None. The
last episode we had duty. Duty is sacrifice, Lord Kragen
told us. And this week, that second part,
the sacrifice, really hits hard. It's a sacrifice to the God of
politics, a ruthless, capricious and thankless deity, or perhaps
we should say the God of power. But this episode and that
concept also explores what duty means.
Not all facets of it, mostly these extreme versions, the kind
stretch to the point that it may no longer resemble duty, but it
certainly retains the concept of sacrifice.
Aegon believed it's his duty to kill the murder of his child,
even if it meant killing innocents.
Arguably, that's revenge, not duty, but again, it's all where
you're sitting. Otto clearly disagreed with that
logic. And thanks.
Keeping the peace is their primary duty, even though he's
got a lot of blood on his hands for what's happened to date.
Allison and Helena's duty in this episode is to make their
very real grief, normally a private thing, as public as
possible. Kristen Cole certainly has a
take on duty here, much to the dismay of Sir Eric and his
twins. Sir Eric, Damon and Rainier have
a bitter argument rooted around trust and duty.
But there's also the small folk. What is Hugh Hammer's duty to
his wife and daughter? What are Allen and Adam's duties
to each other and to Lord Corliss?
What of the duty of the wives and families of the murdered rat
catchers? What of Mazaria, who has no
family or household to be loyal to?
And just as duty means different things to different people, so
to sacrifice this is yet another massive consequence of war, the
overturning of society to a point where what's right and
wrong is no longer clear. Or, to use the example of the
episode title, even cruelty and kindness can be hard to
separate. The episode title, by the way,
is Rainier rather cruel. What were simple choices become
morally fraught on the strength of some amazing acting
performances and the excellent delivery of a scene immortalized
in legends since the earliest chapters of A Game of Thrones
back in 1996. Many are calling this one of the
best episodes of House of the Dragon yet.
We'll talk about all that and more on this episode of History
of Westeros Podcast. Hello and welcome.
Make sure to catch our breakdowns of every episode.
We summarize all the action as succinctly and neatly as
possible to get you ready for the full review which you're
hearing right now. We have our live streams at 6:00
on Monday, and on Wednesdays we do a deep dive of the week, and
last week it was Blood and Cheese.
This week it's Eric and Eric. So we'll talk about them
Wednesday at 7:00, and we'll be talking about them much at all
during this episode since we've got so much else to discuss.
Saturdays at three, we have our preview episodes where we talk
about everything we expect to be coming, including spoilers,
things from the books but never leaks, and of course, game
streams at Six Eastern on Friday on twitch.tv/history of
Westeros. All right, so if you have
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groups and join the discussion there.
You should see links in the description.
I'd love to hear what you liked most or didn't like your
favorite performances, Easter eggs and callback.
We'll start with that ourselves with the little with just a
little more set up first. As I said, the episode's called
Rainier of the Cruel. It was directed by Claire
Kilner. It's her 4th episode directing
House of the Dragon and she's got one more to come this
season, episode 5, which we don't have a title on yet.
She directed season one episode 4 and 5 S the last two episodes
right before the time jump. King of the narrow sea and we
light the way which the with the big wedding and everything and
then the green council, which was episode nine of the split
finale. So she she got to focus on all
Eric and Eric and the chase for Aegon and all the politicking at
the last minute there after the death of Viserys.
Of course. The episode was written by Ryan
Condell and Sarah Hess and was a nice 69 minutes long.
Sean, what did you think of the episode overall?
I loved it. I I loved the last episode too.
To be clear, I think I might have liked this one more, but I
think it would be splitting hairs to try to put one over the
other. I think this one, at least it
stood out to me more. A few sort of cinematic moments.
I feel like there was more moments where the camera kind of
lingered on an image or a face without any dialogue or action.
And I, I love that kind of thing.
It gives you as an audience member to kind of ponder what's
happened and what's going to happen.
Think about what the character's going through.
It's a part of filmmaking, you know, cinematography and imagery
and stuff. I, I like it when it gets
featured more so than obviously, I like dialogue too.
But a picture says 1000 words. You know, if I could say one
quick thing, if we're not going to focus as much as Eric and
Eric on this, I just had a a quick thought that we could
probably elaborate on Wednesday that early on, like last season,
I was kind of frustrated. Like, why would they have twins
with similar names? There's so many parts about
this. It seems so unusual, so
troubling from a like trendy. There's already a lot of bunch
of Aegons, a lot of similar names and characters and
everything to keep up with, and they're just making it more
difficult. But their Gerard thing is still
a little unjustifiable to me. However, the twins themselves
are much more justifiable, One for this plot point of one being
able to come in as disguised as the other, right?
But furthermore, and maybe even making the names more
justifiable too, I think they are sort of a microcosm of the
whole thing that's going on here.
Right. Absolutely.
From a distance, they look the same.
They're both have torn loyalties.
They're parts of sides that have good and bad parts.
They're fighting to the depth over it.
They're, you know, all these things I'm saying about them you
could say about the greens and the blacks.
Does that make sense? Absolutely.
Oh yeah, absolutely. A lot.
For the whole dilemma. We've made similar points
before. I'm glad you caught that on your
own 'cause I don't think you've ever heard me say that.
But absolutely, I, I agree with you.
And it's a, it's a very fitting metaphor.
It it it really does encapsulate a lot about the Dance of the
Dragons by itself. Great take.
What about you Cher? What did you think of the
episode overall? Well, I love this one, but it
was also extra long so there was just more to love.
So I'm going to be biased probably throughout the season
towards the longest of the episodes.
But also this was a pretty Helena centric episode and I'm
fairly partial to Helena and I thought they really gave her a
chance to shine here. So I, I loved it and I've been
waiting for Eric and Eric for God, a long time, a very, very
long time to see this very tragic brother versus brother
fight. And I'm not one for for fights
exactly, but it was, it had me on the edge of my seat.
It was, it was really dramatic. I loved it.
Right there with y'all. I thought it was an amazing
episode. In terms of acting, it might be
the strongest episode of the entire series so far, which is
only to be fair, only 12 episodes but still that's back.
Thing has been really good throughout so that this is
really saying something. I.
I had a hard time picking. We did our usual Facebook group
poll and last I checked Rainiera and Otto and Aegon were doing
the best, which is Tom Glencarny as Aegon, Emma Darcy as
Rainiera, and of course Reese Efons as Otto.
And hard to disagree with that You might not have picked them
specifically, but you can see why someone else might.
Damon and Rainier's conflict was really strong.
I thought it was a very realistic argument, the way they
moved around and kind of stalk back and forth and the the just
the barely contained rage and frustration and just trying to
say things really quickly. Yeah, very realistic.
So let's start with the red key where the episodes begins.
The action actually stays here for a full 15 minutes.
That's very unusual for any show but this show or Game of Thrones
in general, because it's, it's usually pretty quick to shift
the action to kind of keep you back footed with just so much
happening. It's, it's kind of a quality of
of this show, but even more so. Game of Thrones did that
because, well, there are a lot more locations to go to.
That's one reason. That was one other thing I was
thinking a lot about this episode is that I don't know how
parallels are a little easier to draw, maybe because there's sort
of basically just two sides, right?
And Game of Thrones, you're jumping back and forth between,
I don't know, at least four or five different storylines and
characters. But in this one, it's pretty
much just two. And so it's a little easier
sometimes to compare and contrast things.
Yeah, yeah. And it's also easier to see how
they connect. Like early on in A Game of
Thrones, you're like, well, how is Arya and Essos connecting to
anything? You know, you know, it's going
to, but it's not necessarily easy to connect that like right
now you can see, well, I don't know exactly know what's going
on with Alan and Adam, but connected to Lord Carly's and
he's connected to the black. So it's like that's at least
somewhat straightforward. Obviously things can change, but
it's not terribly confusing in that regard.
So with the beginning of the episode, they used this other
technique that we saw mostly throughout episode 6 or sorry,
season six, episode 10 of Game of Thrones, meaning the Winds of
Winter. The one with that haunting piano
music all the way through it. It was a really different way of
presenting the music where it was really in the front.
They do the same thing here during the commotion and then it
quickly changes back to sort of a normal musics in the
background dialogue in the front, but it's done very
precisely. The music hits right when Aegon
strikes the castle. It the the music stops being
forefront and drops to the back as well.
They repeat this technique during the procession where
there's a drummer out front and the drummer is in tune with the
banging that we're seeing and with the the panic in Helena's
eyes that she's having a bit of a panic attack there.
So it's really, well, the music was really well infused in this
episode. And of course, it's always just
excellently made surrama Jawadi. But you know, they just a good
job of placing it. So during this chaotic,
dreamlike sequence that's of course happening probably just
an hour or two after the murder at most, There's people being
rounded up, A dog is being given a cloth, the gates are closed.
Aymond returns to find the secret door open and the coins
missing. Great shot of the mural behind
him in blue, reminding of reminding us of his sapphire
eye. Neat.
You can't see the sapphire eye, but you got the blue reflection.
That's pretty cool. Great shot of him finding one of
the coins covering his eye as well.
I particularly love this one. It's very striking and kind of
reminds you of the the Greek myths of having putting the
coins over your eyes when you're dead.
Or he's looking at the sigil of their own house.
Here the golden dragon is the sigil Thrones.
Too. Yeah, true, true.
They well, they weren't coins, they were like painted stones,
but it's a similar thing. It's very similar.
I certainly thought of that when the thing with with John Aaron,
which I think you're referring to, is the first thing I thought
of too They. Did with Tyron also right?
Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Then it was Tywin.
Yeah, the little painted stones, the I stones.
Yeah, that's pretty neat. They certainly got that idea
from the Greek coin thing. And here we go with with a more
direct reference. So Aegon smashing the model is
in a sense, like the second Doom of Valyria.
He's destroying Valyria all over again.
Don't worry, folks. This was a model of the model.
They didn't destroy the original model, that one got set aside,
taken off set, and I don't know who owns it now, but it wasn't
just dumped in the trash can or else.
It'll be part of a tour or something and we'll get to see
it and you know, they have the game, the props, tours and
stuff. I think that they said that it
was all scanned, it was all they can use a 3D printer to make it
again. So I, I there's if there's not
yet, there probably will be multiple copies of it.
Yeah, that's how they made the one to get smashed.
Yeah, exactly. So Red Ned does what a good
friend should do. He closes the door while his
friend is deep in enraged grief. I got his shouting things.
He shouts, I declare war, he shouts traitors and villains,
and he shouts fire from the sky, which I don't quite know what he
means by that. Is that just shouting like how
he intends to get his revenge, get on his dragon?
That's kind of what I thought, but it was a little unusual and
I thought it was worth mentioning.
My guess is it in the in the filming he probably said 30
things and they picked out five or ten snippets to stick in
there. That's possible, although they
did say it was only one take 'cause they didn't have multiple
models for him to smash. So good job Tom Glencarny doing
it so well on that, you know, limited filming opportunity.
But the, the, the phrase he says that most sticks out to me is I
am the king. And that's a call back to Tywin
Lannister telling Joffrey, any man who must say I am the king
is no true king at all. And indeed, Aegon's reign is not
as secure as he had been told. And we have a similar parallel
follow up when Otto confronts Aegon about a couple of
different things. And the way he talks to him in
the council scene, which we'll get to next, Aegon complaints
about being seen as weak. And I was like, you're already
seen as weak. And Otto, a hasty coronation, a
dragon escaping the pit. The people see an omen.
Yeah, he's not wrong. So he, Otto is is he's it's
tough, but he's not wrong. He's saying truth.
He's not trying to water down the facts here, even if people
don't like hearing it. A couple of points I want to
make in the subtitles. In the very opening, when you
were pointing out how the music kind of starts out in the front,
the subtitles say Muffled Chaos. The.
Sound of the commotion and the castle and one I want to well, I
have several thoughts here, but one I want to point out they're
using the heck out of these sets that they built and I'm so glad
I really appreciate the imagery we get of the the courtyard and
the castle and everything. But also, that muffled chaos
thing kind of reminds me of AI Don't know a theme, a motif
maybe of this episode or the series.
Because in the same way that they close the door when Aegon's
having his little temper tantrum, Otto later closes the
door when he's yelling at Aegon and Kristen Cole.
And in general, they're trying to keep this quiet, at least at
first. Much like Viserys dying, they
want to keep control over the PR, right?
Don't let everyone know muffled chaos is something crazy.
The kid just got killed. But don't let this news get out.
Aegon has this idea that he doesn't want anyone to know
about it. It shows that we're weak.
Aldo wants to use it to his vantage, but I still think
there's a little bit of a theme here of like control being lost
and the reality that trying to be kept behind closed doors.
Sure. Yeah, it does make sense.
Yeah. And so Aegon kind of lays into
everybody and says first, you know, where was Lord Commander
of my Kingsguard? Cole says a bed, which
technically true, it was just his mother's bed.
So yeah, I mean, he wasn't lying.
More on that later because we have a follow up conversation
about the security here, but Larry's enters to tell them
they've caught blood just naming him a gold cloak.
Again, we don't know what this guy's name is and saying he had
the prince's head in the sack. So it's a pretty literally
caught red handed there. That's basically straight from
the book, though. In the book, Allison dishes out
the torture instead of Aegon and it's a lot worse.
It's drawn out over almost two weeks.
Can I say another little snippet here?
Lars comes in in the midst of this argument and commotion in
the council room, and he finally interjects when Aegon turns
negative energy towards Allison. Yeah, that's a good.
Point that, but like he's kind of letting it play out till
Allison gets a target on herself.
He's like, oh, by the way, we got the bad guy and then that
kind of he. Was like letting letting the
rage fly around until he found the right moment to step in.
That's a good point. Yeah he didn't say something.
You're right that he walked in and didn't say something right
away. He waited.
That's that's a good good catch. So Aegon is perplexed that they
could be thinking of anyone but Rainier.
He thinks she's laughing at him and this goes to show he's not
thinking very clearly and maybe isn't a clear headed guy in the
1st place, but he's in full rage mode.
Otto Knows better. Otto Knows that Rainiera isn't a
baby killer. This isn't something she would
do. Damon on the other hand, sure he
would do this. But Otto says it doesn't matter.
He's like, yeah, on one hand it does in case they're still
coming after us, like we have to worry about current security
still. On the other hand, we're going
to blame this on Rainiera no matter what.
It's too juicy a political opportunity to to let go it it.
I've used this example a few times.
It calls back the a key moment in the show The Wire, where Slim
Charles confronts his boss and says, hey, we, they killed one
of our guys, let's go get them. And he's like, it wasn't, wasn't
them. And he's like, what?
Well, don't tell our guys that our gang is all fired up to go
attack our rivals. Don't let them know that it was
someone else, 'cause they're ready to go.
They're ready to die for you right now.
They're ready to go, like risk their lives.
And this is a rare opportunity to let's use it.
Same thing here. It doesn't have to be true.
It's so politically valuable, he says.
I will not let you Harris die in vain.
And of course, later, it's part of why Otto gets so mad later
that that this plan gets, which is such a difficult thing to do,
just gets thrown in the trash after the fact.
Like they go through all the effort to do it and then Aegon
undermines it. I think Ryan Condell in the
inside the episode bit he said something he he was quoting
someone else. I don't even know who quite to
attribute the quote to. But never let a crisis go to
waste. Yeah.
And, and, and it's also worth noting, it's extra frustrating
because it's a difficult pitch for Otto to make on on a few
levels. Cause one, I believe at least
that he he's not a robot. He is emotionally disturbed by
this himself, you know, maybe some fear for his life, you
know, remorse for his daughter and the the boy himself that was
killed. But he has this sort of big
picture sense, this responsibility, this leadership.
And he's like, you know, this is sad, it's awful.
But also we have to make it through this too.
We have to keep making decisions and go through our day and our
the war is on, etcetera. So what do we do now?
You know, and Aegon and Allison and many of the other people
involved, they are not at that point yet, whether in their
general maturity or their grief at the moment.
And so this is a tough sell for him to make.
And Allison is able to kind of side with him and and reign
Aegon in. But Allison and Helena
themselves have to suffer extra. They have to be put on parade
for this grief, which makes it extra frustrating for Aegon to
kind of ruin the whole thing so. Yes, yeah, very much.
Otto wears Aegon down. You're right that at first even
Allison is kind of against it. He says she says father like
when he makes a suggestion, but he just doesn't stop.
He's relentless. He's like, look, the political
value's too much. Like this could save our lives
doing this now. This could be the difference
between us all dying or not. So we definitely can't throw it
away. This is what he means when he
says Jeharis shouldn't die in vain.
And Allison was like, yeah, I guess, you know, he sets it on a
difficult course, but the hand is right.
Kind of says it gently. And and it's Tom Glenn Carney's
acting so great. He goes from the rage to
breaking down over it being realized, kind of realizing
they're right. He doesn't say it, but he stops
arguing. He's just like, yeah, all right,
fine. It's a heartbreaking display of
how politics dehumanizes people. The strategic value of this
procession is horrible, But the Aegon, the father can't bear
this. But Aegon the King, it's it's
good advice, right. And that's why the and that's
what you're referring to. Sean Otto's already in Hand of
the King mode. The rest of them are still in
family mode. They're still, well, maybe not,
you know, or while, and Jasper Iron Rod, the guys who aren't
part of the family, but they recognize that that grief is, is
present in the room with these people who are having to be two
things at once when those two things are at odds.
Being a king and being a father are often at odds here in
particular, you know, and, and the same thing with Ellison
being a mother and being the queen Dowager.
She's like, I don't want to make my daughter go do that, but I'm
gonna, you know, it's the same thing comes back to duty.
That's exactly what Ellison says.
Elena's like, I don't want to do it.
And, and she has to really explain it 'cause she asks all
the questions, like, why? Why I don't want to.
And then just straight up why, Why do we have to do it?
Why do we have to pretend? Why do we do it?
And it's like the, the most cutting questions.
And Allison answers, doesn't hesitate.
She's like, we have a duty to the realm.
We have to do this, we do that. Like she has her answers ready.
And it's, yeah, it's really sad, really dehumanizing.
And just goes to show some of the same things you mentioned
with Eric and Eric and how this all really encapsulates the
horrors of of civil war, of a family turning on itself and
when the realm is brought along for the ride.
I will say though, this is another moment to draw a
parallel because compare this fallout, the the Greens response
or whatever to the boy being killed to the Blacks.
Renera gets her grief, if you will, her way, right.
Luke is dead. She flies off.
She's not in a council meeting. She's not making plans.
She's trying to find evidence of her son's body.
She's trying to, like, accept the reality of it, whatever it
is. It's it's a different response.
Like, you know, Alison and Helena and his other character,
they don't really get the chance to grieve that Ranira did.
But it was sort of at the sacrifice of strategy, right?
In the meantime, Damon's like jumping out of his skin trying
to look, we got to do something now.
We got to act. And knowing nothing's happening.
And it's possible they could have made a key move.
They could have like, sent a bunch of Ravens out talking
about how their boy was unjustly killed by these upstart greens.
But none of that happened. They didn't they didn't
capitalize on the crisis. The Greens are, yeah, Damon is
not Otto, even though there's a lot of parallels between them in
this episode of like what happens to them storyline wise
and how they have a falling out a bit with their with their
respective leadership. But yeah, that's one thing they
didn't have in common. They're basically in an
identical position. Like there is no official hand
to the king, an official hand to the queen right now.
But Damon is kind of effectively in that role.
Maybe that'll change now that he's left as of this episode.
But to this point, clearly that's his role and he was more
like an egg on or an Amon, just like I want to get them.
You know, he wasn't thinking of the big picture.
So in fact, he's he, you know, very much hurt the big picture.
He did the opposite of look at the big picture.
He hurt them badly in in terms of that, which we'll get to a
little bit later. Back to Helena here.
She hands the shroud for Jerry's to her mother and we wonder if
she knew that was coming or if this even was meant to be a
burial shroud ahead of time. But she couldn't have just made
it all of a sudden like this is a long term project.
I think that is what she was stitching and that oh.
Yeah, she was. When?
She was scared of the. Rat No, I know that.
I'm saying it does. What did she know it was a
burial shroud at the time? That that's that's what I'm not
clear about. It right?
She might not have realized why she was stitching it, just that
you had this vision of it I guess.
Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's unclear, but
during the actual procession, as I briefly mentioned before, she
has what appears to be a panic attack.
And they clarify in the BTS that is what she's having.
It's a it's a panic attack and it's really well done.
Like the acting is extremely authentic and she can really
feel her panic and it's got that drums going.
The drums really add to that tension.
That was that was done to add to the scene.
They knew the drums would make the tension be greater.
You have Allison kind of helping hold her knee and she's just.
I don't. I don't.
Even warming and. Necessarily when she's holding
her knee, that's Allison's fear and anxiety that we see.
Allison is always like clenching and like has all that stuff.
I think that shows like, she's like, I don't know, I, I don't
necessarily think that Helena is comforted by that squeeze on her
leg. Oh, I agree.
I don't think it did comfort her.
I think that may be what she was trying to do.
But it was really, I think you're right, it was projecting.
I think Allison was maybe doing it more for herself.
Olivia Cook, by the way, very funny.
To lighten the mood of the scene.
She talks in the butts about how quickly FIA Saban, that's Helena
of course, would go from this incredible tragic acting,
playing this role so well to just in between scenes just like
bouncing happily because she's just like having a good time
sitting on this carriage, just being driven around with her
friend Olivia Cook, you know, just hanging out because of
course they're not that far apart in age.
They don't have mother daughter type gap in real life in age
wise there. So one thing we expected to talk
about today that we will have to talk about some other time
whenever it actually happens because it didn't happen is this
riot. So there was no riot
accompanying this funeral. We they they they fooled us in
the trailer there there was scenes that made it look like
there's a riot, which those scenes were real.
They're really going to happen. They just aren't part of this.
We we thought it was one all big scene, but apparently there's
more to come. So it's.
Two different. We'll come back to that process.
Oh yeah, that we could have figured it out then and before,
but apparently we just it just looked similar and we didn't put
give further thought to it. Yeah, I didn't think to consider
the the dresses because I also was expecting that those riot
scenes from the trailers to pop up here and they didn't.
And it one thing that made me do is kind of re evaluate what was
happening here. Part of it just showing the
grief and the struggle. But I, I, I thought for a minute
about why did they bother having that wheel get stuck and having
them have the crowd kind of close in and Helena have her
little panic attack. I can kind of imagine especially
an hour, an episode pushing over an hour.
They could have trimmed a minute off that, I think, and still got
the gist of it across. But I wonder if it was symbolic
or foreshadowing of this isn't going to go smoothly.
It's not going to go how you think.
There's going to be a hang up, you know?
Yeah, or next next time maybe because it didn't like that's
what I thought when the wheel got stuck, that's what I was.
I was like, oh, maybe this is it.
And but yeah, of course, of course not.
But I think that was just to to heighten Helena's
uncomfortability, how she was feeling.
It was just to to really make you feel her panic attack.
It does that too, but I think it's showing that there's,
there's going to be a, a, a pothole in Otto's plan that that
he's going to quite get the support that he's hoping.
For OK, OK, I like that the metaphorical hole in the hole in
the road there is. Yeah, it's not so smooth after
all. OK, so there's a lot of things
the crowd shout and that the procession leader shout.
Well, and some of these are are interesting.
Behold the works of Rainier Targaryen, the filer of the
innocent. Now in the subtitles you see
Kingslayer, but we are pretty darn sure it should be kinslayer
cause well for one thing, Jairus is the king.
But this does make Rainier a kinslayer, and you would think
they would say that so. It doesn't make Rainier a
kinslayer, to be clear. No, it does.
It does because they're blaming it on her.
Well, that's the point. Well, yeah, that's.
But that's the point. Yeah, that's that's what that's
the point I'm trying to make. They're all just trying to make
people believe these things about Rainier.
She's also not monstrous or cruel, but which is what's said
here. So Rainier the Monstrous, of
course, is maybe a reference to Meili's the Monstrous.
And Rainier the Cruel, of course, is not only the
reference to the title of the episode, but it's reference to
Megor. They're trying to make her seem
like Megor, which does happen in the book.
It's the the phrase I think is Megor with teats rather than
calling her Rainier the Cruel. But same difference.
Just use the first part of the word sort of the second.
Yeah, it's, it's pretty much the exact same thing.
Now, when Helena returns from the procession, she's going up
the stairs with her handmaids as Aegon is coming down with his
guards. And they just kind of look at
each other. And then Aegon just kind of
passes her. Now, we interpreted this as they
just didn't know what to say to each other.
They're not a very close couple, their brother and sister not,
you know, they are king and queen, but they aren't that
intimate, right? They've had relations in order
to have kids and don't spend much time together other than
that. But in the BTS, Tom Glencarny
says they shared a moment here that there was a lot unspoken.
I don't know that that came off. But I I'm glad to hear it.
And it does add a little more to the scene, although the scene
had plenty going without that. What do you think, Sean?
I, I had that same confusion that I felt like he was cold to
her, drafted, unsympathetic maybe, you know, all kinds of
things that are basically negative.
But he said that she's the only other person that maybe really
knows or the closest to knowing how he really feels.
Now even that I think is unfair at best because it's I'm trying
to be sympathetic, but the fact is he didn't give a crap about
his son until two weeks ago, right?
Like he is not this good dad. He this is a lot of this, I
think is for show. This is his his ego and a power
trip. It's not like he's been fawning
over his kids this whole time and can't believe his son is
dead now. He couldn't, he couldn't even
tell his son and his daughter apart, you know?
So no, they're twins, I guess. But you, you see what I'm
saying? I feel like that.
That part doesn't bother me. Even Jamie and Cersei say that
their mother and father couldn't tell them apart.
Yeah. But maybe I'm pushing it with
that point. But but the idea is I think that
much like Damon, this is his excuse for violence.
Now that these and and it's and it's a shame.
It's a point I wanted to make earlier because I feel like we
started to see some growth from him.
We started to see him maybe shedding some of his
irresponsibility, taking on the role of leader, learning from
Otto and Lars. It seemed like there might be
some hope for him as a person or a king.
And now that is gone. I think now just anger and
vengeance are just going to take over.
And it kind of like Damon using Rainier's phrase, bring me Amon,
be like, OK, now I can go do whatever violent thing I want.
Aegon's son being dead is now an excuse for him to like, push
forward with the war, to assert his power, to put people,
etcetera etcetera. Absolutely.
Yeah, Well said. I was saying I don't disagree
with any of what either of you thought about that scene or I've
seen other people think that and I think it was my first
impression. But on rewatching it and looking
at kind of the nuances in Aegon's expression, I think it
really does reflect the shared tragedy that they've shared and
the fact that he doesn't know how to address this with her.
He feels that he's failed and he's seen his weak.
He feels the steep shame and sadness.
He does. I think he really does feel that
and he can't bridge the, the gap between them and I, I so I see
what Tom Glencarney was saying about this being a moment of
connect to them or like they see one another.
I think Helena does see that he is tortured by this in that
moment, you know, like I think she sees that, but it is no real
help to her. And I also would like to point
out that he has his multiple Kingsguard Knights behind him as
he walks around, right? Helena has two handmaidens.
We still don't seem to value the Queen's life enough to give her
an actual guard. And I don't know.
Well, hey, they're like, they had their chance to kill her and
they didn't, so we don't need to guard her.
They clearly don't care, no. I do see that other side, by the
way. But what he and what you were
saying to Shaya, especially given, like I said, the
parallels that they have, because we see how Ranira treats
Jace, like she embraces him right when he comes back and his
brother's dead and they're struggling and it's like a
sentimental moment where they can share this sadness.
But here, Aegon and Helena don't know how to do it.
And later on, Allison and Aegon don't know how to do it either.
When she walks and he's crying, she just goes back out.
They just don't have a proper familial bond or or.
They don't know how to show affection.
Yeah, it's a family that doesn't know how to show affection.
It's been a consistent pattern with them.
It's it's very, this is something that people identify
with the Greens very early on that they dislike.
They notice it right away. They don't like it.
The Greens remind a lot of people of a real world
conservative religious family that's got a lot of money, but
not a lot of love for each other.
They don't. They look to politics and image
and power before they take care of each other and they don't
know how to be affectionate. They don't know how to love each
other. And not that the Blacks are a
whole lot better in that regard, but you do see them at least
able to give each other basic comfort sometimes here.
You're right. It's it's very, very stark how
little they're able to comfort each other or even know how to.
That's the thing I think you, you're right, you really touched
on is they don't even know how to because they didn't receive
that kind of love growing up. They weren't comforted properly
when they were children. Aegon obviously was not raised
well, he was ignored by his family.
Helena as well, and maybe even more so, probably even more so.
It's just the consequences are maybe larger for the realm for
not raising Aegon properly because he's the king, but still
the point stands for both of them.
I don't think Elena was ignored by Allison particularly anyway
because we've got a couple scenes with her kind of looking
over her. But Aegon, I think was, and
there's I'm sure none of the other men in the family were
paying any attention to Helena. Well, I think Allison checked
out with Aegon. I think after Aegon raped that
girl, raped Deanna. I think Allison has struggled to
face the monster that she birthed.
I, I think she can't face the the terrible thing that he did
and will continue to do. And she knows she loves him
still, but she can't show it. She can't hurt herself more over
it. I don't know.
It's really sad. I agree with that, though.
I'd say there was coldness even before that, you know, like,
even when he was younger. She just, again, I just don't
think she, like her mother died young.
So this is probably a big part of why she has this lack of
affection for her children, that she wasn't treated
affectionately. It just goes on and on, back and
back and forth. Yeah.
Her father pushed her into a marriage with a man twice her
age when she was just a teenager.
Like she when was she supposed to get any kind of emotional
relationship experience, you know?
Right. And that's why she's taking
anything she can get, AKA Kristen Cole.
Same with him. He's also got no one else.
I mean, that's the life of a Kingsguard, right?
They don't have those relationships.
They're not supposed to. And that's, you know, a hard
life for them. But this is realistic.
It's human. That's why I don't have a
problem with Alice at Cole being added as a thing.
It just makes so much sense. They're good looking, they're
lonely, they're around each other all the time, They're
grieving. They have like complicated views
on shame and and they're both have strange views on religion.
Like Allison thinks the gods are punishing them.
That's that's from one perspective, it's very sad.
Another. It's a little bit arrogant to
think that the gods would single you out.
Like those people were punished more than you, you know?
But this is how she's taught to think.
And she thinks it's real. It's not everyone can be Euron.
Not everyone can go through experiments to prove that gods
don't exist. Like, you know what?
I'm gonna go, I'm gonna, Kinsley, I'm gonna do all these
things that people say you can't do, and then I'm gonna see that
nothing happened and I'm then I'm gonna have confidence that
gods aren't real. Allison has not been through
anything like that. All she has is she's lived
around the trappings of the seven and the faith all her
life. She goes light candles at the
Sept like a good person of her culture should do or is taught
to do and to honor her ancestors and all that.
But yeah, and she's worried on that side from Krista Cole, from
her lover, she says, or have you told anyone?
And he's like, what do you take me for?
And he says, a a man who who seeks absolution.
And she's right to worry. Remember how quickly he
confessed to Rainier, the Rainier affair back in season
one? He didn't need any prodding.
Like she wasn't even at member. She wasn't even asking him about
that. And he confessed to it anyway.
He, she was asking about something else.
And he's like, yeah, I slept with her.
And she's like, wait, what? So it's like.
So Allison has good reason to think coal might spill the beans
here. Well, she's also projecting here
because we then see her with Otto and look, guess what?
She's the one who's close to spilling the bean.
That's why she asks. That's so true.
I was going. To say it's a perfect example of
someone expecting others to do what they would do.
She's looking for absolution. Yeah, she wants to tell someone
else, and so she's kind of expecting that he might have
also. Yeah, so she's it's the same
thing. It's like you're the you're bad
value. You're worrying.
I like people who lie expect other people to lie to them like
liars expect other people to be liars.
You know, vindictive people expect other people to be
vindictive, you know, so yeah. So she's expecting Cole to feel
that way and she. And to be fair, it's not
totally. Shay is right that it's
projection, but she does have logical reason for this too,
given his past. So she weeps for Helena, she
weeps for G Harry's. But like Shaya brought up, she
has less concern for her son. She's also unable to come.
She doesn't come off as heartless like I said, it's just
just kind of helpless. And you?
Think she's kind of afraid of Aegon.
Yeah, maybe a little bit, you know, maybe a little bit.
But I think it's just so much of it is just the way they're
raised. It's a great point y'all made
about her. She, she first wants to confess
it's Otto, and Otto asks like, what's sin?
And she, she then she just doesn't say anything.
And then later she says it. And he's by then he's probably
had a chance to think about it and he's like, I don't want to
hear of it. Which is another way to
encapsulate politics over love. Like she needs someone to
confess to, to come clean to someone she can trust.
She needs to get this off her chest.
Like she literally scratches herself on the chest as she
brings it up. It's that physical manifestation
thing of her picking at her nails and scrubbing that you
brought up last week, Sean, that she was scrubbing herself in the
bath and she couldn't get clean. It comes up here too.
It's really great consistency of her like foibles or quirks as a
character. But Otto isn't going.
He's like, Nope. It's it puts us at risk.
If I know, like if I don't know, then I can't spill the beans
either. It's better to keep it a secret,
which from political perspective you see his point, but from a
father daughter perspective I you you don't.
From a father, daughter or or maybe even just human or
whatever kind of perspective he it might just be too much for
him to deal with. He's already straught in a bunch
of ways, you know, never mind to him the the political
implications he might just not emotionally be able to handle
anymore, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Like in general, a father doesn't want to hear about who
his daughter's having sex with. In general, I think that I feel
like that's a kind of a. Especially a religious
conservative family, right? Right.
So but but the their dynamic has changed though, like we've saw
and it started to change last time, which is they are
supporting each other more like they are more of a team.
Which is a reversal. They were at odds a lot season
one. Now they're kind of together,
which is a change from the blacks, Whereas Damon and
Rainier were pretty tight season one, now they're the ones split.
So that's a nice little little mirror image there.
One of many mirror images in this episode and this series.
So Sir Kristen, let's talk about him.
Let's focus on him for a minute. A lot of people are like, he's
not Sir. He's just it's one of the
saddest moments of the episode is him watching that little bed
being taken apart with like that was like, man, they got us in
the fields with that one. They really know how to just
that little thing, you know, just the, the act of taking
apart the little bed is so sad. It's like that phrase, you know
what was like a child shoes for sale never worn like, Oh my God,
don't do that. So it's one of the saddest
moments of the episode. His acting is really good here,
even though you're mad at him all the time, especially on
rewatch when you know what he's going to do the second time
through because one of the cringiest moments is him
lambasting Sir Aric. But again, we'll save that for
Wednesday. We'll hold on.
Hold on to the your frustration for Kristen Cole over that.
But in general, does this change your view of Kristen Cole?
Does he seem more of a hypocrite or whatever?
Well, how do you see him now? It is.
This is basically pretty big moments in this episode
regarding him. It does it clearly makes him
more of a hypocrite, but it's in a way that I understand, if that
makes sense You it's it's frustrating for him to do this,
but it but people do this people often do this and it's.
Do do what? Do what?
Specifically, what do? What do you mean?
Lash out at other people when they're really upset with
themselves. That makes sense.
That is human. Realizes I've made a mistake.
I, I, I have sinned. I, I've done something wrong.
I've been a hypocrite da da. Well, let me find someone else
being a hypocrite and I'll tell you know like it's there.
There are definitely better ways to do this.
Wasn't being hypocrite though like this but.
Arc wasn't being a hypocrite though, he he unleashed on him.
That's not a hypocrite that's just a that was just a punching
guy. That was just pure blame.
What I meant, really, he's looking for someone to go after,
someone to take this internalized emotion out on
outwardly, not necessarily for doing the same thing that he
did. Yeah, but this is someone that
maybe he and his own mind can justify or maybe even
legitimately have a little bit of concern about.
You know, it's not that I, I don't think he's being fair.
I I don't necessarily think this is the case.
But even if Cole is aware enough that Eric wouldn't do this, is
everyone he that's part of why I think he knows he can do this to
him, because he knows he could turn the king or whoever against
him. You know, I think, and and it's
another thing I want to think about too, another sort of
parallel you can draw that Damon felt like he needed to do
something. This came in the wake of seeing
this dead baby. And Cole, for all his flaws, he
still wants to defend Allison. He's still on some level
believes or needs to believe that he's doing the right thing
for the right side. And these freaking blacks just
killed a little boy he wants. He's just like Damon.
I want revenge. I want to take action.
I'm tired of these council meetings.
I'm tired of all those patients. But we rightly condemned Damon
for doing that. This is your your.
But we rightly condemned Damon for that right.
Oh yeah. So, so we condemned call for
this, of course in the same, by the same regard absolutely.
Yeah, it's, it's a, a, an emotional negative, unfair,
hypocritical. Yeah, it's not.
Well, no. As much as I want to attack him
for being a bad idea, it almost worked.
It. Did almost work right?
Yeah, it worked better than Otto thought it would, that's for
sure. The.
Difference there and he would have got to her or even if he
would have been killed immediately afterwards, so.
Yeah, yeah, it's it is really interesting because he confronts
it's, it's funny 'cause he confronts one of the few people
that can rightly call his flaws, his specific mistakes out,
whereas the council doesn't know exactly who's like they, they
aren't sure exactly who was supposed to be where, but Ark
does. He's like, why didn't you assign
a guard to Helena? Like, that's your call.
You're the one in charge of security.
So I was a little, remember how confident I was that he was
supposed to be guarding them. I was technically wrong.
So I was so Cal. I was like, no, Sean, you're
wrong. He was supposed to be guarding
Al. He was supposed to be guarding
Helena. I was wrong.
But it was his fault because he was the ones that was supposed
to put a guard on Al on her and just didn't.
So the heirs were not guarded. That's just wild.
So it, it is Cole's fault in that sense and he is not taking
responsibility for it. Mary, who we had on as a guest
for Saturday, Maester Mary had a great take on Cole and his
patterns, which is that he is very willing to feel shame or
guilt. He does feel that he is not
above that at all, but he doesn't feel responsibility for
the things that make him feel shameful or guilty.
And that is something that some characters do, but he doesn't.
And that's part of why a lot of people don't like him because he
does not take, he takes very little responsibility.
And not only does he not take responsibility, he blames other
people for it. We saw a little bit of that for
Damon, but Damon didn't go nearly as far and trying to
blame someone else. He just tried to say it was a
mistake, like, oh, it was an accident, whereas that's a
different conversation, a different way to shirk
responsibility. He did do it, but it's very
similar. It's parallel in that last
episode, he tried to blame Rainey's.
He's like, you could have just killed him all there and you
didn't. And now we're in this situation
and he tried to blame Masari and and she called him out.
You're just blaming me because of your mistakes.
OK, so wait, so I, I want to get a gauge on it, Sean, because
people were very curious about how you would feel about Cole
after this episode or just, you know, your your, your gauge.
It seems like you're not as as warm to him as you are, but it
still seems like if I were to have you rank Damon and
Christian Cole, you're putting Damon at like a three and Cole's
still like a six or what? You know, you're there's there's
a gap between them. They're not head and head right.
I think I said last, I don't know if I said it on the stream,
but I I said to someone that last episode that Cole lost a
notch to me but Damon lost 2. I mean Damon was lower in the
1st place. I think in this episode they
each lost a notch to me. So you know he's, you know you.
Don't think Damon Cole lost two notches.
He said he tried to send like the this is like a a murder
thing when he's, you know, the blaming people and everything
like Damon just all he did was shirk responsibility.
He didn't like order a murder plot.
Well, and he ordered a murder plot last episode, right?
Which we which he fell two notches for.
So why doesn't Cole fall 2 notches this episode?
That's my point. Yeah.
The difference is, I think that Cole, I think this murder plot
is less bad. I think that it is this one is
like, Why? Because the last one isn't with
a child being killed. But that wasn't, but again, that
wasn't like his intent, right? It wasn't, you know, and this
could have gone, this could have gotten innocent people killed
too. Like a someone got in his way, a
kid could have been killed. Cole's intent here was to end
the war, he thinks. Sure, he may have some shrouded
others. No.
Hold on, hold on. Do we know that for sure?
Do we actually know that? We that he's some other thoughts
in his head. Because we no, no, no, hold on,
hold on, hold on. What I'm saying is I don't know
that he's honest when he's saying that he's trying to get
Arc to go. That doesn't mean he really, he
genuinely believes this will end the war.
Because I don't think that's true.
I don't think it would end the war, and I don't think that
Kristen Cole would believe that. I think he's just telling Arc
that to do that. It would just be.
Yeah, it would. Jace would just be.
Exactly. Jace would just be king and
Damon would would be king. Kansor at former king.
Whatever it wouldn't, it would definitely wouldn't stop the
war. I'm not saying he's full of
thought it out or that he doesn't have some other ulterior
motivations or cloud of judgment and everything else, but it it
does make sense and he said out loud he's like, I guess Jason be
the the king, but would it would is the realm going to stay at
war over this? Yes, of.
Course they would. Yeah, they they definitely
would. They definitely would.
That people wouldn't support the blacks if they believed Jason
was a bastard in the 1st place. Because he's next.
No matter, in any scenario, he's next.
I mean, they might, but what I'm saying is even now, Rener is
worried that her support's Wayne.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely sure. It would it wouldn't support
Wayne even more if she wasn't even alive.
You know, like I'm not saying. No, it might not, because people
might rather support a man. A lot of lot of patriarchal
Westeros might be happier to support chase.
So yeah, no. So it's not that simple.
Yeah, it's actually hilarious. It might have blown up in Cole's
face if he had assassinated Rainier and now it's King Chase.
And now, well, King Jace is as a clear path to the throne.
I I don't know, it might have worked out poorly.
Yeah, one one way or the other, Damon's plan was not to end the
war, right? Even if Cole's plan was poor,
thought out, and mixed up with other motivations, Damon's plan
was also poorly thought out and mixed up with other motivations,
and didn't even have the primary motivation of trying to end the
war. I don't think that's, to me,
that's not a distinguishing factor because it wouldn't have
ended the war either way. I don't think their intent
matters when we don't know for sure what the intent was.
And we do in Damon's case, we don't in Cole's case, and we
definitely know that the war wouldn't end because of it.
He's just wrong like that. I think there is.
You have to include like basics intelligence here and he didn't,
he didn't use that. He just expected it.
He just like went off half cock. He would rather support someone
knew who is dumb than someone who is evil.
And even if Cole and Damon. Well, they're both He he was.
Cole is dumb and evil. Yes, well, so is Damon.
I don't know that Damon is dumb. He's definitely evil.
Well, they he did evil things. They both done evil things.
Neither of them are pure evil guys.
But yeah, anyway, I do think the blood cheese was dumb.
Anyway, let's move on. We spent a lot of time on that
one. It will be very interesting to
see how Kristen and Allison's relationship is impact going
forward. She doesn't hasn't yet reacted
to what he's just done and we don't know what that will be.
And of course, he's the Hand now, and all sorts of things are
going to change between them. And yeah, Otto called it a
prank. He was like, you didn't consult
any of us about this prank before you left.
And Allison, I feel like, probably would have taken her
father's side on that one. Here's another thing where
Aegon's education would have really helped.
The lack of education really hurt him.
There had been a Lord Commander named Han not that long ago, and
it went very badly, in fact. So that was Ryan Redwine.
And he was in the season one briefly.
He dies I think in episode two or three and he's standing
behind Jaharis at the Great Council, so.
You. You reminded me of another
thing. I wanted to appoint one to make
an earlier scene when Aegon was destroying the model of
Vulvaleria. Yeah, I think that was also sort
of symbolic, if you will, of him not only not paying attention
to, but just. But he's like destroying the
past and the legacy of the Targaryens.
Does that make sense? Like he, I.
Think it's really just his father's legacy, not the
Targaryen's legacy. That too, yeah.
Because that's referred to specifically in this episode.
Like, don't you remember thinking about your father?
And he hated his father. So he he's, he's violently
destroying his father's legacy, which he didn't like.
He didn't want to be like his father.
And now he has an excuse to just smash.
It off and particularly thinking about this because of the line
that is spoken to Damon by the the brothel woman.
I don't know if we even have a name for her, but she's like,
you know, the angry Princess you.
Said Damon. You meant Aymond.
Aymond, Aymond. Sorry if I misspoke.
Yeah, you know, angry Princess end up hurting common people
like me. And this is an example like a
you know, that he is, I guess he's king at this point, but but
his like on a lot of levels, but just think of the time and work
and effort that one guy this day, like stop, you know, like
that in the background, like watch him destroy this.
But also what it symbolizes father, his legacy, their
history, on and on. And he's just mad in this moment
and destroying all of it. And and this continues.
It's been happening and it keeps happening.
Gamon did the same thing. It's it's Eric and Eric aren't
exactly common. People like the Cargilles are
like a a noble family, but they are still relatively common
compared to the Royals and they are suffering to death for these
angry Princess, you know? Absolutely.
Yeah. They're losing their temper and
sending people off to do bad things.
That, by the way, is a callback to virus telling Ned.
Why is it always the innocents who suffer when you high Lords
play your Game of Thrones? Very strong callback there.
Very big moment, very big line talking about well, actually,
let's take a few questions here. Mick Floyd says I was so I was
ready to kick Allison's back in, but Tom and Egon doesn't want
anybody see him as weak. So was her leaving while he was
crying good parenting? Maybe that's possible.
But I, I, I, I think maybe that's what maybe that's
something that she would tell herself, but I think she just
doesn't know how to comfort him. I think that's regardless of
what else might be going on. I I'm pretty adamant that she
doesn't know how to comfort him so definitely doesn't have to be
just that though. Like why would it be one thing?
This is she should be having a confusing, complex set of
emotions here and I think that's a very valid potential
possibility for one of them. He doesn't want to be seen as
weak. Yeah.
Like some people want to be left alone when they're sad.
That's that's not uncommon. I don't want to argue too hard
against that take, but there is a difference between being seen
as weak to the public and being seen as weak to your mom, you
know? Yeah, that's a good point.
But she. But still, she might recognize
that he'll just get mad at her if she tries now.
Still, maybe still she should try Despite that.
I don't know, But yeah. Whitney Lee sends a super chat.
No question, thank you Whitney. And Jill, 47, says it's odd that
no one asked the queen to pick the rat catcher who did it so
they didn't have to kill them all.
I wouldn't say it's odd. I would say it's a function of
just how single minded and in a hurry Aegon is to get revenge.
I think they don't want to re traumatize Helena but I don't
think it even crossed his mind. I don't think it crossed his
mind, but I think if it had, there might have.
He might not have wanted to go drag her to stare at a bunch of
men in a lineup. Yeah, he had the blinders on.
He was presented with with Blood.
He beat him to death. Blood admitted that he worked
for the rat catcher whose name he didn't know, just that it was
one of the Red Keep rat catchers.
Simple as that. There is no further thought.
There's like, well, what? How can I get them as quickly as
possible? There's no other steps needed,
just have them all killed. He just immediately had an
answer that could satisfy him. Even though it's a terrible way
to handle it, it was quick and he knew he could do it right
away. And remember Otto when when Lars
came in with this information and it seemed like Aegon want to
go deal with himself and Chris and I was like, hold on.
And Lara said Otto was like, make sure you get some
information quick. Yeah, I'll just kill him right
away. Yeah, Otto was worried about
that, and he was correct to be. And I think Otto would have
thought whether he should have or not to have Elaine and pick
him out. I think Lars probably knew he
could have done that. I think Loris wanted to give
Aegon this moment of violence. I think Loris is trying to get
an Aegon. Side Oh, yeah, I think you're
right. I mean, he already has tried to
insert himself with the whole hand, like that's your father's
hand. Which, by the way, he he uses
almost the exact same wording when he fires Otto that that the
Loris planted him. Yeah.
He's like, he's your father's hand, not your hand.
You know, he's like you're not you were my father.
You were my father's hand, not mine.
He says he just repeats it right back to him.
But before that point, we have the shot outside of the rat
catchers hanged, and it's the first appearance of Alf the
White. We'll be seeing more of him
later. Sean, you don't even know who
that is, but he does matter. The first thing he does is steal
something. So that gives you a little quick
hint as to his character. We have a sad shot of the little
dog sitting there, still loyal to to Cheese.
Cheese was killed. There's Alf, and there's the
little dog. Poor loyal dog.
Oh, hopefully find someone that won't kick him to be his next
companion. So this is done pretty quickly.
We see this, the guy Otto or Alf asks what did they do and no one
says anything. We just cut to this council
chamber where Otto is already enraged.
He finds out. He comes in he's like what did
you do to the rat catchers and this is his big it's giving the
worst person you just know made a great point energy Otto cause
Otto makes several great points here.
Of course we can't help but notice that so much of this was
set up by him in the 1st place. His own arrogance had a lot to
do with this scenario happening in the 1st place.
He created the conditions that allowed a lot of this happening.
He's more than anyone is why Eggon is on the throne but he
and he wanted to avoid Damon because he feared another Megor
the cruel and he's telling all his opponents that this is right
near the cruel. But the most Megor like thing
done in this episode was hanging the rag catchers like Megor hung
all the builders or hanged? Sorry Stannis hanged all the
builders after building the very tunnels Blood and Cheese just
used to sneak through. Oh man yeah Megor's paranoia got
more. Targaryens killed the red keep.
When has those tunnels ever helped Targaryens?
I don't think it's only ever so yeah, I got more to say about
this, but Sean, go ahead and and weigh in before I just say all
of it at once. I think that this is maybe
another example of the, I don't know, this this theme, I don't
know, projected the right word. But like Otto's mad at himself.
I think he knows a lot of this is his.
Fault. He's taking it out on Aegon and
now Aegon did do a bad thing, but he, I, I and I was kind of
surprised at the insults he was throwing at him.
He kept pushing it. Both both the anger and both the
the cinema and the actual words were really pushing.
It. He's never been like this,
right? He's never lost his composure
like this. This was very different.
Yeah, I was. He snapped is maybe part of it
is he also hasn't had his chance to grieve his grandson being
killed and the effect that that's had on his granddaughter
and the efforts will say sacrifices, maybe his personal
sacrifices to kind of swallow these emotions.
He hasn't allowed himself to grieve because he feels like he
these things he has to get this duty he has for the long term
good of the realm and the people and his family and his children.
And he's been sucking it up and making these tough decisions and
this stupid kid is ruining it all.
And he's like, you know, you thought about your father, like,
you know, my, my father said I should be.
I made you king. Yeah.
And. That was a very dumb thing to
say, 'cause as we just said, he doesn't really like his father.
Bringing up his father's legacy is an insult.
He's like, yeah, I don't want to be like that.
This is Yeah, that was a poor choice.
Yeah, Otto, you did make him king.
You made this man who killed 100 innocent men, 99 innocent men or
whatever. You made him king.
You did that. Live with it.
Otto.
Yeah. Hate him?
Yeah, but in this moment, talk about boxing.
Yeah, and but in this moment, unlike pretty much every other
moment, he can't control his emotions and and a lot of those
other moments, it almost makes him seem cruel or cold.
But here, when he lets it go, he still seems cruel and cold.
And the timing is just wrong because Aegon's already got
these seeds planted and and Otto's harvesting them without
realizing it. I love it.
It's such a great scene. He's his acting is so good that
just he just the way he unleashes he he calls him
feckless, feckless Sean. He claims Aegon has no feck, not
a a speck of feck in that man He.
Doesn't give one. He doesn't give any feck I I
actually honestly do not know what feckless means.
I've seen it written a million times but it's just context.
Always kind of semi explains it, but it's about to.
Say also just context. I think it's like regard or
control. Certainly, that certainly fits.
Anyway, it's very on point. Yeah, he's he's yelling at him.
He's can't stop the insults. And like how Amond refers to his
own mother as Allison, though in private he's called him Aegon.
In the council meeting, he does that too.
He does it here. And in the council meeting, he's
still thinking of him as his grandson, like the kid he put on
the throne. He doesn't call him Your Grace.
And that might have helped a little bit, but it's just all
these the, the, the insults piling up and Aegon being like,
you know, just can't handle it. He's like, I'm handling this
better than you all of a sudden. Because that's an interesting
thing, isn't it? Aegon's demeanor has shifted
dramatically by this. By the time the scene rolls
around, he feels like he's a little satisfied.
Maybe because he killed the rat catchers.
He's taking action. He's he's no longer melting down
and he's drinking heavily. Yeah, that's exactly what I was
going to say, that he feels as measure of control as anyone
would. He actually did do something
right here. He, he did multiple things
actually. He beat blood to death,
presumably he killed 100 men and he sent Kristen off to well, he
said he sent Kristen to send Aurek off to kill Rainiera,
right? Like he he has enacted 3 acts
better is more than has happened so far in his whole reign.
So yeah. He says Aegon also points out
that what have you done? You know, I, I want to spill
blood, not ink. And all you've done is Curry the
favor of fish wives. And he's like, no, like the
whole realm is hearing about this.
He's like, it's not just the you you think that only the people
in King's Landing that saw the body care.
No, look, everyone's telling everybody word's going to
spread. It's going to take a little
while, but you just upended all that.
You just ruined our ethical advantage in front of everybody.
Like we, we were the good guys 'cause they killed a child and
our, you know, we were, we had the, the upper hand with the
propaganda and now we don't. Is, is Otto's point.
Whether that's actually true or not remains to be seen, but you
tend to trust Otto's judgement on things like this.
He, he's not an idiot, you know, he's a dishonest, he's
ambitious, but he's not a fool. He's, you know, the same kind of
thing with like a Tywin who was also handed the king.
You wouldn't trust Tywin to not be ruthless or violent, but you
would trust Tywin to act rationally in within the frame,
within the the the framework he's shown you before.
You know, I that one line that Otto said that his death could
be worth more than 1000 nights on a battlefield?
Yeah, and, and I, I thought about that a lot because, you
know, if, you know, I don't know what the number would have to
be, but let's say one in 100 potential soldiers that were
going to join Renera's 'cause now they don't.
And if there were 10,000 people that were going to well, that's
1000. It don't if you had 1000 nights,
go kill one person each. Well, if you get 1000 people to
not join, they don't need to be killed and might be even more
than that, right. Especially when he considered
the idea that like, you don't even have to equip and send
those Knights out and wait for them to get to the battlefield,
right? You just have to send A1 Raven
can affect 1000 people 200 miles away like Otto was.
I think that was a very good assessment by Otto.
But now if each one of those rat catchers had one brother and one
son or one uncle or whatever who are now not going to join the
green side because they're mad, what the king did he he, he just
cancelled out the. Value.
He really did yeah. And, and that, and that'll be
the room. That's what spreads Like this is
this is what happened. This is your loyalty to the and
this is, this is what his, you know, magnanimity towards the
guy shouldn't even use that word 'cause I can't say it.
All his goodwill towards the common people is just.
He just murdered 99 and he's like, do you strike at me?
I strike back at you. Like he's treating them like a
monolith, like they did it like, no, it wasn't them, it was just
one of them. It was really Damon and you
know, and but he's treating them like they're some sort of group
that arranges together he which is just the height of paranoia,
insanity. I don't know which.
It's just it's not rational, it's not smart.
But it's also not unexpected that this kind of behavior would
come from a person like this person raised like this person,
with this, with these values. Which, yeah, brings me to your
answer, Aziz to to Jill when you said no.
I don't think it's odd for Aegon to not show Helena.
You're right, Jill 47. That's what a rational person
would do. If Otto had charge of this, he
probably would have done that or any number of things.
There's probably a number of solutions here that didn't
involve killing 100 men and publicly hanging them.
One other callback to Song of Ice and Fire here is Jamie
getting mad at Cersei for killing the guards who Virus
drugged. Virus drugged some guards and
went and and the business down in the black cells and then they
went you know with Tyrion and all that right and then the
guard Cersei finds out and the first thing she does is order
the death the guards that fell asleep and Jamie's like you
idiot. We should have questioned those
guards like like something happened, you know, like what
now we don't know. We have no idea if they what
they saw. We could have just we could have
killed them after we questioned them.
But this is big. This is Cersei energy right
here. Aegon just not thinking and just
only thinking of revenge and violence and getting back at the
people that did this and not thinking exactly what what's the
line that Otto says? He says he has not the Longview.
I love that. Yeah.
And it's right, right. In the same conversation where
Allison also kind of downplays like that.
That's really downplaying it. He does not the Longview like
saying he's very short sighted. Yeah, that that's that's putting
it mildly. But Allison says Sir Kristen is
not temperate. Yeah, you don't say, Sir.
Kristen is not temperate. The thing she says after that,
though, is that he's dedicated. You can't deny his dedication.
Which? His loyalty, maybe his.
Loyalty is dedication anyways, Which to her, yeah.
But really that this is a parallel because this is kind of
like when Eamon was, you know, lambasting his mother in front
of Cole and Cole's like, Nah, it's all right near his fault.
This is this is kind of the same thing where they're like Cole
and Aegon together. Those two idiots will just, you
know, Ram run the realm of the ground.
And she's like, Sir Kristen is not temperate.
This is like, hold on, Let's let's just dial it back a little
bit. That's my lover you're talking
about. She's not quite as bad.
She's not. She's not as just Kristen's way
worse. She's blames it all in right
here. She's a little more like nuanced
about it, but still. I I think by the way that Otto
said they have not the Longview, not he 'cause I think he was
talking about. Both.
Kristen and Aymond also that all three of them are.
Just, I think he said he, but he's, you're right that he,
you're right either way, whether he said it or not.
Also, real quick, feckless is in the realm of unqualified,
incompetent, irresponsible. OK, it's feckless lacking FEC.
So if I have stuff, I want to say someone doesn't have any
skills something. It's like you have no FEC at
this. I think we all knew what?
Well, I I guess we, Aziz and I both knew what the word feckless
meant. We were asking what the root of
the word FEC is. I could not without.
To be clear. Quickly while trying to keep up
with this, I could not find FEC but I could find feckless.
So yeah, yeah, we knew that it. Might be a word that didn't have
less added to it. It might have had some other
origin that sometimes happens, but.
So Aegon wasn't well educated into being king.
You know who hasn't been educated as Hand of the King?
The new guy? Kristen Cole.
What? What experience does this guy
have? And the one order he's given so
far? Though technically he wasn't
Hand when he gave the order to Sir Ark, if this is any
indication of his ability. And we already saw him talk to
Aymond about a plot, a campaign plan to go, you know, attack the
crown lands and all that. So we can pretty much expect
that to be one of the first things he suggests.
One last thing with Otto and and Aegon.
Another sign of Aegon's weakness is the use of the classic saying
you are dismissed to someone who's already walking away.
I I did like that moment because it was a little bit of a
reminder to Otto, you know, like it, it and and maybe to Aegon
himself, like he is kind of asserting himself and it may be
after the fact, but he did want to remind Otto that I am the
king. I'm not joking.
You really are out of here, you know.
But anyone who has to remind someone he's the king is no true
king. It comes back to that.
One of the quick point is it and again I'm I'm way down on where
I was for Kristen Cole and I've never been that high on him in
the 1st place except for how handsome he is.
Gorgeous. More down on him than Damon
relatively, but it is possible. Not knowing how this pans out.
I can easily find myself with my foot in my mouth or eat my words
in a couple weeks. But in this moment of war, he
might be a good hand. He might.
If the main thing they need to be deciding is how to manage
battles. He might be better than Otto
now. I immediately can see the
counterpoint to that is he hasn't really been to war just
'cause you're good at fighting. With the result.
Doesn't mean you're good at managing the battlefield troops,
so we'll see about this. Like they don't have really
anyone who's got that skill. That's part of the problem here
is like yes, you're right, Kristen Otto would might be even
worse than Kristen Cole who at least has some Marshall
experience at least as probably read some books about strategy
and talked about it. It's at least like in his
wheelhouse, even if he has no experience at it.
Eamon's probably read the most about it.
I would guess that Eamon has the most like book learning on war
strategy. He has studied the blade and
philosophy and history. He said.
So actually, we should believe him.
And more on books a bit later. We've got a pretty cool scene
with Rainier in the library, but we're not quite there yet.
So Aegon smashed a lot of things the model a table blood his
father's legacy several glasses and he plans to smash more with
his new steel fist of a hand, which that's a book line.
My new hand will be a steel fist.
That's George RR Martin writing right there, by the way.
Another great moment. We didn't it kind of got lost in
the shuffle of all the great acting.
You knew how it was actually quite good in his limited time
blood, the the the gold cloak, like his voice went from that
menacing, gravelly evil to guy who's rightfully afraid he's
going to be tortured and killed, which again, rightfully so.
Yeah, that's that. He got luck that it was actually
pretty quick. And yeah, his his trembling and
his just all that anxiety in his voice.
Great job, Curtis. Frank says ineffective leads to
the word effectless, which leads to the word feckless.
OK, so it could be feckless, but it was changed to feckless.
OK. So you have no effect.
You have. Yeah.
So you someone that's ineffectual, similar, I suppose.
Very good. Thank you.
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Most of the rest of this episode will spend on the other side of
Blackwater Bay, with a few exceptions.
Let's head over to the Black Council.
Dragonstone right here. I just can't believe people
would think are capable of this. This is a little bit of naivete.
She's not understanding that, no, like they don't know you.
They don't know that you're a good person.
You are. You don't have a well defined
personality to the common folk of all over Westeros or the
nobility. Yeah, they got to know you a
little bit when you were younger.
But this is the part of politics that she's not grasping fully.
It happened in the first episode where her leadership being
paralyzed meant that they were unable to capitalize on this
event of her son's death in the way that Otto almost capitalized
on it for the Greens before Aegon kind of threw that off.
But Aegon pointed out in the meeting, who else could it be
exactly? That's what people are going to
think. Your son was just killed.
One of their sons has just killed.
Everyone's going to think of you first.
And she, the fact that she doesn't recognize that
immediately is a little bit of a flaw in her reasoning.
Alfred Broom, who is very rude about it and doesn't read the
room very well. It's his first experience, first
appearance, by the way, this Alfred Broom.
He says, yeah, actually, some of us kind of did think you could
have done that in haste. And Rainier gives him the just
hard stare, like, really, really.
You really thought that? And Rainey's gives the mind
yourself without even looking at him.
And it's like, oh, that was that's commanding right there.
I thought that was interesting, by the way, that she might have
also at least a little bit to been at least a little bit have
been talking to Renera A. Little bit I think.
There's a chance Renera is about to have that guy executed.
Not executed, but maybe something?
Kicked off the council at least you know, it's like calm down
with you know our old trouble here is overreactions.
Let's not overreact in anyone so.
Yeah, So Damon's silence throughout this meeting is kind
of what gives it away. You've got Lord Celtagar saying
some things. Broom says his things.
Let's actually mention Celtagar first.
He's the one who who says, yeah, I already doubled the guards
because he knows too. He's like, yeah, they're going
to come for us. Of course they are.
He understands that. And then he says something else
that's obvious. It must be said that the damage
to our position is immeasurable. Yeah, it is hard to measure
because they they don't know. But it's also a big deal, right?
Part of it's just lack of understanding.
Part of it is this is bad, right?
But yeah, Damon's silence and kind of smug face gives it away.
And next thing you know, the room has been cleared.
Well, the room isn't cleared. They go to Rainiers private
corridors and have a conversation there, a room we
get very familiar with in this episode because we're in there
several times and we have a fight in there.
Well, an argument and a fight to a war of words and a war of
swords. So it's a it's a great argument,
fantastic and realistic. The way they kind of walk around
and stalk and yell and the red face and the just the
frustration barreling through. Rainier is relentless.
Even though she's a little afraid of him, even after he
gets a little physical with her, she still calls empathetic,
which is like, yeah, you go like, don't be afraid of him.
That's my favorite part of the episode, calling empathetic.
Nice. I thought it was telling that
there was a moment when he kind of moved toward her and she
reeled back because he choked her, right?
That's like another notch that Damon has lost in the past that
keeps him lower than Kristen, if you're right.
She jumps when he slams that door too.
Jolt. Also another continuing with the
the sort of motif of losing control behind closed doors,
kind of like we saw with the with the greens that's happening
here. Like she's realizing that Damon
did this and we don't see how that plays out in that room, but
probably pretty short even if everyone realizes that Damon was
probably behind it, but she gets everyone out and behind closed
doors they have it out with each others.
Yeah, now I think Damon is loyal to her, but just they have
differing ideas of what loyalty means.
He thought he was loyal to his brother and like, in a lot of
ways he was. Yes, he undermined him in ways
and went against him in ways. But if it had ever come to war,
he'd have been the first one at his brother's side.
And that's what he's thinking of.
That's what he's thinking. He's like, yeah, no, I'm on
your, we're at war. I'm on your side.
I'm about to go lead troops for you.
That's the point he brings up. He's like, how can you doubt
that I'm on your side? Well, it's not that she doubts
fully that he's on her side. It's that she can't.
She doubts how he expresses this, how he takes action to
support her, and how they are very much on the same page about
what that, what that means and what she wants from him.
And in the same way with Thesaurus too, like he is loyal
in his way, which is only physical violence in the short
term. He's not loyal in any long term
sense. And she even kind of calls him
out on it that he starts with her.
He he does the, the, I don't know.
It's something that people often do make the projection thing or
whatever. You blame someone else for doing
what you're really doing right. He's like you, you know.
How did he? Say you were afraid to spill
blood. No.
No, no. Your dad was using you to keep
me from being right. Yes, that's what.
He was saying shadowing him. Yeah, he was afraid of me,
right? Right.
And and the fact is that she's she's saying she didn't say
this, but what I believe is that he's using her.
She kind of like puts it out there.
He's like, look, do you accept me as your queen and ruler?
And he doesn't give a straight answer.
His response is I'm about to go raise an army for you.
Because the answer is he wants to use her.
He wants to use her name, his position as her king consort, to
do what he wants, just like he did with Visarus.
I'm the King's brother. You can't stop me.
He's sure he's loyal to Visarus, but he's really using his
brotherhood to the king to do whatever he wants.
And he's still doing with her. And she can't trust him because
she thinks, I think correctly, she's he's going to keep doing
that. Even when a war is over and they
win, Assuming they win, then what?
She's still gonna have the same problems with him that Bizarres
did. She still had the same problems
with him she's having right now, and he's not gonna stop.
She can't really trust him. He's not really loyal.
He's only loyal to the extent that he gets to keep his own
power, autonomy, ego, whatever else.
Yeah, and it's really well said. They really get at some really
important points here. The point about fear versus
trust is super well done. Like Damon was like, no, he he
was afraid of me. And she's like, no, she didn't.
He didn't trust you. He he wanted to rely on you, but
he couldn't. It wasn't 'cause he was afraid
of you overshadowing him. It was because he was afraid of
what you would do that didn't agree with what he would do.
And then that would reflect on him.
Things like this, things like blood and cheese.
Yeah. And at first, she's not fully
grasping that, actually, given the responsibility she's given
him. Actually, she does too bear
responsibility for Jairus's death.
She believes her careless wording is partly to blame here.
So she's taking responsibility when there's only a little bit
to take. Maybe there's a little more than
a little, but she's taking it. Whereas Damon is trying to
absolve himself entirely where clearly he's more directly
involved. It clearly bears more
responsibility than she does. No matter what percentages you
assign, his percentage is higher and he's trying to shirk that
while she's trying to accept her share.
Again, it's like Daenerys in A Dance with Dragons at Marine.
Until a shepherd brings her actual child's bones, she
doesn't realize how dangerous her Dragons really are.
In this case, it's not a literal dragon posing the danger she
didn't recognize. It's Damon.
Damon is the dragon that's out of control here.
Damon is Drogon. He needs to be reigned in.
But can he be We We once compared Damon to Achilles in a
episode Parallel Lives episode and that's apartment.
Here again, in the movie, Troy Agamemnon says Achilles can't be
controlled, but Nestor, his advisor, says we don't need to
control him, we need to unleash him.
And that's basically what happens here.
He kind of unleashes himself. He's just like, he leaves and
just go, I'm OK, I'm unleashed now.
Fine, I'm going. And presumably he's going to
Heron Hall in the Riverlands and we'll see what happens.
But this is a better use of his talent.
Like you said, maybe Kristen's better in the field than he is
ruling 'cause he's clearly not very good at ruling.
Like it's no experience. He might do better in the field.
Damon maybe as well. Like if if it's just about
fighting and winning the war and killing soldiers and.
He might not muck it up so badly.
If you're leaving him to make political decisions, then it's
probably going to go badly. But this maybe this will work.
And that's kind of reflected by the later conversation with
Corliss and, and Rainey's where they where they clarify some of
this. It's like, do you think he'd go
against Rainier? And she's like, no, not like
that. Just she just, he just won't
always be obedient. He'll just always do his own
thing and just try to, like you said, he'll just try to get away
with what he can using her as a cover, which that's a very good
way to put it, Sean. And I think Rainey's was kind of
trying to say the same thing, but in different terms.
And Renee herself kind of says it too.
When Bayla says what of my father, she says, I don't know,
Chart his own course, That's what she says.
Yeah, hopefully he's going to help us, but we'll see, you
know, hopefully he's still on our side, you know, but she's
she probably doesn't really think he's gone off to like she
doesn't think expect to get a turn on them.
But again, like, in what way is he going to help?
It's who knows? With help like Damon's, you
know, with friends like Damon, who needs enemy?
All right, so this is again, again to bring up Christian Cole
and Allison it this this part line hasn't gone as far because
Allison doesn't know what Kristen's capable of yet.
She just knows he's not temperate.
She doesn't know what he just did regarding Eric Ark and she
doesn't know what he'll do next now that he's handed the king.
So she also bears some responsibility for kind of
knowing she has a, a, a hold over him and maybe not realizing
what her hold over Kristen means.
Like, oh, what's he going to do in my name when I'm not looking?
Or what's he going to do when I'm just because he thinks it's
what I want? Same things happening here with
Damon and and Rainier, except it's less about what Damon
thinks Rainier wants. It's what Damon thinks Rainier
needs rather than, yeah, it's a little.
The dynamics are similar, but they're definitely not
identical. And real quick, a knock on
Allison is that she should already be worried about this
because it's happened with Laurie's multiple times.
He did something a lot more kniving or dreadful than she
affected when she was kind kind of giving him guidance and he
went like 2 steps farther than she thought would considered
would even happen. And so with that experience, you
should be, I think, a little more worried about what might
happen with Cole as well. Shout out to our good friends at
the TK OK Podcast Network. Hey Tommy, sending hearts and
geese and a mirror and swords crossing and a headstone which
can only refer to the Cargill twins.
Some of his favorites. I As I said in the chat, Tommy
is just like Lena with her drawings and whatnot, and she
wrote in her journal. The goose kills its own
reflection and now we can say that was the Cargill twins.
Their sigil is a goose. A golden goose is the sigil of
house cargo. That's what he's referring to
with his maybe cryptic emojis. It's y'all.
Well done, Tommy Rainier alone. We got some shots of her.
This is probably the scene you were most thinking of, Sean,
when you talked about just seeing people thinking.
This one to me, of all of them stands out the most because of
that great camera work of going from one eye to the other of
hers and how she's, when she's with her children, Aegon and
Viserys, she can't smile even when she's with her kids because
I she's worried like they there are they targets now these
children of hers that now that Allison or now that Helena's
children have been targeted, you know, from their perspective,
are they going to come after her kids?
That's and yeah, that's dangerous.
Yeah, I had so many thoughts in this this sequence here that
didn't really have any dialogue, just this imagery because it was
right in the mix of when I wish I could I I might be juxtaposing
some of the scenes, but I I feel like it was the same time period
when Aegon and Helena didn't quite know how to interact with
each other. Yes, you're right.
That's what you can see. I when I flip through them, it's
going back. And then you see.
Then you see Renira with her kids and maybe forming a better
bond than the greens are. It seemed like Helena was with
the kids alive and Rainier is trying but is she going to fail
too? I don't know.
And and it's ironic I think that she's giving them dragon.
She's like, take, it's not a toy, you know what I mean?
She's like giving these Dragons to play with.
I don't know how it's symbolic. That's supposed to be of like
what has happened to the Targaryens in general.
Is she still doing it? Is she questioning it at this
moment? And in the scene it has her sort
of looking to the light, but looking sort of upward at a
window where light is coming through and the, and the the
camera doesn't even move. It kind of just shifts focus
from one eye to the other. But when it goes back to the
light, you can see, I don't know, just in the air.
They spent so, so much time in this moment.
I, I feel like it, it's got to mean something.
And maybe it's just a pacing thing, but when it's over an
hour long, they, I feel like it needs to have a deeper meaning.
And I haven't quite decided yet, but one of my thoughts is maybe
that even the light is not pure, that, you know, that the sort of
dust or debris in the air like that, that nothing is pure, that
she's questioning what she thought was pure or good or
right. Then she has questioned before
already whether or not she should be the heir.
Is this worth it? And then we cut from that to
Allison sinking into the water. She's, you know, drowning
herself rather than looking to the light, drowning herself.
And again, the way those scenes came one after another with no
dialogue, no action, just as imagery.
I'm, I'm, I don't know if anyone out there has any, any thoughts
or ideas or maybe there's some foreshadowing that I swear to
God, if Allison drowned herself. I, I even started thinking about
the, that, that Dalton Greyjoy that's supposed to come into the
mix. So is somehow he going to cause
Allison to die? I don't know.
Maybe I'm, I'm reaching too far, but those are the thoughts that
stirred at me and he's still moaned.
I also watched it three times. So I'm still had some thoughts
picking up on new things, you know, so.
I was curious, like as Renira looks at her.
Her two sons, you know, is she just like overcome with gruesome
imagery? Like that's kind of what I was
thinking is that she's trying to not picture her son's
decapitated, but she it has to cross her mind, right?
Like how do you not have that on your mind?
I agree because especially because she says why would I do
that to Helena of all people? Like she's like if I was going
to target someone, why would it be her kids?
Like that's that's kind of insane.
Like why wouldn't I go after Aegon or Aemon Exactly like why
wouldn't she go after the people who kind of were the target That
was sloppily handled. If we if we go over to yeah,
backing up, I would as well to echo what Sean said, if y'all
have takes on these sort of dialogue less scenes that seem
to suspend time and slow things down in an episode that is jam
packed. So that's a good point as well,
Sean, about how they they took the time to do this even in an
episode that was really kind of stretched out.
So I do appreciate that and I would love to hear other
alternate all their interpretations is the word I
was looking for. If we return to the real briefly
to the drift Mark interlude with Rainey's and Corley's, we've had
a few of these bed scenes. This is like their thing to have
us get them talking in bed, which is a sign that they're one
of the very few relatively healthy couples in the entire
series. One of the few couples that's
doing all right, you know, they're still like having
conversations in bed. Like compare that to Aegon and
Helena who can barely talk to each other at all, or Allison
who can't comfort his her own son or Otto can barely comfort
his own daughter and. Or like, think about Allison's
probably not having any bedside bed conversations with Cole.
They just like, slap each other up and go at it.
I don't know. And.
Then they're worried about getting caught and they're like,
let's get out of here. Like panic, you know, they can't
just take any moment like this cause every moment they're in
bed together, there's a risk of getting caught.
These two can be like we've been married for a long time, we can
do this. Can I say Renera Allison
Craney's Please command me. Right, isn't that that's the
that's the joke in this in this moment, right.
He says I'm he makes them a joke about being a sub and now it's
not so bad. You know, he's like, I don't
know it works out for me just fine.
That was a good joke. I love how the dragon riders
make it much easier for characters to just they can do
scenes in multiple places without it being like ah,
Littlefinger is in his teleporter again, how the heck
did he get all the way there? Virus teleported to Slaver's
Bay, how the heck did he do that?
But because Radius was just a dragonstone and then she now
she's over at drift mark. But that as a dragon rider that
makes perfect like, why not? Like, that's fine, 'cause we.
Know they're not really that far away.
Either No, they're not, they're island next to each other.
Yeah, it's really not that far now.
And of course, we could think maybe Coralis is a Dragonstone,
but no, he, he, we haven't seen him there yet.
He wasn't at the council meeting.
He wasn't around at any of those other scenes.
So pretty sure he's still at Drift, Mark Baylor and Jace.
Let's talk about them. This is a nice conversation.
We don't get a lot of these conversations between the core
characters. Obviously these are very
important characters, but they're, they're not tier one in
terms of their screen time. And it's so it's these scenes
are, well, we really like them. We, we, we want more of them.
She skips dinner for crossbow practice.
She's deep in her feelings. It's a conversation mostly about
fatherhood, which this episode is heavy on fatherhood themes.
Bayla says she has kind of a love hate relationship with
Damon and kind of explains that a little bit doesn't go too deep
with it. It's kind of some of it's kind
of self-explanatory. You got get the sense that they
don't spend a lot of time together, but he's protective,
that kind of kind of thing. Worth pointing out something I
don't think we actually noted in the scene between Bayla and
Rainiera is that when she goes in to see Rainiera she notes the
broken debris on the ground. She sees that there was a a
fight between Damon and Rainier and it was in conflict which she
kind of already knew because his Damon storms past her, doesn't
even say a word. She knew he was in a bad mood.
She sees that he yelled and broke something.
And who knows how many times Bayla growing up has seen Damon
rage at something like when they're often and Pentos like,
was he happy or did he sometimes have some some fights and and
yell and break something? I don't know.
It might have brought back a lot for her.
So yeah, I think she was very much thinking about her
relationship with her father right then and there.
That's a great point. And I would say that it's kind
of hard for me to imagine that Damon and Lena never had
arguments like she is very strong willed, strong
personality. So it's like hard, kind of hard
to imagine that they didn't have a few a few fights.
And it's not hard to imagine that maybe Lena was the more
mature one in those conversations or arguments or
whatever, and maybe Bayla would would have seen her mother's
side more. But again, that's mostly just
guessing. So that's also a great point and
something that ties them together here in this moment
that is a little interesting. Jase asks for permission to go
do the scouting job that Rainier gives to Bayla instead, which I
think is a little interesting. Maybe she's a little little is
does she trust Balamore or more worried about Jace or both?
Also, Jace is the heir to the throne, so you need to be more
careful with him. So but but but again, it's the
question of what's the queen and what's the mother here, right?
There's a dual role that she has, just like everybody else in
this episode is in the balance being apparent with being a
ruler, which is which is giving the orders here or or which is
taking prominence here. I thought that's pretty
interesting. Yeah, I would say you could make
an argument either way. You could say that Rainier
keeping Jace from action right then is the sensible ruler
decision, or you could say that that's the mother speaking.
You could argue either and I would I would agree.
I don't think one is a slam dunk decision.
What I think you can say is that she does see Bayla as more
expendable. Quite possibly.
Baila might also be more experienced too, right?
I, I, I wish I knew better, but when did she claim her dragon
versus when Jayce got his? How much more time in a cockpit
does she have, so to speak? They're like the exact same age
basically, if I remember correctly.
So it's not, it's not that won't help this settle this, but yeah,
I think it's possible she was dragon Rider first.
I don't recall. I found my head.
And you can imagine she might have pushed harder to impress
her dad to be a dragon writer, like right.
And I, I, I think that the mother is given the command to
not let Jase go, but the queen has the excuse of you're the
heir. We can't risk it.
That's that's. Yeah, the two, you can't
separate them. That's that's a great way to put
it, 'cause you even as much as we're trying to separate them,
you can't. They're it's the same individual
making these decisions and we don't know.
She doesn't think she knows as a mother that someone would argue
you're just trying to protect him.
But she has the excuse as the queen of he's the heir, we need
to be protective. So it's a it's, it's certainly a
little of each, but it is, it makes the decision easy for her.
Yes. I also want to point out just
how competent capable they are showing bailed to be and
military minded, you know, fighting minded in that she made
a lot of shots on these posts. She's been practicing, she's
been training and she's good. She, you know, we have to
imagine you will see her in combat of some sort and see
these these skills and action. How?
How could she be in combat? She was told to keep her
distance. Who could know?
Who can say? I mean, yeah, nothing could
possibly go wrong. She's not hot headed at all.
Her father isn't hot headed. Targaryens aren't known to be
hot headed. That she would never do anything
she's not supposed to do. She didn't have a deleted scene
where she yelled at her aunt for not being more aggressive about
the war effort. No, not at all.
So yeah, her dragon is Moon Dancer.
Correct. Was that moon dancer that we saw
flying that that Adam saw flying?
No, that was sea smoke. That was sea smoke.
Yes, that was Lanor's dragon who was mentioned here.
Jumping ahead, but I was a little confused by what was
happening in that scene. That's OK 'cause Lanor is
mentioned in this scene 'cause it's, it's Jace's, quote, UN
quote father, the cover story father.
And Bayliss asks, that's her uncle.
Lanor was her uncle. She's like, yeah, what about my
uncle? And Jace is like, yeah, he
taught us how to fish and he like cake.
And then she asked about Sir Harwin Strong.
It's a very touching moment where he's like, yeah, he was
called Break Bones. He was fierce.
He was. We let you know.
We think I think he loved me. And she's like, of course he
loved you. It's yeah, he.
Was your dad? I mean, I mean, we all know he
was your dad. We all my bad.
Did I say that out loud? I thought I was thinking that
they share a moment over Luke and it's a good scene.
You know, it's like I said, good to have these two together and I
hope we get more. Let's talk about yeah, let's
talk about that little since you mentioned it, let's talk about
Alan and Adam and the little moment with sea smoke there,
starting with Alan and Adam. So this is on the other side of
the blockade, right? They they're talking about goat
Stew and then having food and all that, which is a a parallel
or a mirror image of the scene with Hugh Hammer and Cat, which
we'll talk about next, where they're talking about food
starting to go low in the blockade because of the
blockade. So this is life on the opposite
sides of the blockade and it builds on what they talked about
last time, but it kind of deepens the mystery a little
bit. Allen expresses hesitation in
sailing with Corley's. And Adam says you're come on,
man. It's the best chance you've got
to make your claim to make your fortune, especially when he get
especially given what he owes you, especially given what he
owes us. So you can understand the the
you 'cause you already, it's already been established that
Allen saved Corley's life. But what does he owe them?
And they're his. It's his brother and Alan is a
or Adam is a shipwright. So what's your latest take on
this? Actually, let me let me ask you
the latest take on this after we discussed this quick sea smoke
scene. So he's just grabbing crabs and
mussels, maybe more stuff for his Stew, right?
And then the dragon just appears circling around him.
We're left wondering what's on his mind and on what's the
Dragon's mind like? What's going on here?
So give us your takes on both Adam and Sea Smoke and Adam and
Alan and this deepening mystery around.
And a shout out to the great reflective dragon scene.
That's how we see the dragon at first reflection on the water in
the sand, which is just a stunning moment and shot.
Hard to really fully capture in a screenshot, but just really
cool. Yeah, I am similarly perplexed
as I was last time. There's clearly something here
they're holding back from telling us that I is probably
going to become integral, if not central.
I thought that. Yeah, the the he owes us.
I was like, oh, us. What are you?
What is it did he owes? And why is Allen so reluctant to
claim it? And Allen seems to have given a
reason. He's like, this is war, man.
Real war. Like this isn't just like we're
going to go beat up on some pirates.
This is like a real war is coming.
And, and I think Adam at one point even said this is your
chance to distinguish yourself. And in my mind, before he even
said that, I was taking note of the scars on Allen's face.
And when he said like, I think this dude has already
distinguished himself, you know, like, and I, I, I'm, I'm hoping,
you know, I, I, right now, I, I feel like I might align myself
with this character if he just doesn't want to be part of
another war. I think it's understandable,
especially if you've already seen a lot of violence and know
that people are going to die. Maybe people close to him have
already died and he just look, I just want to sail a ship and
fish and explore. I don't want to be mixed up with
violence. I think all these Lords fighting
over the throne is nonsense in the 1st place and I don't want
to be part of it. I'm.
I'm wondering, hoping if that's what his angle is.
And maybe Adam is a little more young and naive and hasn't
distinguished himself yet. And so it looks at work as the
chance just like a lot of these other characters do.
And it always frustrates me. I think there's.
Yeah, sometimes when you know some terrible injustice has
occurred and you need to, you know, it.
It comes to violence I get, but I don't.
I don't know if this war is over a terrible injustice.
This is about the rich getting richer.
You know what? I mean.
Rich people over who should be the top rich person and everyone
else is getting sucked into a war over it so.
Agree. That's a very good point.
Yeah. So you or you can see why you
don't want people to to join this.
Don't be a part of this awful scenario.
Like, why? Why would you do that?
Yeah, good take. I appreciate that.
And yeah, they'll, this, this plot line continues to build and
we'll continue to to ask you questions about it, see what
your take is 'cause we're, we're very, we, we have of course know
a lot about where it's going, but I like the way they've kept
this hidden. It'll enables us to quiz you
and, and see how it looks to a show only person.
You're not technically a show only person, but you are show
only for House of the Dragon. OK.
So, yeah, like I said, the other side of the blockade, Hugh
Hammer and his wife Kat, We actually see Kat during the
procession. She's one of the people that we
see in the crowd, and that's kind of neat because you might
not have seen that otherwise. It's a very deep cut, right?
She's right there. You can see the flowers passing
by and part part of the little procession.
Technically in the behind the scenes, like they, yeah.
They said yeah, they were dropping hops, yeah.
That's right. You call it flowers there, and
maybe it's meant to have that effect, but it's hops.
Oh, I was referring to the flowers on the corner there.
The left on the. On the actual yeah, I thought
you meant the debris flying about.
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the debris though 'cause I would
have forgotten to say that. Yeah, that's what the that's
what Claire Kellner, the director said.
That was it was they just, yeah, they let made that drop down
like A to make create that sort of dreamy effect.
And maybe this was meant to be a little bit of a parallel to the
little dust motes in front of the light of the window at
Dragonstone. So Kat expresses fear that
things are going to get worse quickly because the rich are
beginning to hoard because people are afraid.
And he's like, you know, that's a bad thing to do.
And she says, well, we might be doing that too if we had the
money, you know, like if we had more money, we would probably be
hoarding as well. And it's a really interesting
commentary on power and what people do when they're
desperate. And it's like, yeah, you do.
People do look to themselves and they're not necessarily all high
minded and thinking of of their communities.
Some people do absolutely, some people do.
But sometimes the, the, the wave, the churn, the, the events
from outside are just too much that you, it puts you in an
every person, every family, every man for themselves type
scenario. And I think that's what seems to
be building or looking towards that.
And they're afraid of that coming and what will happen if
it does. Their daughter is sick and
they're not sure Aegon will keep his promise about paying them
well in advance and all that. There's also a little bit of
basic supply and demand, not purely hoarding.
Like if the person that has chickens used to hatch enough
chickens each day to sell 5 chickens to five people, but now
they don't like the the chickens and the eggs that were coming in
have been limited by the blockade.
So now, well, five people came a day for chickens will only have
three. And the next day seven people
come because they're not finding another place but only have two.
Like they could sell for the same price, but eventually they
just don't have any more chickens.
And the reason they're charging more is because the carrots cost
more for the goat Stew also. So I need more money for my
chickens in order to get my carrots.
And like everyone, it's, it's going to like get to a tipping
point of where we're not charging more.
We don't have food. That's what's going to happen.
And absolutely the the the riot scenes that are coming.
Here it very much could be and I I agree with what you're saying.
There's this cooperation between the two forces of supply and
demand and also price gouging. Those two things go together.
Whenever there's natural price inflation, people also take
advantage. The two things are always found
together, and that is probably happening here as well.
We shall see. Talking about, well, going back
to Dragonstone and talking about Rainier and Mazaria.
This scene begins with Rainier alone, looking at books and the
lore porn. Good Lord, I want them scrolls.
I want access to this library. Gimme.
Look at that. That is some cool stuff.
You got a book there? She's looking at a book about
Vicenia. And that's interesting for a
couple of reasons. It's already established that
Rainiera is interested in Vicenia as an ancestor.
Season one, episode one, What did she want her new baby
brother or sister to be? While she was hoping it would be
a sister named Vicenia, right? Her dad expected a boy named
Balon, but she's like, Nah, it's going to be a girl named
Vicenia. And then when she had her own
girl who died stillborn and deformed, what was she?
What did she name it? Vicenya.
So this is definitely, this is her.
This is her Targaryen. She's enamored of Vicenya.
Doesn't bode well if she actually starts behaving like
Vicenya. Vicenya is not like Rainier, not
book Rainier or not show Rainier.
She's a little bit more like Book Rainier, but Vesenia was a
hardliner who ruled through fear.
Getting her hair braided a little bit later.
Just like Vesenia gets her hair. Wears her hair in a braid.
In the scene when Raniera is is getting assassinated, she's
getting her hair braided by a Linda Massey there.
But she's rejecting. She's like, no, don't.
She walks away. It's kind of weird.
How she gets weird from it too. That was another note that I
took. They bothered to show us that
and gave us the name of that handmaiden.
Yeah, Linda. Yeah.
It's Elinda Massey.
Elinda. Elinda Massey 'cause there's a a
Lord Gorman Massey. She's the daughter of one of
Rainier's Lords. Is is is is one of her
handmaidens. The Massey's are in A Song of
Ice and Fire too. Remember, Justin Massey is one
of Stanis's men, the one who tries to marry Asha and, and,
and Stanis is like, maybe go get me the cell sort company.
And then maybe a lot of people think Justin Massey's going to
be the one who runs into Aria over there in Essos anyway,
bringing it back over to Dragonstone.
So yeah, Vesenia is not a good person for Rainier to emulate,
at least not in that sense. She wasn't compromising.
You know? Rainier is, at least for now,
but maybe that'll change. One person she's very
compromising with, she's certainly open to and handles
Mazzara in a way that I doubt Vesenia would have.
Mazzara isn't fully honest with Rainier, but she doesn't tell
any big lies. She certainly doesn't tell any
lies that would harm right in here I don't think.
She's mostly just trying to save her own skin and just trying to
downplay the things that might get her executed, which is
pretty understandable. And she has no one else to
protect. This is makes her very unique in
this entire setting for now is that she doesn't have a family.
She doesn't know. She knows she's lost her
position. She lost her house, her home as
she put it, something. She built it very slowly.
So she has like very little attachments, no people that
she's looking out for anymore. She kind of was looking out for
the small King's Landing, but now she's like, well, I, I have
no ability to do anything for them.
So she's a little aimless, not to be confused with feckless
because she is definitely effective but doesn't and
doesn't know what to do. And she's worried about being
executed here. So she sort of figures out that
Rainier is not such a bloody person.
Not so bad as all that. She's not Otto.
She's not Damon. She starts to realize that
actually, there's a there's an opportunity here.
Rainier mentions a few things about Damon.
She kind of asks a few questions about Damon, and she uses that
to kind of make herself on Rainier's side.
She's like, yeah, he does that, doesn't he?
Like I'm on your side. Like Damon did that to me too,
you know? Like he, she's got all these
things she can say that's like, oh, I've been through.
I've been there too. You know, he did that to me.
I've seen him behave like that. We've got things in common.
You know, she's not saying it like that, but that's the
message. She's she's much more, she's too
clever to just come out and say it like that.
But it's a very well done. The dialogue is clever and the
way she just broaches this subject.
And then right here it looks at her in the scene that O'shea's
got up on screen right now. This is when she says, you
Remember Me now, 'cause she's not going to volunteer that.
She's not going to volunteer that.
Hey, I was the one that Damon used as a pawn to say she was
pregnant. And she's like, she see, now she
has to convince her like, yeah, not everyone found that joke
funny, 'cause which this she's honest about, right?
She was not happy, but she tore Damon a second butthole after he
did that whole, yeah, she's pregnant thing.
She's like you. It's very similar to what the
Madam says to Amon's like you. You did not consider the
consequences to me when you made that lie.
You will not suffer for making that lie about me.
I might suffer. They might kill me because you
make it sound like I'm carrying a prince's child.
You won't suffer for that. They won't kill you, but they
might kill me. So yeah, when Princess lose
their temper, the commoners suffer.
And she's realized this. She realized that she was
playing a game that she shouldn't.
She got too far in, got burned. Which is the same realization
right Near was having about Damon.
She's like, when I was young, I took your your lack of attention
as a challenge. Like like a lot of young women
like trying to get the the boy to pay attention to her.
Like, obviously boys do that too to girls.
But as an adult, she's like, I took that as a challenge, but
now I have challenges enough and she's done with that.
And Mazar is kind of yeah, they do have a lot in common.
She's clever about getting really here to see that, but she
had to be clever to do it in a way that wasn't offensive, that
wasn't like, yeah, we we're so close without being a worm, a
white worm, you know? I couldn't decide if she was
digging on purpose or maybe, or if Renera took it this way at
all. But when she was like, you know,
I used to want to be of consequence, but now I realize I
just can't. Damon Otto, they're never going
to accept me. Is Renira thinking the same
thing? Yeah, I think Rainiera, Rainiera
is definitely thinking that. I think the question for me is
whether, when Mazzaria says that, whether she is choosing
her words carefully to needle in to Rainiera.
I think there's no question that it resonates with Rainier and
what she's going through right now.
But I don't know if Mazzaria knew that she was speaking so
truly. I think she did.
Yeah, she's saying you need more
people like me as your ally or something like that.
If not me, you need people who are also in this position.
Who who are on who are outsiders to the patriarchy.
So they aren't going to just jump ship for it if it comes
around again. Like like we talked about with
Otto and Allison, Otto didn't realize he was being misogynist
towards his own daughter by undermining her power in front
of their sons. And once he once he pointed out
to him, he's like, to his credit, he's like, yeah, you're
right. Oh, I won't do that anymore.
And this is kind of a similar kind of conversation.
She's like, look, these men will not listen to you, Maybe I will.
Follow up question when Renera asked where she got that scar?
With those on, it was answered right.
Isn't that interesting? I was in the wake of her saying
I I might as well stayed a whore, right?
Like these men are never going to have really respect me.
I might as well just stayed as whore.
And then she's like, where'd you get that scar?
Was that as a result of being a whore, or was that did did Damon
do that to her? Is that what we're supposed to
get here? I don't know.
I really do not know what that was supposed to tell us.
I think those are both valid interpretations, but I wouldn't
I, I'm so unsure that I wouldn't be able to like, yeah, that's
got to be it. I really don't know.
But I think it might be partly like it's it's it's not yeah,
it's, it's something that happened to her personally and
it's it's, you know, I'm, I could be a political ally, but
we're not, we're not that kind of close, you know, we're not
friends. I don't know.
I. Didn't even piece it together.
So we're talking about just now, but it Renera did say that did
kind of snap back with that when she was saying like, you know,
what's the point of trying to be of consequence?
These men are never going to matter anyway.
And I went, if that's Renera trying to separate herself from
Azaria, like I'm a Targaryen, I'll get these men to listen to
me. Where'd you get that scar?
You're just a whore like a but. But in the end she comes back
and says, my bad, I'm going to let you go, right.
So. My guess is that it was a
slavery scar that Mazzaria was raised in slavery collar or
something to that regard. She was an, you know, a former
slave. That would that would just be my
call on what a a neck scar like that would mean.
Like when you have a slave collar that's too tight
consistently, you know, it just. I don't know.
Yeah, that's what I think. I've seen other people say it
too. But it's, I'm wondering, not
partly, you know, where did this car come from, but also why was
that renere's report in that moment?
Does that make sense? Yeah, I wish they had talked
about it at the BTS, but they didn't because that was a scene.
I was hoping they'd clarify more, but for now I don't know.
We'll have to come back. If y'all have takes on it, let
us know. We're very open to it because we
don't have much ourselves. Now another little part of this
is perhaps in reference to the scar is we learn, or maybe we
learned this a while ago. I just learned it.
She's from ET, not from Lise, which the book version of hers
from. So of course both Lise and ET
have slavery. So that doesn't actually give us
any additional clue, but it does fit the the knowledge there.
So yeah, she thinks about it a while off page I or off screen,
I guess, and then decides to release her.
It's nice timing because obviously this leads to the Eric
Aurek tie in which, you know, was pretty somewhat vague but
clarified that yes, Mazzaria is a big reason why Aurek was
caught. But again, more on that on
Wednesday. She's given a birth on a ship
called the Corwin, which is a nice little detail.
Corwin was an earlier Valaria, not a Lord Valarian.
He was the son of Damon Valarian who was Aegon's first master
ships and he died before Damon and there's a if I remember
correctly. Either way he wasn't the Lord.
And there's also, of course, a nod to Corwin of the 9 Princess
and Amber series by Rodger Zelazny, which George R Martin
is a huge fan of, and Corwin is the main character.
I I think in the at least in the show Canon, Corwin is Coralis
and Veyman's father. Oh really?
I believe I I I just again for House of the Dragons show Canon.
I think Coralis and Veyman, Yeah, their father was Corwin
Valarian. I do.
Believe, I think in book cannon we don't know who they're.
Father, I think that's correct, I think, but I think they
clarified that for the show Cannon.
Yeah, cool. So that's that for now.
It turns out, by the way, that line in episode one where Mazari
says to Eric, last time we met, there were two of you.
That was foreshadowing. It looks like Yep, because there
was like, wait, there's two of you.
That's not that's wrong. There shouldn't be two of you.
As I mean, she probably would have, she would have known about
these, these twin Kingsguard probably.
But I think it's important that she had had those interactions
with him, because I think Mazzaria knows enough that she,
even if she'd never met those two, she might have.
She would know who the Kingsguard are.
But it's extra significant to her that she she actually has a
connection to either to both of them.
I agree it was pretty well set up.
They weren't just Missouri and these two people just recognize
them. They had scenes together last
season, especially during episode 9.
Can I say the little tidbit? I, I think I teased it before to
people that when we get our Screener access, they tell you
like what not to talk about. And one of the things they said
not to talk about was that Mazaria tells Eric about Eric
being there. And I was kind of appreciative
that they did that 'cause I could have seen it being a
slight argument of a moment of discussion between a lot of
folk, but it's just really clear.
Yeah, they make it very clear that's that's definitely what
happened. OK, so let's talk about Aymond
at the brothel. As we guessed, this is where he
was when the blood and cheese scene happened.
This is Madame Sylvie, as Ashay clarified earlier, and big Damon
energy in the scene. This is some callbacks to season
one, episode one, when Damon and Mazzari have their first scene
together. There's this kind of stunted
sexuality. Damon, of course, just can't
keep it hard. Where Amon's not really
interested in sex, in this scene at least, it's more about being
mothered. It's like she he's getting the
affection that he can't get from his own family.
Something we've discussed at length in this episode, how they
have that kind of dysfunction and it but it doesn't end there
either. He's confessing things that
getting things off his mind and that's healthy.
Like this is what Allison can't do.
This is what Allison wanted to do.
She wanted to unburden herself and have a confession.
And this is what Amond is doing. And it's it's probably helping
his mental health. He admits that he didn't mean to
kill Luke. He says Luke, he doesn't say
Prince Luceries. He doesn't use a formal title.
He uses the familiar name, which I think is a good way of having
him express some guilt. Like he he does feel bad.
He says I feel bad about I lost my temper.
It reminds us how much he grew up with with Luke that these two
boys like were knew each other well enough that he used a
nickname for him. Yeah, and there's this great
parallel. Just like Damon believes Viserys
feared him and that's why he put Rainier in in, you know, over
him. Damon now believes Damon fears
him because he's, oh, you thought so much of me.
He sent assassins kill me. Like, if you knew how
incompetent those assassins were, you might not be so puffed
up on the old ego there. He sees himself as this big
military target, which is accurate.
He is a big military target. The writer of Veigar is a big
deal, as Otto reminded him, while simultaneously trying to
like, draw his ego down by also separating him from his brother.
But so it's true, Damon really was as well in the first episode
saying, yeah, let's go get Veigar.
He he said Veigar and her rider, He didn't even call Amon by
name. But Amon is wrong in that this
was a military strike. This was out of revenge, out of
the caged animal finally being released and allowed to do
something, not out of strategy, certainly not out of fear.
That's the that's very far down the list.
No one, no one here was was doing this because they were
afraid of Amon. So his ego's getting bigger.
It's already kind of big, you know, And we've it's, it's
tempered by these childhood anxieties and quote the Caprice
of youth, as it was said last episode.
Now we discussed separately how Jaharis's death can impact the
succession, whether Eamond or Jahara is now next in line.
But this episode doesn't address that.
So we'll come back to that later when that comes up, presumably.
And I already mentioned this bit about the High Lord suffering
when you played your Game of Thrones, but that's such an
important line here in the scene when when Sylvie says that, that
it's worth a second mention. He has a strong theme throughout
the whole episode that we saw a common through line.
I think of of the small folk or maybe some of the merchant class
in some cases, because we see Madam Sylvie, we see the rat
catchers and Ulph, and we see Adam and Alan, you know, we see
just a lot of different. We see you and Kat, of course.
So we see a lot of different walks of life here.
And yeah, I'm happy to see this, this Madam knowing the really,
really powerful role she has right now.
She has a prince's ear. And so I'm very pleased to see
her try to actually influence him for good and teach him some,
some some life lessons. And yeah, I, I'm very intrigued
by this Madam character. Whether we see her consistently
going forward at all or again or I mean if if we see her with
Aymond or with other people, I don't know, but solid.
Or if she'll try to become a person of consequence like
Mazzari. I'm making that mistake 'cause
that is obviously that was a big.
This is obviously the Eamon Damon, Sylvie Mazzari parallels
are strong. But that seems to be one that's
not here is that Sylvie isn't trying to, like, rise high in
the underworld and by selling out the prince's secrets.
But maybe she will she Or is she exactly.
Or is she at this point? It doesn't look like it.
And it also seems like she's been here a long time and hasn't
been involved in anything like that.
So she's probably not going to get started now.
Whereas Missouri hit the ground running with that.
It was always kind of part of her ambition.
Still, it's never too late to sell a secret or two.
It doesn't mean she's not going to become some big underworld
operator, but that doesn't mean she can't sell it.
Like, yeah, she doesn't mean she can't get a little bit involved.
We'll see what did. I mention that this first person
here, one of the sex workers that people were really curious
about from the trailers, there was the shot of this silver
haired Targaryen girl at the brothel.
And people were like, who is this?
Who is this? Well, we see it.
It's really just a a brief shot of her of her dancing with some
other girls. But we do know the character
name for this, this, this person is Copper Penny, which is a
really fun name because she's not a full dragon, just a copper
Penny. Anyways, I just, I just think
it's a funny little detail whether we see more of her and
these other brothel girls, I don't know.
It's these are girls that work at Madam Sylvie's brothel.
So like if we see this as a recurring location, we might see
Copper Penny or Sylvia again, I don't know.
Sylvia and Copper. Hey, yeah.
So that's also maybe a little bit of a nod to Penny or the
dwarf's Penny in In The Song of Ice and Fire and.
We see a dwarf here, a dwarf girl in this very.
Episode Good call. That might have been intentional
to draw that parallel closer. And of course, if you go to like
James Bond, there were lots of women named after money.
There was Moneypenny and most of the rest were named after sex
acts, I guess. But Moneypenny was like the the
the administrator, the the secretary, something like that.
She had an important role, but I don't remember what her official
title was. Anyway, so this is our last
little part here. I think we haven't talked about
Allison and Otto's final conversation.
I do kind of wish the episode ended with Eric Ark.
I think that might have been a better way, like a good final
note. But they did keep going.
And there were a couple other scenes, one of which was this
one. Otto and Allison have their last
meeting before apparently he's going to leave.
Otto calls the young Peacocks, which is a call back to Catlin,
using the term nights of summer and all their all their colors
and and verve and eagerness to die.
Fittingly, winter is coming. So you know, nights of summer
won't We'll, we'll get their comeuppance, I suppose.
And it's a parallel to Damon, an argument and a parting of ways.
Damon goes to Harrenhal, which again, we'll discuss that next
week after that plot line actually begins.
Presumably Otto goes to Old Town and or Highgarden, though I'm a
lot less sure we'll be seeing him for he might, we just might
not see him for a while. I'm not sure.
He says he'll go to Old Town and bring Allison's other son to
heel. Another son.
That's right, there is another child and we were wondering how
they were going to handle this other character.
His name is Daron, and it seems like they've made him a little
bit younger, which helps explain his absence a little bit.
It makes sense because if he was like the same age as Aegon and
Amon, they'd be like, where has this guy been all this time?
But no, he's young and he's not yet a dragon rider.
He has a dragon but isn't riding it yet.
So that's part of why he's not a big deal.
But now they're going to make him a deal.
A big deal, I don't know, but a deal.
And now, not necessarily mean now as in the next few episodes,
I just mean, he's been introduced with a line of
dialogue. Who knows how much longer before
he's actually on screen. But he's in Old Town, which is
in the book, and his dragon is called Tesarian.
We assume it's the same dragon, a blue dragon.
And this is kind of making him out to be more like Joffrey, a
Prince who's there prominent, not prominent present, but just
too young to do much. We've seen Joffrey, you know,
tossing a one of his brother's possessions in the fire and
sitting there looking cute And. Yeah, so you would understand
that if yeah if the Greens had another kid basically Joffrey's
age, what will he be possibly be doing of consequence besides
just being a little kid? So yeah, that explains why he
hasn't had much of A role yet and why he still might not have
a role for a little while longer, but at least he's been
introduced. At least we know Daron is going
to be a part of the show 1 way or another, even if it's maybe
not even till next season, who knows, but it's definitely
coming. And Allison in the meantime,
says, yeah, I still think we can control Aegon.
What do you think, Sean? Do you think she can still
control Egg on or maybe a little bit or?
Maybe a little bit she might. She might be able to control him
a little bit more through Kristen if he's the Hand now.
But I don't know if she was controlling him through Otto
even though he was a Hand. But she might be able to control
Kristen better than she control Otto.
But maybe Kristen becoming a Hand might be more, he might be
become more of a loose can or corrupt with power himself.
Yeah, I can imagine, you know. Or if he's out in the field,
there's more. He's not politicking if he's out
in the field either. Yeah, he might not be there to
be Hand, which maybe that will open up.
Allison's a vacuum for Allison to be able.
Yeah, Kristen's character's already a little dubious.
So when he feels like I'm sleeping with a king and now I'm
the Hand, no one could tell me what to do, you know?
Yeah, that's a pretty good point.
I think he's. You say he's sleeping with the
king. The Queen I might have miss
focused. Yeah, I think you might have.
I just. It's good to be the king.
Well, that would be a scandal. Whoa.
Hey, So Kristen Cole sleeping with egg on.
Whoa. This is a twist that's not in
the book. You know, there is one little
note if I could go back a second.
I wanted to compare and contrast Aymond and Damon and it kind of
like how you were saying Damon is trying to absolve himself or,
or, you know, like avoid any real responsibility for this
child being murdered. Like that was a mistake.
You know, at first he tried to just keep quiet about it when he
got called out and he knew he couldn't really quite deny it,
but he he he never said like, I shouldn't have done that or I
should have thought it out better or I realized how bad
that is on you now. It was all like, what do you
want from me, you know, kind of mentality where is Aymond is
like, I can't believe I did that.
I lost my temper. I you know, he he seems to have
real remorse and regret and you know, if or how he makes amends
for that, I have no idea. But it seems like Damon, who's
avoiding taking responsibility for it to whatever extent he's
going to make amends, probably equates to killing a bunch of
innocent people. That's probably what he's about
to go do now, right? Like, especially after Ranieri
calls him pathetic. Because I'll show you Pathetic
could have. Been thought go kill even more
innocent people. 1000 people, yeah, I'm gonna kill a kid was
bad. Yeah, I'm gonna go kill some
more children. You'll see.
So yeah, I don't. Exactly, expect Amon to turn
into a good guy after this but it's it's still I feel like.
You appreciated that moment. Measure for bad the goal post to
avoid this. Guy, this is a man.
Like, there's a lot of people in this show who would never say
I'm sorry, and Damon might be the least likely, but there's a
lot who would never like. Cole wouldn't say it either.
Allison wouldn't. Otto wouldn't.
Egon wouldn't, but he might be the least likely.
He's the most sure of himself. He's the most confidence.
I think they all have. Confidence definitely rolls up
into the arrogant like this. It's where does confidence end
and arrogance begin? Someone like Damon has a lot of
both. You know, he's got the privilege
of his birth and his station and his dragon and his wealth and
titles. But also.
If he was really that competent and confident, he would have
gone through those sewers himself.
Why could he have not gone along with Cheese and Blood to to
attack AIM and his Eric winning the freaking Dragonstone by
himself? Right?
Right. And by the way, I've got a lot
of parallels between the passing through Dragonstone and the
passing through of the Red Keep. As part of our Eric Ark episode
on Wednesday, we filled up this episode pretty well without
talking much about Eric Ark, which is why we do a deep dive
of the week. And again, that will be
Wednesday at 7:00, and we'll talk about Eric and Ark.
And yeah, we'll have you on for that, Sean, if you're available,
because we're not really going to talk boilers in that one.
That's all going to be about just the the stuff that happens.
I mean, they're both dead. There's not much else going on
with them anymore, right? And we can talk about how their
legend impacts the Song of Ice and Fire, some real world
parallels, some other influences.
And yeah, just talk through the scenes and all the details and
the setup and everything. It'll be great.
We'll have a good time. Wasn't there a song in a first
episode about something about brothers brothers departing or?
Yes, there was a song called Goodbye Brother, and the first
episode was the Stark theme. Yeah.
They didn't play that here, did they?
Because that would have. Been good also.
It would have been. It's the Stark theme.
Everybody recognizes that it's Starkey, but it would have but
but a little tease for the episode of Wednesday.
There is a in world song by Lucian of Tarth called Farewell
My brother that is written about Eric and Eric.
There you go. So yeah, so and it's possible
they even like made connected that dot when they wrote no,
they couldn't have because it was fire and blood came out
after Game of Thrones, the TV show.
It's goodbye, brother came before.
Farewell, my brother, now that I think about it.
All right, well, more on Eric and Eric and farewell my brother
and all this other sorted stuff on our Wednesday episode.
Any final thoughts from y'all or are we ready to move to the end?
All right, let's do it. Any questions y'all have, send
them to us at westeroshistory@gmail.com or
join us on our Facebook group or Discord.
You can find the links below in the description.
And what else? Let me say thanks as well to
Bran for our great new intro. It is so cool.
We love those coins, the the different heads of those coins.
They look so real and and it looks like what real Westerosi
golden Dragons would look like, like maybe the one Ayman held in
front of his eye. Yeah, very good job, Bran.
We love it. We'll keep playing that and we
expect to see some changes to it.
Lots more to come from us. We've got lots.
We've got some scripted videos come in.
And of course, we'll continue with our coverage throughout the
rest of the season. On behalf of Sean and Ashea,
we'll see you all next time. And you know what to do.
Valar Rereadas my friends, None.