Leading up to that final moment – you know the one, Rhaenys sitting atop her dragon, staring down Alicent and her entire family – I had already planned my entire review for “The Green Council,” the penultimate episode of season one of House of the Dragon. I was going to dissect Alicent’s state of mind – what little the series allowed us to see of it – and break down the symbolism of Rhaenys watching yet another man be crowned over a woman with a stronger claim to the throne. I had even come up with a nice call-back (or call-forward) to the positioning of having a POV character emotionally watch a key decision such as this in the penultimate episode of the first season to Arya watching Ned’s beheading in much the same manner back in season one of Game of Thrones. But then the series had to bring a dragon to an expositional set piece, and they threw all of my carefully laid plans into chaos.
Because here’s what happens when you take your show’s established planner – the one character who doesn’t act rashly, who takes her time and lies in wait for the moment to make her move – and has her do something so outrageously stupid that it leaves the audience grasping for reasons why she might have done it. You cheapen your story. Because why in the seven hells didn’t Rhaenys simply waste that entire altar of people? Think about it. Say she does it – say she kills the entire Green royal family. What happens next? Well, nothing. Rhaenyra hears about what Alicent tried to do, flies to King’s Landing with Daemon, their children, and allies, and takes the Iron Throne. Does she kill Rhaenys? Hardly. Rhaenys, it can be argued, stopped a rogue faction from going against the late king’s express wishes, and allowed the rightful heir to sit upon the throne. She saves literally years of death and bloodshed. She almost certainly gets sent back to Driftmark a hero of the new regime.
So, why didn’t she? That I cannot answer. I know Eve Best did an interview in Vulture explaining her reasoning – or the reasoning she created to play the scene. I know the showrunners said they wanted to have a cool dragon moment at the close of the episode. All of these are well and good (well, not the need to bring out a dragon just for a cool moment – that’s just stupid and bad writing, as your audience knows there’s dragons, you should employ them when it makes narrative sense, not just for the wow factor). But if your audience is sat, watching, thinking “My god, just kill them all and save us the coming war!” and then can’t figure out the reason Rhaenys didn’t without resorting to outside reading materials, you made the wrong narrative choice.*
*And yes, we all know that the show wasn’t about to kill half their cast when HBO still needs to milk several years out of this story. I know that. I’m just saying why even put that option on the table to allow us all to look back on and think “Man, this show could have been so much shorter, but then a character did something ridiculously stupid and it wasn’t.”
Listen, we all knew what Rhaenys was going to do when she snuck away. We all knew she was going to get her dragon and fly away to warn Rhaenyra and join her side of the conflict. And that was a great story beat. It added to the tension of the sequence – watching Aegon slowly accept that his new position means more power and love from the masses, a nice boost to his ego that will allow him to be a potentially dangerous king, and Alicent realize her eldest might be buying into his new role with a bit too much gusto. But I was expecting the dragon flight to happen outside, an ominous screech and a dragon visible through the open door, allowing Alicent to realize that Rhaenyra just got harder to kill now that she will be prepared to crush the troops that were sent to surprise her at Dragonstone. That’s the way you start this conflict – with a moment that allows the other penny to drop. Not a dragon screaming in the faces of all the key Green characters but not frying them to a crisp. Because Rhaenys knows that this means war. She knows that these are now her enemies. She knows dragon will fight against dragon, killing thousands. So why doesn’t she just stop this before it starts? Why not show the wisdom she could have shown as Queen? Is it because she still believes the Seven Kingdoms won’t accept a woman on the throne, even as she goes to fight for that? Is it because she knows Rhaenyra’s heir is a bastard, even as she goes to fight for that? I can’t reconcile that with the character we’ve seen up until this point. She’s the smartest planner, so many steps ahead, unafraid to shut down those who would offer the wrong idea at the wrong time. This just doesn’t track from a character perspective. But it does scream “The writers wanted a cool set piece people would talk about!” Unfortunately, I suspect most if not all reviews will be talking about it for the wrong reasons.
Before I end this review, I did want to lodge one final complaint about the episode – an episode I did enjoy in parts, though, as I’m very interested to see what the show does with Aemond moving forward, as he’s rapidly becoming the most interesting complex character in the series. I loved that we were shown just how deep the plans to install Aegon went within the Small Council – and how Alicent knew nothing about it. Watching the depths of Otto’s scheming was wonderful, seeing how betrayed Alicent was and how wary she was over the need to kill her former best friend – who she rightfully pointed out Viserys would not want dead, even if he had actually wanted Aegon on the throne. After all, when Viserys was placed on the throne, he didn’t order the death of Rhaenys, despite her better claim and desire for the position. But what I needed to see was the moment that changed for Alicent. Where was that moment where she decided that her father was right – that in order for Aegon to rule in peace, Rhaenyra and her family must die? We see her ask Rhaenys for her aid and dragon – even if it means killing her granddaughters. We see her recognize the need to have her children in her possession, not Otto’s. But we don’t see the struggle to accept what she must allow to gain the upper hand. That would have been a complex and compelling scene for Olivia Cooke – a great actress – to portray. And it would have been such a key character moment for us.
By having Alicet’s push for Aegon on the throne stem from a misinterpretation of Viserys’s last conversation, it allows the series to hedge its bets with Alicent’s choices when it comes to elevating Aegon. Yes, none of the characters seem to believe Alicent’s claim about Viserys. But she does, so the audience needs to understand the moment when she goes from “I’m doing my husband’s wish” to “In order to see this to fruition, I must order the death of the friend I once loved as a sister.” Not getting the chance to see that was a disappointment.
And here’s the even more disappointing thing: I didn’t hate this episode! I liked a lot of the search sequence. I liked seeing that even within the Blacks there are cracks (albeit ones that will be smoothed over quickly for a united front). I loved the Aemond character development, and I love that poor Heleana really doesn’t fit within her crazy power-hungry family. I liked that Alicent finally got to the point where she accepted her role in the coming war, even if we didn’t get the necessary character beats to arrive at that realization. But it’s amazing what one major misstep with a dragon can do for the enjoyment of an entire episode. Rhaenys should have ended this war before it even began. Now, everything that comes after – every dead Targaryen and Velaryen – will be a result of that failure and not simply a product of a war between two siblings each with a claim to the throne.
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