Alicent and Aemond kiss: House of the Dragon's ‘gross’ Freudian Slip has nothing to do with Sigmund Freud

Imagine grossing out a fandom that has been rallying behind incestuous relationships for over a decade now! One that has been seeing dysfunctional families for years and has hardly ever shied away from cheerleading for all the oddballs, misfits, and even the crooked ones.House of the Dragon unlocked that feat with its maiden episode of the latest season (Season 3, Episode 1).

Amidst a battle as bloody as the Battle of the Gullet is, Alicent Hightower and Aemond Targaryen’s kiss in the season 3 premiere arrived like a rotten apple hurled straight at the viewers — the only other equivalent would be Sheepstealer retching out dead sheep from his mouth for his food and his newly bonded human, Rhaena Targaryen (spoiler alert)!Let’s save the when, where, how, and why for those who still haven’t caught the whiff of that lip-to-lip transmission.

But to keep it brief and give the readers context, here’s what was up:Alicent came back to King’s Landing from Dragonstone after securing a deal (and a safe passage for herself, along with her daughter Helaena Targaryen and her daughter Jaehaera) with Rhaenyra Targaryen, to find Aegon on the run and Aemond sitting on the Iron Throne.

To make her arrangement somewhat work after the pieces on the board had already moved, Alicent tried pursuing Aemond to stick to his previous plan of leaving King’s Landing for Harrenhal by manipulating him into believing that she was rooting for his victory after all.

Mistaking his mother’s tactical tenderness for genuine affection, Aemond leaned in and kissed her on the lips.

Alicent froze, but didn’t quite recoil, so that her play remained intact.

Now, when the episode aired — that one scene — the viewers watched it in horror, shock, and a bit of a vomiting feeling inside their mouths; they sat through the inexplicable cringe because the stakes of the premiere episode were sky-high (Battle of the Gullet, remember? ).

But the moment it was done, the internet sleuths did what they do best: they sprinted straight into the nearest wall of analogy and labeled the scene ‘Freudian’, ‘Oedipal’, or ‘mommy issues’, ranting about how HotD was running on a Freudian Slip.Only if Aemond were a five-year-old and he *really* had ‘romantic’ or ‘sexual’ feelings for his mommy!In that case, Freud wouldn’t have been turning in his grave now!But why must Sigmund Freud, of all people, take offense at being dragged into such an incestuous instance?Wasn’t he the ‘father’ of a similar concept?Not really.

In fact, the Austrian psychoanalyst’s Oedipus complex couldn’t be any further from the equation Aemond and Alicent shared (or the kiss that took place).For the unversed, the Oedipus complex is a specific psychoanalytic theory that suggests that children experience a subconscious, possessive desire for their opposite-sex parent.

In that theory, Freud argued that young boys, between roughly ages three and six, unconsciously desire their mothers and see their fathers as rivals.

Freud’s theory revolves around early childhood psychosexual development — not unloved, neglected, and traumatized adult sons kissing their mothers in the middle of a medieval civil war.Freud’s theory underlines the unconscious desire (sexual, romantic, or plain possessive) of a young boy towards his mother — whereas Aemond’s kiss for Alicent reads more like confusion curdled by power, instead of stemming from a place of passion or even fondness.If one takes a look at Aemond’s character arc, they’d see the foundation being laid from the first season of the show.

From the very beginning, Alicent shared a specific equation with each of her children.

For her firstborn, Aegon, she tried hard to mold him into a ruler despite his repeated resistance and continued show of incompetence.

For her daughter Helaena, she let her be in her own world of foretelling and prophecies.

But Aemond — her second son — became Alicent's soldier; responsible for protecting his mother.

He became her weapon — the son who never stopped trying to prove his worth, seeking approval, hungry for some attention from his mother, the same attention she easily gave away to his elder brother, who hardly cared for it.Remember when Aemond lost his eye but won Vhagar? Even after an incident so life-altering, even after enduring humiliation from his siblings, after watching Alicent wage war against the rest of the court on his behalf, Aemond stopped behaving like a son — and instead started behaving like Alicent's enforcer.

Growing up with that kind of sentiment for one’s mother, the traditional parent-child relationship begins to turn upside down.

Instead of Alicent protecting Aemond, Aemond starts acting as Alicent's guardian.

By the time he barely reached adulthood, he behaved less like a son and more like a protector, adviser, and surrogate patriarch.Even Ewan Mitchell processed the kiss in an almost similar way: in an interview, he said how he thought Aemond felt as though he was “assuming control of the family.” Mitchell even joked that it was finally a “I’m the daddy now” moment for Aemond!Take note of the timing of that kiss; it didn’t happen when Aemond was weak or vulnerable — it happened when he effectively had control over the family dynamics, when he was the reckless dragonrider who commanded obedience through power and fear.That’s what constructs the basis of the Alicent-Aemond kiss; it’s not really about forbidden desire.

It's about power.

Trauma.

Emotional starvation.

Blurred boundaries.

And a mother-son relationship that has been quietly mutating into something deeply unhealthy for years.Turns out, contemporary psychologists discuss this sort of phenomenon under the umbrella of concepts such as enmeshment, boundary dissolution, and role reversal.A major 2024 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin reviewed hundreds of studies and defined parent-child boundary dissolution as the breakdown of normal psychological boundaries between parent and child.

Researchers identified patterns including enmeshment, where emotional boundaries become blurred, and coerciveness, where children assume authority over parents.

These patterns were associated with emotional and behavioral difficulties later in life.That sounds familiar?That’s essentially the axis around which Alicent and Aemond's relationship revolves.This is where the Freud chatter gets slippery.

Sure, people love to call scenes like this ‘Freudian’ because that word has somehow become shorthand for anything weird, incest-adjacent, or psychologically sticky.

But even recent research on emotionally enmeshed parent-child relationships often describes situations where children become responsible for emotional needs that should be fulfilled by adults.

Some scholars refer to this as "emotional incest" — not because of physical sexuality, but because emotional boundaries become distorted and the child is pushed into an inappropriate relational role.Alicent and Aemond’s kiss violates the traditional architecture of a parent-child relationship.Although Olivia Cooke, for her part, called the scene an “Oedipal undercurrent,” calling it Oedipal syndrome or a mere Freudian slip takes away several of the layers their complicated relationship has.House of the Dragon — belonging to the Game of Thrones universe — has been building this sick little ecosystem for years.

It has never treated Targaryen family life as normal.

From the beginning, the show has leaned into incestuous, unstable, half-holy, half-rotten desire as a feature, not a bug.

In short, the GoT/HotD universe has always maintained a track record of putting forth fractured relationships over functional ones.Alicent and Aemond’s relationship sits right in the middle of all that mess.

Sure, Alicent loves her children — even her second son.

But during the course of their upbringing, she rarely expresses her love in an affectionate, motherly way — she either demonstrates devotion through sacrifice, or wages war to keep her family in one piece.Aemond’s inheritance as a second son, who has been bullied, ridiculed, and yet overlooked throughout his formative years, is nothing but his fixation on his mother — not as desire, but as a lopsided attachment gone somewhat feral.

He is the child who was starved for warmth and acquired power instead; received discipline instead of safety, and a family structure that thrives on violence more than tenderness.Of course, the kiss is less “mommy issues” and more of a psychic breakdown in miniature: an emotional trespass, a power grab, and a proof of how badly this house confuses fondness with ownership.

The irony of the internet running with its favorite buzzword, ‘Freudian Slip’, is probably the weakest justification of that kiss — and in extension, that scene — while the true nightmare lurks beneath that scandal.More than being a complex psychological conundrum, it basically reveals a son who has spent his entire life mistaking power for love, and a mother who suddenly realizes she may have helped create a man who no longer understands the difference.And the potential consequences of that dynamic seem so horrifying that even for a franchise that’s built on fire and blood, and everything gruesome, that unveiling may be the most unsettling repercussion of all.Get the latest lifestyle news and trends.

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