A standard television-episode plotting method: Use the first act to create chaos between characters, the second act to heighten it, and the third to bring all the major players together at a party/event/function, where different pairs can mingle and stew, and the tension can finally come to a boil. Gossip Girl, the premier example, virtually never deviated from the form; every gala or school gathering at Constance Billard was an excuse to send Upper East Siders snaking across rooms to whisper accusations and then explosively confront foes. Procedurals like Law & Order have the perfect setting for their blowups — the courtroom, where accumulated evidence is hurled at witnesses and defendants until emotion carries them off toward confession. Catharsis, it’s what we came for!
In its seventh episode, House of the Dragon tips that convention on its side. Laena Velaryon’s funeral, and more specifically the post-funeral patio luncheon, throws the whole cast of characters together from the get-go, including some who haven’t seen one another in years, like Rhaenyra and Daemon. It’s a mirthless party, where everyone casts side-eye at friends and enemies alike, and the camera mingles among them like an acutely aware guest. It’s hard to tell precisely how much time has lapsed since Laena’s death — perhaps a few days — but it was enough for the various dispersed Targaryens to descend on Driftmark and bring with them their genetically endowed abilities to be uniquely awful.
Here are a few things we learn right away. Otto Hightower is again Hand of the King, despite the fact that he’s been away from court for a decade and there surely must be another reliable agent Viserys can employ. Harwin is confirmed dead, and although Rhaenyra’s boys may not know that he is their real father, Jace at least senses that their mourning loyalties ought lie with him. Aegon is currently betrothed to his sister Helaena, a little Louise Bourgeois in the making who whispers songs to spiders and generally avoids conversation. (Aegon is also a pre-teen lush.) Viserys’s mind is wearing down like his degrading body — at one point he calls Alicent “Aemma.†And whoever planned this event didn’t think to offer victuals to the mourners — or to throw it in a sensible, indoors location. This is the tip of a chilly wave-beaten island, yet apparently no one expects the gray skies and crystallized breath.
For all its contrivance (why would the sickly king make this journey to attend the funeral of his estranged brother’s wife?) this episode gets one thing right that we’ve missed out on until now: It slows the tempo down to a conversational crawl and digs into the little slights and shared looks. Until the final few moments of the episode, when the showrunners cram in their big Laenor reveal and Rhaenyra and Daemon’s wedding, they finally hit the appropriate narrative pace for a show of this scale.
Aemond’s long, luscious (and dark as hell) bonding scene with Vhagar does the right thing in taking its sweet time. For all the obvious reasons, House of the Dragon had to go big with its dragons, and Vhagar, the biggest prize of all, had to be shown off in all her glory in order for us to understand the stakes of Aemond’s gain. Vhagar is massive, huge, gigantic, a dragon that could make playthings out of other dragons, at least twice the size of Daemon’s Caraxes and Rhaenyra’s Syrax. (This infographic may not be perfect, but it’s helpful.) She’s also a storied warrior, originally ridden by Aegon I’s sister/wife Visenya during the Conquest of Westeros. With tiny Aemond on her back, her size is even more apparent. Though we’ve seen dragon riding before, this is the first time we’re shown the inherent danger in climbing onto a beast like Vhagar and taking her for a ride. As Laena explained to her daughter last week, the dragon must choose the rider, but the rider must also prove their worth. To skip out in the (extreme) dark and confront an animal that can melt armor establishes Aemond’s bona fides, and the fact that he hangs on for all her Top Gun-style dives and climbs cements the two together.
Vhagar apparently gives Aemond a confidence boost, too — or, depending on how you look at it, a lobotomy. The formerly tame Targaryen is now an asshole of the highest rank, joining his big brother Aegon in the pantheon of Terrible TV Tots. Baela and Rhaena’s furor about Vhagar is justified — they’ve just lost their mother, and now this piece of her will fly off with a spoiled little princeling they don’t know particularly well. Plus, there is the additional fact of Rhaena’s dragon-less state; she may have believed that Vhagar would naturally pass to her. And the scuffle-turned-slashing in the bowels of High Tide is decidedly instigated by Aemond, despite the fact that he is outnumbered and doesn’t have a weapon. Jace may pull out a knife, but the look on Aemond’s face as he holds that rock over Luke’s head bears an uncanny resemblance to the one on his Uncle Daemon’s face when he bashed in Rhea’s head. It is an expression of triumph, as though he has to inflict cruelty on someone else to ensure his own new sense of self.
The choreography here is impeccable, with Lord of the Flies vibes bouncing from every direction, and a clear understanding of how kids scratch and punch. The scene is also a clever mirror of how the adults handle the same accusations and slights.
Like her son, Alicent has grown a backbone the size of Vhagar’s. When Viserys insists that Rhaenyra repeat the “vile insult†Aemond hurled at her son, Alicent assumes she will have Rhaenyra cornered, that once the princess says out loud that the lineage of her children has been questioned, Viserys will have to publicly reckon with this crisis of legitimacy. But the king is now nothing but a pawn; Alicent nudges him in one direction, and then Rhaenyra shoves him back again. His solution is to ask them all to shake hands, make up, let bygones be bygones, as if the very pinnacle of earthly power weren’t the prize at stake in this fight. Rhaenyra can adjust her sails accordingly; she may have the blood of the dragon, but she can cool herself down. Alicent has ten years of rage at playing second fiddle stored up inside her, and she’ll be damned if in this fight she doesn’t at least get parity — meaning, ahem, a child’s eye.
And oh how she flies at Rhaenyra! After the demure, practically ghostly Alicent the showrunners gave Emily Carey to play, it’s magnificent to watch Olivia Cooke open up her mouth and deliver a tempest. For a brief moment the camera zooms in on the Valyrian steel dagger she swiped from her husband’s belt — the same one that Viserys showed to Rhaenyra and used to impress upon her the requirement that only Targaryens hold the throne, because only they can produce the Prince That Was Promised. Alicent is ignorant of the larger implications, but it’s not hard to draw a connection between Rhaenyra’s glimpse of the dagger and her hasty proposal to Daemon. To Targaryens only pure blood is real blood, and Daemon can not only help her guard her succession, but keep her family dynasty clean.
After all, they do literally bind their blood. The Targaryen marriage ceremony — stuffed into this episode, to its detriment — requires multiple wounds and saguinal exchanges. The Daemon-Rhaenyra-Will-They-Or-Won’t-They saga comes to an end, with the gentlest of sex scenes in the dunes, and the bloodiest of ceremonies on the rocks. But the real thrill of their union is how they pull it off, and the real missed opportunity of the episode is how quickly they reveal the twist.
Imagine if we hadn’t known that the charred body in the fireplace was not Laenor, but the unassuming dude trotting down the stairs at High Tide who had his neck wrung. Imagine if we hadn’t seen Laenor and Qarl rowing off towards Essos, where they’ll live happily on Daemon’s gold. Imagine if House of the Dragon would slow down, just a bit, and let us live in uncertainty.
From the Ravens
• Even with the volume turned all the way up I could not hear several lines Daemon uttered to Otto. Enough sotto voce!
• Otto’s swift kick into Aegon’s side is just the kind of grandfatherly leadership Tywin Lannister ought to have offered to Joffrey.
• Why exactly would Viserys invite Daemon back to King’s Landing, again, even if ten years have passed? I get that we’re encouraged to see Viserys as willfully blind, but he cannot possibly have moved beyond Daemon inviting his daughter to a sex club and trying to screw her up against a wall!
• Speaking of, when Daemon and Rhaenyra walk down the Driftmark beach, she confesses her frustration at how he left her. “You abandoned me and look what my life became.†Daemon’s reply, “You were a child!,†is more of a self-indictment than he thinks it is.
• Finally, Eve Best is put to great use. Her screams! Her indignance at Corlys’ refusal to let the crown go!
• By my measure Rhaenyra gave birth a few days ago. Has her maester cleared her for sex?
• And are those stitches really the best a maester can do? Aemond will be sporting a Phantom of the Opera look, and Rhaenyra practically had yarn pulling her arm back together.
• It’s hard to imagine sedately uttering, “Do not mourn me, mother. I may have lost an eye, but I gained a dragon,†just after said eye was slashed out of my face, but perhaps Aemond is made of sterner stuff.
• When Otto tells Alicent that he’s proud of her for losing her cool with Rhaenyra he notes that they’ve won Vhagar “to our side.†And in her proposal to Daemon, Rhaenyra calls the Hightowers “the greens†for the first time. Even considering all the earlier tensions, these are the first real rumblings of war.