“He dares me to rain fire down on a seat that raised my banner. And the realm would name me ‘Maegor Returned’. They’d rise up against me, and the same gods who delivered me to the throne would rightly cast me down.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
After a fairly eventful first three episodes, this week sees House of the Dragon settle back into the more… sedate pace for which it’s become known. That figures, what with this originally having been planned as the second episode of the season, where traditionally the political wrangling holds sway. And so it does here. If you’d been hoping that Ormund Hightower’s surprise seizing of the town of Tumbleton would lead to another Great Big Battle, you’d have been disappointed (so far).
That’s not to say nothing actually happens in this ep – far from it. For a start, Ser Ormund Hightower finally gets something to do other than standing around in a field. James Norton, of Happy Valley fame, was a pretty big casting announcement, so it was obvious that he was going to play a major part in proceedings. His capture of Tumbleton finally gives him the chance to invest Ormund with an actual character.
It’s debatable whether this actually works, though that’s down to the writing rather than Norton’s performance. As Alicent remarks when questioned about him by Rhaenyra, she really doesn’t know much about him except that he is “sensitive to odours”; and the ep doesn’t show us much more than that. I suppose it explains why we first meet him in a bath, and if you’re attracted to James Norton’s admittedly impressive physique, you get an eyeful here.
Outside that though, Ormund so far has little to distinguish him from your standard Westeros Lord – sometimes fair, sometimes harsh, sometimes both simultaneously, as we discover when he deals with an inevitable incident of one of his soldiers trying to force himself on one of the locals. Sentencing the recalcitrant infantryman to castration (and arm-breaking), he nevertheless forces his ward Prince Daeron to execute the unfortunate lady’s brother Leo for the crime of laying hands on a Hightower soldier. Nasty, yes – but no worse than we saw Ned Stark being in the original Game of Thrones.
Ah yes, Prince Daeron. With Ormund’s deception regarding him last week, the show has dispensed with the need to dance around his identity, so this week it’s confirmed that the silent young man we saw hovering around the Hightower camp in ep1 is indeed the wayward Targaryen Prince. Incarnated by 17 year old British actor Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Daeron doesn’t have the standard Ridiculous Targaryen Wig (unless of course he dyed it to avoid identification).
This fits with him being raised more as a Hightower than a Targaryen, as Alicent admits was always her intention. One interesting character trait in Ormund is that he defers to the Prince as his superior throughout, while still ultimately telling him what to do. Plainly, the stories of Daeron being the “nice Targaryen” are true, as we see with his reluctance to execute Leo on Ormund’s orders. He’s plainly a chip off old Viserys’ block, but in this nasty world, that’s almost certain to spell his demise sooner rather than later.
Still somehow not dead is the wandering wreck of King Aegon, though it’s not for want of his trying. This week sees more detail of his trek round the countryside, as he yet again fails to take the wily Larys’s hints that acting like the King is going to get him killed. Aegon’s never been likeable, but it’s to actor Tom Glynn-Carney’s credit that you feel a scintilla of sympathy for him as he brokenheartedly cradles the head of his dead dragon. Larys, of course, has to pay a greedy local for the privilege. Later, as the pair find themselves in the ruin of Rook’s Rest, complete with another dragon corpse, Larys has to spend all his remaining coin to get the pair of them shelter, and still Aegon can’t help behaving like a spoiled aristocratic brat, which inexplicably hasn’t yet blown their cover as a pair of wandering clerics.
There’s a deal of satisfaction in seeing Aegon’s humiliation at being forced to collect sewage, then have to kiss the shit-covered boot of the nasty leader of the survivors when he kicks up a fuss about not getting any food. Still, though, you have to wonder why Larys is so patient with his petulant, arrogant charge; he must have one of the cunning plans that make him this series’ equivalent of Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish. I’d guess that keeping the actual King around to present as resurrected when the time is right is a pretty good trump card in whatever game he’s playing.
Also missing in action is Prince Regent/King Aemond, though unlike Aegon, the viewer has no idea where he’s got to. Finally reaching Harrenhal, the ever-bitter Ser Criston Cole is told by witchy Alys that Aemond hightailed it for King’s Landing on hearing of Rhaenyra’s conquest. Now I wouldn’t trust a word Alys says, and since we last saw Aemond mortally wounded and in her ‘care’, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s still secreted around Harrenhal somewhere.
Still, his absence (and more importantly, that of his dragon) puts a pretty big crimp in the Greens’ plans; not just for Criston and Gwayne Hightower, but also for Ormund, who was depending on Aemond to help him hold Tumbleton. With Hugh and Ulf now circling the skies of the besieged town on their dragons, he may indeed have something to worry about.
Hugh has skin in this game – namely his wife Kat, who was the unfortunate recipient of the licentious Hightower soldier’s attentions that led to so much trouble. I must confess, I didn’t realise this when I was actually watching the ep, only finding out later from the internet. This show’s sprawling, massive cast of characters can often be difficult to keep in mind; I’d also forgotten that Rhaena, now living like a bedraggled hermit with disgraced dragon Sheepstealer, is actually Prince Daemon’s daughter from his second wife Laena Velaryon. And that Rhaenyra actually has two surviving children, who’ve been sent off to Pentos for safekeeping.
Fortunately for that one at least, the dialogue helpfully reminded me of it when Daemon, courtesy of his dragon, caught up with the pair of them in the Vale. It’s uncharacteristic for Daemon to be quite so forgiving, but presented with his unrepentant daughter, his choice of frying an unfortunate local peasant to blame for Sheepstealer’s misdeeds is sort of understandable. I can’t help feeling that’s going to come back to bite him when Rhaenyra inevitably finds out; but fortunately for him, she’s engaged in another massive miscalculation trying to purge the commoners of King’s Landing in search of the Green loyalists writing nasty things about her on walls. That’s unlikely to end well.
Business as usual for a mid-season episode of House of the Dragon then; not actually boring as there’s plenty of intrigue going on, but definitely not what you’d call exciting either. Finally giving Ormund Hightower something to do, and properly unmasking the formerly mysterious Prince Daeron, is a definite plus, but there’s still something of a placeholder feel to this ep. Yes, ones like this are necessary to move all the pieces into their required places, but nobody’s going to hold this one up as a classic bit of TV. And I must admit, the sheer complexity of trying to remember who is related to who and how has me yearning for a “Previously on…” at the beginning of each ep.
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