‘House of the Dragon’ Showrunner Reveals the Surprising Character He’d Pick to Rule Westeros

‘House of the Dragon‘ has spent three seasons proving that no character sitting near the Iron Throne is truly safe from ambition, betrayal, or outright madness. Following a Season 3 finale that left Rhaenyra Targaryen darker and more ruthless than ever, fans have been left wondering whether anyone left standing in Westeros could actually govern responsibly.

That question found its way into a new interview with showrunner Ryan Condal, who was asked point-blank who he’d personally choose to rule Westeros given the current state of the realm following the finale’s chaos. Speaking on the Pilot TV podcast, Condal took a full seventeen seconds to consider his answer before landing on a choice that surprised even the interviewer.

Rather than picking a Targaryen, Condal named Alicent Hightower as his top choice, explaining that no character in the entire series has experienced a greater range between holding real power and being stripped of it, according to Empire. That reasoning points directly to Alicent’s journey across the series, from her position as Viserys’s queen and mother to two kings, to watching her influence steadily erode as the war between the Blacks and Greens spiraled further out of her control.

Condal didn’t stop at just naming Alicent, though. When pushed for an alternative, he offered Lord Corlys Velaryon as another strong candidate, joking that he was simply trying to pick someone who wasn’t blonde, a lighthearted jab at just how consistently the Targaryen bloodline has proven unfit for stable leadership throughout the series.

Condal’s reasoning behind picking Alicent centers less on her claim to the throne and more on her lived understanding of what it actually means to wield and lose power. Having spent years as one of the most influential figures in King’s Landing before watching her authority slip away amid the Greens’ internal power struggles, Alicent’s arc has consistently emphasized the personal cost of political maneuvering in a way few other characters have experienced as intimately.

That same logic extends to Corlys, whose decades of experience as Lord of House Velaryon and a key figure on Viserys’s original small council give him a level of practical governing knowledge that most of the show’s younger, more impulsive Targaryen claimants simply don’t possess. Given how consistently ambition and inexperience have driven the show’s central conflict, Condal’s picks suggest a preference for steady, seasoned leadership over any inherited right to rule.

Condal’s answer arrives at a particularly resonant moment in the series, following a finale that saw Rhaenyra descend further into ruthlessness while Aegon’s unexpected survival threw the entire balance of power into disarray. Given how thoroughly the show has spent three seasons critiquing the dangers of unchecked ambition among Targaryen claimants, Condal’s choice of Alicent and Corlys feels less like a throwaway hypothetical and more like a genuine reflection of the story’s underlying themes.

With Season 4 confirmed as the show’s final chapter and the war between the Blacks and Greens more fractured than ever, questions about who might actually be fit to rule Westeros will likely remain central to the story as it heads toward its conclusion.

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