House of the Dragon Episode 2

Daemon makes a bold play as House of the Dragon episode 2 begins to develop some bad habits.

The production value here is so high and Martin’s original tale so rich that it’s probably not possible for House of the Dragon to turn in a truly bad episode. The opening and closing shots of very literally-named warlord Craghas “The Crabfeeder” Drahar surveying the destruction he hath wrought are quite beautiful. Rhaenyra’s immediate understanding of her father’s plight does open her up for an even more acute betrayal when he chooses to marry her best friend, but that doesn’t make the scene before it any less of a missed opportunity. Anything you ‘wish’ you can make happen?” Instead she opts for the shockingly congenial “You are a king…and your first duty is to the realm. Truth be told, “The Rogue Prince” is filled with talky scenes where the quality of the talk just doesn’t pass muster. Forgive the potential hyperbole but Viserys’s brief conversation with his Master of Laws Lord Lyonel Strong (Gavin Spokes) might be among the least interesting and least necessary GoT/HotD scenes ever filmed. While one dragonrider flying to a fiery island to treat with another dragonrider may sound fairly epic in the annals of history, in practice viewers must concede that there’s not much to it. A lot of those educated guesses made their way into “The Heirs of the Dragon” and it’s perhaps why the episode so closely resembles the early Thrones seasons. But when Daemon announces his betrothal to the “Lady” Mysaria (Sonoyo Mizuno) and steals a dragon egg for their eventual child, the king is forced to act. Daemon folds far too quickly and the scene’s dialogue doesn’t really hold up – though newly-minted Kingsguard Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) reminding Daemon of who knocked him off his horse is admittedly satisfying. “The Rogue Prince,” however, doesn’t have many, if any, of those well-sourced scenes. This is an awkward hour of television that doesn’t fully extinguish the show’s hopes of being a worthy heir to the Iron Throne…but it does dim them.

House Of The Dragon dives deeper into the court intrigue and scheming that will set the stage for civil war to come in HBO's Game Of Thrones prequel.

“Some Myrish prince is feeding sailors to the crabs,” Daemon replies, and we see the prince in question carrying out his bloody business, hammering men into posts as they scream, crabs racing across the sand. Lord Strong, a man who seems to be a very loyal and pragmatic man, doesn’t outright say he’s against the union, but it’s clear that he thinks it’s a mistake. Sure, Martin always writes “grey” morality and complicated characters, but in Thrones there lots of characters you really wanted to see emerge victorious. She tells him that she came to him “to be liberated.” “From what?” he asks. Only Hightower opposes the union, though he minces words and beats around bushes, telling the king that he also dearly loved “mine own lady wife” and that he cannot comprehend how terribly difficult it would be to be pressured into remarrying so soon. The proud Sea Snake at the end of his rope. Rhaenyra herself, who observes the king and the young girl walking together, also approves, telling her father that she understands his obligation to remarry. Lord Corlys and his wife Rhaenys have offered their own daughter’s hand in marriage to the king. He looks down and then across at Hightower and the soldiers. It seemed clear that Hightower’s motives were that of an overly ambitious man with the skill to play his liege like a fiddle. “I want the same for my child.” Daemon and his men draw their swords; the king’s men draw their own, and then the red dragon, Caraxes, appears, looming over the scene menacingly.

King Viserys I is pressured to choose a new wife who will be Queen of Westeros in episode two of 'Game Of Thrones: House of the Dragon'.

This is a self-confident and portentous line from the heir to the Iron Throne, signalling a potential shift in tradition if she becomes ruler… - Rhaenys to Rhaenyra: “I understand the order of things. He storms off – and, it turns out, to meet Daemon by the fireplace in order to plot together to wage war in the Stepstones. To the fury of Lord Corlys, he chooses Alicent, with whom he does seem to share a genuine bond. She is sent off to choose the latest knight for the King’s Guard, and we sense a spark between her and Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), the man she selects. “I want him to see me as more than his little girl,” Rhaenyra tells Alicent in a room filled with approximately 38,000 candles.

yells Corlys Velaryon (the famed seafarer and richest man in Westeros played by Steve Toussaint) at a small council meeting. His crabbiness – fair enough, given ...

And with that, a glint enters Daemon’s eye and the wheels of plot start turning in earnest. At the episode’s close, Corlys strikes a pact with Daemon (could this be House of the Dragon’s first backroom deal? [Paddy Considine](/topic/paddy-considine)) is boring Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey), daughter of the Hand and best friend of Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), to tears with his miniature cities. And with that, Viserys gains a wife but makes an enemy of House Velaryon, the only family capable of challenging Targaryen supremacy. Daemon and Otto square off on a misty bridge (real shades of Euron Greyjoy’s return to the Iron Islands here), but it takes the surprise arrival of the heir presumptive, Princess Rhaenyra, astride her dragon Syrax, to break the stalemate. Back home in King’s Landing, Viserys opens up to his only child (“I struggled to realise that my daughter had so quickly become a woman grown”) but this is perhaps just nonce inoculation, given that he then immediately announces his intention to wed her BFF, Alicent. [Matt Smith](/topic/matt-smith)’s Daemon who takes centre stage by the denouement. The threat in the Stepstones – an important shipping lane between the Free Cities and Westeros – comes from marauding pirates who, rumour has it, are funded by merchants and bankers trying to weaken the power of the Seven Kingdoms. “The Stepstones have now grown into a conflagration, yet you sit here and dither about court business!” yells Corlys Velaryon (the famed seafarer and richest man in Westeros played by Steve Toussaint) at a small council meeting. If you were afraid that House of the Dragon might be a watered-down version of its predecessor, the sight of scuttling little crabs eating men alive ought to allay that concern. After the thorny question of the King’s succession was resolved – for now – attention must turn to which inappropriately aged heiress he will invite into his bed chamber. It proves true, once again, in this second episode of