading for a character with initials of “AR.”
Of course the videos have since been stricken from the internet via Warner Bros. copyright claims.
But before that they have been posted in a number of places, including Reddit, so their descriptions survive, and enough people have seen them to vouch for those descriptions’ accuracy.
While the initials “AR” were revealing enough, the actual text which Beecham recited leaves identity of the character in question obvious. Alys Rivers will appear in Season 2 of House of the Dragon
For those who don’t read George Martin’s books, Alys Rivers was a fairly prominent, if supporting character, who might become even more important to the history of Westeros, if George Martin is to ever conclude her storyline.
Normally a low-born bastard child of House Strong would not have made much impact.
Sure, he managed to become a lover of Prince Aemond Targaryen and later give a birth to a child she claimed was Aemond’s son and the true heir to the Iron Throne.
But by the moment of that child’s birth Aemond was dead. Moreover, his party came worse off in the war (even if the victory of the Blacks was far from overwhelming and involved a number of concessions to the surviving Greens, including accepting their claims about the order of succession), and there was no powerful lords willing to restart the war for the sake of Alys’ claims.
However, Alys had one big thing going for her. The reputation of a witch. As to whether it was backed by actual magical power, Fire & Blood leaves a lot of room for doubt.
It could be real, or it could be just cunningly crafted tricks and rumors spread by superstitious men.
In any case, while during most of the Dance of the Dragons itself Alys was more of a supporting characters, there is a strong possibility that she might play a more prominent role near the end.
We have yet to know how her attempt to claim the throne for her son concluded – it must have failed somehow, but the full story is yet to be written.