Fabien Frankel Discusses Playing Ser Criston Cole in House of the Dragon

HBO’s fantasy prequel returned for its third season on June 21, 2026, plunging viewers back into the bitter fracture of the Dance of the Dragons. Created by Ryan Condal with George R.R. Martin and drawn from the pages of Fire & Blood, the series has moved swiftly from the capture of King’s Landing to the naval devastation of the Battle of the Gullet. Amid the sprawling cast—which features Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen, Matt Smith as Daemon, and Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower—no figure has courted quite as much friction as Frankel’s pragmatic and hardened knight.

Fabien Frankel on Playing a Divisive Character and Five Years on the HBO Set

For five years, Frankel has inhabited a role that routinely polarizes viewers. Speaking about the reaction to his character, the actor noted the unique tightrope of playing a figure fans love to despise.

That push-and-pull has occasionally generated unexpected empathy from audiences. Rather than directing hostility entirely at the actor, viewers have often expressed sympathy for the sheer weight of the role. Frankel recounted how public perception shifted toward understanding rather than pure animosity, drawing comparisons to the enduring legacy of Jack Gleeson’s portrayal of Joffrey Baratheon on Game of Thrones.

Looking back on his journey, Frankel highlighted the personal and professional milestones that defined half a decade of production. Before landing the landmark role, he had only two screen credits to his name. The casting process itself had unconventional beginnings; as Frankel revealed in past interviews with independent.co.uk, casting directors initially sought an actor with the physique of Jason Momoa, a brief that he humorously assumed counted him out from the start.

The Long Road to the Riverlands and the Shadow of the Butcher’s Ball

As the narrative progresses through Season 3, Ser Criston Cole finds himself increasingly cornered. Once an earnest Dornish knight elevated to the Kingsguard by Viserys, Cole’s trajectory splintered the night he killed Joffrey Lonmouth at Rhaenyra’s wedding. Embracing the Green cause under Alicent Hightower, he spent subsequent seasons as an uncompromising military commander pushing for decisive action.

By the middle of Season 3, however, those guerrilla tactics have yielded an exhausted, demoralized force trudging through the Gods Eye. Following the departure of Gwayne Hightower in Episode 5—where Cole rejected practical counsel to turn south—the Kingmaker marched straight toward what book readers recognize as an inevitable reckoning. Frankel told interviewers that the latter half of the season keeps getting bigger, badder, bolder, nastier, and bloodier, and promised a surprising arc for his character.

Early reactions from Comic-Con screenings and subsequent viewer reports for Episode 6 confirm that the narrative is delivering on the dark promise of George R.R. Martin’s source material. The upcoming confrontation strips away any lingering romantic notions of chivalry, matching the brutal reality detailed in the text.

What George R.R. Martin’s Source Material Establishes About the End

In Fire & Blood, the Butcher’s Ball stands as one of the most one-sided and merciless engagements in the entire Dance of the Dragons. With his men starving, horses lost, and the countryside turned hostile, Cole’s diminished force walks directly into a much larger army of Riverlanders and Northern Winter Wolves led by commanders including Ser Garibald Grey, Ser Pate of Longleaf, and Lord Roderick Dustin, known as Roddy the Ruin.

When Cole attempts to negotiate safe passage by offering his own life, the commanders refuse him. His subsequent demand for a three-on-one single combat is similarly dismissed to deny him a heroic last stand. Instead, three arrows—landing in the belly, chest, and neck—end his life abruptly. The ensuing slaughter wipes out his green army, and his head is taken as a trophy, cementing a grim conclusion to a turbulent path.