Old feuds and bad blood

Sunday night’s episode of The Dragon House opens with an old quarrel. A group of Ferns and a group of Blackwoods are arguing over the border of their land. One side pledged to support Rhaenyra’s cause; the other, at Aegon’s. It seems likely that the only reason they support different sides is malice. Hottest tempers prevail when it comes to a kingdom on the brink of war, though no bloodshed is as appalling to the gods as that of a kinsman killing a loved one.

This little quarrel ends with words and shoving. A young man draws his sword. Then the scene returns some time later and the same field is littered with corpses from both Houses as far as the eye can see. The countryside is covered in blood and rubble. The old windmill has seen better days.

The first real battle of the Dance of Dragons has finally happened, albeit off-screen (I think it’s very effective). It won’t be the last. It seems that much of Season 2, or at least its first half, will be devoted to the first rumblings of war rather than the war itself, and the calmer spirits trying to stop it all. Daemon (Matt Smith) and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) clearly want war, but what about Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Allicent (Olivia Cooke)?

Rhaenyra discusses the upcoming bloodshed with her aunt, Rhaenys (Eve Best) and decides that she must travel to King’s Landing to meet Allicent face to face. She asks Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) for help and the white worm gives her the only place the Dowager Queen visits without anyone watching: the Great Sept, where she goes to light candles and say her prayers.

Rhaenyra disguises herself as a nun and heads to the Sept where she finds Allicent and kneels next to her, much to the shock of her former friend. She begs Allicent to do everything she can to avoid war, and then the conversation turns to what exactly King Viserys I said in his final moments. It’s a pretty big revelation for both of them when it turns out he was talking about the “Prince That Was Promised” and the Song of Ice and Fire – not at all about Aegon, his son. But Allicent, although visibly shaken, says it is too late. The war is coming and she can’t and won’t do anything about it.

Let me complain for a moment, not about this show, but about Game Of Thrones. I remember how desperately stupid the ending was and how many weaknesses it had, especially in season 8. I maintain, even though I’m not sure George RR Martin will ever finish his books to prove me right, that Jon Snow East The Song of Ice and Fire. This is the promised prince, not Daenerys, as the series kept stupidly suggesting, before clarifying that she was not Daenerys at all.

In fact, the show just dismissed all the prophecies as gracefully and clumsily as possible. Jon didn’t fight and kill the Night King. Arya came along at the eleventh hour and pulled it off because the show gave her massive superpowers for no good reason, making her much, much less interesting as a character in the process.

Then Jon kills Dany and is exiled, while Bran becomes king! Jon was the heir to the Iron Throne! He was of Stark (ice) and Targaryen (fire) blood! The House of the Dragon clearly shows that this prophecy is important enough to include in a prequel, but it reminds me of how Thrones fucked up.

Regardless… Rhaenyra’s attempt to avoid war was only a half-attempt, at best. She never offered anything to Allicent as a bargaining chip. All she did was insist that she was the rightful heir, that her father loved her, and that Allicent was wrong. Was she hoping that simply repeating her belief about the throne would somehow convince the Dowager Queen, and that she would then, empty-handed, be able to avoid war? Convince Aegon of what? To renounce the throne? There was a time for this, when Aegon clearly didn’t want it, but that ship has sailed.

A few other very important events happened in this episode. Rhaenyra sends her youngest boys with Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell), Daemon’s daughter and younger sister, to Beala, to go to the Vale. Rhaena, as you may recall, is the only member of the family who still doesn’t have her own dragon. This makes her feel very left out of all the fun, especially the “flying a dragon to patrol for enemies” fun. But with the children, Rhaenyra sends Rhaena with a clutch of unhatched dragon eggs. This calms him down to a certain extent.

Daemon, meanwhile, heads to a very damp, very dreary and mostly unoccupied Harrenhal where he meets the steward, Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale) and settles down, eager to raise armies and rebuild the immense fortress. The Riverlands, it seems, are the key to the entire war and both Green Team and Black Team are preparing to bring the Lords of the Riverlands to their respective camps. However, old Grover Tully is old and infirm, and so his banners are restless and unruly.

In this dark castle, Daemon has a strange vision of a young Rhaenyra—Milly Alcock’s first appearance on the show since the first half of Season 1, and quite a surprise!—sewing the head of young Prince Jaehaerys back together.

Side note: I love you, George RR Martin, but if you had made these names easier to spell, you might have finished Winter Winds now. Sigh.

This is no ordinary vision, but one that a witch attributes to the taciturn prince – er, sorry, Your Grace—And trust me, this particular witch will have a much bigger role to play as the story progresses. “You will die in this castle,” she tells Daemon. Witches always prophesy the darkest things in Westeros.

I don’t think the show conveys this well, but Daemon did indeed capture Harrenhal for Team Black without spilling a drop of blood. Landing his dragon, Caraxes, on the roof certainly helped. Strong’s dislike of his relative, Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), doesn’t hurt. Larys, meanwhile, becomes Master of Whisperers in this same episode, thanks to his countless words of wisdom for young Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney).

We also meet two other important new characters. The first is Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox from Slow horses (who plays this type of character too well) Alicent’s brother who apparently spent all this time in Vieilleville rather than at court. I’d say he’s appeared off-screen in the past, but since he’s only introduced to Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) in this episode, I’m guessing he’s never been to King’s Landing before. He comes across as arrogant and spoiled, and even the Lord Commander is irritated with him – and I hate agreeing with the Dornish on anything!

Speaking of Cole, he left with an army towards the Edge and Harrenhal. He is tired of all this discussion, all this lamenting. He wants action, and so he takes action. Ser Gwayne accompanies him and as they head west, Gwayne and his servants leave the corps to find a nearby inn. Cole follows him, annoyed by the young knight’s nonchalant nonsense, and it is at that moment, in an open field, that he sees the dragon high up.

He urges his mount forward and tells the others to ride hard toward the trees. In the sky, Baela (Bethany Antonia) is on her dragon, Moondancer. She spots the flash of armor and dismounts as the knights gallop for their lives. Later, we learn that she was close enough to identify Criston Cole, though the Hand and his men manage to hide in the forest before any harm can come to them, and Gwayne expresses his gratitude, earning the Lord Commander another loyalist.

The other new character we meet in this episode identifies as a Dragonseed, that is, a Targaryen or Valyrian (including House Velaryon) bastard sired in the Nera Bay region. In this series and in Martin Fire and blood, these include (and yes, this is a spoiler but I think it will help to understand):

• Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew), the blacksmith we met earlier this season;
• Addam (Clinton Liberty) and her younger brother, Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim), both bastards of Velaryon, although their parentage remains uncertain.
• Ulf White (Tom Bennett), the man we meet in the brothel tavern in this latest episode, although we spotted him near the ratcatcher’s gallows last week. He exposes a few things about his lineage, which is why I thought it was worth expanding on in this article.

There are others we haven’t met yet that I’ll leave off the list, but they’ll all be very important characters as the war unfolds thanks to their unique bloodlines, even as bastards. We also hear, once again, about young Daeron and his dragon Tessarion. Alicent’s youngest has yet to show his cherubic face on House of the Dragon, but he is on his way.

In that same tavern, that very evening, two brothers come to visit him. One is noisy and obnoxious; the other is as fresh as a cucumber. Neither of them should really be there.

We learn earlier that Aegon replaced the dead Kingsguard with his lackeys, showing all the wisdom and foresight of a lump of coal. None of these slouching ingrates seem to have much training or discipline, another annoyance for Criston Cole, who I’m almost starting to feel empathy for (yikes). As they dress him for battle – he insists on following Cole’s army against the wishes of the Small Council – they mention a trip to the brothels with a squire who has not yet lost his virginity. “But you have sworn an oath of chastity,” Aegon told them sternly. They laugh at first, but quickly shut up as their king seems completely serious. (This is right after Larys convinced the king not go into battle, after all, through a few clever little lies that play directly on Aegon’s lack of self-confidence).

Maybe he was serious about these vows, but a few hours later we see him stumble…