Rhaenyra – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 8 – The Queen Who Ever Was

“The dragons dance, and men are like dust under their feet. And all our fine thoughts, all our endeavours, are as nothing.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

House of the Dragon wound to the finale of its second season with the same mix of moments of brilliance and frustratingly uneven pacing that have characterised it this time round. This was a good episode for character development, nicely tying up some arcs that have been seriously dragging for most of the season, but in terms of advancing the plot it mostly meandered along setting up pieces for next season before suddenly dropping a plot bomb in our laps with an excellent final montage and cliffhanger.

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 7 – The Red Sowing

“Well then – let us raise an army of bastards.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Now that’s more like it. This wasn’t a barnstorming, action-packed episode of House of the Dragon; but it didn’t need to be. It’s a penultimate episode, and what it needed was to set things up for the finale while providing a building sense of pace in the narrative. After last week’s ponderous instalment, I’d been uncertain it could do that, but it succeeded admirably.

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 6 – Smallfolk

“There are older things in this world than you, or I, or living memory. You are not the player, but a piece on the board.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It was another… shall we say, leisurely paced episode for House of the Dragon this week, which may not win it many more admirers from those who find the show very slow going. To be fair, this week, even I had my reservations. I’d expected a lull in the pacing after the Big Battle of ep4, but with only two episodes of the season to go, it feels like the show should be upping its pace.

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 5 – Regent

“Do not underestimate your subjects. They are a thousand thousand living in the shadow of the Red Keep, and forgotten for too long.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After last week’s Bloody Big Battle, it was back to House of the Dragon’s trademark political scheming this week – but with some justification. The fallout from the Battle of Rook’s Rest is seismic, and even if you find the show’s predilection for men with beards arguing in dark rooms tiresome, given last week’s events it was entirely necessary dramatically.

House of the Dragon: season 1, episode 10 – The Black Queen

“We do not choose our destiny… it chooses us.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

And so, House of the Dragon ends its first season much as it began – with multiple scenes of nobles gathered in dark rooms discussing strategy, punctuated by a graphic, horrific birth scene and the occasional bit of jaw dropping violence.

House of the Dragon: season 1, episode 8 – The Lord of the Tides

“It is ill luck to look upon the face of death.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

There’s a lot going on in this episode of House of the Dragon – and as usual, it’s all to do with succession. The redoubtable Lord Corlys Velaryon has, it seems, been injured and afflicted with an infection that seems sure to kill him. With House Velaryon being the second most important House in the Seven Kingdoms (after the Targaryens), and with the logical heir, Ser Laenor (apparently) dead, there’s no clear inheritor. Let the squabbles begin.

House of the Dragon: season 1, episode 7 – Driftmark

“Exhausting, wasn’t it, hiding behind the cloak of your own righteousness? But now they see you as you are!”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It seems weddings aren’t the only royal occasions prone to disruption and drama in Westeros. As we see in this ep, funerals can be equally as difficult, as Lady Laena’s memorial on the Velaryon stronghold of Driftmark further draws the lines of alliances between factions that will (presumably) soon be openly at war.

House of the Dragon: season 1, episode 6 – The Princess and the Queen

“What are children but a weakness?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

And just like that… it’s ten years later.

This is a shame, as I’d grown rather attached to the actors playing the younger parts, who now must necessarily be recast; though the older characters often don’t seem to have aged at all. So, it’s out for Milly Alcock as Princess Rhaenyra, replaced by Emma D’Arcy; while Queen Allicent, her former friend and now deadly rival, is incarnated by Olivia Cooke, replacing the perfectly decent Emily Carey. Theo Nate, meanwhile, has been replaced as husband-in-name-only Laenor Velaryon by John MacMillan, who, as of this episode at least, looks strangely about the same age.

House of the Dragon: season 1, episode 5 – We Light the Way

“Is it not better to have lived in peace than to have songs sung about you after you are dead?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Oh dear. There’s going to be a wedding. Keen observers of previous (well, actually, future) Westerosi royal weddings will be well aware that such things tend not to go well. This one, however, sets a new precedent – it all goes pear-shaped before we even get to the actual ceremony, with a pre-wedding feast that goes from awkward, to supremely awkward, to horrifically violent, in one of the most bloodthirsty dances in the Seven Kingdoms. “I’m not much of a dancer,” confides Princess Rhaenyra to her intended, Ser Laenor Velaryon. “It’s just like combat,” he replies. He’s not wrong.

House of the Dragon: season 1, episode 4 – King of the Narrow Sea

“You are wearing a crown. Do you also call yourself King?”

(SPOILER WARNING – ALSO POSSIBLY NSFW!)

Right, well it looks as though I was wrong in my earlier assumption that House of the Dragon would be playing down the massive amounts of sex so beloved of parent show Game of Thrones. Very, very wrong. Because this episode lets it all hang out, with copious amounts of sex and discussion of sex – along with (natch) how it affects that all-important Royal Duty.