For all its ambition, House of the Dragon has had a narrow scope. Time zooms by, but we haunt the same few places: King’s Landing, Driftmark, Dragonstone, occasionally the sandy shores of the (finally important) Stepstones or a place like Harrenhal. Game of Thrones specialized in road trips; characters walked the vast terrain of Westeros or rode the open plains of Essos for entire seasons — forming friendships, witnessing atrocities, leaving one another for dead. So when “The Black Queen†opens on an overhead view of a map, gliding past Moat Cailin and The Neck and finally zooming out over the Vale of Arryn, it seems like the showrunners are finally recalling that there is a whole world out there waiting to be involved. What are the Targaryens fighting for, if not this vast and varied realm?
The map is the famed Painted Table, last seen (in the future) as Daenerys, the next Targaryen queen-to-be, plots her return to Westeros around it. Daenerys’s gatherings were always chilly affairs, but it turns out the table possesses a majestic feature we’ve never seen. When lit from below, the whole map glows; its carved crevasses are particularly golden, and bear more than a faint resemblance to the canyons that fill with blood in the show’s opening credits. We’re meant to see the parallels to Dany’s disastrous reign (note how Rhaenyra says she does not “wish to rule over a kingdom of ash and boneâ€), and to note how patient her ancestor is in comparison. Alicent and Otto threw together a coup in less than an hour; Rhaenyra will survey the board, move her pieces where they are most effective, and consider the well-being of the realm rather than use the Westerosi as stooges in a three-penny coronation.
The names of dozens of major and minor lords and houses are bandied about as the Blacks shore up support and fret about fickle allies. Even more High Valyrian dragon monikers are dropped into conversation. Without closed captioning and a deep background of Targaryen lore, I pity the casual viewer who just stopped by to check out the little dragon show’s season finale and see what the fuss is about. So before we crack on, here’s the lay of the land:
The Greens have three adult dragons: Aemond’s Vhagar, Aegon’s Sunfyre, and Helaena’s Dreamfyre. The Blacks have Rhaenrya’s Syrax, Daemon’s Caraxes, and Rhaenys’ Meleys (if she is willing to join the fray), while the boys have Vermax (Jace), Arrax (Luke), and Tyraxes (Joffrey). Baela has Moondancer, and as Daemon points out, Seasmoke still hangs about on Driftmark, and Silverwing and Vermithor on the Dragonmount. (Vermithor may be the dragon Daemon sings his sweet little Valyrian song to, in a bid to lure him to their fight.) If they bring their whole lot to Harrenhal and surround King’s Landing, the Greens will be trapped between a firewall and the sea.
Troopwise, Rhaenyra and Daemon hold Dragonstone and have three certain allies who live in the same general neighborhood: the Masseys, the Stauntons, and the Bar Emmons. The Tullys of Riverrun were great friends of Viserys, so Rhaenyra thinks they might side with her; they’d prove a vital ally since they control so much of Westeros’ middle lands. The Baratheons of Storm’s End are also kin; Jocelyn Baratheon was Princess Rhaenys’s mother. And the Arryns of the Vale are (poor, slaughtered in childbirth) Aemma Targaryen’s family; if they aren’t wild with fury at their daughter’s death, they may side with her daughter.
Perhaps now is the moment for an interregnum like the one that bursts into the middle of this episode. In “The Green Council†Rhaenyra sported a small but noticeable belly, rubbed with the diligence of an actor encouraged to send the audience some silent clues. Just as Princess Rhaenys tells her the news of her father’s death and Aegon’s enthroning, a crowning of her own begins. The baby’s destiny is sealed from the first sight of that bloody hand — she (we learn in Fire & Blood that the baby is Rhaenyra’s only daughter) must die in a sacrifice parallel to that of Rhaenyra’s mother, Aemma. If Aemma could not have her son, Rhaenyra cannot have her daughter. And if the mother perished under too great a strain, the daughter will persevere.
As a scene it’s a smash — horrible and captivating. The daughter is considered a “monster†in Fire & Blood, and here we can see she has no skull, though her tiny toes are perfect. How I wish this scene mattered more in the bounds of this story. Rhaenyra’s tenderness (she wraps the body herself, leaving the Silent Sisters on the sidelines) is a match for her vicious yank as she rips the baby from her body. But why is this happening? Crammed in here it feels like horror for horror’s sake. Why must a woman suffer in order to take hold of the mantle of power?
Because Rhaenyra does put power in a chokehold, the same way that Daemon (whose shittiness I had nearly forgotten) wraps his fingers around her neck. She firmly puts him to the side, sends him off on dragon errands, eventually talks over his preening put-on of power at the Painted Table, and nearly laughs in his face when she learns that Viserys never told him of the Song of Ice and Fire. Daemon may have wanted the crown for himself, but when Ser Erryk (and trust me, it is Erryk and not Arryk) crashes their child’s funeral pyre and pulls out Viserys’s crown, it’s the prince who puts it on Rhaenyra’s head (after a long, covetous glance), just as he placed it on his brother’s pate in “The Lord of the Tides.†In that shot, we’re looking up at him, almost like we are kneeling at his feet, his only supplicants.
Another bold move on Rhaenyra’s part is that saunter through Otto’s men after she lands Syrax on the ramparts. As in that fateful second-episode meeting with her then-uncle, now-husband Daemon (keep up, this shit changes overnight), Rhaenyra is happy to use her dragon’s strength as her own. (They do seem to share a brain in a green dream–y way.) After Otto Hightower rolls up and assumes that if he says Aegon’s name the fastest that means he wins, she waltzes by him and declares, “I’m Queen Rhaenyra now†(the old Rhaenyra can’t come to the phone). His terms are meaningless (“I would rather feed my sons to the dragons than have them carry shields and cups for your drunken usurper cunt of a king†😬), and even a page from the history book Alicent and Rhaenyra once studied together isn’t worth a damn. Rhaenyra thinks over Otto’s offer for the good of her people, for the unity her father meekly preserved. (Like Daemon, I too wondered, “What the fuck is this?†when the Grand Maester, who seemingly came along just to carry a piece of paper, pulled that page from his robe.)
I am delighted to tell you, however, that after an entire season of war reports from the allegedly integral Stepstones, they finally do matter. A trade dispute has yet again borne narrative fruit for a fantasy series! Corlys, recovering beautifully from septicemia without even a drop of antibiotics, was off-screen winning back those sandy little atolls, preserving the shipping lanes of the Narrow Sea (sexy), which he can now donate to the cause of keeping his grandsons alive — for the next day or so, anyway. Now, should the plan work out, the Velaryon fleet can lock in the Greens from the coast, and the dragons can pounce from the west. (Narrator voice: No plans ever work out in Westeros.)
But their biggest allies have to come through for the Blacks to successfully squeeze the Greens like the snakes they are (sorry not sorry, Team Black all the way — for now). Jace, the older and fitter brother, will fly north to the Vale to see Lady Arryn, and then to Winterfell to marshal Lord Cregan Stark. Which leaves Luke to hop over to Storm’s End, a short distance away, through a miserable rainstorm.
Rhaenyra might have guessed that Otto would send his own emissaries to lure contested houses to the Greens — let’s chalk up her mistake to first-week-on-the-job nerves. The error, along with Aemond’s devilish jawline, will haunt her. Luke is just 13, Aemond an exceptionally mature (read: AARP member) 19, but the matchup that really matters is hulking Vhagar versus spindly Arrax. Arrax never stood a chance (Fire & Blood notes that he is five times smaller), though when he clears the clouds and hovers in the sunlight above the storm, reprieve seems possible. The Targaryens and their dragons choose one another, but in a contest of wills, the beasts win. “Serve me,†Aemond bellows, but Vhagar, a war veteran, wants blood. Even the blood of another dragon. Chomp, Arrax is in two, and Lucerys presumably in many more pieces than that.
For all Rhaenyra’s control, this is too much. Season two may bring a whole new woman, one who has now lost a mother, father, daughter, and son. One who is hell-bent on ugly, merciless revenge. Unlike the bold presentation of her reaction to her stillborn baby, we see Rhaenyra’s back as she learns about Luke’s midair demise. The last thing we get is her face shifting from placid to wild. The dragons are all about to eat one another alive.
From the Ravens
• The beatings will continue until morale improves! That’s essentially Daemon’s management style. He drags two members of the king’s guard (why are they there?) outside and asks them to declare for the rightful heir. Then, wham, out comes Caraxes, red and lean and mean, just like his rider. Is this how we inspire loyalty? Death threats?
• Rhaenys never kneels to Rhaenyra, hmm.
• Nobody can bring themselves to ask whether it’s Ser Erryk or Ser Arryk, and I kept imagining them mumbling as the funeral service went on, wondering which identical twin just leapt out of nowhere with a full-ass crown in his bag.
• When Otto’s ship is sighted off the coast, they note the banner with a green three-headed dragon, a combination of the Targaryens’ sigil with their color. How did the Hightowers find time to sew whole new insignia in approximately 48 hours?
• I will forever think of Rhaenyra’s finger stroking Lucerys’s hand as she sent him on his way.