Also like Alicent, she has a son named Aegon to waggle in front of her father unlike Alicent, she’s thoughtfully (cunningly) named another son Viserys. Like Alicent, her preferred method of manipulation is to appeal to the bond between herself and Viserys. Rhaenyra has the moral upper hand, somehow, although she did arrange for the convenient disposal of her last husband, and she has abandoned her ailing father for six years to go have presumptively insane sex with her new husband/uncle. She has also taken over his kingdom, runs it however she sees fit, and is blatantly furthering the interests of House Hightower and her shitty, shitty, shitty sons. But Alicent looks at him with tenderness in her eyes. Viserys looks like a corpse - I couldn’t help but think of the Sire from What We Do in the Shadows, with his gnarly teeth and cottage-cheese pallor - already rotting, but not yet buried. She administers Viserys’s wine, dabs at his mouth with a napkin, and doesn’t flinch at the view of glistening ligaments and meaty muscle visible through the rancid hole in his cheek. It all leads to one central point: If Viserys is now a puppet, who gets to pull the strings?įor all her lesser qualities (see: demanding a child’s eye be plucked from his skull), Alicent is, as Rhaenyra eventually toasts her, a devoted and loyal wife. Characters break off in twos or threes to conspire and plot, and repeatedly remind us that these two families are not so copacetic. Once the masses descend on King’s Landing, the episode is a choppy one, with little scenes that pile on top of one another, each one desperate to advance a small plot point. The stakes may be high, but the tactics are low, low, low, the sad little political maneuverings of those who revel in their newfound power. Nobody but Lord Caswell (whoever he may be) greets them, and in the Small Council meeting Alicent and Otto attend - where, in fact, they rule - the two have a little snicker at the message their absence has sent. So what do his nearest and dearest do when informed that Corlys will arrive home, in desperate need of some nursing, in three days? Well, they sail off to King’s Landing to assert their stakes in his title and money.Īfter a note from Baela, Daemon and a seemingly pregnant Rhaenyra also depart for the halls of the Red Keep, which have been redecorated with the seven-pointed accoutrement of the church - faux devotion from the Hightowers, who are attempting a reputational rebrand. But now, while putting down yet another Triarchy uprising in the Stepstones, Corlys has suffered a slashed neck, a dip in the seas, and what sounds like septicemia. In “Driftmark,” Corlys assured Lucerys, his “natural-born” grandson, that the Driftwood Throne would pass to him, considering Laena’s death and Laenor’s then-current title as future King Consort. Now, they’re gathering again, this time to contest or assert the succession of the heir to Driftmark, a title whose value and power we’ve been told about ad nauseum, though we’ve never really seen that strength in action. It’s been six long years (ahem, one episode) since the last Velaryon funeral, when one child lost an eye and several others lost their damn minds. May this recapper humbly recommend that the Targaryen and Velaryon families recognize that they are not the kind of kinfolk who can gather for a chit-chat and a glass of Dornish wine? What does the Sea Snake say to the god of death? Well, we’re not really sure, but the hubbub surrounding his potential demise has been enough to unsettle the entire monarchy (again), send Targaryens leaping from island to island (again), and gather the whole crew for one cozy little melee (again). Viserys has presumably departed this life Vaemond undoubtedly so. Is Corlys dead or not? That’s the one mystery House of the Dragon is willing to preserve in this fast-paced eighth episode.
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