After Aegon’s fall creates a power vacuum, Alicent petitions to be named Regent as she already ruled King’s Landing once before, but her credibility is shattered by men incapable of viewing women as firm figureheads. “But the Dowager Queen is a woman,” one of them states, and defers the vote to Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), whose viciousness has recently proven to be dangerous and unpredictable. Only the Grand Maester backs up Alicent, but the others foolishly vote for Aemond, including Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), whose misogyny runs deeper than everyone at the table.

But Alicent already knows that these men are hypocritical and power-hungry, and is aware that they will undermine women when it suits them best, as she has leveraged their prejudice to undermine Rhaenyra in the past. The taste of being treated with the same callous disrespect feels bitter, and her simmering rage overpowers the scene, which frames her mounting shame as the focal point while Aemond’s war strategies fade in the background. Alicent scoffs in quiet disbelief when she hears that the Council has decided to close the gates and prevent merchants from entering or leaving: a remarkably poor decision in the face of the common folk’s food crisis, doled out with the thoughtless arrogance that comes with taking one’s gender-based authority for granted.

These problematic attitudes will not change anytime soon, leaving women in precarious positions to do what they can with the limited autonomy they have. Whether they choose to circumvent convention or snatch power with more direct means boils down to choice and circumstance during a time of all-out war.

New episodes of “House of the Dragon” season 2 premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.