House of the Dragon’s Benjamin Evan Ainsworth Is Ready to See Daeron ‘Take Things Into His Own Hands’

Sitting the Iron Throne in Westeros may be an honor many have died for and few have achieved, but have they truly ascended if their face isn’t a coin circulated around the Seven Kingdoms?

As House of the Dragon nears the end of Season 3, Daeron Targaryen (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), the stowed-away spare to the throne (at least according to half the Targaryen bloodline), becomes one of the rare few to find himself on a gold piece thanks to his power-hungry, odor-averse uncle Ormund Hightower (James Norton). It’s all a clever, albeit jarring campaign to slowly seed the idea that Daeron is the rightful king, just as Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) occupies King’s Landing and seizes her rightful place on the throne. Only the gods know if the coin campaign will actually work to usurp her claim once again, but for now, Ainsworth is just happy to have a piece of the storyline.

“It was wild,” he tells TV Guide. “[Showrunner] Ryan Condal kindly gifted me one of the coins, so I’ve got one, which is super cool.”

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The coins actually circulated in Episode 5, going all the way up the King’s Landing ladder and into the hands of Rhaenyra, giving her a first look at her latest adversary and nephew — at least in coin form. But the consequences of the coins started to take root in Episode 6, when Rhaenyra sent several Baratheon soldiers to Tumbleton to feign fealty to the Hightowers and Daeron in an attempt to assassinate him. But it didn’t work, thanks to his even-keeled uncle Gwayne (Freddie Fox), who saw the false-flag plot for what it was. After the massacre, Daeron sees once again the violence wrought by the pursuit of power, mere days after Ormund casually and cruelly made him use his dragon Tessarion to char an average citizen in the sept.

Despite the growing frequency of bloodshed around him, Ainsworth says this is not what Daeron wants for his life.

“It’s new to him, and while he’s been training and sparring all his life, his attitude to that is of skill, of practice,” he says. “It’s a very methodical process and something he enjoys. But now to see real violence and stuff that goes against his morality and what he thinks and believes is really jarring. It’s almost like he has no choice but to go along with it even though he knows it’s not what he wants it to be, but he’s stuck between Hightower and Targaryen.”

His one refuge in this whirlpool of Ormund’s toxic, abusive influence is Gwayne, who Daeron perks up at the sight of in Episode 6.

“Seeing Gwayne again after all this time, after all that’s changed in Daeron’s own life, it’s almost like there’s a safety net,” Ainsworth says. “There’s a brotherly bond there where he can talk with him. But he’s also a parental figure that’s gentler than Ormund is.”

But Gwayne is coming off a tough campaign at the side of Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), and he doesn’t show much compassion to Daeron’s pleas to stick around. In fact, Gwayne is quite critical of Daeron’s submissive state in Ormund’s presence, chastising his nephew for going along with the push to take the Iron Throne. But as Daeron tells Gwayne — in more words than he has spoken all season — he doesn’t feel safe questioning the increasingly volatile Ormund, both because of his reckless hunger for power and other unspoken traumas he has caused that Daeron stops short of even speaking aloud.

Practically begging Gwayne not to leave him again at the mercy of Ormund falls on deaf ears to the preoccupied uncle, who says Daeron’s status as Ormund’s “little treasure” will keep him safe while he goes back to Oldtown to salvage the Hightower name. Watching another family member cast him aside is sadly something Ainsworth says Daeron knows all too well.

“It’s part of the fabric of who he is,” he says. “He’s half Hightower, half Targaryen. He’s in the middle of this chaos. There’s the assassination attempt. His face is on a coin that’s in King’s Landing. He doesn’t know what Ormund is doing at any moment. There’s a lot of chaos around him, and no one to talk to.”

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He isn’t completely incapable of handling himself, though. After Gwayne heroically recognizes the assassination attempt for what it is, he and Ormund watch as Daeron spars with swords in the courtyard of Tumbleton. This was Ainsworth’s first time working with a sword, something he grew intimately comfortable with in his next role — as Link in the upcoming The Legend of Zelda movie.

“It was my first time doing any kind of swordplay in this kind of way, and it was certainly enlightening and helped with the job in New Zealand [where Zelda was filmed],” he says.

While the scene is largely focused on Ormund and Gwayne’s conversation, Ainsworth likes to think Daeron was knowingly showing off a bit that he is capable of handling himself — be it with a sword or his dragon.

“In that scene, he is kind of getting away from the chaos around him, but he’s also almost proving to himself to those watching that he can protect himself,” he says. “It was a cool opportunity to show this character in a different way because he’s had to become a watcher. But I’m excited about what it means if Daeron has to take things into his own hands and how that could help this character grow and where that might end up.”

Let’s not forget, Tessarion is caged in Tumbleton just like his rider is being kept from his family. Neither are likely to remain imprisoned forever.

“That image of Tessarion chained in Tumbleton’s sept says a lot about Daeron’s own experience,” Ainsworth says.

House of the Dragon airs Sunday nights at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max.