After the colossal impact - oh dear, poor choice of phrase - of last week’s episode, I’m not surprised that this week’s House of the Dragon scaled back on the epic in favour of Epicureanism.
Like any war, there are victors and vanquished, but there are no winners. Both sides have taken heavy losses, whether in the quantity of men the Greens lost in taking Rooks Rest; or in the quality of the fallen.
No shade on the 900 men who gave their lives for the Greens of course, but Rhaenys Targaryen was worth a million of you, so as far as I’m concerned you got off lightly.
Ser Gwayne the Green Knight even questions aloud whether Rooks Rest WAS a victory while on their actual victory parade back into King’s Landing.
Reflection must be a part of any sensible strategy, and we see it deployed - or not - in a number of ways that are intimate and personal.
Perhaps none more so than Daemon giving a tongue-lashing to anyone around him, including, it seems… his Mum.
OK, yes, I know, it was another one of his Harrenhallucinations, but still. Bit of a shocker to the system, the, er, climax of that scene.
Look, sex puns aside (for now) this episode to me was about the nature of ambition, but perhaps more importantly, its own Dark Sister… frustration.
For whomst among us has not had ideas, plans, schemes, hopes, and dreams dashed as heartily as Meleys was on the walls of Rooks Rest? Or at the very least interrupted, intercepted, altered, or traduced?
In some ways the past year has been a massive thwarting of some of my own ambitions, and trying to move past the frustrations that at times seem to overwhelm me. What is the point of even trying, I cry in the dark, when failure seems constant? How do you move past the agony of frustration, and keep reaching for the ambition? At what point do you start entertaining… mad thoughts?
So while I’m still here to hopefully bring the yuks, my wonderful kittens, I found this possibly the most introspectively moving episode of the series so far.
HotD S2E5: Regent
A question. How did Aegon not die on the road back to the capital?
I mean, if Aemond had airlifted him out of there on Vhagar, a sort-of Royal Flying Dragon Service, that would make sense.
But it very much looks like he’s been put in a box and pulled slowly behind a horse for what must have been at least a few days.
The guy is a drunk, so one can only imagine he was lucky not to spontaneously combust when hit by sparks from the beefed-up Bic lighter that is Vhagar’s throat. Maybe Sunfyre’s last act was to twist his own body as he fell to cushion Aegon’s landing, but still… how is he alive?
To add insult to serious life-threatening injury, there doesn’t appear to be a rush to get him urgent medical assistance. He’s part of the slow victory lap Ser Criston “Ass” Cole and Ser Gwayne the Green Knight take through the streets of King’s Landing to show off the hulking dead head of “the traitor dragon” Meleys. YOU RUDE SONS OF BITCHES. “Killed by your king!” YOU LYING RUDE SONS OF BITCHES.
I thought for a moment poor Meleys’ mortal remains were still smouldering, but closer inspection suggests they put incense or some sort of smoky scent on the carriage to ameliorate what can only be described as dead dragon stank.
Far from being impressed, the peasants are almost revolted, taking it as bad juju.
“I thought the dragons was gods,” says one, displaying an impressive disregard for subjunctives.
“They’re just meat,” replies our burly friend Hugh, who really is rocking the most impressive half-up, half-down with beard combination.
It’s a beard you can lose a badger in.
Alicent and Aemond stand looking down at proceedings, sharing the kind of close, loving bond we’ve come to expect from this tight-knit family.
WTAFA
Alicent notes Aemond is now carrying the Cat’s Paw dagger, a weapon Aegon used to love to muck around with instead of paying attention at Small Council meetings. You get the sense she wants to ask him what happened at Rooks Rest, but also doesn’t want to speak to the guy.
They see the non-descript box carrying Aegon trundle below them, and Alicent heads off in the slightly disengaged way that only a mother not entirely sure whether she wants her son to survive can.
Again, the ritual around providing healthcare for Aegon is more slow and complicated than *insert name of your hated private health insurer here*.
Eventually, a team of Maesters led by Grand Maester Orwyle prises off Aegon’s armour to inspect the damage. It’s another scene where having the subtitles on gives a visceral dimension to the viewing experience. “Pus squelching” was my favourite.
Below the Valyrian steel lies what can best be described as a flame-grilled Whopper. Aegon is now more brisket than man. And he’s clearly not been well-seasoned either, as the maesters and Alicent all hold their noses as the full olfactory impact hits the room.
“Is my son going to die?” Alicent asks, as Silent Sisters stand solemnly at the ready. Grand Maester Orwyle is very kind in his response, but the upshot is “Girl, as if we know! Get the hell out of here already, and send in the biggest aloe vera plant you can find.”
Aemond artfully strolls into the king’s chamber, and heads directly to the foot of the bed. It’s another brilliant physical power move from Aemond, the prince of boss-ass body language. He watches with something that could be glee as his brother sizzles before him, but merely says “Someone will have to rule in his stead.”
Alicent heads off to find answers from Ser Criston, who’s busy polishing his sword. That’s not a euphemism in this case, because he’s using lemon and what looks like sand as cleaning agents and ouch, that would sting.
It’s impressive the way Ser Criston avoids eye contact with Alicent in this exchange, and answers with all the detail of a World War 1 telegram:
WE WON STOP AEGON FOUGHT WELL STOP ASKING ABOUT AEMOND STOP PLEASE STOP
We do discover that Sunfyre eventually died of his injuries, which is genuinely sad. He was a beautiful boy, and it wasn’t his fault his dragonrider was a bratty fool.
Hours later, or maybe the next day, the Small Council meets to hear an update. Grandmaester Orwyle and his team have done their best, but as the Red Keep is not kitted out with an MRI machine, the true extent of his injuries are unknowable. Alicent appears to have a tear in one eye as she is told Aegon may never wake up, but then again it could just be hay fever.
The other One-Eye certainly cries no tears, but sits calmly while Alicent begins talking about the R-word: Regent.
She’s not backwards in coming forwards, saying she acted in the role when Viserys was ill, and stands ready to do so again.
There’s a few polite coughs as the council suggest that role was done in peacetime, and mayyyyyybeeee what we reaaaaalllyyyyy neeeeeed right now is, you knowwwww, a maaaannnnnnn.
Grandmaester Orwyle throws a bone in for Alicent, saying she has runs on the board, but it turns out you can’t spell “penis” out of “female experience”.
There’s a frisson of tension as Alicent tells the room that Aemond is young, and his lack of restraint has already cost them dearly. She then tries to backtrack a bit, saying he’s a skilled dragon rider and he’s best deployed in the field.
But one by one the councillors reinforce the patriarchy. Ser Larys Strong touches on the theme I mentioned last week - that by campaigning against a Queen Regnant, they can hardly install a Queen Regent.
The look of disgust Alicent shoots at him is only outdone by the look of disgust she shoots at Ser Criston when he doubles down on Aemond as being the next in line, once again without meeting her gaze.
Aemond, sensibly, has stayed quiet during this debate, but ends it with a confident “It’s agreed, then.” He grabs the marble speaking ball thingy and moves up to occupy the King’s chair. “What is our position in the Riverlands?” he asks.
Foiled again by her cool, calm and collected psycho son, Alicent sinks into her chair. This episode is full of beautiful moments of cinematography, and we see this here: the camera slowly zooms in on Alicent, as the conversation of men happens around her. Their voices dim as we hear Alicent’s frustrated breathing intensify, along with a dull hum that seems to evoke the rage burning just behind her eyes. She’s particularly affected when Aemond talks of closing the city gates to keep people in the capital and avoid stories of hunger and deprivation being widely spread. She recognises she’s not alone in being isolated and restricted; her body is a microcosm of the body politic.
Perhaps I’m too kind to Alicent - after all, it was her testimony that stripped Rhaenyra of her rightful inheritance. She is now perhaps reaping what she sowed in pushing a male claim instead of accepting a female one. It has made her own skills lesser in the eyes of the Small Council (exception for feminist ally Grand Maester Orwyle, respect), and worse, in the eyes of her own sociopathic offspring.
But I remain soft-hearted toward Alicent, perhaps a sign of my own foolishness. I think she represents a phase of womanhood many of us go through, which is trying to “join” the boy’s club at the expense of other women. But I think she is struggling now with the fallout from that. Aemond has said before of his mother that she “holds love for the enemy”, but I think in this case it’s a credit to Alicent, not a curse, and it might just save her soul.
“And somebody cut down those f***ing ratcatchers,” Aemond declares, ending their meeting.
Ser Criston later does just that, with Alicent finding him among the stinking corpses to ask why he has cast her aside when he knows what Aemond is; whether his loyalty to her only exists in the middle of the night.
I almost, ALMOST, have a tiny sliver of compassion for Ser Criston, as his experience at Rooks Rest truly seems to have shaken him. He’s a warrior, sure, but he’s never seen the brutal effect of dragons so intensely. “We have given the war to dragons,” he intones. “A dragonrider should lead us.”
But the problem is Captain Fedora gets all “milady” and thinks Alicent should be protected from having to do the terrible things that Aemond will quite happily jump right into. Having just had her sex weaponised against her ability to govern used against her, she’s in no mood to hear that shit. “I didn’t ask to be spared,” she snaps back, then tells him off for addressing her by her first name.
I suspect it might be some time before Ser Criston gets to polish his sword again.
Meanwhile there’s panic at the city gates as the Gold Cloaks start preventing the citizens of King’s Landing from leaving. Among them is Top Knot Hugh, his wife Kat, and their daughter Sick For Plot Reasons.
Hugh is a proud man and didn’t want to leave the capital, despite the blockade leaving less food in the city than at a Victoria’s Secret backstage buffet. He was convinced the King would come through with payment for all the “machines” he helped build (anti-dragon Scorpions, if I recall), but Kat eventually hit him with the killer line “You can stay and wait for the gold and use it to feed ghosts”.
So here they are, amidst a growing crowd of the hungry and frightened, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Kat hears the Gold Cloaks reference Aemond as the Prince Regent, and is the first person in this show to look appropriately terrified at that fact.
A cry of “We want meat! We want meat!” goes up, which honestly just sounded like me barking my order into the KFC drive-thru speaker.
Will Aemond and the Small Council realise this course of action is not necessarily the genius strategy they think it is?
After all, we are only ever a few half-decent meals away from rioting - but the privileged well-fed ones in the Red Keep are not the ones who’ll be suffering…
It’s somber times across the Bay, with Corlys and Rhaenyra both having sad alone time to mark the passing of the irreplaceable Rhaenys. They come at it from different angles, but both know the scale of the loss.
For Corlys, it’s the end of their great love, the number one driving factor behind his success.
For Rhaenyra, it’s being left without her wing woman at the GIANT WAR ROOM TABLE MAP.
And boy, isn’t it full of grumpy, angsty men yearning for action. I’m still not up on all of their names, but the main agitator seems to be Ser Alfred Broome, who’s swept up in frustration at losing their best dragon, a series of strongholds, and still having no ground army because Daemon shot through after “a marital spat”.
“You wanna come at me, bro?” Rhaenyra demands. Broome says she’s quick and clever but she’s a girl, and girls don’t play World of Warcraft so they don’t understand military strategy.
“There has been peace in our time; you have seen no more battles than I have,” is Rhaenyra’s tart response.
The men continue bickering until Rhaenyra says she will fly Syrax into battle if necessary and is met with more jeers about being the queen and not risking her own life.
It’s not just Rhaenyra who needs some chub rub cream due to intense chafing.
Jace tells Baela he’s sick of being a coddled princeling while she goes out and scouts, so he’s off to see what Daemon’s doing at Harrenhal. Then he has a better idea: secure a path into the Riverlands for the Stark army by treating with… the Freys.
NO NO NO NO NO NOT THE F***ING FREYS.
Look, I realised I’m forward-biased. I know what this family eventually gets up to. But maybe that’s the future, with Lord Walder and his eleventy billion freakazoid children.
Nope, an ambitious set of perfidious grifters, the whole lot of them.
They want Harrenhal in return for providing safe crossing across The Twins, because of course they do.
I guess it’s not a bad deal for Jace to strike, tactically-speaking, as it does guarantee their fealty to Rhaenyra. But I do feel sorry for the leftover Strongs who’ve been keeping the gas on at the great big old water park that is Harrenhal. The only question is - how will Daemon react hearing his stepson/nephew-once-removed has offered something he himself sees as in his control?
Back at Dragonstone, and sick of the company of men, Rhaenyra is spending time with the two sensible women she can still rely on. Baela is not a surprise; she is, after all, family. They have a lovely moment together reminiscing about Rhaenys, before Rhaenyra tasks her with taking something to Corlys.
More interesting is Rhaenyra’s growing confidence in Magical Mysaria Tour, despite her frankly unknowable accent. As an older woman who has dealt in men’s f***ery as the White Worm, Rhaenyra feels able to open up to her about her insecurities around leadership. She’s forging a path that is new to everyone, as there’s never been a Queen Regnant before, and she’s not certain of her steps.
Mysaria reassures her she was her father’s chosen heir, but Rhaenyra is angry her education in that role did not include warfare strategy and battle tactics like a boy would have received. She rails against the fact that the one weapon she does have - her, on Syrax - is being tied down like an unwilling bachelor.
But Mysaria has never had the privilege of being a dragonrider, so she’s always had to think outside the box. There is more than one way to fight a war, and brings up the fact that the smallfolk of King’s Landing will see Meleys’ death as a bad omen. Rhaenyra agrees with that; something that barely rates a mention in the Greens’ camp. Mysaria says rumours are like food to hungry people, and suggests letting others help do what the Queen cannot.
We then see one of the castle maids kitted up and sent over to the capital, smuggling her way thanks to the help of a friendly guard who knows Mysaria. She hurries through the wet and windy streets to a door, where a lady greets her, “Elinda!”. What house has she gone to, and what food - in the form of gossip - is she there to dish out?
Let’s head elsewhere in the realm now, and make a brief stop at The Eyrie, the first time the seat of the Arryns is seen in this series. Lady Jeyne Arryn seems a reasonable, if somewhat purse-lipped kind of woman. She’s unimpressed that her request for a dragon for protection has been answered with two lil’ baby dragons.
I don’t know why the phrase “still wet from the egg” makes my skin crawl, but it does. Maybe because it sounds like a euphemism for something sexual, when really it’s just a euphemism for young. I should probably not be fleshing out these weird thoughts my mind has on the page. If this is held up in a court of law as evidence of my creepiness one day… well, let’s face it, I should nuke these recaps from orbit if that’s ever the case. I have already convicted myself many times over.
Quick tangent: the spelling is different, but Lady Jayne is an Australian hair accessories brand, so everytime I say the phrase Lady Jeyne in my head I picture the Lady of the Vale combing her locks with a boar bristle brush before putting it up in an octopus claw grip clip.
It’s not totally ridiculous though, considering Lady Jeyne has beautiful, pin straight black hair, as no-nonsense as Lady Jayne products can make your own haircare routine.
“I mislike feeling powerless,” she tells Rhaena, no doubt thinking of how much she’d like to order the Salon Pro Rechargeable 2 in 1 Hairstyler with ceramic plating and cordless technology.
Now here Rhaena has the best answer. “So do I.” Poor sweet thing, I do feel sorry for her. Her sister Baela is all kick-ass dragon-riding heroine, while her attempts to bond with a dragon have been as successful as driving a Tesla Cybertruck, and she’s been shipped out on babysitting duty. Talk about maddening.
Let’s move on then to the Riverlands, where it seems the more Daemon’s mind is being f***ed over, the more f***ing over he’s doing to the region.
Initially, he looks quite impressive, sitting astride Caraxes menacing the heads of House Bracken. He’s leaning more and more into the “King” thing too - demanding they bend the knee to HIM, not Rhaenyra.
But he soon looks foolish when the Brackens rather hard-arsedly choose death by fire than joining forces with the Blackwoods and their “hired dragon”. There’s another spectacular shot of Lord Bracken turning his back on Caraxes, whose great head slowly hoves into view.
The moment of anticipation turns into an anti-climax, when it’s revealed their grit in the face of death is precisely the reason Daemon chooses to spare them. Willem Blackwood is incensed, but as Daemon says, he’s there to raise armies, not corpses.
Instead, he persuades Blackwood to “persuade” the Brackens. It’s all hints and meaningful looks, indicating Daemon is very keen for Blackwood to get into the heinous bullshit business, but not to let it be traced back to the Targaryens.
The problem is whatever tiny fissure Harrenhal opened up in Daemon’s brain is quickly becoming a crack, as we seen in his Oedipal dream for the ages.
When I write these recaps I try to sequester myself away from detailed reaction to the episode, but I can only guess this is the scene from this episode that will create the most controversy.
Me? I thought it was fantastic.
Obviously, as gross as all get out. But that’s the point. We’ve all become inured to the concept of Targaryens inter-marrying, so to demonstrate Daemon’s descent into denial, the show has to break a taboo even the Targaryens respect.
Daemon is being seduced into power, here represented by what we think is a mysterious blonde beauty. He’s being told all the things about himself that he longs to hear - that he’s strong, powerful, clever, majestic and has a wang Isambard Kingdom Brunel could only dream of engineering.
“Suspension is the key.”
He’s hearing what he wants to hear, so it repays it with pleasure. This is the body that birthed him, The Great Daemon, The Rightful King, so it makes sense his subconscious treats it as a holy sept where he should worship at the altar, if you get my drift.
Again, I’m not saying I endorse this sort of behaviour. The Raven On recaps have a strong “Say No To Incest” policy when it come to the world at large. But this is a hallucination, and I really applaud the show for, ahem, pushing that button.
Of course, Daemon’s waking hours are causing him just as many nightmares.
There’s the matter of his title. People are still not calling him “my King”, and Sir Simon As Ser Simon is particularly bitchy about it. “King…. Consort” he keeps insisting, even though Daemon is getting more and more annoyed at the implication of “consort”.
There’s the matter of who is going to pay for all the construction work needed at Harrenhal to ready it for the great army Daemon intends to raise; plus the meat and bread needed to feed them. Ser Simon delicately explains that Ser Larys nicked off with the family gold, and his resources cover only the bare necessities for his small household. He tentatively suggests Daemon write to the Queen to secure the funds, but Daemon is in ghost mode with Rhaenyra. She’s swiping right and sending endless question marks, but he’s leaving her on read.
He pledges to fund the war effort himself; and better still, he pledges to help build it too. But there’s the matter of the mysterious screams and cries that whistle around the castle walls as he chops wood in its dank courtyard.
Alys Rivers accuses him of being better with a sword than an axe, but he refuses to be labelled a bludger. While tending to a cut on his hand, she tells him about the whispers she hears on the wind of the “weak and women” suffering at the hands of the Blackwoods. She says an upright man would repudiate such measures, but Daemon has never pretended to be an upright man. However he does believe himself to be a better option than Aegon or Aemond.
“I’m sure your tactics have been approved by the Queen,” she shoots at him, which prompts Daemon to give the clearest indication yet that he is now in active revolt against Rhaenyra. “They won’t accept her - they look to a man for strength.” He says Rhaenyra can join him when he invades King’s Landing, but it will be as a co-soverighn. Daddy wants the toy too.
“What a pity you never met your mother,” Alys says, a strange statement that takes Daemon aback. Before he can question further, an exhausted Sir Simon As Ser Simon comes in to confirm that the Blackwoods have brought the Brackens to heel.
It’s all a bit Macbeth at this point, with the Scottish Thane hearing of his future titles from the witches before one of them being confirmed by a king’s messenger, thus promoting his ambition. And much like in the Shakespearean play, Daemon calls for a celebration.
But the party doesn’t go as planned.
Yet again, Ser Simon interrupts his disrupted sleep to alert him of the arrival of the Riverlords. He starts by admonishing him for their early arrival, but he’s soon shouted into submission by the passion of the outraged lords.
“There have been… complications,” says Sir Simon As Ser Simon, in the understatement of the year. Bad stuff has been happening, and contrary to instructions, the Blackwoods have been flying the red-and-black Targaryen banner.
The accusations of the Riverlords echo Banquo’s ghostly presence at Macbeth’s table, but they are of course much louder. A better comparison might be the sense of a Greek chorus, or even the Furies themselves, raining down opprobrium upon the Dragon Lord who has sanctioned the excessive force of the Blackwoods.
“We will not raise our banners for a tyrant,” the woman leader declares, and boy I loved the virtual slap you could see across Daemon’s face.
Given that these terrible actions - again, against the smallfolk, the innocents - are happening offscreen, we needed these Riverlords to convey the horror of what Daemon himself is turning away from. By the end, Daemon almost has as many strips torn from him as Aegon.
Something has to give with Daemon at Harrenhal, and we might get a taste of that soon. Fed up with endlessly ignored ravens, Rhaenyra has tasked Ser Arthur Broome to get the stick out of her husband’s ass. He’s going to find out once and for all if he’s raising an army for her… or for himself.
Given Daemon’s nocturnal-maternal encounter, and increasingly loose grip on reality, I thought we’d take a Tears for Fears detour (via Donnie Darko) and dive into Daemon’s Mad World:
All around me are some pasty faces
Dreary spaces, no embraces
I’m a king I need some goddamed aces
Going nowhere, going nowhere
The Brackens would prefer the fire
Things are dire, things are dire
Send the Blackwoods to be very thorough
In the borough, in the borough
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams about my mother are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, you’ll think that I’m a flake
When Harrenhal encircles, it’s a very, very
Mad World.
Dead wife haunting me at every tea time
Stop it Laena, stop it Laena
Alys Rivers must be up to no good
Weak and women, weak and women
Tell her I’m the best to rule in King’s Landing
Not Rhaenyra, not Rhaenyra
Hello River Lords now what’s your problem?
Will this screw me, will this screw me
And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I touch my mother’s boobs are prob’ly bad
I find it hard to ask you, what action I should take
When Harrenhal encircles it’s a very, very
Mad World
I’ll chop some wood
Mad World
Let’s re-connect with Corlys, something Baela seems keen to do too. The box Rhaenyra has given her to pass to him contains the badge for Hand of the Queen, but the honour only evokes bitterness. “Haven’t I given enough?!” he bemoans to Baela, who’s having none of her grandfather’s excuses. In a glorious moment, she says Rhaenys wasn’t just a piece of property for Corlys to lose - she was a Targaryen f***ing princess, and had free will, and honour, and a fighting spirit of her own. She went out in a blaze of dragonfire just like Laena did, and just like Baela wants to as well. Corlys can do what he likes, but she knows what side she has joined, and she’s not throwing away her shot.
Stunned by the maturity and energy of his granddaughter, Corlys makes a bold pronouncement:
“Granddaughter, I would name you my heir.”
Baela - showing the best responses seem to come from the sisters - replies “I am blood and fire. Driftmark must pass to salt and sea.”
Now this is interesting, and perhaps gives more weight to my theory that Corlys might seek to legitimise his bastard Alan, the one Rhaenys called comely. Perhaps his brother Addam With the Extra D (snort), as it’s likely he could be one as well.
Corlys takes some time to think about the offer, teary and alone in the halls of High Tide. But we see him clasp his hand around the badge, seemingly embracing his appointment.
He and Rhaenyra have both lost the most from Rhaenys’ death. Perhaps she would approve that they forge the path forward - the one never taken before - together?
Certainly Rhaenyra needs ideas. Jace returns with good news from the Freys, but is surprised at her anger. Yes, she’s mad at him for going without permission, but he realises it’s not all about him.
Rhaenyra needs dragons, but Jace points out what she really needs is dragon riders. With Rhaenys dead, Rhaena incapable and the other sons too little, there’s a dearth of pilot candidates.
Now the Targaryen “blood purity” thing has always been a bit of an awkward concept, beyond just the incest required to keep it going. Sure, we can accept it’s a fantasy trope about the dragons being connected or bonded somehow to Targaryen blood, but in our real world, it always feels iffy, to say the least.
So I love Jace suggesting that the party line of “Only Targaryens can ride dragons” comes conveniently from Valyrian histories that are in themselves propaganda material. He latches onto the idea of looking at the family tree to find some other options among houses that had Targaryens marry into them.
I LOVED hearing the name “Tarly” mentioned as having a possible Targaryen connection. Please bring back Sam Tarly to play his own great-great-great-great grandfather and get saddled up on dragonback. Forget Jon Snow riding Rhaegal, I need to see that to be truly happy.
There’s also another possibility here - bastards. People like old mate Ulf, who claims to be a half-brother of Viserys and Daemon. Surely this would be a great time to show off his Targaryen lineage, if he’s brave enough to chance it. To be honest, there are probably more Targaryen bastards with stronger potential than legitimate lords.
“It’s a mad thought,” Rhaenyra says of the plan. But as Akira Kurosawa said “In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
Finally to conclude with striking images from the flip sides of the Aemond/Aegon coin.
Barely a day or so into his new role as Regent, Aemond visits the Iron Throne, staring up at the spiky chair, but crucially not in any hurry to sit in it. As lighting and thunder roil around the keep, he senses Helaena behind him. “Was it worth the price?” she asks, at once knowing and naive.
Clearly she knows something about how he came to be in that position; what she does with that knowledge remains to be seen.
The other tragic moment is Alicent keeping vigil by Aegon’s side, with only his ragged breath to indicate he hasn’t fully transformed into an all-beef patty. But in another example of the terrible disconnect Alicent seems to have with her kids, she leaves the room just moments before Aegon can utter a barely audible whisper… “Mummy”.
“This is my impression of my Dad.”
It’s strangely devastating, because it’s not something Aegon is likely to forget. Should he pull through - and it seems despite all the odds he will - he will feel more disconnected from his mother than ever before.
Yay! Best Moments.
Despite its more measured pace, this episode contains some of the most brilliant shot composition.
I’ve already mentioned the slow zoom in on Alicent as the Council tunes her out; and Caraxes’ fearsome face lining up behind Lord Bracken and his men, who’ve turned their backs on Daemon to await death by fire.
The Twins are beautifully depicted, with Jace striding off at the end of the meeting towards the side of the bridge where his dragon Vermax is chilling on a grassy knoll. (Another question - how did he know which side to land on to facilitate the meeting in the middle of the bridge? Just lucky?)
But perhaps the smallest, blink-and-you’ll-miss it moment is when the scene in which the Riverlords confront Daemon ends, Daemon is shown resting his right hand on a chimney flue as he stares into the fire. It then cuts to a reversed image of Rhaenyra resting her left hand on a chimney flue as she stares into the fire. It’s 52:22 into the episode if you want to go back and take note; it so subtly shows how both of these characters are being vexed in their ambitions for the crown, but responding in very different ways.
Zing! Best Lines.
A chef’s kiss moment of comedy timing was seeing that epic shot of Caraxes behind a defiant Lord Bracken, death surely imminent…only for it to cut to Daemon sitting dejectedly on a rock flanked by Willem Blackwood.
“I really didn’t expect them to be so eager to die.”
Ew, gross
There is a shot of a maester cracking a broken bone in what I think was Aegon’s knee, or possibly an elbow. The vision was nasty enough, but the sound of the bone crunching… I may have thrown up slightly in my mouth.
Boo, sucks.
THE PUPPY IS STILL STANDING GUARD BY THE HANGING CORPSE OF CHEESE I CAN’T I CAN’T I CAN’T WE DON’T DESERVE DOGS.
The Dance of Dragons civil war may end with mass death and destruction, but I will sweep all of their ashes before me as long as every hair on that little guy’s body is safe. Please let Hugh and his family adopt that pup. What could be more comforting for Sick For Plot Reasons than a faithful hound?
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