House of the Dragon – The Black Queen Review

RIP Lucerys Valeryon, Heir of Driftmark. We hardly knew ye (seriously, we hardly knew you – as in I had to look up how to spell Lucerys). It’s all fun and games until your uncle, who looks as old as his mother – seriously, for all the excellent casting work the show has accomplished, and they have really cast a great show, the ages of this final bunch of actors really don’t seem to mesh well with how they appear on screen – can’t control his ancient and incredibly powerful dragon and he takes a bite out of you and your much younger dragon. Interesting that the series has once again chosen to show a mistake – this time by the overconfident Aemond – as the impetus for a massive move that sends the Dance of the Dragons from a political fight into an all-out war (more on that choice in a minute). But here we are, at the end of season one of House of the Dragon, with war coming, two additional key pieces of The Blacks (that would be Rhaenyra’s faction) off, unprotected with their dragons – which I suspect will become a key point early in season two for one of them, if the show continues to follow the known history of the war as closely as is has thus far – and Rhaenyra ready to burn it all to the ground over the death of her child.

Let’s talk a bit about that death, because while it changes how we look at Aemond – who, up until this point, has been the most vicious and revenge focused of the “younger generation” of Targaryens. Lucerys’s death was, ultimately, an accident. Yes, it was the result of Aemond thinking he had control over something that, ultimately, is uncontrollable should it simply wish to do what it wants. Similarly, Luke also lacked the necessary control over his own dragon, who egged on Vhagar and ultimately led to Luke and Arrax’s deaths. It’s interesting that after spending multiple episodes building up Aemond as the schemer, the one who might be the better king out of Alicent’s sons (or at least the sons we’ve met – there’s still one more that we’ll apparently meet next season, who has been fostered at Dorne), we see a crack in his cocky armor. We see that he isn’t as in control as he thinks he is.

This is, perhaps, the best bit of character development we’ve seen from Aemond – a key player in the war to come – since we saw his determination to conquer Vhagar when he was a child. This more vulnerable Aemond didn’t want to kill his nephew – despite saying so in front of Lord Baratheon. He really only wanted to scare him a little, maybe rough him up, and show him that he’s not ready yet to be playing with the big boys on the back of a dragon. But Aemond – and the audience, lest we think controlling a dragon is easy, even if Dany made it seem that way on Game of Thrones – wasn’t able to get Vhagar to obey when it mattered the most. As Rhaenyra warned earlier in the episode, the only thing that happens when dragon fights dragon is that everything gets burnt to the ground. Well, this is the first instance of that happening – even if the small folk were saved a crispy death.*

*For all Rhaenyra’s commentary on how she doesn’t want to rule over ash, no one managed to mention that simply bringing dragons to fights results in the deaths of countless small folk. Hell, Rhaenys killed hundreds, if not thousands with her stunt in the Dragonpit last week.

And, while I won’t keep bringing it up all next season, kudos to Daemon for calling out Rhaenys for not simply roasting The Greens alive before peacing out of King’s Landing. Because you know what I don’t buy? Her excuse of this isn’t her war to start. Did she ever, for a second, believe she wouldn’t be dragged into it? Did she think that The Greens would allow her to simply live out her life on Driftmark, alone and unattached while she commanded a dragon? That they would let her granddaughters stay safe? That The Blacks wouldn’t keep them both under their noses, as they are (or, now only one is) betrothed to Jace and Luke? It was and will continue to be the dumbest choice of any character in this story thus far – one that was concocted solely for the series and does not appear in the history of this time as written, I should add.

Rhaenys was bound to declare for The Blacks. Not only does it make a nice symmetry for the Queen that Never Was to be on the side of the first Targaryen Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, but all of her connections were with this side. She should have burnt The Greens to a crisp when she had the chance. Because now none of these characters are making it out alive. Having said that, I was loving to see just how over everything Rhaenys is – from her own slight by her grandfather to her husband’s seeming inability to deal with grief by spending time with his family and not disappearing for six years to fight a war, she’s just done. And I don’t blame her. At all. As the sole character remaining in the series who genuinely understands the cost to House Targaryen the last thirty or so years have been, she’s uniquely positioned in a way no other character in the series is to both comment on the action and shake her head in disgust. But what she cannot do is be a bystander. I so wish we had seen more of her this season.

A misunderstanding – willful or not – lead to Alicent’s determination to put Aegon on the throne. A moment of inaction allowed the battle lines to become more deeply drawn when Rhaenys escaped the Dragonpit. And an inability to control one’s dragon led to Luke’s death and Rhaenyra’s official declaration of war on Aegon and Alicent. Kudos to the series for making it clear that war needn’t be something that has a righteous foundation. Whether or not that was their goal in this set of events, that’s what it showed us. The Dance of the Dragons could have been avoided at several key moments. But human error and a desire to see one’s self as above the fray led to an all-out war between Targaryens and the death of nearly all the dragons in the realm. Pretty bleak, if you ask me.

So, was the first season of House of the Dragon a creative success? Yes and no. From a performance aspect, I think this might be the deepest and finest cast of actors one could have hoped to find. The performances were captivating and elevated the often frustratingly thin dialogue to heights fitting of a fantasy epic of this scale. But I still wish we hadn’t rushed through so much of the table setting so that we could arrive at the outset of the war in the waning moments of the season. So much of what is to come depends on our relationship to these key Targaryen characters. As it stands, the death of Luke didn’t hit all that hard because we hadn’t spent nearly enough time getting to know him (not to mention his last scene with Rhaenyra all but telegraphed the death for those who haven’t read the book – or checked Wikipedia). Spending a season simply getting to understand who everyone was – outside of Alicent and Rhaenyra – would pay dividends as the series advances. Hell, the number of people who tell me they can’t keep all the characters straight at this stage is shockingly high (it doesn’t help that Targaryens have a series of names and prefixes they seem mightily attached to).

There was the time to build this better – to show us more of this world and how the characters function within it. Spend a season with the younger versions of our two leads. End the season with the time jump to them as adults. Then give us half a season building to the death of Viserys and the next half starts the war. Sure, people want dragon fights, but if we don’t care about the humans riding them, what’s the point? The series has managed to navigate other elements much better than its predecessor – particularly when it comes to depictions of violence (still gruesome, but rarely fully gratuitous) and sexual assault (off screen, thankfully). But the series could have been built on a more solid foundation. Hopefully it will do the work to back fill some characters in season two to help make things even stronger, but I have my doubts. There’s an interesting series here, but it needs to take its time to continue building the world around it – and considering the body count we’re headed for, I can’t imagine the series really wants to cut corners now.