To his credit, however, Egg appears to be a Targaryen who’s growing up to follow in the footsteps of his uncle Baelor rather than his brother Aerion. He’s up at dawn to put himself and Dunk’s horse through their paces in the world’s most adorable training montage, hoping their combined efforts can somehow help drag their master over the victory line at the joust. He’s curious, works hard, and wants to see how the people live outside of the world he was raised in. He loves watching the tournament and seems to think he could be happy living a simple life in the Reach. Show me any other Targ (okay, maybe Rhaegar) who would ever even consider saying or doing the same. And, most importantly, Egg shows up when it matters. He runs to get help when Tanselle is attacked; he blows his cover to protect Dunk from retaliation. Genuinely, he’s a good kid. That family really doesn’t deserve him.
If you need further proof of that fact, just look to Aerion, Aegon’s older brother, who is comprised of pretty much every awful Targaryen trait you can think of, all mixed into a single arrogant and odious package. He’s cruel and vindictive, for no reason other than he’s allowed to be. He purposefully stabs Ser Humfrey Hardyng’s horse through the throat during a joust because he knows he can get away with it. He is a man who lives without fear of consequences for his behavior, whether it’s essentially crippling a fellow knight or torturing a young woman for daring to allow a papier-mache dragon to be killed as part of her puppet show. Everyone knows what kind of man he is, and precisely how he behaves.
It’s interesting, then, that “The Squire” is also the first episode in which we’ve really seen sustained pushback against the Targaryens, both individually and as a larger concept within the world of Westeros. A riot breaks out after Ser Humfrey falls, complete with commoners throwing things at a swiftly retreating Aerion. (Take a second to try to imagine anything like that ever – ever!! — happening to House of the Dragon’s Daemon. How the mighty have fallen, indeed.) Dunk, bless him, doesn’t want to believe that he killed Hardyngs’s horse on purpose, because that’s dishonorable behavior for a knight. But everyone else seems to take it pretty much as read. Apparently, that’s what we expect from a Targaryen these days: Cruelty and dishonor.
The song Egg sings at the beginning of the episode offers a pretty rough rundown of the events of the first Blackfyre Rebellion, complete with the kind of bawdy humor and mockery it’s almost guaranteed King Daeron doesn’t like. But such things are just one of many cracks in the family’s crumbling foundation. Their dragons are long dead. The threat of yet another inter-family civil war is high. And nobody seems nearly as in awe of them as they used to be.
Or, as Raymun Fossoway so colorfully puts it: “They’re incestuous aliens, Duncan. Blood magickers and tyrants who’ve burned our lands, enslaved our people, and dragged us into their wars without a mote of respect for our history or our customs. Every pale-haired brat they’ve saddled on us has been madder than the last, god knows how. The only thing a Targaryen can do for this realm is finish on his wife’s tits.”
Doesn’t sound much like a dynasty for the ages when you look at it that way, does it? Maybe Egg’s right to try to run away.
