Ormund Hightower (James Norton) might be the most delicious addition to House of the Dragon Season 3. From the moment the brilliant Hightower commander stepped out of his tent in the Season 3 premiere and began sniffing his ornate pomander, fans of the HBO hit have been obsessed with his cunning personality and wildly dramatic flair.

“Ormond is talked about in the book, but it’s quite clinical, sort of a bird’s eye view of him. We know about him and his family and where he sits in the family tree, but we don’t know so much about his personality,” House of the Dragon star James Norton told DECIDER. “It was actually really lovely, because we had a bit of a blank slate to work with.”

“Ryan [Condal] and the other creators were really collaborative in asking me — you know, they showed their intent early on in wanting to make him delicious, and eccentric, and dangerous, and just give him lots of different facets and make him inherently unpredictable.”

Alicent (Olivia Cooke) tells Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) in the show that Ormund “sees himself as a scholar,” and that he “despises the ignorant and uncouth. Alicent also added that her brother Gwayne (Freddie Fox) thought Ormund was “cruel” in their youth.

When Freddie Fox spoke last month to DECIDER, he said that Gwayne had “respect for Ormund’s, albeit, slightly Machiavellian intelligence,” but added that the two Hightowers “have very different world views on how [Benjamin Evan Ainsworth‘s Daeron Targaryen] should be influenced.”

The other big thing we know about Ormund? He has a heightened sensitivity to smell and obsessively sniffs a pomander he carries on him at all times.

“For me, the smell — the pomander thing —was really crucial because, yes, it’s playful and it can be used against him, et cetera, all those things, and it’s a quirk, but also it speaks to a personality trait which is vulnerable and dangerous,” Norton said. “If someone who’s in a position of authority is that vulnerable to losing control… Because obviously control is obviously incredibly important to him, whether it’s smell, taste, clothes. He is incredibly Type A, OCD, like he needs everything to be in a very particular way. If it doesn’t, if it’s not in that way, what the hell happens? And of course, we see what happens in Episode 4.”

Norton is of course referring to a scene in which Ormund receives bad news from Gwayne, who has arrived at Harrenhal to discover Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) and Vhagar fled. Daeron notices a flicker of rage before anyone else does and insists another page leave at once. Ormund explodes, hacking at a table with his Valyrian steel sword, Vigilance.

“So yes, it’s playful, but it does speak to a kind of particular pathology, I guess, which is, as an actor, really interesting to play with,” Norton said, before admitting he can relate to Ormund in this way.

“I know what that is. I have this weird thing with chewing gum. I cannot abide people chewing gum near my ear because it makes me — and I’ve looked it up and it’s a thing — and it makes me feel unbelievably nervous and scared and angry and all the rest of it.” Norton then joked. “So, yeah, me and Ormund are the same person, basically.”

But what exactly is Ormund sniffing when he wafts that silver pomander under his highborn nose?

“In terms of what the smell is, again, testament — I know probably a lot of people talk about this, but this show, the dedication from each team and department is like second to none,” Norton said. “At one point, I was shown three different trays with all these different apparati on them. It was a scene where I fill the pomander, and there were all these spices, and dried fruits, and herbs, and a pestle and mortar, and I got to choose what the tray looked like, what was on it, and then I have a scene where I’m literally like breaking it all up. They were all real, all the spices, all the herbs, all real.”

So what is “Eau de Ormund“? “The actual smell is lavender oil, because every day the props department — again, incredible detail, no one will ever know this apart from me — but they would spray the pomander with lavender,” he said. “So every day, every time I’m smelling, I’m smelling delicious lavender oil. So, I guess lavender is my scent.”

Ormund might need to stock up on that soothing scent soon because House of the Dragon is setting up the cataclysmic (first!) Battle of Tumbleton. When we asked Norton to tease the show’s version of one of George R.R. Martin’s most brutal battles, he tried to play coy.

“Hold on, how do I do this in a sort of cryptic way? I mean, I don’t know what happens at the end of the series, obviously, because I’ve forgotten, but whatever happens, it’s going to [be] satisfying,” Norton said. “It’s going to be, I don’t know, spicy. How about that? Spicy.”

House of the Dragon returns this Sunday, July 19 at 9 PM ET on HBO and HBO Max.