That’s a Nice Dragon You Got There
We get there first by way of the most cinematic moment we’ve witnessed since Meleys met Vhagar above the skies of Rook’s Rest. Upon a lonely sliver of sand and sea, Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, first of her name, greets the first good news she’s had in weeks: a baseborn bastard of the shipyards beneath Dragonstone, the humbly named Addam of Hull, has done what poor Ser Steffon Darklyn could never. He has claimed the dragon Seasmoke as his mount and proven his Valyrian heritage.
Rhaenyra is at first rightly wary while entreating with this stranger. But after hearing his sincere oath of fealty, Emma D’Arcy’s face beams its first rays of sunshine since Rhaenyra’s father was seen still shuffling around the Red Keep. “You have done something, I feared impossible, Addam of Hull, ” Rhaenyra says with a deep sigh of relief. “I am glad of it.”
We should all welcome such happy tidings. On the most basic level, despite the truncated eight-episode nature of season 2, this year’s House of the Dragon has moved at a strangely listless pace, especially after the lightning-swift gait of the show’s first season. It is difficult to put a finger on the cause given that, technically, a lot has happened this year: the heinous murder committed by Blood and Cheese, Aegon II’s rash and swiftly curtailed reign, and of course Rook’s Rest. Nonetheless, it sometimes seems like the show is struggling to create drama between the high points which George R.R. Martin’s faux-historical text, Fire & Blood, lay out for the series.
So here, with the irrefutable evidence of a bastard bending a dragon to his will, there is a genuine game-changing storm that can be exploited for its dramatic weight as news of the deed ripples across the Crownlands. In the moment where Rhaenyra and Addam come to an understanding, we have an image, courtesy of director Loni Peristere, worthy of the tapestries that adorn the season 2 opening titles. But we also have a proverbial bomb going off that upsets the feudal order of the world that Westeros was founded on. And how each character reacts becomes instantly fascinating.
In a clever reversal of what at least Martin’s fictional historians tell us of this turn of events, it is Rhaenyra who immediately embraces the idea of smallfolk, or even bastards, becoming her fellow dragonriders while her beloved son and heir, Jacaerys, reveals a shockingly conservative streak. This creative choice feels right.
Rhaenyra is a woman who knows all too well the worthiness of a bastard—or the worthlessness of a knight. After all, in her heart of hearts she recognizes her first three sons are far less Velaryon than Addam or his brother Alyn of Hull. But beyond this one major indulgence, she’s spent her life trying to play by the rules entrusted to her by her father, even as she’s lost at least three of his Seven Kingdoms to those who never met a rule they couldn’t ignore. There is unsurprisingly dissent in her small council and among the Valyrian-descended keepers of the old ways in the Dragonpit. But by virtue of being a woman attempting to lead a medieval society, Rhaenyra has learned firsthand the impossibility of conforming to society’s expectations.
