One night in King's Landing and the world's your scandal.
I'm still processing Episode 4 of House of the Dragon.
The Short Take:
The most consequential episode yet. We’re swimming in the morally gray and psychologically complex.
Dragon Count: 3
(No new dragons this week. Sigh.)
Image Credit: Den of Geek
[SPOILER ALERT: This whole review is going to be an unrelenting breath of dragon fire. Scorched earth style. Don’t get caught in the spray if you haven’t seen the episode.]
The Long Take:
I’m not going to drag this out. The biggest event of this episode, by a brothel-laden mile, was Rhaenyra and Daemon’s express train to Incest-ville. It was the fuse that lit several powder kegs of tension between characters, and I suspect that there are many more explosions to come as a result of the events set into motion here. Rhaenyra will marry Laenor Velaryon to reforge an alliance between their two houses. Otto Hightower is no longer Hand to the King. Daemon has been denied and exiled (again). Ser Criston Cole now must live with his broken vow. All of that precipitated from one night in King’s Landing.
The Rhaenyra/Daemon scene has stirred the most conversation and reactions from viewers and critics alike, generally scandalized and/or reeling with conflicting explanations about what went on. If you concluded your viewing with a vaguely confused, icky feeling, I’m here to validate that sensation. While I know in my bones that I had just watched a superb hour of television, I did not quite know how I was supposed to feel about much of what I had just witnessed. Whereas most critics and colleagues of mine have said that this week’s is the best to date, I’m going to go a little bit against the grain here and say that I enjoyed last week’s episode more. I admire Episode 4 more than I enjoy it relative to Episode 3, and I think that is purely because Episode 3 is more triumphant and sure-footed for its characters while Episode 4 is where everyone gets perilously sloppy.
Before we can parse how I feel about what happened in the episode, I need to try to wrap my head around what actually happened, especially with Daemon and Rhaenyra. Pouring over podcasts, reviews, and tweets, I’ve seen and heard a broad spectrum of interpretations of the chain of events that transpired the night Rhaenyra snuck out of the castle. Some say that this was 100% a premeditated, calculated political move on Daemon’s part. Pure entrapment so that he might force Viserys to allow his brother to marry his niece, which would add unwanted chaos and/or help him get one step closer to the crown. In this scenario, Daemon only leaves Rhaenyra stranded in the pleasure den because he experiences impotence, gets mad and embarrassed, and flees the scene. There is a strong case for this, as one of his earliest scenes with Mesaria establishes impotence as an issue for him. Miguel Sapochnik, in the behind-the-scenes featurette at the end of the episode, actually says that impotence is what prompts Daemon to leave. I am one of those death of the author critics who tries not to view an artist’s explanation of a work as the absolute truth; the text itself has a life of its own and what the audience interprets can be completely different than what an artist intended. So Sapochnik calling impotence is not necessarily game over, but it does strengthen the case that impotence was at least one factor in what transpired.
On the other end of the spectrum is the idea that Daemon genuinely cares for his niece. He had second thoughts about having sex with her in general; some might say because she’s his niece, while others say that considering the Targaryen comfort with incest, that’s not a thing. Or he mistakenly thought that he could cruelly expose her and ruin her for political gain, only to discover that he has a heart and can’t actually close the deal.
Image Credit: NY Times
In between these two spectrums — of Daemon as evil and impotent on one end and with a cowardly heart of gold on the other — are all kinds of nuance, almost a Rubik’s cube of interpretations in which anyone can create an infinite number of combinations of who, what, when, where, and why. Some critics have noted the loneliness that seems to disappear when Daemon and Rhaenyra are together, and that barring the age difference and the incest, they could be good for each other. On Talk the Thrones, Chris Ryan half-jokingly asked if these two just got “caught up in the moment,” which sounds pretty romantic. Others, like Kim Renfro on A Cast of Kings, very compellingly argue for Daemon as a classic abuser because he gets Rhaenyra all excited about being with him and then, once she’s on board, he cuts her off and makes her feel bad so she’ll be on the hook for more. The folks over on Trial By Content discussed how it’s more about control and when Daemon feels like he’s not in total control he malfunctions. Did he lose interest in Rhaenyra once she showed interest back and evened out their power dynamic? How consensual was this sexual encounter? How much did Daemon want to give Rhaenyra a taste of freedom, or indoctrinate her in his hedonistic philosophy vs. trying to set her up and ruin her reputation so she was no longer a viable heir? Should any of us be rooting for them at all? How much does the incest matter in this situation?
Here’s where I’ve landed: Daemon had every intention of “coupling” (thanks, Otto) with Rhaenyra so that she and Viserys would have no choice but to marry her off to him, thus making him the heir apparent’s king. The kneeling and offering his crown to Viserys was just a ruse to get everyone to let their guard down. As an aside, that crown is actually made out of bones. That’s what people are saying at least. I was assuming it was a nice driftwood arrangement, like something you’d find in a beachy display at HomeGoods. Bones makes more sense in the context of the brutality of the show, though. Anyway, Daemon’s victory in the Stepstones gives him confidence — perhaps even a sense of manifest destiny — and he returns to King’s Landing with a renewed sense of ambition. If Viserys won’t restore him as heir, his next best play for the Throne is to force a marriage with Rhaenyra. Only once things heat up and get real does he get cold feet, even if it’s his body telling him to quit before his heart and mind have caught on. The one point I’ll add that perhaps other critics have not mentioned: Daemon pretends that he actually had sex with Rhaenyra when we see that he didn’t because he’s embarrassed that he couldn’t go through with it and doesn’t want to admit what actually happened. And, as he points out to Viserys, it’s more about what people say than what actually happened at this point, so he might as well try to reap the political benefit still on the table. It’s very like him to pretend that everything went according to plan even when it didn’t, and he seems like the type of character who likes having the reputation that he’s bad more than actually being bad.
Image Credit: NPR
I’ve concluded that Daemon calculated all this because the entire evening seems so orchestrated. Daemon plants the bag of clothes with the map in Rhaenyra’s room, and they start out with a wander through the streets and take in a politically satirical play. It seems kind of nice at this point; he’s trying to give her a break from the pressures of royal life. He always keeps the alcohol flowing, though, and eventually the entertainment gets more adult. Once they get inside the pleasure house, she is too distracted to notice that he snatches the woolen hat right off her head, letting her very recognizable blonde Targaryen hair flowing for all to see. To me, this shows that Daemon definitely had some kind of plan, some goal. He wants them to be seen. If the goal were really just to have sexual relations with his niece (which, again, is creepy), then he could have easily snuck into Rhaenyra’s room and tried to woo her in a more secretive setting. That probably would have saved him a lot of coin too. But, then again, maybe that’s just not Daemon’s dating style because he loves a good show, like the attention-seeking entrance he makes at the beginning of the episode.
I have to acknowledge that Daemon does, in certain moments, act as a pretty decent mentor, showing Rhaenyra what the common folk in King’s Landing think of her, explaining the importance of popular opinion to a monarch’s success. This reminded me a lot of Cersei Lannister's rise to power on Game of Thrones. Like Rhaenyra, she thinks that the common person’s opinion of her doesn’t matter, and that comes back to bite her later. Daemon also shows Rhaenyra that contrary to what the patriarchal court tells her — the same court that has trapped Alicent in a castle, miserably and joylessly “squeezing out heirs” — that sex is an act that women can enjoy as much as men. That she can marry for political advantage but then, behind closed doors, she can take what she wants, as Daemon says everyone in the pleasure den does.
These kernels of wisdom do not negate Daemon’s abuse of their uncle-niece relationship, however. While Rhaenyra is, as Viserys awkwardly says at one point, a “woman grown” (she’s 18 in this episode), she’s led a fairly sheltered life in the castle and no matter how consensual their abruptly curtailed rendezvous seems to be, and no matter how much I like both of these characters individually, their almost union still felt wrong. Looking back to Episode 1, I now see that Daemon giving her a necklace was a set-up for the childish crush that Rhaenyra has on Daemon in this episode. As Mallory Rubin also noticed on The Ringer-verse’s House of R Deep Dive, when Rhaenyra rejects suitors on her tour, she’s fidgeting with Daemon’s necklace around her neck. When Caraxes nearly tips over her ship, she looks to the skies and beams. She rushes to the throne room to see Daemon after four years apart. Confusing (Conflating? Combining?) looking up to Daemon as her cool uncle with romantic interest in him, Rhaenyra very easily falls for Daemon’s trap in the pleasure house, and her relative naïveté makes Daemon more abusive than I would like.
Image Credit: NY Times
But these twisted relationships of tainted love (cue the 1981 Soft Cell song) is actually a staple, as I think this episode goes out of its way to show that problematic relationships can and usually fuse together exploitative power dynamics with genuine feelings of love and connection. They are not mutually exclusive, this collection of scenes shows us; in fact, this paradoxical cocktail is what fuels these relationships, making them difficult to end. The editing frequently intercuts between the Daemon and Rhaenyra scenes and a more intimate window into Viserys and Alicent’s marriage, for example. Most critics have noted that this juxtaposes Rhaenyra and Alicent nicely to highlight how they are both being victimized by the patriarchal society of Westeros in different ways. And in contrast to Alicent’s norm-following imprisonment, Rhaenyra chooses to rebel.
If we add Ser Criston Cole’s scenes with Rhaenyra, however, a pattern begins to emerge. Alicent will tenderly give Viserys a sponge bath when she doesn’t have to, and she may in some capacity care for him, but she is still his hostage, unable to say no when he summons her to his bed chambers when “the hour is quite late.” She still, in a painfully clear way, has to lie back and think of Westeros. A similar power dynamic puts a damper on Criston and Rhaenyra’s otherwise adorable hook-up. Because he is in the King’s Guard and has sworn to protect her, and since she is a Princess and holds so much power compared to a low-born social climber like him, he can’t say no either. I found the initial game of keep-away Rhaenyra plays with his helmet and her pouncing on him very stressful for this reason.
While the power dynamic between Criston and Rhaenyra cannot be ignored, their relations do seem like the most consensual and happy out of the three couplings we see in the episode. I can’t lose sight of what Rhaenyra gains from Daemon’s manipulation (and abandonment) — a sexual awakening and the agency that might accompany it. Instead of despairing that Daemon has rejected her or that she has been used in some way, she chooses to move on quickly and choose her own sexual partner — one who would treat her with more respect. She may have been reckless and risk-taking this week (also unnecessarily lying to Alicent), but, in the end, she had what was, for her, a positive sexual experience that was not predetermined by the strictures of the court and the men who dominate it. That’s a big deal.
Image Credit: Variety
As I’m sure we will soon see more fully, however, Rhaenyra will never escape those old men at court and their power over her life and her body. I noticed so much voyeurism, in various forms, throughout the episode. The most obvious example is the proto-Little Bird that runs to tattle on Rhaenyra and Daemon. But I also noticed that the camera during the Rhaenyra/Criston scenes frequently hovered behind a decorative screen or divider, in a way that made me feel like I was spying on them. Alicent sees the rat creeping on her and Viserys from the top of the bed canopy. She’s hiding behind that same bed as she eavesdrops on Viserys and Otto. The visual storytelling of the show very clearly wants to convey that no one is ever alone on The House of the Dragon. Nothing will stay secret for long. I imagine that doesn’t bode well for Ser Criston, who will likely face a harsh punishment if/when his vow breaking has been discovered. Or maybe their secret stays safe, but he can no longer live with himself and defects or puts himself in harm’s way unnecessarily.
Image Credit: TV Line
I don’t have a handy transition for this, but since I very rarely have criticisms for these shows I love to watch, I feel I must voice them when I do have them, even if they don’t fit with the rest of the review. The AV Club used to be my go-to source for pop culture reviews, and they traditionally had a “stray observations” feature at the end of an article to catch any notes that didn’t make it into the body of the piece. Instead of stray observations, I might call my version of such a list abandoned dragon eggs because it feels like I neglected to hatch these ideas into a fuller train of thought.
My one complaint about the crafting of this episode is the early scene with Alicent and Rhaenyra reconnecting and mending fences. I know time has passed, but in terms of what we have seen between these two characters, this happy moment seems too abrupt. I really wanted to see Alicent and Rhaenyra actually fight or have some kind of cathartic discussion about Alicent courting Viserys behind Rhaenyra’s back before we got a friends again scene like this. I get that functionally, within this episode, this scene serves the opposite purpose. The rift widening again between these two women, sewn with distrust and judgment, is supposed to be all the more tragic for that glimmer of friendship renewed.
Viserys actually makes decisions for once! I enjoyed seeing him step up and take action, especially in his surprisingly well-handled firing of Otto. Too bad he’s probably going to die next episode. Those lesions have to catch up with him sometime.
Sadly, there’s not much to report on this week’s Dragon Watch. While Caraxes’ playful nudge against the boat did make for quite a splashy entrance, and, as I discussed earlier, generated a subtext through which to understand the later incident with Daemon, that was really all we got in the dragon department. Here’s hoping we catch up with Seasmoke and Syrax next week when Rhaenyra presumably goes to the Stepstones to finalize her marriage with Laenor. I wonder, do dragon riders ever double date with their dragons? I can think of one couple from Game of Thrones who might have come close. These are questions one only asks in the World of Ice and Fire.
What was your take on what happened between Daemon and Rhaenyra? And where do you think we go from here?