David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the Sport of Thrones showrunners who reworked George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy saga from a group of novels right into a worldwide TV phenomenon, don’t watch Home of the Dragon. They’re off engaged on a brand new blockbuster adaptation of a style basic as an alternative.
But when they had been common viewers of the Thrones prequel sequence, I’m wondering what Benioff and Weiss would take into consideration the second episode of Season 2. “Themes are for eighth-grade e-book experiences,” Benioff as soon as stated about constructing out a Thrones season. However the central theme of Home of the Dragon drips from nearly each pixel of this newest entry.
Households are fracturing because the Dance of the Dragons begins in full, and each the black and inexperienced factions on this battle undergo from the fallout. This hour of tv largely gives moments to breathe following final week’s episode-ending horror, nevertheless it’s punctuated by three household blowouts, between Queen Rhaenyra and husband-uncle Daemon; King Aegon and grandfather Otto Hightower; and Kingsguard knights/brothers Erryk and Arryk Cargyll.
This episode picks up proper after the traumatic climax of “A Son for a Son”—no extra time jumps now that the battle is right here. The Crimson Preserve is in turmoil, the Metropolis Watch is looking out for an murderer with a toddler’s head in a sack, and the king is smashing his father’s detailed mannequin of previous Valyria—speak about an emblem of this dragon dynasty’s decline—in a rage.
“That is battle! I declare battle!” Aegon screams, and he means that his half-sister Rhaenyra “sits throughout the bay, on her rock, laughing at [him].” However Rhaenyra does no such factor when she learns of younger Jaehaerys’s homicide—and Helaena’s lack of a son, so quickly after Rhaenyra misplaced a toddler of her personal.
As a substitute, Rhaenyra and Daemon spar in a gripping argument, which tears a gap of their admittedly sophisticated however heretofore largely loving relationship. “I can’t belief you, Daemon. I’ve by no means trusted you, wholly, a lot although I wanted to, willed myself to,” Rhaenyra says.
When Daemon approaches his spouse in anger and reaches towards her face, Rhaenyra’s flinch is a bodily manifestation of that lack of belief. Though not addressed immediately on this episode, Daemon choked Rhaenyra in an analogous circumstance on the finish of Season 1, and she or he remembers the assault, even when it doesn’t recur.
But it surely isn’t Rhaenyra’s lack of belief that hurts Daemon essentially the most on this change. Her small, shocked “You’re pathetic” is much more chopping to somebody who sees himself as a warrior of legend. After this insult, Daemon walks out with no additional phrases and flies away to components unknown on Caraxes. “He should observe his personal path,” Rhaenyra says afterward—one not essentially entwined along with her personal.
Throughout Blackwater Bay, one other royal couple can be following separate paths. Whereas Aegon stays within the Crimson Preserve, secretly sobbing in his room, Helaena is paraded out in public as a part of a funeral procession for the departed inheritor. Helaena almost wilts underneath the stress, however her husband doesn’t a lot as try to console her on this second of want; slightly, when the 2 encounter one another on the citadel stairs, one going up and one happening, Aegon passes with out saying a phrase to his spouse.
Evidently, Aegon has grander plans on his thoughts—like firing his grandfather from the put up of hand of the king and changing the political schemer with a extra martially inclined “metal fist.”
“The king is my grandson, and my grandson is a idiot,” Otto yells, stressing the familial tie inherent to this relationship. However Otto’s florid speechifying—listed here are simply among the SAT vocab phrases Otto makes use of on this scene: deprivations, feckless, impetuousness, trifling, forbearance, judiciousness, and insolent—solely makes Aegon firmer in his choice. “You might be dismissed,” the king instructions as Otto is already departing.
(Otto was beforehand stripped of his title as king’s hand when Viserys was king in Season 1. At that time, his departure from King’s Touchdown left Alicent alone, with out close by allies, forcing her to mature as a political determine. This time, that dynamic is probably flipped, as Alicent has ostensible allies at courtroom however maybe little political energy, if her fears in “A Son for a Son” that Aegon and Aemond are now not listening to her are legitimate. Whether or not her relationship with Criston can prolong from the bed room into the Small Council chamber shall be important.)
But extra households are torn aside by Aegon’s new hand, Criston Cole, who tells Aegon at the beginning of the episode that he wasn’t guarding Helaena and the twins as a result of he was “abed.” (Ah, however in whose mattress?) Criston tells Alicent that there isn’t any absolution for his mistake, however he figures he can a minimum of make an effort. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard goads Arryk Cargyll into an argument, accusing him of harboring traitorous sympathies due to his twin brother, Erryk, who joined Rhaenyra’s trigger on the finish of Season 1.
The Kingsguard is sort of a household—a “sacred belief,” Criston says—particularly as a result of its members vow to by no means father youngsters. And within the case of the Cargylls, that kinship is literal; they kind, Arryk laments, “one soul in two our bodies.” However to defend his honor and appease his commander, Arryk agrees to pose as his brother, sneak into Dragonstone, and try to assassinate Rhaenyra in her mattress.
After all, Erryk will get in the way in which. Taken as an motion set piece, the Cargyll duel just isn’t particularly thrilling tv. As Westerosi one-on-one sword fights go, it pales compared to, say, Brienne’s ferocious bout with the Hound or Oberyn’s duel with the Mountain. Nor do the comparatively nameless Cargyll twins supply the identical stage of private drama as these different battles with better-loved characters.
However as a thematic summation of this episode’s message, the Cargyll duel is completely positioned. “You parted us. However I nonetheless love you, brother,” one twin says to the opposite as they cross swords. The 2 are an identical, so onlookers can’t distinguish which fighter is aligned with the blacks and which is aligned with the greens. Even their names sound the identical. And so they each finish the episode useless, as a horrified Rhaenyra appears to be like on.
A secondary focus for this episode is the significance of smallfolk—a key world-building ingredient lacking from Season 1. The smallfolk play a key position in Otto’s plan to reply to Jaehaerys’s loss of life, as he organizes a public funeral procession as a propaganda marketing campaign, loudly blaming Rhaenyra for the prince’s loss of life and displaying off Jaehaerys’s corpse—together with his head, recovered from the Metropolis Watch murderer, crudely sewn again on to his neck—and grieving mom and grandmother.
The Cargylls themselves match right here, kind of, as a result of they hail from a little-known home, despite the fact that they’ve been knighted and elevated to the Kingsguard. So too does Criston Cole, the jumped-up son of a steward who just isn’t solely the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard but additionally the hand of the king.
Aegon isn’t so type to all of the lower-born males in his make use of, nonetheless. He orders the hanging of each ratcatcher within the Crimson Preserve as a result of he can’t make certain which one is responsible of abetting his son’s homicide; the ensuing wails from the ratcatchers’ wives and youngsters filter in by the home windows of the citadel and contribute to Otto’s verbal conflict with the king. And Hugh, the blacksmith who obtained Aegon’s promise of fee (however not the fee itself) within the season premiere, is struggling with a sick daughter because the Velaryon blockade drives meals costs within the capital metropolis skyward.
This dichotomy shows the promise and peril of a royal battle for the lots who populate the realm. On the one hand, smallfolk can, with correct alternative, luck, and fortitude, rise as much as positions of energy; on the opposite, they are often slain en masse on a whim. (And that’s even with out the literal firepower of a dragon to do the slaying.)
It’s virtually too on the nostril when Aemond’s matronly brothel companion cautions the dragonriding prince: “I might remind you solely that when princes lose their mood, it’s usually others that suffer. The smallfolk, like me.”
That juxtaposition extends again throughout the Blackwater. Alyn of Hull, the sailor audiences met final week who rescued Corlys from loss of life at sea, greets his brother, Addam, who’s excited by this potential. “To serve with the Sea Snake is to make your fortune,” Addam advises his brother, calling it “one other alternative to tell apart your self, remind him of your price.” Alyn appears reluctant to become involved with the highborns and their adventurous wars, however that doesn’t cease Addam from gazing in surprise at Baela’s dragon, Moondancer, because it circles overhead.
Driftmark is the one place within the space, it appears, the place households aren’t being torn in two. Addam and Alyn would possibly disagree about their outlook on battle, however a minimum of they’re hugging and sharing meals. Baela and Rhaena aren’t making any bother for Workforce Black. And Corlys and Rhaenys cuddle in mattress, a stark departure from each different intimate second on this episode—even the ultimate scene, which depicts one other sexual liaison between Alicent and Criston, begins with violence as foreplay.
As a result of all through the halls of energy, household relationships are dissolving because the civil battle splits not solely the Targaryen home at massive, however the inner teams that compose the broader royal household. If that’s the thematic thrust of this present, then Aegon’s declaration about the right way to deal with his relations would possibly as effectively function its mission assertion: “Fuck dignity. I would like revenge.”
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