In the pilot of Game of Thrones, Ned Stark teaches Jon, Robb, and Theon a crucial lesson that resonates throughout the rest of the series: He who passes sentence should swing the sword. It might not be the exact lesson Daemon was attempting to teach Rhaenyra as she prepared to ascend to the Iron Throne, finally claiming her birthright, but it’s pretty close. In order to become Queen in the eyes of the assembled nobles and guards, she needed to prove that she has the mettle to wear the crown and hold those who oppose her reign accountable. It wasn’t enough to merely have Daemon do it for her – she must show that she, too, possesses, the ability to kill. After all, the King’s Guard laughed when she pulled out her sword – rightly, as it turns out, considering how she botched the execution of Ser Otto* – this was her chance to show she’s more than just a woman.
*If you’re looking for more Rhys Ifans, might I suggest checking out AppleTV+’s Star City, where he has a starring role? It’s a surprisingly good series and Ifans gets to play a much more sympathetic character on it. There is, of course, plenty of scheming happening around him – it’s a show about the Soviet space program – but he’s one of the few not really mucking about.
But to get to this point – the moment where control of King’s Landing (or, should I say, Queen’s Landing) shifts from the Greens to the Blacks (while Harrenhal switches in the other direction, albeit with Aemond taking a key hit to the back and placing himself at the mercy of Alyce Rivers) – Rhaenyra had to summon a strength that she didn’t know she had. If there’s one thing Emma D’Arcy can do, it’s show immense emotion. They’re easily the strongest actor in all of House of the Dragon when it comes to mining their emotional depths to let us know just what Rhaenyra is feeling. Their eyes are incredibly deep and soulful, they’re able to summon deep wells of emotion as required. They’re just sensational. And watching D’Arcy pull deep from their toolbox to show us all the shades of Rhaenyra’s grief at the loss of Jace – and the betrayal of everyone under her command in allowing him and Baela to lock her away so that they might ride off to the Gullet – was heartbreaking. What I was shocked to see, however, was that we didn’t see the emergence of anger in that moment. We didn’t see Rhaenyra take a heel turn, channel her grief into righteous anger. We didn’t see a Mad Queen. Even when ascending to the throne, there was only tears.
I suspect that’s about to change, however, now that Alicent has failed to escape and she has seen that Rhaenyra ordered the execution of her father – and that Alicent’s promise of Aegon’s head cannot be achieved as he’s fled the city. That tentative truce between the pair? Well, what does a new queen do with the Dowager Queen and the former Queen Consort, especially when Aemond is still on the game board? Nothing good can come of this, and Alicent might be a snake but not even she can compete with Daemon’s maneuvering. I’m really excited to see what comes next, if only because it means we’ll get to have D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke get to share the screen together once more, however briefly it might be. The show is always better when those two get to work together.
In terms of the rest of the episode, it was mostly chess pieces moving around the board. Aemond in Harrenhal, gravely injured. Ser Criston leading the troops his way. The Velaryon fleet has been decimated, but all the key members of the house are still alive – and in the case of Alyn and Addam, legitimized (although one assumes the official heirs remain Baela and Rhaena). Speaking of Rhaena, she’s got her dragon but is more or less a fugitive and her father has been tasked to hunt her down (although he doesn’t know it’s her he’s looking for). And Larys and Aegon are still trying to escape – and remain the most boring piece of the story.
My one major criticism of House of the Dragon is the same one I’ve had since the start: The focus of the series is more on who has power when and much less on creating complex characters to tell the story of the power movements in Westeros. Save for Alicent and Rhaenyra (and, to a lesser extent, Daemon), we’ve had precious little character development when it comes to the sweeping cast of characters. More attention is paid to the battle sequences and dragons than to fleshing out their riders or those who command the armies. Hell, Ser Criston was the poster child for angry misogyny last season and this time around he’s more or less an empty shell with little to no personality to be found. At this stage of the game, I have to believe it’s a feature of the series and not merely a bug – the writing just isn’t concerned with giving us interesting characters to fight this war. But boy, would that have made everything in this episode that wasn’t connected to Rhaenyra a hell of a lot more compelling than it was. Still, the performance from D’Arcy was just sensational, carrying an uneven episode and lifting it up.
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