A Son for a Son - House of the Dragon: Ep. 2.01

00:01 - Liz (Host)
Welcome to another episode of the Westerosi Primer. My name is Liz. We're going to be talking about Season 2 of House of the Dragon. This episode and the next bunch are going to be different from Episodes 2 to 11 of this podcast. Obviously, this will be a spoiler-heavy episode, so hopefully you watched the show this week. With that said, let's begin. 

00:27
I have to say the opening sequence was really impressive this year. It was definitely an improvement on the opening credits in season one. Last year's was really dark and it felt a little bit too abstract, but mostly it was too dark. This time around I thought it was actually very impressive with the fact that we have a new concept. For anybody familiar with medieval culture, you would probably recognize the opening credit sequence is based off of medieval tapestries. In fact, from what I've read in interviews, the biggest inspiration for the opening credit sequence was actually the famous Bayeux tapestry. At any rate, I thought it was a really interesting idea and it makes a lot of sense given the nature of A Song of Ice and Fire. 

01:35
It depicts a number of various events in the history of House Targaryen. It was a little difficult to tell, but I suspected some of the earlier bits in the sequence are a reference to Valyria, especially the Doom of Valyria, but it could also be a reference to Dragonstone, because, of course, dragonstone has a volcano. It definitely depicted the conquest, because we did get to see the three dragons, balerion, vhagar and Meraxes. They may have included an image of the destruction of Harrenhal, which does come up quite a bit in this episode. It also depicted what I believe is a reference to Maegor the Cruel. And then, of course, it depicts Jaehaerys and Alysanne. And then, of course, we also see the famous Great Council at Harrenhal, where Jaehaerys's heir was ultimately voted on. And then, of course, we see the images of Alicent and Rhaenyra, the end of their friendship, and then, of course, the sequence ends with the image of Aegon and Rhaenyra side by side on thrones, depicting, of course, the start of the Dance of the Dragons, which we are now currently witnessing. There are also, of course, a few other images in the tapestry that are a little bit unclear to me. It has been suggested in some of the interviews and also in some of the comments that I've seen online, that some of the images that I can't identify are potentially references to some of the later events in the series, although it would be strange if they do that because that's potentially spoilers for people who are not familiar with the lore surrounding the dance, but it's possible. 

04:00
So we start with the episode proper with a brief I would call it reintroduction to the North and of course we get introduced to Cregan Stark. I know I pronounced his name as Cregan Stark back in the second episode of this podcast, but apparently the actual pronunciation of his name is Cregan. Which is just a thing that I find a little frustrating with A Song of Ice and Fire is that sometimes the way names are spelled does not necessarily reflect the way they're actually pronounced. So we formally meet him at the wall. And we also, of course, witness the very sad way that Jace finds out what happens to his little brother. Which I think is an interesting echo back to the original Game of Thrones, when the way Bran found out or in a sense got confirmation about his father being dead was through the message of a raven. Which of course brings to mind a phrase that comes up a lot in the Ice and Fire saga, which is dark wings, dark words. And of course this all leads to Rhaenyra still mourning and going through the many stages of grief over the death of her son Lucerys. You can't really blame her. Her relationship with Luke actually reminds me quite a bit of Catelyn and Bran's relationship in the earlier series. Even though Rhaenyra very much loves all of her children, she did seem to have a very big soft spot for Luke in particular. So she's taking his tragic death very hard. And it does lead her to demand for Aemond's head. We can't really deny that she has a perfectly understandable reason for wanting to get revenge on Aemond because he is the one who killed her son. But I'll get into that a little bit later. But along side her grief there's also Daemon, who is not a man who tends to express grief in the typical sense. He is definitely the sort of guy who would take a sad situation and vent out his feelings through anger and violence. And of course we very much see that in this episode. And we end the episode seeing what the result of that vengeful anger reaps. I thought it was really interesting that we got to see a little bit of Corlys Velaryon in this episode. We are also briefly introduced to a young man he speaks with whose name is Alyn. And I can confirm to you listeners who are not familiar with the Dance of the Dragons that there is a reason why the show introduces this character Alyn. Alyn will definitely come up again quite a bit in the later episodes I suspect. But we do get an introduction to this character and, yeah, if it doesn't come up in the tv series, then I will undoubtedly discuss this in a later episode of the podcast, whether it's this season or in a future season. Again, if you want me to discuss this stuff, then definitely participate in the poll that I put on the website, just so that I know that you're interested in me discussing that. 

08:41
Another interesting thing that came up in this episode is Alicent and Criston. I don't know about you listeners, but for me personally, I was not 100% surprised about that. The only thing about it that I was surprised was the fact that they just straight up had the two of them having a secret affair with each other. I'm not really all that surprised, because I felt like there is just way too much tension between the two of them in season one. That it just made sense to me that they probably have a very inappropriate relationship with each other. It just still felt a little strange how, in your face, they made it in the episode this week. And of course it definitely comes across as pretty hypocritical of the two of them. Because, as other people have pointed out on the internet, Rhaenyra got dragged to hell and back in the first season with her alleged fling with Daemon and her actual fling with Criston. Yet the two most morally upright people in the show are the ones who are hooking up on the side. Can you people be more hypocritical? 

10:28
We have this interesting dynamic between Alicent, Otto and Aegon. It does remind me a little bit of Cersei, Tywin and Joffrey to some degree. Although Aegon hasn't demonstrated that he is a complete psychopath like Joffrey is. But Aegon is still not that great of a person. He spends more time drinking and carousing with his friends than ruling. Although he does seem to make some attempt at ruling, which is admittedly not that bad per se. Given that he was never really given the training and education of how to be king from his father. And it's pretty obvious to anyone with more than a couple of brain cells to rub together that Aegon is essentially meant to be a puppet king for Otto and Alicent to rule the Seven Kingdoms with. Because it's pretty obvious that Aegon is clearly not the right person to be sitting on the Iron Throne. Aside from the fact that he was never trained on how to be a ruler he doesn't really have a lot of ideas. 

11:58
He comes across as a king who, ironically enough, is pretty similar to his own father. He means well. He does have some good intentions. And he's trying to please people and maintain a good reputation with the small folk and the nobles alike. But he doesn't have the acumen to actually achieve those things. Which is why he's in essence going to be a puppet king with his grandfather pulling the strings. It's pretty obvious since season one that's ultimately what Otto actually wants. He wants a moldable, biddable grandchild on the throne. So he gets to be Hand of the King and he gets to say his blood is on the throne. But we'll see how that actually turns out. And then, of course, we get to Aemond, who I just think it's not too much of a surprise that he ultimately doesn't feel that bad about killing his nephew. He did look very shocked in the season finale that it happened, but I guess he realized that "you know what? It already happened. There's nothing I can do about it now. So we don't have a choice but to move forward." And it seems that he's very much eager to start the fight. Which, in case you didn't know, I actually did a recap commentary similar to this about the entirety of season one of House of the Dragon. And I actually recorded it for a podcast that I used to co-host with a couple of other online friends of mine. 

14:02
If you're interested, I will put a link in the show notes for you to listen to. But in that commentary I did mention that when they did the time jump to roughly around this time period like just before all this war talk started happening before Viserys died that it was a really interesting casting choice they made where they hired an actor who visually does have a lot of similar features to Matt Smith. So that Aemond and Daemon have visual similarities in terms of looks to each other. Like you could honestly believe, when you're looking at the two of them, that they are definitely related to each other. And of course, there's also the fact that Aemond's name is basically an anagram of Daemon's name. Which also adds to the parallel and to the similarities these two characters have with each other other. So it's again not too surprising that the two characters are very similar in that they're both eager and ready, chomping at the bit, to start fighting. Because they know that there's no way at this point to talk their way out of this conflict. Especially when somebody's already been killed and, as we were about to see, at the end of this episode, more blood will be spilled. Of course, at the end of the episode we got to a very infamous event that, again, those of us who are familiar with the lore and also familiar with in the book Fire and Blood refer to as Blood and Cheese. Where you have those two guys who end up killing one of the young children of Aegon and Helaena's. 

16:22
For me personally, I felt like it did a pretty okay balance of you're getting that a terrible situation is happening. And yet they weren't in your face with how grotesque the situation is. When you compare it to something like the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, it's not as terrible, I guess you could say, but it is still a terrible situation. It's just that they're not shoving it in your face that there is child murder happening. At the same time as somebody who was familiar with how George wrote it in Fire and Blood, I would say this is another example of the showrunners toning down something that happened in the books on the show. I could easily get into a mini TED Talk about how they really toned down Ramsey in Game of Thrones. He was so much worse in the books. But this episode is not the time for that discussion. 

17:41
I did have a couple of things that I thought were a very strange decision. One thing I thought was a really strange decision was why were there no guards at all in any of the hallways? That just is very strange to me, because in this section of the Red Keep, this is some of the quarters where members of the royal family have their bed chambers. This is where they sleep. so you would think that there would be at least a few guards on duty in the hallways, in the corridors. Just as common sense security for members of the royal family. In fact, actually it was mentioned in Fire and Blood, the rat catcher, who gets referred to as Cheese. He specifically knows some of the passageways in the castle to avoid guards. So then why would you need to go through Maegor's secret tunnels if you could just simply walk around without the guards in the palace stopping you or questioning you, especially at that time of night? 

19:03
There are some details where I'm not a big fan of what they did, because it doesn't logically make much sense to me. But the whole point, though, is Daemon tried to organize revenge for the death of Lucerys, and it doesn't quite work out how he necessarily intended to happen. Even in the books, it's a little bit dubious as to whether he truly wanted a young child to die. Admittedly, the child is a threat because he is the son of Aegon, who would, in essence, be a potential threat to Rhaenyra and her son's claims to the throne. But the real priority would have been to try to get rid of Aemond, because not only was he the one who actually killed Lucerys, but he is also a very strong warrior for his brother. So, from a military perspective, Aemond really is the bigger threat and the more immediate threat to be dealt with. But we'll see what the ultimate repercussions are for what happened. Overall, I thought the episode was a pretty good setup to the next phase of this conflict. And I will be very curious to see how some of the future events will get depicted in the rest of the season. 

20:48
As of this, recording the episode titles for the next few episodes has not been released yet. I can't currently predict or speculate what may happen other than what was shown in the episode previews. But if you haven't already been following the Westerosi Primer Twitter account, I actually did do some bit of live tweeting while I was watching the episode. I will be doing so again for all the other episodes for the rest of the season. So if you do have a Twitter account, please follow the Twitter account that I set up for this podcast. That's, overall, my general impressions of the first episode. Let me know what you guys thought. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to reach out on social media, send an email or leave reviews where you can Tune in next time as I talk about the next episode of House of the Dragon. So, valar Morghulis.