As we count down the days to the blockbuster finale of Game of Thrones we’re pretty certain Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are both going to have a pretty big part to play.
There’s also the small matter of the couple’s newfound romance which is pretty likely to blossom throughout season 8.
After becoming good friends on set, the romantic scenes have proved to be something of an issue between the two.
“The first scene we had together we both just started laughing,” Emilia, who plays Daenerys, told Variety.
“Why are you looking at me this strange way and saying these strange lines? You’re my friend?”
Adding to that, Harrington said he pretended to gag when it came to filming those scenes.
“Oh my God, mate. You’re not making this any easier!”
On top of the impending onslaught from the White Walkers, Jon and Daenerys have the small matter of discovering that they are actually related. Obviously though, this is Game of Thrones, where incest is perfectly normal.
We found out Jon is the son of Lyanna Stark and Daenerys’ brother Rhaegar, making him her nephew and ahead of her in line to the Iron Throne.
Explaining how the bombshell could complicate things a bit, Kit told TV Insider: “Jon is someone who plays by the book. He cannot lie. Finding out about Dany would be very hard for him.”
Emilia added: “Daenerys’ life long dream has been to avenge her family and claim her rightful seat on the Iron Throne. ‘She truly loves Jon. Were she to find out about his title, it would cut deep.”
We also recently learned that we’ve been pronouncing ‘Khaleesi’ wrong this whole time.
That’s according to David Peterson – the linguist who creates the series’ fictional languages, who said the mispronunciation is a “real thorn in my side.”
“I wanted to make sure if something was spelled differently, it was pronounced differently,” Peterson explained of his process of transforming the handful of Dothraki words George R.R. Martin had created into a full language.”
That worked pretty well for everything except the word Khaleesi … There’s no way it should be pronounced ‘ka-LEE-see’ based on the spelling. So I had to decide, ‘Am I going to respell this thing because I know how people are going to pronounce this, or am I going to honor that spelling and pronounce it differently?’ I made the latter decision and I think it was the wrong decision.”
In his book Living Language Dothraki, Peterson writes that “many Dothraki words have multiple pronunciation variants, often depending on whether the speaker is native or non-native. Khaleesi, for example, has three separate pronunciations: khal-eh-si, khal-ee-si, and kal-ee-si,” which at a later point in the book spelled is “ka-lee-si.”
Game of Thrones returns for its final season on April 14, 2019.