#poor daemyras man not only is their ship inherently sucky but nobody even cares about it in production

[navree]

tbh, i have the sneaking suspicion that emma d'arcy dislikes daemyra just as much as sara hess might. like, this isn't shade, but you can clearly see the difference in chemistry that milly and matt had compared to emma and matt. it doesn't help that s2 is at the part of the dance where their characters are separated for quite a while. the last engaging scene they had together was when they were arguing in 2.02 after blood and cheese. so, yeah it doesn't feel like much of the 🔥🔥🔥 is there for daemyra in the show after the actor change for rhaenyra.

Emma didn't describe the show as "too many men" for no reason, lol.

In all seriousness, I'm sure Emma and Matt are as friendly in real life as they appear to be in promotional material, there's been nothing to suggest otherwise, but the chemistry absolutely does not hit with them as a married couple. Part of it is that, yeah, they don't really spend a lot of time together (they barely had one on one scenes dedicated to their relationship in season 1, let alone in season 2 when they were on opposite sides of the country the whole time), whereas Milly and Matt's Daemyra had a lot of one on one scenes. I think another thing is that Milly and Emma are portraying Rhaenyra at vastly different stages of her life. Milly is playing a young Rhaenyra who sees Daemon as a challenge, a kind of dragon to conquer, she actively pursues time with him, she wants him very badly and that factors a lot into how she behaves around him and what she does when in his vicinity. Rhaenyra by the time of the change to Emma is a lot more settled. She is not actively pursuing Daemon at all, she's got a family and a lover of her own when we first see her, and after the second time jump her energy is devoted mostly to her own internal issues around the succession and, as always, her tumultuous relationship with Alicent (rhaenicent supremacy). This version of Rhaenyra is a lot less driven by Daemon when around Daemon, she's just doing her own thing and Daemon happens to be there. Some of it might also be some problems caused by the out of sync filming schedule, I think episode 7 is the first episode the show ever filmed (considering the first official pics we got were clearly done during ep 7), so the episode about Daemyra's reunion and their passion reaching its zenith and culminating in consummation is the first time these actors have actually played these characters, the first time Emma's even worked on a production on this scale given that their career up until that point. So that kind of early awkwardness and unsurety really permeates the whole relationship in that episode, which is why that sex scene is the most passionless thing HBO ever put to film.

Daemyra also really isn't a focus for the show in general and specifically Emma's portrayal of Rhaenyra. In meta material like behind the scenes talks or interviews, Emma really focuses a lot on two things: Rhaenyra's interiority and her relationship with Alicent. Focusing on the relationship with Alicent makes sense, the show focuses on the Rhaenicent relationship too and it's been obvious since the beginning that it's the driving force, the beating heart, of the entire enterprise (which is why I don't get people who are still upset about that when we're more than halfway through, you weren't bamboozled, they've been honest with you about what they're doing from the getgo, if you ignored that it's on you). So it makes sense that Emma's performance focuses on that as well, just as Olivia's performance also focuses on how Alicent relates to Rhaenyra in turn. But Emma also focuses their performance on a lot of things like Rhaenyra's views on other, more peripheral people (they had this wonderful quote after ep 10 about Rhaenyra sublimating Otto into a fatherly acceptance role and a bunch of stuff around the bridge scene and Rhaenyra's wants and it was so good, I wish I still had it), and also internal things, like Rhaenyra's desires, her now canonical queerness, and gender, which the show doesn't focus on a lot but it should because their insights are always so fascinating. So between the actor not really focusing on Daemyra as a driving force while they're acting, and the show not really doing much with Daemyra after they get married because why would it and thus making it periphery, the lack of sparks makes absolute sense, and is why I periodically forget that these two actually are married and Daemon isn't just some random pedophile squatting in Rhaenyra's house.

Closest to interesting Daemyra even got was the whole "Daemon has very complex feelings about Viserys and his pursuit of Rhaenyra is partly through the lens of viewing her as a Viserys proxy" thing, but that's it.