I Fucking Hate Ser Criston Cole

House of the Dragon, a show in the same universe as Game of Thrones but taking place centuries earlier, is great fun mostly because all the characters are so hateable. Much like Thrones, the show offers a succession crisis and introduces several factions that are vying for power. Also like Thrones, so many of the characters are either so vile or so stupid that I feel myself rooting for chaos more than anything else. I do have one character that I hope loses, though: Hand of the King and commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Criston Cole, played by Fabien Frankel.

If you’re not watching House of the Dragon, I’m sorry for spoiling some of the events of last season in this article. Cole is a stupid asshole who failed upward and isn’t even good at his job. He’s presumptuous and petty, has a nasty violent streak, is a horrible little misogynist and has a stupid haircut. I’m getting ahead of myself—apologies. I just hate this man so much.

I thought Cole might be fine when we were first introduced to him in the previous season. He was a new knight from a non-noble background, and he quickly hit it off with Rhaenyra, the heir to the throne. After Rhaenyra learned that she was supposed to marry another noble, Cole confessed his love to her and asked her to run away with him so she could fucking farm goats or something instead of being the queen. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen there; she refused him. Not soon afterward, to let off some steam, Cole beats a man to death over dinner. It’s genuinely horrifying to watch, and somehow it isn’t Cole’s worst moment.

From there on out, Cole goes from being so down bad for Rhaenyra that he was actively asking her to run away with him to hating her passionately. When Alicent, Rhaenyra’s best friend who married her dad (there’s a lot of incest in this show), eventually makes her own claim for the throne, Cole is her most ardent defender, going so far as to place the crown on her shitty son Aegon’s head. He also starts fucking Alicent, which I’m sure is unrelated to all the other stuff that’s happened before and has no bearing on his general opinions on women with power.

During every episode of House of the Dragon, I pray for Ser Criston Cole’s death at least once. Often, I wish for his death multiple times per episode. It’s not enough that he sucks as a human being. Aemond, who has now killed not one but two of his own family members, is a loathsome little asshole, but he has panache. He’s also extremely good at his job of being a scary fucker who intimidates his enemies. By contrast, Cole is an abject failure in basically every way. As commander of the Kingsguard, he often loses track of his King. In fact, while King Aegon’s son was murdered, Cole was nowhere to be found because he was fucking King Aegon’s mom. When he’s later elevated to Hand of the King, supposedly the King’s most trusted advisor, he approaches every delicate political situation as if he’s a hammer and they’re all nails. 

Caught an assassin who killed the toddler-age prince? Time for torture. Torture didn’t produce the name of the second assassin? Okay, hang everybody who matches the only criteria they were able to glean, horrifying the King’s subjects. Because it turned out so well last time, just keep fucking the Queen Dowager, whose stupid son is your charge. Almost all of his choices are spurred by his fragile sense of pride, and then he makes his shame and guilt everyone else’s problem. To avenge the death of King Aegon’s son, he tells a knight to go impersonate his twin in Rhaenyra’s court and kill her. Not only does that obviously not work, it leads to the surviving twin killing himself out of grief. Great job, Ser Criston Cole! Better luck next time!

The most frustrating thing about Cole is the way he tries to become a political player, but without any of the knowledge or savvy of the people who have been at court longer than he has. Cole is smart enough to know that King Aegon is basically a big himbo, but not smart enough to know how to steer him away from extremely dangerous situations where he will most likely die. In fact, all he does is stoke Aegon’s bloodlust out of his own desire to secure his seat of power and win glory on the battlefield. While Cole’s battle tactics may be sound, he’s just unable to do his duty, which is make sure the King doesn’t die. He makes the mistake of thinking a vain twenty-something with absolute power will listen to him, despite the fact that Aegon dismissed his previous Hand because he didn’t want to listen to him.

At the very least House of the Dragon lets us all watch this blow up in Cole’s face constantly. While he and Aemond were able to engineer a narrow victory through their superior tactics, Cole yet again was unable to protect his King, who surprised them at the battlefield. This resulted in Cole getting severe burns and multiple broken bones. Frankel plays this moment perfectly in the episode—when Cole finally finds King Aegon’s body, he looks like a guilty dog that got into the toilet paper. The only way it could have been sweeter is if a dragon bit him in half.