House of the Dragon Season 1 Episode 6 “The Princess and the Queen” Recap

This week I sit the Recap Throne as we leap forward a decade in time to reconnect with our cast of maladjusted, well-dressed royals, some of whom have been aged up via recasting, some via prosthetics, and some of whom haven’t aged at all.

Spoiler note: This recap and the comments section may contain mild spoilers from George R.R. Martin’s novels and Westeros histories, whether or not that material has appeared on the show yet. If you have not read the books and wish to remain completely Unsullied, we encourage you to check out our non-book-reader recap by Oz of Thrones!

We open on Rhaenyra, now played by Emma D’Arcy, lying in the birthing bed as her mother once did, bringing yet another Joffrey into the world amidst lots of squishy sound effects. Rhaneyra is told that the queen wishes to see the newborn post haste and so, in one long take, she shuffles laboriously to Alicent’s chambers where we see that her former BFF, now played by Olivia Cooke, has upgraded from anxiety-ridden teenager to full on Evil Stepmother.

The issue is obvious: the brown-haired, snow white (see what I did there?) baby Joffrey looks nothing like Rhaenyra’s husband, Ser Laenor, now played by John MacMillan, but bears a striking resemblance to Ser Harwin Strong. King Viserys, who we might as well call King Crypt Keeper at this point, doesn’t see it, of course, but Alicent has made it her life’s mission to expose Rhaenyra’s sons’ bastardy.

Speaking of sons, Aegon and Aemond Targaryen and Jacaerys and Lucerys Velaryon attend a class in the dragonpit on dragon management and we get a sense of what the dynamic is between the boys. Surprisingly, their mothers’ rivalry hasn’t entirely trickled down to them, as Aegon, Jacaerys and Lucerys have teamed up to pick on Aemond, the only dragonless one among them, by presenting him with pig they call the Pink Dread. Oh, those crazy kids. It’s all fun and games until … well, you know.

Aemon briefly attempts to claim a dragon before wisely high-tailing it out of there and being delivered, ashen-faced (in every sense of the phrase) to his mother. I should mention that just before this we get a sweet scene between Alicent and her daughter, Helaena, who’s absorbed in her insect collection. The implication, I think, is that Helaena is on the spectrum, though, of course, Alicent has no way of knowing this or of making sense of her daughter’s behavior. When Alicent asks Helaena why a centipede/millipede has eyes if it can’t see, Helaena explains that, “it is beyond our understanding.” “I suppose you’re right,” Alicent says, “Some things just are.”

Anyway, Alicent reprimands Aemond but assures him that he will have a dragon one day to which Helaena replies, seemingly to her centipede/millipede, “he’ll have to close an eye.” Oh, the foreshadowing is on point this episode, isn’t it?

Alicent attempts to make Viserys look at the Punnett square she’s drawn for him, but he refuses, so she vents her frustrations to Ser Criston Cole (who has not aged a day in ten years) and to her eldest son, whom she finds masturbating on a windowsill. We see that Otto’s parting words to her last episode have left a huge impression. She takes it as a given, now, that Rhaenyra will kill her children once she ascends the throne, and that it doesn’t matter if Aegon chooses not to challenge her succession (as he proposes before she grabs his face) because he threatens her legitimacy as queen merely by living and breathing.

Meanwhile, in Pentos, Daemon and a heavily pregnant Laena are living in a state of relative domestic bliss. Their host, Prince Reggio, offers them a permanent residence in Pentos in exchange for protection from the Triarchy, and, oddly enough, it’s Laena who’s biting at the bit to return to Westeros and Daemon who would prefer to stay far away from “the political scheming, the endless shifting of loyalties and succession” in Westeros. The best way I can make sense of this is to liken Daemon to a recovering addict who wants to avoid the stimulant that brings out his worst self. Meanwhile, Laena, understandably, wants their daughters to grow up in Westeros because, of course, what could be sadder than a Targaryen girl growing up in Essos?

Back in the Red Keep, tensions boil over in the training yard as Criston Cole and Harwin Strong play out their rivalry through Aegon and Jacaerys. In fairness to Harwin, he does speak out against the sparring match but, still, his preference for the “Velaryon” boys is obvious. When Criston implies that he cares for Jacaerys like a son, Harwin ostensibly confirms this insinuation by punching Criston bloody.

This act winds up having greater consequences than anything else said or done this episode. Lyonel attempts to resign as Hand as a result and, when Viserys does not accept his resignation, he settles for escorting Harwin back to Harrenhal. Larys, who also doesn’t appear to have aged, relays this information to Alicent who wishes out loud for her father to be the Hand once again, unknowingly clutching a monkey paw as she does so.

Rhaenyra finally seems to understand that her unconventional marital arrangement with Laenor is putting their lives in danger and berates her husband when he expresses a desire to go off to war in the Stepstones again. Sensing herself backed into a corner, she attempts to mend the decade-long rift with Alicent by offering to marry her eldest son to Alicent’s daughter. Though the strength of her proposal is offset by her breastmilk leaking through her dress, the real reason that Alicent refuses her offer is because she can’t very well stage a coup if her daughter has married into the line she plans to oust.

Things aren’t going so well across the Narrow Sea either, as Laena’s labor has become obstructed. The Maester or obstetrician or whoever delivers babies in Pentos offers Daemon a similar choice to the one Mellos gave Viserys: cut open the mother in the hope of saving the baby. Daemon refuses, objectively proving himself a better husband than Viserys. Who would have ever thought? Laena wants to die a dragonrider’s death, as she told Daemon earlier this episode, and waddles out to Vhagar (presumably after parkouring down the castle walls to evade detection) and commands her dragon to end her misery. In the most moving scene of the episode, in my opinion, Vhagar hesitates to kill her rider. It’s not until Daemon emerges from the castle, calling after his wife that Vhagar seems to understand the situation, and engulfs Laena Velaryon in flames.

The episode wraps up with Rhaenyra moving her household to Dragonstone and Lyonel and Harwin Strong dying in a fire started by some mute convicts who took Larlys up on a deal. The newly minted kinslayer monologues about the futility of love to Alicent who is horrified to learn that her desire to have her father back at court resulted in the death of two men.

Larlys sniffs a malvales, the very same flower he used to ingratiate himself to the queen last episode. Cut to black. Roll credits.

Stray thoughts

• The plight of dragonless children was an interesting point of emphasis this episode. Poor Aemond and Rhaena.
• I think this was the first time a character noticed the literal yet highly symbolic rats gnawing away at the the might of the Red Keep.
• As the strongest man in the realm, Harwin should really have rendered Criston comatose after getting so many punches in, right?
• Laenor’s line, “The wise sailor flees the storm as it gathers” feels like a more passive variation of his father’s saying from episode 2, “To elude a storm you can either sail into it or around it. But you must never await its coming.” Make of that what you will.

The post House of the Dragon Season 1 Episode 6 “The Princess and the Queen” Recap appeared first on Watchers on the Wall.

Via http://watchersonthewall.com