House of the Dragon Ep. 2, or a really messed up edition of The Bachelor?
A character's fraught choice sets up thrilling, complicated conflicts to come.
The Short Take:
The political intrigue ramps up in a big way in Episode 2, with some characters playing the game (yes, that one) better than others. Juicy conflicts act as well-placed chess pieces that will fall throughout the rest of the season.
Dragon Count: Holding steady at 2.
Image Credit: WikiofThrones
[And the SPOILERS roared as one. Make sure you’ve seen the episode before you continue.]
The Long Take:
I’ve missed watching characters make bad choices. A classic Thrones narrative often pivots when a character has a big, difficult decision to make. Considering the parallels between Westeros and Tudor England, many of these big decisions revolve around marriage proposals as political alliances. Without spoiling perhaps the most talked about scene in all of Game of Thrones, I will vaguely remind everyone of what happened when Robb Stark chose a wife. Often these decisions defy duty, political advice, or common sense. Others sacrifice personal happiness. In Westeros, the smart choice rarely aligns with the right choice.
And we can usually, as viewers, see the potential fallout of each option around the corner because the series does a thorough job of showing us what is at stake and how each party involved will likely react. It seems as though House of the Dragon will keep up this tradition, as I found the writing and the structure of the episode brilliantly built towards a crucial moment: King Viserys announcing to the small council that he plans to marry the Lady Alicent Hightower, his daughter’s best friend. (Maybe former best friend now? We’ll see.) A shocking — but really not so shocking — revelation for those in the room and watching at home.
Image Credit: Yahoo.com
Proposing to Alicent was neither the smart nor the right choice, and as such this week pushed whatever Ned Stark parallels fans and critics drew last week out a Bran-sized window. I think the only person Viserys made happy was Alicent’s power hungry father, Otto Hightower. And that guy is the worst.
Or at least he’s my least favorite on the show so far. This episode confirmed my suspicions from last week that Otto’s number one goal is to rule the realm by proxy, trying to manipulate Viserys into making decisions that will advance his own House’s ascension to the throne. He has been sending his daughter to visit the grieving king, so that when it came time to choose a new wife — as everyone in the realm keeps saying is necessary, even if it’s too soon — Alicent would be the closest to a romantic interest. A known quantity. A friendly face. Between two underaged girls (Laena is 12 and Alicent is 15), choose the underaged girl you know, right?
But how trustworthy is the girl you know? On Talk the Thrones, The Ringer-Verse’s HotD instant reaction podcast, Mallory Rubin made a great point about how we don’t really know much about Alicent’s interiority, so it’s difficult to gauge how much she’s just trying to follow her father’s orders vs. how invested she is in her own house’s rise to power. As Rubin mentioned, she does seem to be manipulating Rhaenyra and Viserys when she is alone with them, but the show also makes a point to show her nervously picking at her nails until they bleed. This implies that she’s not happy about what’s going on or isn’t comfortable engaging in lies and deception. The data point I’ll add is that in the behind-the-scenes featurette at the end of this week’s episode, the actress who plays Alicent, Emily Carey, says that she sees Alicent as genuinely trying to console Viserys: “She doesn’t go to intentionally court the king. She does it out of kindness.” She sees her own widower father in him and wants to help. I don’t totally buy that this is the only thing going on, though. I think that it makes more sense if Alicent is trying to find this strain of kindness to make the best of a situation she doesn’t want to be in. She has to be at least somewhat clued into Otto’s nefarious motives. Hopefully the show unfurls Alicent’s thoughts more, perhaps when Rhaenyra inevitably confronts her about what the dragon-riding princess must perceive as a betrayal.
Image Credit: Boston Globe
A more generous viewer might say that Viserys is also trying to make the best of a bad situation, but, to me, his attempt at compromise is so misguided because it’s a baffling half-measure. He’s technically remarrying and giving in to pressure put upon him to maintain the crown’s strength and propagate the Targaryen line, but he’s not actually going so far as to make a good match. So he’s selling out, but poorly. If he’s committing to the logic that remarrying will make him a better king, he shouldn’t in doing so snub the arranged marriage that will actually benefit his house and his reign politically. Viserys’ poor choice here is very similar to his ineffectiveness last week, in which he seems to care about his wife and technically has the “I had no choice” or “I had to make an impossible choice” defense, but really ends up committing horrible acts in the way he handles Aemma’s dangerous pregnancy and ensuing death. One could try to argue that he is trying to marry for love as best he can, but it’s hard for me to say that when Viserys must know that choosing Alicent is so much more upsetting for his daughter than Laena, a lady who is also too young but isn’t close to Rhaenyra in the way Alicent is.
Viserys even says to Alicent, in the creepiest way, that she should keep their meetings a secret from Rhaenyra because she wouldn’t understand. That implies he knew what he was doing and the harm it would do. On the Still Watching podcast this week, Vanity Fair critic Richard Lawson very insightfully used the word grooming to describe what’s happening to Alicent, and asked viewers to weigh in on the age gap. I was grossed out, but, like last week’s depiction of Aemma, I think the show wants to critique Westeros as a patriarchal society as opposed to romanticize or glorify violence against women or statutory rape.
Regardless, everything is now in motion in a way that Viserys can’t take back. And that was my favorite part of the episode — the show’s ability to set up a series of conversations that clearly establish stakeholders and stakes so that when we hear Viserys name Alicent at the end of the episode, we know this is going to blow up in his face. The pleasure of the rest of the season will be witnessing how exactly it is going to blow up in his face. This isn’t new to the Martin-verse by any means, but it’s nice to see Condal and Sapochnik carry the torch just the same.
The most notable cliffhanger foreshadowing the oncoming disaster is a new alliance forming between Corlys and Daemon. I know Daemon is our relative villain at this point, but I find Corlys’ turning to him completely understandable. The entire time he has been trying to get the rest of court to take the threat of the Triarchy seriously and defend his shipping lanes, which are extremely valuable not only to him but to the rest of the realm. Viserys and Otto, however, keep brushing him off. Viserys choosing Alicent over Laena is the last straw because it basically says to him “your house isn’t good enough to join with mine.” Fed up with the continued disrespect, he turns to Daemon. On several of the many HotD podcasts Joanna Robinson has appeared on, she has described Corlys as “nouveau riche,” a self-made noble who may feel more self-conscious about his relatively new seat at the table. This adds a subtextual layer to Corlys’ character that makes his quick abandonment of the crown believable. He interprets their multiple refusals of him as classist elitism. Plus, Daemon can solve his Crab Feeder problem; we saw last episode that Daemon is not afraid take care of business and that he and his army of Gold Cloaks could probably take on a gang of pirates. (The Crab Feeder, by the way, seems like he will be a very fun villain. While the sight of crabs feasting upon barely dead corpses was pretty gruesome, I do love how literal his name is.)
Image Credit: LA Times
I conducted a poll on social media right before the episode premiered, and most responders predicted that Princess Rhaenys would choose Rhaenyra over Daemon. But something about Corlys’ scenes on the small council in Episode 1 made me doubt that. Even then, I suspected that a rift between houses was coming. As for the Queen Who Never Was specifically, one might assume suffering injustice at the hands of patriarchy would prompt her to show solidarity with Rhaenyra, but instead we get the complete opposite when Rhaenys tries to convince Rhaenyra to get in line and learn “the order of things.” How much of that is jaded mentoring vs. a pro-House Velaryon agenda is unclear, but the whole conversation was much pricklier than I would have expected. Condal made a very helpful comment in the behind the scenes featurette, saying that they wanted to show that other women can participate and perpetuate patriarchy as much as men. Once I heard that, I could see it. I wonder where their relationship will go in the future; are they destined to be enemies or will they, over time, become allies again, especially if the new partnership with a volatile and hot-headed Daemon doesn’t work out. I can see that deal going south real quick.
I appreciate Condal and Sapochnik’s ambition to complicate all of these conflicts, either by bucking expectation or by tormenting us with sincerely warm connections between characters. Throughout this episode, we get a taste of what could have been through heartfelt, open, seemingly peacemaking conversations between Viserys and Rhaenyra or Viserys and Corlys/Rhaenys. I liked seeing that after all of the bitterness at the small council, Corlys did try to be nice to Viserys. That could have been disingenuous for the sake of priming Viserys for the arranged marriage proposal, but Steve Toussaint’s performance made me actually believe he was olive branching. I like Corlys as a character a lot, and I’d largely credit Toussaint’s acting for that. Either way, it was tough to see Viserys have an opportunity to mend fences and yet throw that opportunity away. (Again, if he really wanted to say “I am the king and I will do what is right despite tradition,” he should have just refused to marry at all until he actually fell in love with someone age appropriate.)
Image Credit: New York Times
Much more heartbreaking than the missed opportunity with Corlys is the father-daughter relationship between King and Heir, distorted and fractured by monarchal politics. The scenes in which Rhaenyra and Viserys start to reconnect and talk about their feelings are well-written and well-acted, and that makes the final reveal of the episode much more tragic. When Viserys says how much he misses Aemma, Rhaenyra replies with, “I am happy to hear you say this. It is nice to know that I am not alone in my grief.” That’s progress! That’s bonding! Later on, when Viserys explains to Rhaenyra that he must remarry, she gives a very mature response and says she knows it is his duty and supports him. Viserys fails to mention to Rhaenyra, however, that he actually plans to marry Alicent. He has to know that in their conversation Rhaenyra assumes he plans to name Laena as his new wife, as she and Rhaenys had seen him very openly walking and talking with Laena earlier in the episode. And remember that he tells Alicent not to tell Rhaenyra about their visits AND that he sometimes fears talking to his daughter more than The Black Dread, his former dragon that could overshadow an entire town when he flew. So it’s not that he’s unaware that she will be unhappy with his choice; it’s that he’s too afraid to tell her before it’s already a done deal.
Like a good crime family or mob movie, House of the Dragon inextricably links conflicts amongst family members with broader political conflicts. Daemon stealing a dragon egg, for example, is a political power grab move, a show of force, but he’s also mad at his brother and wants his attention. And it’s only once Rhaenyra and Viserys find out that it’s the same egg that Rhaenyra had hand-picked for her baby brother before he died does Viserys actually get up out of his chair. It’s as much a family matter as it is a kingdom matter at that point. Part of this is due to the patriarchal monarchy and obsession with he royal line of succession in Westeros. As we learned last week, marriage and birth are intrinsically political. That notion is what really killed Aemma Targaryen.
The duty vs. family binary has very much been woven into the discourse of House of the Dragon. However, Condal and Sapochnik complicate that binary a bit by posing the question: to whom does a king have a duty? His people? His peers? His family? Himself?
I think Viserys’ first duty should be to his only living child, but I may be biased because I’m 100% on Team Rhaenyra, even more so than I was last week. I’m starting to think she’s the only competent one in the room most of the time, as she repeatedly tries to assert herself with good ideas, only to be shot down by those around her. I admired her tenacity in spite of this, especially holding her ground with Otto Hightower as she argues that Ser Criston Cole is the most qualified for the King’s Guard position because he’s the only one with combat experience. I can see how someone might claim that in making this choice, Rhaenyra also disregards political savvy, as Otto points out that some of the other candidates are from houses who are valuable allies. But, to me, such a snub makes so much more sense than Viserys’ in context because she’s actually applying sound logic for why Cole is the better choice. Viserys doesn’t seem to have any reasoning behind his choice other than Alicent was nice to him and fixed his dragon figure.
Image Credit: New York Times
Even though the episode climaxes with Viserys controversial life update, the most thrilling scene is the confrontation between Daemon and Otto — but really Daemon and Rhaenyra — on the bridge at Dragonstone. With the sun glowing through a hazy sky, the aerial shots of the bridge, and, of course, DRAGONS, this scene was incredibly epic. Rhaenyra’s entrance was as well, as her dragon, Syrax, swoops over cowering men and roars at Caraxes before she lands. Rhaenyra is completely fearless. She ignores Otto when he asks Ser Criston to escort her to safety, instead warning all the men that Syrax is very protective of her (read: back off or I roast you). She, without hesitation, dares Daemon to kill her. And, once again, she uses sound logic; if Daemon really does mean to become heir to the throne again — if his stealing of the egg and taking over Dragonstone really is about his attempt at a coup of some kind — he should just kill her. That is the logical extension of his behavior. But, as she likely knows, Daemon still cares about her and Viserys. He respects her. Probably even loves her. He will not kill her. My only note for the writing of this scene is that I would have liked to have seen Rhaenyra tell Daemon that by taking THAT egg, he crossed a line. That’s a nice to have and not a must have, though. I was very satisfied with Rhaenyra completely calling her uncle on his temper tantrum shenanigans. She handles the situation better than Otto ever could, and, as she says, avoids bloodshed. Make this princess a queen ASAP.
ALSO SHE HAS A COOL DRAGON. It’s dragon watch time! We didn’t get any new dragons this week, but the dragon-induced stalemate on the bridge was more than enough to make up for it. The use of dragons in this scene amped up the tension, which was great. But what made me even happier was how each dragon reflected the position and personality of its rider so much. Caraxes is intimidating, to be sure, but he stays behind Daemon and his band and has a high-pitched, whiny roar. This is not unlike Daemon’s own lashing out at his brother in an attempt to get his attention. He’s hanging out at Dragonstone, far from King’s Landing, taunting Viserys from a distance and trying to draw him out or get a rise out of him. I know I’ve already cited the most recent Talk the Thrones episode, but it really is worth a listen this week, if only for the top tier anecdote Joanna Robinson tells about her friend who does the sound design for the dragons on the show. Miguel Sapochnik apparently told the sound designer that Caraxes should sound like he has a deviated septum and is trying to overcompensate with the other dragons. There’s a lot more to the hilarious story, so I encourage you to check out the pod.
Syrax, on the other hand, is more disruptive, take charge, and in the mix, like Rhaenyra. She flies in unannounced and lands right on top of the bridge, perched where no one can ignore her. This echoes Rhaenyra’s uninvited intrusion on this skirmish. She’s not supposed to be there, but intervenes and outshines everyone else. Rhaenyra and Syrax are easily the MVPs of this episode, with Viserys as the LVP, if that’s even a thing. The grotesque hard to watch parts of this episode come in the form of not one but two types of organisms eating away at human flesh: the maester gives Viserys maggots for his gangrenous wound, and, to hype up the Crab Feeder, the episode shows us a vast cast of crabs (I looked it up and the collective noun for crabs is either cast or…collective) crawling on the beach and nomming on the corpses of the Triarchy’s fallen enemies. I see this as a metaphor for Viserys’ reign. If left to his own devices, his poor, half-measure decision making will eat away at a prone realm until there is nothing left.
Image Credit: Variety
And there’s nothing left of this review now, methinks.
The fact that a.) I have already have such strong reactions to the choices these characters make and b.) have spent most of this review parsing out an interpretation of what could be happening and what will happen as a result implies that this show, for a second time, has provided us with a well-crafted, thoughtful, robust, and rich text.
It is subject to different interpretations, of course; so, please, share your own impressions of all these characters and conflicts with me in the comments!