House of Dragon' Episode 2

Rhaenyra receives some surprising news, and Viserys likely sets into motion the thing he's been trying to avoid.

I don’t know that there was a way to frame this for Rhaenyra that would have made it more palatable, but I do know that springing it on her in front of the gods and Small Council and everybody, leaving her feeling shocked, deceived and betrayed by the two people closest to her, was the worst way to let her know. The only thing more shameless than his tweaking of the king’s grief, when he learned of the Lady Laena betrothal plan, was his “checkmate, Sea Snake” grin later after Viserys announced that he would marry Alicent instead. Setting aside the ick factor that apparently wasn’t a big deal back then, another possible consideration in Viserys’s choice of Alicent is that he may not have enough time left to wait for a child bride to grow up. The broad, sweeping shots in particular — aerial views of King’s Landing, the backdrops at Dragonstone — have a two-dimensional C.G.I. “This is an absurdity!” the Sea Snake said in response to Viserys’s big reveal, and at first he seemed to have a point. Fortunately, they were able to shoot much of the show on When Otto stared at Rhaenyra with a new respect for her formidableness as she soared off, I’m guessing he was pondering future clashes as much as the present one. Both are more introspective and sensitive than others in the royal court, and they enjoy the escapism of stories and myth. par for the course for “Game of Thrones” nuptials. But “he’s got a strange moral compass of his own,” the actor said. It endangered Viserys’s relationship with the Sea Snake, his most important ally — who wanted the king to choose his preadolescent daughter, Laena (Nova Fouellis-Mose) — and shattered Rhaenyra just when she was starting to feel OK about things. A different princess, her own dreams dashed by men long ago, might coolly describe all this as “the order of things.” But that doesn’t make it any less painful.

Episode 2 of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel is about King Viserys' awkward duty to remarry.

"And so your first duty is to the realm. "You are the king," she says. "I will speak of my brother as I wish," he says while villainously staring over the fire. Because that is the order of things." In order to save his finger, which the maesters have presumably been treating with cauterization (fire), the King's medical help submerge his hand in a bowl full of maggots. "My father named me Princess of Dragonstone," she says as she confronts her uncle, "that is my castle you're living in." "Is that what your father told you to say?" (Valyria is a region in Westeros, for those struggling to keep up with the lore.) In episode 1, we were introduced not only to King Viserys, Prince Daemon and Princess Rhaenyra, but also Hand of the King Otto Hightower, his daughter Alicent, and the "Sea Snake" Lord Corlys Velaryon. "The King's own brother has been allowed to seize Dragonstone and fortify it with an army of his Gold Cloaks. "Sea Snake" Lord Corlys Velaryon has been complaining loudly to the Small Council about "the Triarchy," an alliance between the Free Cities of Myrs, Lys and Tyrosh. [House of the Dragon's premiere episode](/culture/entertainment/house-of-the-dragon-recap-the-heirs-of-the-dragon/), King Viserys declared his daughter, Princess Rhaenyra, the heir to the throne.

At the end of the strong opening episode to this Game Of Thrones spin-off, everything seemed to be unusually hunky dory for Westeros. Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly ...

After storming out of council when the king announces his plans to marry Alicent, Lord Corlys retreats to his home on Driftmark and invites Daemon to visit. Given that the wedding seems to be news to Mysaria, and that she isn’t pregnant, this is acting out on a royal scale. Smith, meanwhile, is great at the sort of sudden turn that Daemon does, arguing for his rights one minute and flipping over the disputed egg the next, apparently on a whim. Sure, he’s offended his brother, his niece, and his girlfriend, but Daemon knows when to cut his losses and wait for the next chance for mischief. Ifans does a lot with very little in this episode, showing a wariness of Rhaenyra, an iron fist with Alicent, and a delicate sense of what will sway the king. Watch the early scene where he talks of the wisdom of a match between Viserys and Laena, but bemoans the “pain” of marrying for duty that the king must bear. [Wheel Of Time](/articles/the-wheel-of-time-premiere-review-episode-1-3) for example, because it’s one thing to conceive of dragons but another to conceive of sexual equality. She’s the king’s first cousin once removed, so continues the Targaryen tradition of intermarriage; she is also the daughter of his oldest ally, House Velaryon, and marrying her would show that the two old Valyrian houses are as tight as ever. The problem is not simply that he’s marrying Alicent – though marrying your daughter’s bestie is simply not a good look. This seaside carnage is the first sign we’ve seen of the large-scale massacre we’re accustomed to in Westeros; if last week was all about the carefully limited violence of the joust and the all-too-real dangers of childbirth, here the scope widens to whole battlefields of victims at once. That rift is torn wider by the episode’s main plot: the question of the king’s remarriage. A mysterious figure, he fires on Westerosi ships and stakes out his victims on the shore at low tide to be devoured by Westeros’ apparently vicious crustacean inhabitants (I suppose it makes sense that even the crabs are cursed with an insatiable bloodlust there).

In the second episode of HBO's 'Game of Thrones' prequel, Daemon makes a play, Rhaenyra wins the day, and Viserys gets the final say.

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After naming Rhaenyra his heir, Viserys makes some reasonable decisions until he decides to wed Alicent Hightower. Daemon causes trouble on Dragonstone.

And now she’s furious with Daemon for carrying her off to a misty, miserable island and using her as a pawn. Princess Rhaenys (who still needs more to do, for the love of the Seven) gloatingly reminds her that “the order of things” demands a male heir, but like her eventual descendant Daenerys (“I will break the wheel!”), Rhaenyra has plans of her own: “When I am queen, I will create a new order.” But with House Velaryon’s ships and the threat of more heir come to nudge him down the ladder, Daemon may not resist the allure of blood for much longer. Vhagar, the largest and fiercest living dragon, who Tyrion Lannister claims is so big that you could ride a horse down her, is nested somewhere on the coast of Westeros, though Viserys doesn’t know precisely where. But when Syrax and Caraxes face off on the giant stone ramp to Dragonstone, there is finally some delicious, vicious tension in the air. Down in the Stepstones, the Triarchy — a collective from the Free Cities across the Narrow Bay — is nailing Westerosi sailors to pieces of driftwood and then setting crabs on them to tear through their skin and then eat their insides. (It’s a novel portmanteau of cruelties from Game of Thrones: the crucifixions outside Meereen plus the gut-eating rats employed by the Tickler at Harrenhal.) Lord Corlys — the Sea Snake, owner of more than half of Westeros’s sailing vessels, and Master of Ships — sees a direct threat to his livelihood and a threat to the crown. Surely they will all grow in complexity and depth over the next few episodes, but even small hints would do a lot to add as much color to the rest of the cast as Daemon and Otto and Rhaenyra are drenched in. Corlys’s wealth would bolster the crown, and his dominance of the sea between Westeros and Essos (Driftmark is on an island outside Blackwater Bay) would serve as a bulwark against incursion. Alicent Hightower is lovely, and pretty, and a little sad, and she picks her cuticles, but that’s about all the development we get for a young woman who is soon to be at the center of a kingdomwide power struggle. Viserys has proven himself a remote father and a selfish husband — if he has to occasionally sacrifice a wife to the proto-surgeon’s sharp blade, well, he’ll do it for Westeros — but mostly he aims to check all the royal boxes: Produce an heir, rule justly, govern wisely, blah blah blah blah blah. Not to mention that characters are so accustomed to the strange magic of Old Valyria that they don’t wonder at the mysticism of it all.

With House of the Dragon's new episode, we finally get a title sequence ahead of all the Rhaenyra, Viserys, and Alicent Targaryen family drama.

The sound is the same. “Definitely the sound that Daenerys had is tied to the Targaryens. [House of the Dragon](https://www.polygon.com/house-of-the-dragon) would not reinvent the wheel there with their own title sequence. The title sequence brings back Game of Thrones’ original theme, but changes up the visuals to match the series’ focus on House Targaryen. Djawadi was [told to avoid flutes, pianos, and violins](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/game-of-thrones-music-ramin-djawadi/583213/) (since they have been featured so often in fantasy themes), and so instead he made an absolute banger out of cellos playing a minor key, making an animated map feel totally epic [and surprisingly versatile](https://www.polygon.com/game-of-thrones/2019/4/14/18310930/game-of-thrones-season-8-title-opening-credits-intro-sequence-changes). [Game of Thrones](https://www.polygon.com/game-of-thrones) be without its theme song?

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.