Smallfolk - House of the Dragon: Episode 2.06

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Thanks for listening to this episode of The Westerosi Primer. For full show notes and more about all things Westeros, head to thewesterosiprimer.com. Before I start playing the intro music, check out this friend of the show.

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Welcome, fellow acolytes, to another episode of the Westerosi Primer. My name is Liz. As usual, before I begin the discussion, here's a few housekeeping items.

As you already know, I'm running a poll until August 14th about the theme for Season 2 of this podcast. Yet again, there are only three responses from you listeners. Out of the five choices, the theme in the lead is still me discussing the real world history and cultures that George R.R. Martin used in A Song of Ice and Fire. If you listeners disagree with this as being the theme for the next season of the podcast, head over to thewesterosiprimer.com where you'll find the link to the poll. Like I said, you have until August 14th to vote in the poll.

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Secondly, this is a reminder that I have a newsletter set up for this podcast. I use this newsletter to share any notable updates about the podcast and the occasional essay related to this fandom. It's a free newsletter, and I won't be spamming you. I'm only going to post things once, maybe twice a week maximum.

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Also, as another reminder, I have set up an Instagram and an X account for this podcast. In particular, with the X account, I do live tweeting every Sunday when a new episode of House of the Dragon airs. And since this week was episode six, there will be two more Sundays coming up where I will be doing this live tweeting. If you happen to have an X account, please feel free to follow the X account for the podcast and join in. So with all that housekeeping business done, let's get into this week's episode of House of the Dragon.

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Obviously, this will be a pretty spoiler-heavy episode, and hopefully you did watch the episode from this week. If not, then feel free to check out this episode at a later date when you have caught up. So with that said, let's begin.

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So there are a few things to discuss from this week's episode, and I'm going to try to keep this relatively brief since the last couple episodes have been a little bit long-ish. So the episode starts with Jason Lannister leading his party of Lannister knights to the Golden Tooth, which is the keep of House Lefford. In case you were wondering, I discussed a bit about the different houses of the Westerlands earlier in this season of the podcast in episode six.

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And from what we can tell based off of the dialogue, it's very clear that the Westerlands are prepared to do battle in the Riverlands. Which is pretty consistent when you consider that, as I discussed in episode six of this podcast, that the Westerlands is right to the west of the Riverlands. And of course, in cases of war, one of the obvious places that the Westerlander houses would be traveling through would be the Riverlands.

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This is, of course, something that happens again in Game of Thrones, a hundred odd years after the events of the Dance of the Dragons, when Tywin Lannister retaliates against Catelyn Stark's kidnapping of Tyrion by invading the Riverlands. So for people who are familiar with the actual events of the Dance of the Dragons, this whole scene was included in the show probably because it's the lead up to a battle that happens called the Battle of the Red Fork, which Jason Lannister happens to mention in a line in his scene. Based off of what has happened in the previous episodes, I suspect that this particular battle will not be included in the TV show. And if it does, it's probably going to be pretty similar to what happened at the Battle of the Burning Mill, which is that we only see the aftermath of what happened there. It's very possible that we'll only find out what happens with this particular battle via a report Aemon will probably receive during a small council meeting. But just in case it does get discussed in the next episode of House of the Dragon, I'm not going to actually talk about The battle of Jason Lannister sends a message to King's Landing requesting that Vhagar participate in the upcoming battle, which of course leads to Aemond in King's Landing.

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So we got a few things related to Aemond that we must talk about. First off, we see how he handles being the regent leading small council meetings. On the one hand, Aemond is a pretty decisive ruler. On the other hand, he is pretty hot-headed, which is not too surprising considering how he's very similar to Daemon in that respect. He's also a man of action, and he is not completely satisfied with sitting around at meetings just talking the whole time, especially when they are currently in a war situation right now. He also revels in the fact that he is now, in essence, the king of Westeros while Aegon is still recovering in bed.

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Larys is very clearly trying to rise up in the world, but of course he realizes very quickly that Aemond is not like his father or Aegon. Aemond is not somebody who is easy to fool or manipulate, because I will give Aemond credit, he is actually very cunning and very intelligent. His problem is that he is young, impulsive, and has way too much hot-blooded energy in his veins to sit down and listen to advice.

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Larys realizes that as long as Aegon is still alive and Aegon is still technically the king, Larys still has a chance to make a name for himself if he does more to support Aegon.

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We see Aegon still in bed trying to recover from his terrible injuries. It's hard to tell whether Aegon really doesn't remember what happened or if he's just saying that to make sure that Aemon doesn't try to kill him. Considering that Aegon is still the king, if he tells anyone that Aemon tried to kill him, then Aemon will definitely get into a lot of trouble. Okay, that's just putting it mildly. Aemon would be executed for attempting regicide.

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One thing, though, I will say, I am very surprised that this has not come up in the TV show this entire time. But one of the things that gets mentioned a lot in Fire and Blood is the fact that after Lucerys' death, Aemon becomes known as Aemon the Kinslayer. Now, this is not something that comes up enough, in my personal opinion, in either House of the Dragon or in Game of Thrones. But in Westeros, kinslaying is considered a major taboo. It's considered unnatural for someone to kill another member of their family, which is why, for that reason, it's a huge deal in the book because Amon has killed Lucerys and now he's killed Rhaenys. And in the TV show, we see he attempted to kill Aegon. He's a twice-over kinslayer and I am actually surprised that Rhaenyra's council has not encouraged a smear campaign against Aemond by saying that he's a kinslayer. They have no issue with trying to portray Rhaenyra as a cruel witch who is responsible for murdering a child, which is what we saw in the second episode. But who knows, maybe people are just too scared of labeling Aemon the Kinslayer, even though that is actually what he is. He is still riding Vhagar, so maybe that's what it is.

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Another thing we also saw with some of the scenes in King's Landing is Alicent officially losing any position in the Small Council. Not that she officially had a title in the Small Council, but... However, her advice and experience as a regent has proven to be of some help while Aegon was technically still ruling. But of course, Aemond is not interested in being told what to do, especially by his mother. Aemond very clearly has his own inferiority complex, trying to establish himself as his own man. He does not want to be seen as being toyed around like his father was, and also the way Aegon clearly was, because Aegon doesn't really know what he's doing either. And I remember while I was watching that particular scene that, once again, another example of how Alysnt does a great job as a parent. Who knows? Maybe when we finally get to see Daeron on screen, we'll see if maybe that kid turned out a lot better, mainly because he was not raised in the Red Keep with Viserys and Alysnt.

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And, of course, another scene with Alysnt that we got in this week's episode is her and Helaena at the Sept, and they nearly get assaulted by an angry mob in King's Landing, which does tie... to Aemond because this whole time there's been a blockade and the royal family have basically done nothing to address the lack of food and supplies coming into King's Landing, which to be fair is actually true. It is a really serious problem, which Larys himself actually brings up in this week's episode. This is a theme that actually comes up quite a few times within A Song of Ice and Fire.

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We also got to see this quite a bit in Game of Thrones as well. But way too often, royals and nobles will focus more on their own interests and their own ambitions. They often forget the needs of the common people, which is why... They constantly underestimate the anger that people have. They only care about people's interest if it means that the common folk's anger becomes a convenient tool for them. And we see this yet again with this week's episode.

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We see that Aemond doesn't understand why the common folk are angry at his family when Corlys is responsible for the blockade. Now, technically, Corlys is the one causing the blockade on behalf of Rhaenyra. Yet Rhaenyra is not blamed. Why?

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It's basically a part of the whole feudalism system when you think about it. The way feudalism works is that you have a social hierarchy where the people on the top have the most power, while the large percentage of the population is towards the bottom of this pyramid. And within this feudal system, there is an understanding that if you are part of the common people, you agree to obey the commands and the rules set by the people at the top. But in return, the people with the most power has the most responsibility for creating order in the society. Therefore, the people at the top have as much responsibility and obligation towards the people at the bottom as the people at the bottom have to obey the people at the top.

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Which Aemond, like so many people in the upper classes, have a very bad tendency to forget about this. And the consequences of forgetting about this is what happens in this episode with the riots. So even though A Song of Ice and Fire is heavily influenced by medieval British history, as well as Western European history in general, the whole concept of feudalism is not only in that part of the world.

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I happen to be Chinese descent, and from my own culture's history, we also have many centuries of feudalism as well during imperial China. And similar to what we saw in this week's episode, Part of the reason why some dynasties end up collapsing during Imperial China is because of terrible famines and other disasters that the Imperial family does not address or try to alleviate.

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This is very important for not only people viewing this TV show or reading the books to understand. It's also a very important reminder for people who are in a position of power to That just because you are in a position of power, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're always going to stay that way. You may receive power, but you do actually have obligations to fulfill. And if you're not prepared to fulfill those obligations, there are others who can do the job better. Sorry if I sound a little political there, but that's something that you will see come up in the saga. It's basically a reminder that this saga is loosely inspired by real-world history, so there are bound to be a lot of familiar parallels that you will see.

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It becomes really interesting how this season... Alysnt seems to be confronted with the results of her decisions in the previous season where you see how her relationship with her children are not really that great. It's, again, a huge contrast to Rhaenyra's relationship with her children. Even if they don't always agree, which, of course, in families you don't always agree with your family members, you still see that there are strong bonds between Jace and Rhaenyra. You don't really see as much between Alysnt with any of her children. Like I said before, thus far it seems like her best relationship is with Helaena. She really hasn't done much to comfort or guide her daughter during an extremely difficult time.

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We see that she tries to take care of Aegon while he is injured, which is of course a visual parallel to Viserys from the first season. Still, it's hard to say whether their relationship will actually improve because of what has happened to him or not. Things are just not looking well between her and Aemond, which is very interesting considering how far she was willing to go when Aemond got injured years earlier. She realizes that she's made a complete mess of everything with her children. Which is why it's really fascinating that we do get that little scene where she talks to her brother trying to learn a bit more about her youngest child. But yeah, hopefully we will get to see Daeron in the third season if we don't get to see him this season.

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So Criston Cole was sent off to deal with the Riverlands.

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And this, of course, brings us to Daemon, where he is clearly still experiencing bizarre dreams and tripping out. I think, however, this week's episode was particularly interesting with Daemon because we get down to another major issue with Daemon, which is his relationship with Viserys.

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His relationship with his brother has been a complete roller coaster, shall we say. He very clearly does care a lot about his brother. He has a lot of frustrations with his brother, just as much as Viserys was frustrated with him at various points in time. But the very telling thing with this week's episode, where we get a repeat of that infamous scene from the very first episode of House of the Dragon, where Viserys confronts Daemon. Of course, we get a cameo from Paddy Considine.

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Even though Viserys basically says the exact same thing that he did in the original confrontation, we see Daemon has a completely different reaction. He's not there to be an angry, resentful brother. He's very clearly distraught about this confrontation because the guilt he clearly feels is about how his relationship with his brother ended is a very big chip on his shoulders. He undoubtedly really regrets the way things ended with his brother.

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Because of how poorly Viserys was towards the end of his life, there was just not really a way for Daemon to ever completely repair that relationship. You could see a little bit of improvement in episode eight of last season, but it's one of those things where you never really got the chance to make things right. and you feel like it's unresolved, and you feel a lot of regret over it.

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The final Viserys scene we get with Daemon is an alternate version of what could have been, what Daemon should have actually done at the time. Instead of going out into the city to hang out with his gold cloaks, He actually should have stayed in the Red Keep with his brother to console him after he lost his wife and his son. That was actually what Daemon should have done at the time. And unfortunately for Daemon, it's only in his dreams that he can do something better for himself and for his brother. Oh, alas. what could have been.

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And to end the Daemon discussion,

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we got that interesting little scene with Alys Rivers, which just is very fascinating how she predicts to him that you just hang on just a little bit longer and things will change. And yes, things do change. There is now a new Lord Tully in charge of the Riverlands. And given how Oscar is a very young lord, he would probably be more amenable to persuasion and negotiation. So we will probably see the results of those efforts in the next episode.

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What is the deal with Alys Rivers? Well, the thing with Alys Rivers is that she is a mysterious character, not only in the TV show, but also within Fire and Blood. Most people say that she is a bastard daughter of Lord Lionel Strong, but, of course, rumors and speculation says that she is actually a witch of some sort and she has spooky powers that she uses for her own reasons. Is she a witch? Is she not a witch? We are left to decide for ourselves. I would honestly be curious what some of you guys think.

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We also get a very brief scene between Alyn and Addam, who have been very minor characters that popped up in this season. I have been hinting at this in some of the earlier episodes this season, but of course I couldn't really explain too much about it because I knew that you guys would eventually find out what the deal was.

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But we do get this nice little scene where we have both brothers having a little conversation. And of course, it's really fascinating that we see how Alyn decides to shave his head. And I've seen a lot of theories about this, and I pretty much agree with the theory, is that Alyn probably has white hair that would probably give away to people who he's actually related to. because it's pretty obvious otherwise who his father could be.

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And related to Addam, of course, we get the big reveal that Addam is a dragon rider. He ends up on Seasmoke, which I was trying to avoid spoiling that when we had that other scene in Seasmoke an earlier episode where Seasmoke was flying around on the beach where Addam was. Congratulations, now you know what the deal was with that.

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But of course, this is also related to a couple of important scenes that we got with Rhaenyra.

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As a follow-up to the very ending of last week's episode, Rhaenyra is very seriously considering the idea of trying to find people who can possibly ride dragons on her side. And we saw how, unfortunately, Sir Steffon gets roasted by sea smoke, which actually is something that happened in Fire and Blood.

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The one thing I do want to make a note of is that the show tries to create an explanation why Sir Steffon was trying to ride seasmoke. And I just want to clarify something for those of you who are not familiar with the actual lore. But basically, the explanation they come up with is that, oh, you have some Targaryen ancestry because some ancestress of yours was a Targaryen princess.

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I'm here to clarify that this is completely made up for the TV show. This is completely not something that is in the books. It shouldn't be that surprising to you guys, because the thing is that with the Targaryens, they are a family of dragon riders. They are the only family left in the world, as far as they know, who are capable of riding dragons. And that's all because of the destruction of Valyria, where there were multiple families that were known as dragon lords, people who are capable of riding and controlling dragons.

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Now, the thing is that as the only family left in the world who are capable of riding dragons, they try to maintain this monopoly. And of course, part of the way they do that is they practice incest, of course. They avoid marrying outsiders because they are of the belief that if you mix your bloodline with people from outside of our family, that the future generations will have less chance of becoming dragon riders.

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Of course, naturally, periodically, you will have members of House Targaryen marrying people who are not also Targaryens. But in those cases, eventually, you will have cousin marriages happening, which is what happened with Rhaenyra's parents. As I mentioned in last week's episode, Rhaenyra's parents are first cousins. It works as a convenient political marriage because Rhaenyra's mother was an Arryn and she is marrying into the royal family. But of course, she is also a distant member of the royal family because she is the daughter of a Targaryen princess.

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Yeah, it becomes very tricky trying to figure out who could also be dragon riders. And that is why it is important that you attempt to do this by searching the family tree. Of course, the other possibility is that there are bastards. Just like any other noble, it wouldn't be too surprising if some of the men in House Targaryen have had bastards before. And it's always possible that even later generations who are descendants of bastards could potentially be dragon riders, even if it's a very small possibility.

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In fact, within Fire and Blood, this whole situation is referred to as the sowing of the seeds, which is why some of these people who turn out to be potential dragon riders get referred to as dragon seeds. And this week's episode, we discover our first dragon seed, who turned out to be Addam.

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Now, for some of you who are more eagle-eyed viewers, you may be wondering, if Addam is a dragon seed, how does that make any sense? Because as far as we know, Addam is not descended from a Targaryen. In fact, it was very clearly established right before Rhaenys flew off to fight at Rook's Rest. She became aware of Alyn's existence. And we know that Alan and Addam are brothers. As far as we know, they're full brothers. Rhaenys is definitely not their mother. So where could this dragon-riding gene, you could say, could have come from?

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There's a few possibilities. Now, within Fire and Blood... It was speculated that Laenor was their father, but of course that can't be true, especially given the TV show's interpretation of things. That can't be true, because if Laenor was capable of having bastard children, then why was he not able to have children with Rhaenyra?

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So the most likely candidate would have been Corlys, but as we know, Corlys is not a dragon rider. Where did Addam get this ability from? One possible theory is that his mother could be a descendant of a Targaryen through illegitimate origins.

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Another possibility could actually still be through Corlys, because throughout the history of House Targaryen, there have actually been multiple occasions where Targaryens and Velaryons have married into each other's families. I actually did mention this in some of the previous episodes of this podcast.

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One really good example I mentioned was actually back in episode four when I was talking about the Stormlands. If some of you listeners will recall, Rhaenys herself is actually half Baratheon. Her father was, of course, a Targaryen prince. He married Jocelyn Baratheon, which is why all the way back in the pilot episode at the tourney, Rhaenys referred to the Baratheon knight who was about to do the joust, her cousin. Because that literally was her cousin.

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The other interesting fact is that I also mentioned in that previous episode was that Rhaenys' mother, Jocelyn Baratheon, her mother was a Velaryon. She had been previously married to Aenys Targaryen. This is not the first time that we've had a situation where a Velaryon married a Targaryen. In fact, actually, King Jaehaerys was also a child of Alyssa Velaryon. Rhaenys herself is also descended not only from a Velaryon, but she was also descended from a union of a Velaryon with a Targaryen before she even married Corlys.

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So the reason why I bring this up is because this is not the first time there has been a marriage between these two families. So it is hypothetically possible that Corlys does carry some Targaryen dragon riding genes in his veins, but for whatever reason, he has no chance of ever bonding with a dragon. We'll never truly know because, as a reminder, George R.R. Martin is a fantasy writer. He is not a geneticist. But that's going to have to be a discussion for a completely different episode.

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So I'll end this episode with a little bit more about Rhaenyra. We do see she makes another move aside from trying to find dragon riders, that she is trying to restore her reputation by creating a situation where she gets better PR, as it were. And she does. which circling back led up to the riot that almost got Alysnt and Helena.

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And yes, we did get this little scene with Mysaria. Of course, this scene never happened in Fire and Blood because Mysaria was actually not at Dragonstone during this time period. She was in King's Landing handling all the rumors and whatnot. So this is primarily an invention for the TV show. But hey, things to spice things up a bit, I guess.

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I personally don't have an issue with the scene per se, but it doesn't personally add much to me, at least, because it doesn't really fundamentally change the plot all that much. Although, of course, things get more interesting later involving Mysaria, but I won't say anything further about that because it's spoilers.

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But yeah, so this was a long episode and I'm going to end the discussion here. So once again, feel free to participate in the poll. Feel free to sign up to the newsletter. Follow the X account. And also we have an Instagram account, although admittedly I haven't really been updating it much in weeks now, but... In the near future, I do have plans to do something more on Instagram. So tune in next time when I discuss episode seven of House of the Dragon. So, Valar Morghulis.

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