What a sad and thrilling waste of life. I hardly knew Ser Steffon Darklyn, and so I was free to watch Seasmoke fuck with him without much care for what might befall him. We’ve heard men call the dragons “gods†before, but, this week, men were reduced to their playthings — unwilling participants in fatal games of teasing. Yes, I’ll serve you. I’m such a sweet and lonely little dragon. I welcome you aboard, middle-aged man speaking remedial Valyrian flanked by dudes hoisting twigs in my face. SIKE! JK! YOU’RE DEAD NOW! TWIGS CAN’T SAVE YOU.
Rhaenyra’s embarrassing dragon auditions should have served to underscore what it really looks like for a beast and his rider to forge a bond of mutual subservience. Imagine the hysterical confusion Addam of Hull must have felt when the sky demon he’d feared his whole life willingly leaned a snout into his hand. Imagine the unbridled joy (well, technically speaking, bridled joy) Addam experienced soaring through the air for the first time on the back of his dead brother’s steed — the restored inheritance of a long-suffering bastard of Driftmark. Now, keep imagining it. Like, in your own mind. Because we don’t get to feel that touch or take that ride with Addam. Instead, we cut to Rhaenyra recklessly jumping on Syrax to … what exactly? See which of the Greens figured out how to ride two dragons with one ass?
House of the Dragon is at its best when it stays with the action, but this week we’re presented with an hour of chin-wagging and bad dreaming. We listen as Jason Lannister, recently arrived in the Riverlands, “disrespects†Prince Aemond by demanding a dragon join his army in the fight for Harrenhal against Daemon and Caraxes, who is a dragon. (Sidenote: Love that the Lannisters brought lions to the dragon fight. Are they meant to be weapons? Diversions? Dragon rations?) Then we listen as Aemond bemoans this disrespect to the small council. The best thing about the Prince Regent’s moaning is it makes Aegon’s moaning, in retrospect, more compelling. At least he was working out how to wear a crown that was thrust upon him. Aemond barbecued his older brother for the chance to hold that marble ball, and he’s already bellyaching.
The first few episodes of season two hyped Aemond as a man of action, but there’s something about a claim to the Iron Throne that turns everyone into Hamlet. Rhaenyra stalks the halls of Dragonstone with various confidantes — Jace, Mysaria, Bartimos — complaining about stalking the halls of Dragonstone. (“It is my fault, I think, that you have forgotten to fear me†is the best line Rhaenyra has been given all season, but she needed to slap that Lord Celtigar way harder.) Daemon the King Consort, hold the consort, please, plods through Harrenhal in a maze of his own nightmares.
And Aemond? It’s taken exactly one episode to turn Aemond One-Eye, the most fearsome warrior in the Red Keep, into just another dithering ruler, roaming from room to room and talking too much. We listen to him intimidate what’s left of his surprisingly alert brother into silence regarding the betrayal he committed at Rook’s Rest. We listen to him remove his mother from the council for not supporting him more in his hour of petulance. If Alicent really wanted to maintain her influence in King’s Landing, it seems she would have been better off backing Rhaenyra’s claim than those of her sons.
Aemond does make one renegade decision: to treat with the Free Cities in order to break Rhaenyra’s blockade. The council believes allying with the glorified pirates of the Triarchy to take on the Sea Snake is a terrible idea, so, like any death-or-glory son of Alicent’s, Aemond will almost certainly do it anyway and the consequences will almost certainly be calamitous. Though perhaps it’s unfair to say “like any son of Alicent’s.†It’s been weeks since Ser Gwayne arrived in town, and the dowager queen finally makes time to inquire about her third son, 16-year-old Daeron, whom she sent to ward at Oldtown.
In a shocking twist, Gwayne reports that Daeron is a pretty normal kid, kind to others and getting really into his music right now, which is the lute. (Sidenote: Why do all these kids have versions of the same name? How many letters comprise the Valyrian alphabet?) Alicent wonders aloud whether it was the Red Keep or her own poor mothering that turned her other sons into monsters, and Gwayne can’t quite bring himself to absolve her. It’s a strangely affecting scene between two characters lurking at this season’s margins, in part because it’s acted by two actors who are very good at acting, which is more than I can say for most scenes involving the Greens. Alas, I fear Gwayne is soon to die. The pluck he brought with him to King’s Landing has been quickly reduced to weary glances.
Gwayne remains a member of Criston’s army, which Aemond hastily orders to approach Harrenhal from the opposite direction as the Lannister brigade. This doesn’t seem like a terrible plan on its face — it’s true that Caraxes can’t man two fronts at once. But Aemond is equivocal about the role he intends to play in the battle to come. He’ll join when he feels like it if he feels like it, he says. Then he adds, “My uncle is a challenge I welcome.†Unless I don’t feel like welcoming it right now. I’ll let you know later. Keep in touch.
The only story line with momentum — besides the Dragonseed Olympics, of course — is Mysaria’s hearts-and-minds campaign in King’s Landing. Right now, the way to win hearts and minds in the capital is through the smallfolk’s empty stomachs. Her scheme to launch hundreds of boats bearing food and Targaryen banners to the shoreline is a hit; overnight, people go from decrying Rhaenyra for the murder of baby Jaehaerys to crying the return of the one true queen. Life has been so gray in the capital for so long that the fruit and vegetables look blindingly Technicolor to me, like Dorothy stepping into Oz. That recurring ironmonger with the sick kid and ballsy wife grabs a cabbage in the feeding frenzy, but his family is going to need way more calories than that. The smallfolk are so emboldened by Rhaenyra blocking the arrival of any food from King’s Landing and then allowing a small amount of food to arrive weeks later when they’re good and hungry that they attack Helaena and Alicent on their way home from prayer. (Sidenote: In a world full of Hamlets, Helaena increasingly dares to be a Laura Wingfield.)
Rhaenyra, for her part, does everything in her power to destroy the narrative momentum by whining to Mysaria about how hard it is to rule her kingdom of almost zero citizens with Daemon beside her or without him. That Mysaria responds with the story of how her own father raped and impregnated her as a child is a hilarious display of victim one-upmanship. Your husband-uncle is possibly untrue to you? Well, my dad attempted to kill me, so maybe get some perspective. I don’t know that it makes a ton of sense that Rhaenyra is now macking on her mistress of whisperers, who happens to be her husband’s ex-girlfriend, but at least it’s interesting!
Far more interesting, in fact, than the peculiar tango being danced between Daemon and Alys at Harrenhal. In their completely separate television series, Daemon, who I do believe is being poisoned, possibly by Alys, keeps reliving the bad old days: the time his brother removed him from the line of succession; the time his brother had to let Aemma die in order to try to get someone in ahead of Daemon in the line of succession. This is all weird and dull, but the question I have is: How is this man filling the long days? He mostly seems to scamper about having terrible dreams, threatening the castellan, and liaising with Alys, a woman who claims to hate him but can’t resist his conversation. “Perhaps those who strive for it are the least suited to wear it,†she tells crown-seeking Daemon, like someone who watched the Game of Thrones finale and didn’t hate it. “It’s not a prize to be won, but a burden to bear.â€
And yet, they seem to have some significantly underexplained connection. For example, Alys tells Daemon that in three days something will happen such that he doesn’t need to worry about treating with Grover Tully. She goes to visit the admittedly very sick, old man, and then he dies according to her own timeline. Is she helping him? Daemon appears to assume so, but Oscar Tully is next in line, and that kid already has cause to hate him. And why is Daemon crying? What is happening?
The only character in a more pathetic posture right now is Aegon. Honestly, for a king, he gets very few hospital visitors. There’s Aemond, who swings by to threaten him to silence. His mother, who can barely look at him. And then there’s Larys, the series’ other character with a rotten foot. After Aemond snubs Larys’s not-so-subtle play to become Hand of the Prince Regent in favor of his AWOL grandad, the master of whisperers goes straight to the infirmary to bond with the fallen king over the shared indignity of having one bad leg. (Sidenote: No one seems particularly worried that Ser Otto Hightower has vanished in the midst of the civil war he started. Shouldn’t they suspect foul play?) They will underestimate you, Larys warns Aegon. Aegon, though, is kind of an idiot, so it’s entirely possible that this mysterious “they†will correctly estimate him. But for Larys, there’s nothing that can’t be spun. Those who support Aemond might say that Aegon was partially rotisseried, but, if you’re completely shameless, you can rewrite the story of Aegon into the legend of the man who survived dragonfire.
This is a show about men and women vying for power, except for one dude: Alyn of Hull. This week, Corlys has to force his bastard son to join the war effort as his first mate. That Alyn deserves the promotion is clear, but the act also honors Rhaenys’s last wishes, which is perhaps why Corlys ignores Alyn’s attempt to refuse the post. Whatever filial fantasy inspired him to join his father’s navy has died for Alyn, who shaves the white hair that would give him away as a Velaryon. Addam, on the other hand, sees how the position could legitimize Alyn, perhaps even put him in line for the Driftwood Throne. They’re adult men, yes, but you never outgrow your broken home. Addam is the little brother hoping Dad will show up for Christmas this year; Alyn’s too jaded to stare at the front door any longer.
Still, Velaryons are in the ascendancy on House of the Dragon. There’s Alyn’s promotion, as well as Corlys taking up the post of Hand of the Queen. There’s Addam’s new whip, and, in the Eyrie, potential for Rhaena to get one, too. Something that stood out to me about the scene between Steffon and Seasmoke is how strangely ritualistic it seemed for an event that hasn’t had much ritual to it. Targaryens are gifted eggs at birth. Sometimes, they sneak down to the pits to claim dragons when their parents aren’t watching.
Just as Prince Reggio grants Rhaena’s request to take Rhaenyra’s sons to Pentos, she learns there is a large wild dragon lurking among the Mountains of the Moon. Does she bring her brothers onto Essos, as her queen commands, or hang around the Vale where dragons clearly thrive, with or without riders? You can almost see her face take the shape of a question mark. So far, this civil war has been a clash of dragons, but its outcome may yet turn on those who harbor the dream of riding one.
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