What has a Hand, two feet, and is green all over?
Answer: Westeros' patriarchy. HotD Ep. 9 brings gendered power back into focus.
The Short Take:
I’m running out of ways to say “another great episode!” With a dour momentum, Episode 9 provides several suspenseful sequences and finishes big. The mournful and ominous score by Ramin Djawadi took my breath away.
Dragon Count: 8
(No new dragons, but the episode made up for its lack of quantity with quality dragon time.)
Image Credit: The Hollywood Reporter
[SPOILER WARNING: If spoilers were dragon eggs, this review would be an oversized clutch for sure.]
The Long Take:
To invite you into my frame of mind, I offer some alternative titles I considered:
It’s coup time.
Let’s dance.
A Hand, a foot, and a dragon walk into a bar…
Team Green is the Hand foot and mouth disease of the Realm.
Who let the dragons out? (Rawr. Rawr-rawr-rawr.)
We’re nearing the end of the season and I’m getting a little punchy. In my defense, a lot happened in this episode.
Regular readers of my House of the Dragon reviews will know that I’m always here for the dragons, and, whenever possible, I’m going to bring it back to the dragons. This week, that’s not so hard because the current discursive elephant in the room coincides with the episode’s big dragon moment. Critics and fans have been very divided over Rhaenys’ restraint when given the opportunity to “dracarys” all of Team Green. After they imprisoned her in The Red Keep, implicitly threatening her with death if she did not bend the knee, The Queen Who Never Was escapes into the streets of King’s Landing, gets swept up in the crowd of commoners herded into the dragon pit for Aegon’s coronation, reclaims her dragon, and in spectacular fashion bursts through the floor of said dragon pit. She stares down the Greens, they brace themselves for a roasting, but then Rhaenys’ dragon, Meleys, merely roars in their faces before she and her rider flee.
The question on many viewers’ minds is why? Why would Rhaenys refrain from killing those who held her hostage, when she could have easily saved Rhaenyra and the entire Realm a huge, bloody headache?
Image Credit: TV Line
Rolling Stone’s television critic Alan Sepinwall tweeted that the main reason (perhaps the only reason?) Rhaenys spares the Greens in this moment is because the story needs her to. If we kill them all now the story ends and there’s never a Dance of Dragons. He pointedly says that this isn’t a good enough reason. For me, I don’t mind if the primary reason to have a character make a specific choice is because the story requires it IF we can come up with a somewhat reasonable explanation for it within that story.
And I’ve seen a whole host of possible reasons. In the behind the scenes featurette for this week, Ryan Condal says that he thinks she doesn’t want to be responsible for such a horrific, consequential act. That seams a little weak sauce, to be honest. We saw last week that Rhaenys is willing to keep her eyes open when The Stranger comes calling, facing the consequences of her choices. I’d be more willing to believe that she doesn’t feel as though this is her war. A popular theory shared by Condal and the Internet is that this was a mother-to-mother thing. That Rhaenys had every intention of lighting them up until Alicent stood in front of Aegon. Having recently lost her own two children, Rhaenys softens and opts for a roar. I agree with A Cast of King’s Kim Renfro and David Chen when they say “eww” in response to that. This interpretation deflects the power dynamics at play here to an “all mothers have a hive mind” kind of weirdness. Rhaenys and Alicent’s motherhood is an important part of their respective identities, certainly, but we shouldn’t assume it defines every choice they make.
My friend Nihal has the best take on the situation that I’ve heard so far. He posits that Rhaenys’ actions basically say, “I can just burn all of you usurpers now, but I have standards.” Rhaenys is one of the nobler characters on the show. She’s self-serving and calculating, but, as Nihal says, she has standards — better standards than the Greens who will murder any dissenters. I like this interpretation because I think that even if Rhaenys felt like this was not her war initially, the treatment she receives from the Greens in this episode — locking her in her room and giving her an ultimatum — changes her mind. She seems shocked and offended that Alicent and Otto would not treat her and the other heads of houses with more civility. They’ve crossed a line in their “we murder anyone who treasonously does not agree with us” campaign, and I can see Rhaenys taking issue with that and basically saying, “we didn’t really have beef before — I almost sided with you during the whole Driftmark kerfuffle — but now you’ve gone and poked the dragon.” I don’t blame her, and I like the idea that she’s been provoked but does not want to stoop to their level.
Sure, the Blacks are no strangers to violence — Daemon murdered Vaemond last week, after all. But that seemed much more in response to slander, personal affront, protecting his family’s honor, or carrying out Viserys’ wishes. You pick which Daemon apology suits you best. (To be clear, I’m not sanctioning this in general, but rather in the context of Westerosi norms.) The Greens, on the other hand, basically restate, reset reality to what favors them and silence anyone who tries to challenge that. Resident loose canon Criston Cole smashes poor Lord Beesbury’s head into his own small ball (props to the Ringer-Verse’s Joanna Robinson for predicting this exact fate many, many weeks ago) just for questioning Alicent’s bias in the situation. He’s not going around calling anyone whores or bastards. Otto presumably orders the murder of the house representatives who do not bend the knee; they hang Lord Caswell just for trying to leave the Red Keep.
I also think there’s a political reality and strategy, as David Chen and Kim Renfro astutely observe. She won’t be doing Rhaenyra’s claim any favors by frying up the more popular male heir that the people prefer…because sexism. Richard Lawson on Vanity Fair’s Still Watching had an interesting counterpoint to this, saying that in murdering hundreds of commoners with her stunt in the dragon pit, Rhaenys is already turning the public away from supporting Team Black. I’ve seen lots of folks focusing on Rhaenys killing people with her dragon, but I think that, again, in the context of Westeros, it’s just accepted that dragons are extremely dangerous and that Targaryens should be revered for this very reason. Think back to Caraxes squishing the soldier who rejoiced that Daemon had come to save him in Episode 3. Common folk are not even on a dragon’s radar, and people seem cool with it in this world, so I don’t think we can hold that against individual dragon riders.
It’s clear dragons hold a lot of power, but the broader, more complex question this episode poses is, can women in Westeros — with or without dragons — actually have power? Rhaenys can make a boss exit, but the patriarchy prevented her from becoming Queen. Rhaenyra faces the same problem as satirical plays present her ascendancy as absurd and thousands clap for Aegon at his false coronation. And, most notably in this episode, we see many ways in which Alicent’s power is only an illusion. Alicent appeared to be in charge, ruling in Viserys’ name in Episode 8, but we see here that she’s actually at the mercy of several men in her life and often must barter her own body for any kind of power.
Image Credit: NPR
I can’t avoid it any longer. I have to talk about the foot thing. You’ve probably been waiting for me to talk about the foot thing.
In past weeks, many critics expressed confusion about Larys Strong’s motivations. Why does he seem so keen on murdering people for Alicent? Why does he seem so loyal to her? Well, we get an answer when Alicent very slowly undresses her feet and turns to look away as Larys masturbates to the sight of them. The way actress Olivia Cooke brilliantly plays this, like putting her feet up on the table while she’s still talking, implies that this is a routine that these two characters have had for some time. Larys provides information or hitman services to Alicent and in exchange she provides sexual favors that will not technically jeopardize her own virtue.
I know it’s difficult to see past the foot fetish. But I think the foot fetish is incidental in so far as it is a means by which to illustrate the power dynamic between Alicent and Larys. When Alicent first sees Larys in this episode, for example, she says “The hour is late.” This is exactly what her younger self says to the servant who tells her that Viserys requests her company in the middle of the night, which should prompt us to consider the two instances as similar. Alicent is powerless and cannot refuse either of these men because they have power over her. Viserys as her king and husband and Larys as someone to whom she is indebted and who knows many of her secrets. So while Larys may have a foot fetish, I think the point here is more that he’s asserting control over Alicent. It’s not the foot fetish that makes this gross, it’s the demeaning coercion of Alicent that does. The look on Olivia Cooke’s face before the camera cuts away says it all.
Meanwhile, I 100% agree with David Chen that having the only two differently abled characters — Larys and Aemond — act as villains is problematic from a representation perspective. Having Larys, whose nickname in Fire and Blood is “The Clubfoot” have a foot-related disability and then also have a foot fetish seems at best heavy-handed. Literature has a long history of representing internal moral flaws with external physical differences; Shakespeare’s Richard III and Captain Hook or Captain Ahab are probably the most iconic examples of this. That doesn’t excuse the continuation of that tradition, but I think it explains why we get characters like Larys and Aemond. Maybe Condal assumed that Tyrion from Game of Thrones, a dwarf who is also a likable, heroic character, already does that work for them?
Image Credit: Screen Rant
I hope the conversation about Larys and disability — which absolutely should happen — does not preclude conversations about the powerlessness Alicent experiences as a woman who in theory should have the most power. I am still Team Black all the way, to be clear, but I do empathize with Alicent’s situation, and this episode did a lot to make me think of her more as a victim of patriarchy than a pure antagonist. During the Small Council meeting after Viserys’ death, the conversation reveals that Otto and several key members have been plotting behind Alicent’s back in anticipation of Viserys’ death. Meanwhile, Criston Cole just goes ahead with murdering Lord Beesbury without asking. Otto is about to put a hit on Rhaenyra and fam without asking. Even when Alicent puts together her own Aegon recovery team, she has to invoke Criston Cole’s “feelings” for her “as his Queen.” For me, this was the first time I saw evidence of not necessarily any illicit relationship between Alicent and Criston, but of Criston crushing on her. The tone with which Alicent says “whatever you feel for me” implies that she’s trying to leverage Criston’s desire, which he self-loathingly channels into a “cloak of righteousness,” to borrow Rhaenyra’s words, and piety. He really is this twisted courtly love monster.
The capstone of Alicent’s powerlessness and asking to what extent can women even have power in Westeros is the conversation between Alicent and Rhaenys. On this week’s Talk the Thrones, Joanna Robinson said that their exchange was her favorite part of the episode, and cited one line the Princess says to the Queen as supreme: “You desire not to be free but to make a window in the wall of your prison.” She even asks Alicent if she has ever imagined herself on the Iron Throne.
On the one hand, this is Rhaenys fighting fire with fire. Alicent tries to flatter Rhaenys and get her on her side by appealing to her sense of succession-related injustice, as if she were some kind of feminist ally. She says to Rhaenys that she should have been Queen — that she should have been by right and by temperament. But Rhaenys rightly calls her on this by throwing Alicent’s subservience to the men around her back in her face. Why would you bag on the patriarchy in Rhaenys’ case but then completely support it in the case of Rhaenyra vs. Aegon? If Alicent were writing a paper for one of my classes, I would note that her reasoning contradicts itself. She also does not know her audience well enough. We know from the conversation that Rhaenys had with Corlys in Episode 7 that she moved past her regal snub long ago. To be fair, Alicent has no way of knowing that. She does know her own son, though. It’s hard to use “temperament” as a way to say Rhaenys should have been queen when Alicent’s own son Aegon has, from what we’ve seen recently, one of the worst “temperaments” of any of the characters on this show.
Rhaenys is not without contradictions, either, though. Recall what she says to Rhaenyra back in Episode 2. She tells Rhaenyra what she thinks no one else will have the heart to: don’t bother because the Realm will put a son of Viserys on the Throne instead of her. Rhaenys says that she understands “the order of things,” that “Men would rather put the realm to the torch than to see a woman ascend the Iron Throne.” If she’s really resigned to this idea, then why get Alicent all riled up about supporting the men around her rather than taking the Throne for herself? Was it just to win an argument? To get her to back down? Or has Rhaenys come around in the decades that have passed between Episode 2 and Episode 9? Would she support Rhaenyra now to redress the wrongs of her own failed ascent?
Regardless of how Rhaenys feels about her bitter history with Westeros’ patriarchal monarchy, I found her escape from the Red Keep and the clutches of Team Green endlessly satisfying. Many critics have praised the Hitchcockian suspense created by the race to find Aegon, and I’m not denying that the Amazing Future King Race was thrilling. But I think we’re losing sight of how suspenseful Rhaenys’ escape was in the process.
Image Credit: New York Times
I’m less of a fan of a random knight breaking her out of prison. This may be an impractical criticism, but I think having Rhaenys wait until Ser Erryk rescues her, undermines her agency a bit. Also, Arryk and Erryk….who? (Please read that with the same intonation as Arrested Development’s “her?”) I managed to catch on quickly enough, but since one half of these twins showed up only one episode ago, I don’t feel like I know enough about Erryk to actually cheer for him that much when he fights his way past other guards to free Rhaenys and help her escape the castle. This rescue of Rhaenys seems like it should be a really big heroic moment, but it’s with a character I barely know. A lot of the storytelling in this episode is implicit. We have to learn about Aegon in his absence rather than watching him gradually convince Erryk that he’s terrible over time. I get that we didn’t have time for that, but it would have helped. Thankfully, I know and love Rhaenys at this point, and this largely makes up for not knowing Erryk.
Image Credit: TV Line
Overall, this episode was a humming machine, with the chess pieces on the Greens’ side of the board both falling into place and balletically crashing into one another, with tragic casualties left and right.
I haven’t yet mentioned Ramin Djawadi’s beautiful score, but it elevates this particular episode so much that I can’t end this review without at least a brief discussion of it. Karl LaClair from The Wampa’s Lair podcast mentioned that the music in this episode reminded him of when Cersei blows up the Sept in Game of Thrones, and I couldn’t agree more. The two episodes have a similar sense of dread to them, and have that “pieces falling into place to create a total, tragic disaster” feeling. Djawadi’s score has the perfect balance of mournful and ominous, and marks a distinct shift in the story from the prologue to the Dance of the Dragons to the spark that lights the fuse and begins the Dance.
Listening to the “Fate of the Kingdoms” track specifically, I noticed that it’s not all creepy minor melodies; there’s a lyrical quality to it. The track mixes major intervals with minor ones in a way that reflects the show’s themes nicely. There’s always the sliver of hope for each character making their way in the world in a more a wholesome way, but inevitably tragedy befalls them. Sort of like Alicent and Rhaenyra’s relationship. It starts out with a kernel of love, but then over time all these ugly, dark layers calcify around that. That’s what I feel when I listen to Djawadi’s score in this episode.
Dragon Watch:
I won’t add too much more here because I spent so much time talking about the big dragon moment at the top of the review. But I will say that Meleys upped the ante of this high impact moment. Her ferocity was obvious and indisputable. While I was, as always, disappointed to not meet new dragons or not get some kind of dragon party, I was very pleased with this quality time with Meleys and Rhaenys because back in Episode 5 we didn’t even get a close up Rhaenys riding Meleys to the Green Wedding. Few even realized that it was The Queen Who Never Was and The Red Queen in that shot.
In the climactic spectacle at the end of this episode, I learned that Rhaenys and Meleys seem very attuned. Rhaenys barely had to say anything to her and yet Meleys seemed to do exactly what she wanted. I feel like this is in stark contrast to the way young Aemond was really just lucky to be with Vhagar in Episode 7. Vhagar is probably making a lot of calls on her own as his much older and wiser half. Take note, dragon arms race trackers!
Image Credit: The Digital Fix
Maybe Erryk is just here to show that non dragon riders just don’t get it. When he tries to help Rhaenys escape (and kind of poorly, I might add), she keeps trying to tell him, “Dude, I just need to get to my dragon. If we just head over to the dragon pit, we’re sorted.” But since he doesn’t understand dragon power and the deep bond that dragon riders and dragons have, he dismisses her and says that it’s too dangerous. Too dangerous for whom is what I say to that!