The Red Dragon and the Gold - House of the Dragon Episode 2.04

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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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Greetings, fellow acolytes of all things Westeros. Welcome to another episode of the Westerosi Primer. My name is Liz. So, as usual, before I get started to the main points of this episode, I'm going to do a couple of housekeeping-related announcements.

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Because I feel that you listeners are just as much involved with this podcast as... I am. So just to let you guys know some updates. If you've been listening to the last few episodes, you are, of course, aware that I am currently running a poll. The poll is basically asking you listeners, what is going to be the theme of next season of this podcast?

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After season two of House of the Dragon finishes airing, I will be going on a hiatus for a few weeks. And then in October, I will be releasing the second season of this podcast. I'm giving you listeners the opportunity to let me know what topic would you guys be interested in listening to.

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So there are five possible choices. And one small update that happened since the last episode is that I got additional responses from you. So currently I have three responses. The two additional responses are actually kind of interesting. So I currently have one vote for a deep dive discussion of House Targaryen, which will definitely include spoilers more or less how House of the Dragon is going to end.

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The other two votes I received are actually asking for me to do some episodes discussing the various real-world historical events and even some real-world culture that George may have been using to write this entire saga. So if you listeners who have not yet voted agree with these votes, or if you don't agree with these votes, then please participate in the poll. I have been debating a little bit about when I was going to end the polling process. And after some consideration, I've decided that out of fairness, I will end the poll on August 14th, which will be exactly one week later. after I have released the reaction to the season finale.

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The season finale is airing on August 4th. The episode of this podcast reacting to that finale will be released on August 7th. So I will give you listeners an additional week, so August 14th, to vote on the poll. I will make an official announcement on Twitter, possibly Instagram, the blog on the website, and I will also be sharing on the newsletter what are the final results of this poll.

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So the other three choices that nobody has voted on yet but are also options are, of course, me doing character essays about different Game of Thrones characters and or their houses. Me doing a compare and contrast of the Game of Thrones TV show versus the novels. And the other option is me discussing some of the various fan theories that book readers have been discussing for the past 30-odd years that some of you who are fans that only watch the TV show may not be aware of.

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The other interesting bit of news I have to share is related to the newsletter. I now currently have two subscribers. Thank you to the two people who have subscribed so far. If I hit 49 subscribers to the newsletter, I will announce a side project related to the Westerosi primer that I will be launching. And the big reason why I'm waiting for a certain number of subscribers to the newsletter is because this side project that I've been thinking about doing is going to be something that is exclusive for people who are subscribed to the newsletter. Those subscribers will get a first look of the side project. I may give a few more hints as to what this mystery thing is about by the time I get to the final episode of the season, but we'll see.

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If you are interested in participating in the poll and or signing up to the newsletter, the links to both things can be found on thewesterosiprimer.com. So the name of this podcast, dot com. And as I also mentioned, I have set up an X account and an Instagram for this podcast. If you happen to also use either of those apps, the links to those accounts are also available on the website.

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So with all that bit of housekeeping done, let me get straight into this week's episode, which was called The Red Dragon and the Gold. Interestingly enough, the title of the episode and some of the titles of this season were actually also chapters in the book Fire and Blood. For example, there was actually a title in the book called A Son for a Son and the following chapter after that one is actually this week's episode, The Red Dragon and The Gold.

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A few things that I was going to touch upon this week. One interesting thing to talk about is, of course, Damon at Harrenhal. He is still there this week where he continues to have strange visions. Whether they are purely nightmares, self-delusions, or some weird spooky stuff is happening, we don't completely know. However, it's very clearly starting to affect him since he has also been hallucinating that he saw Laena acting as the cupbearer in his meeting with a representative of House Blackwood.

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We also get an introduction to the Tullys of this particular generation. We get to meet young Oscar Tully. And incidentally, if you haven't listened to episode 9 where I discuss the Riverlands, I did make a mention about House Tully earlier. And that also includes the fact that we had certain members of House Tully who were in charge at the time. And interestingly enough, the members of House Tully in this particular generation were, of course, named after the Muppets by George, who has a rather amusing sense of humor, I guess you could say. Though the names have changed a bit, but I suppose to be fair, they had to change the name of the particular member who we are introduced to in this episode to Oscar rather than Elmo because it's way too difficult to take seriously if this character's name was still kept as Elmo. Admittedly, Oscar is a little bit more dignified in comparison. I will be very curious, though, if any other Tullys get mentioned other than young Oscar and his grandfather Grover, who is the actual lord of Riverrun.

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Point, though, is that Daemon is still trying to drum up support for Rhaenyra in the Riverlands, and Daemon has been learning the very hard way that the Riverlands, despite the fact that House Tully are supposed to be the lords ruling over the Riverlands. They don't have a very strong control over the other houses under them, which of course is a really big problem. Hopefully we see Daemon actually take to the field pretty soon because after what happened this week, the Black Faction will definitely need to score some major victories here.

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But speaking of, we have Criston Cole. What was he doing this episode? He didn't actually head straight for Harrenhal like most people would think. He actually made a slight diversion to increase the army that he would, hypothetically speaking, have at his back in order to attack any possible support that Rhaenyra could have gotten in the Riverlands. in order to ultimately gain control of Harrenhal. And he manages to capture Duskendale, where we saw that he executes the defiant Lord Darklyn, who is a loyalist to Rhaenyra, rather than bending the knee and acknowledging Aegon as his king. And after taking over Duskendale, as we saw, instead of heading towards Harrenhal, he heads to Rook's Rest, which is what I will be talking about towards the end of this episode.

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In the meantime, we have Rhaenys meeting Alyn, who is the ship captain that we met in the season opener. And it's implied that she is aware of Alyn's origins, which, in case you listeners haven't figured this out by now, Alyn is a bastard. Now, who is bastard is pretty important because In lore, there was some speculation as to whose bastards Alyn and his brother Addam are.

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Publicly, it's been discussed that they are the bastard children of Laenor. However, as we are aware, Laenor could not have possibly been their biological father, so it is heavily implied that they are the bastard sons of Corlys. And you might be thinking, well, wait a minute, why would Corlys cheat on Rhaenys? He and Rhaenys clearly care a lot about each other and they have a very strong marriage. Why would he do such a thing?

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It's heavily speculated and implied that he sired bastard children mainly because of his concern over who would inherit Driftmark. And he would be concerned about that because he is not a stupid guy. He only has two children with Rhaenys. And under normal circumstances, he would be very confident that he would have legitimate grandsons through Laenor to inherit Driftmark.

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However, he is aware that Laenor is gay and not very likely to have biological children, especially when it's pretty obvious that Jace, Luke, and Joffrey are very clearly not biologically related to him. In the book, it was heavily discussed and implied that Harwin Strong were their biological father. There was actually still a slight possibility that their biological father could have been Laenor, mainly because Rhaenys is half Baratheon.

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And as we know from Game of Thrones, that House Baratheon is very well known for having dark hair. So there could have been an argument to be made that their dark hair is actually a recessive gene through the Baratheon DNA that Laenor would have. However, the TV show makes it pretty clear that there is just absolutely no way that her first three boys could have possibly been with Laenor.

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Unfortunately, the other alternative is, of course, Laena, and... any of her children. But again, Laena only had two twin daughters and she died trying to give birth to a third child, which would put Driftmark into a bit of a succession crisis of its own, which we saw in the previous season. Because the only other male claimants to Driftmark would be through Corlys's siblings and nephews. Which, for various reasons I'm not going to get into, he wanted to avoid this. He would prefer heirs to be more directly descended from him. And that is heavily speculated to be a reason why he sired bastards. I guess you could say as alternative heirs to Driftmark, because if he chooses to have a bastard son become the heir to Driftmark, he could try to use his connections to whoever is sitting on the Iron Throne to have said bastard son be legitimized and therefore become his heir.

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It's not heavily discussed in House of the Dragon or Game of Thrones much, but it has actually happened in the novels. One of the examples that we definitely saw in Game of Thrones was, of course, Ramsay Bolton. Ramsay was originally Ramsay Snow. He was the only living child of Roose Bolton, So Roose was able to get a declaration to have Ramsey be legitimized as a Bolton in order to ensure that there is an heir to the Dreadfort.

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That was an interesting little interaction. And we are again reminded that the fact that Alyn, some screen time on this show is important for later.

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Okay, so then next let's head over to King's Landing where we check in again with the Green Faction. So we see that after the conversation with Rhaenyra in the previous episode, Alicent is very conflicted at the realization that perhaps she may have made a mistake and encouraged a coup. That's up for debate, but I'm not going to get into that in this episode.

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We also got a little scene where she receives some Tansy tea, which, if you guys don't recall, we've seen Tansy get used at least a couple of times in the first season. Basically, this tansy tea, or it's also called moon tea, it's the Westerosi version of Plan B. It's a birth control drink where you take it after you, of course, had intercourse. And Alicent realizes that it's extremely important that she cannot get pregnant because she is still newly widowed. And also considering the physical state of Viserys in the past couple of months before his death, it just would not make any sense for her to get pregnant with a fifth child at this point in time. it would be a little too suspicious for people.

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And speaking of things being a little suspicious to people, we have Larys, who has now taken his spot as the Master of Whispers on the Small Council. And he seems to be very suspicious of what is going on with Alicent, especially since they had their own understanding of And she seems to be reluctant in interacting with him in the same manner, which is making his spider senses tingle a little bit. We'll have to keep an eye out the rest of this season and see if anything along this line develops.

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But the more important thing about what's happening in King's Landing is actually centered on Aegon. I've already mentioned this in the previous episodes, but there is a mirror between Aegon and Alicent and Joffrey with Cersei. You have a young king and a dowager queen mother who is trying to advise and guide their son. But of course, how much the son will listen to the mother is going to vary. Aegon seems to be a little bit more receptive to his mother versus Joffrey. However, Alicent doesn't seem to respect Aegon very much. We already saw that in season one. She really doesn't respect her son very much.

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And it's very clear that he is frustrated with this situation he finds himself in because he was never trained in any meaningful way to be king. So he is in a very strange position where, again, he was never trained to be king, yet there is some interest in placing him on the throne. He also doesn't seem to have a desire to actually rule. But now that he finds himself in that position, he is trying to deal with the situation he finds himself in.

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And yet, because of his lack of training and his lack of knowledge of how to be a good king, he just doesn't quite know what to do when he does get asked to make decisions. And even when he does make decisions, there are people who will object to it and advise him to do something completely different. You could argue that maybe these advisors do have better ideas than him, but still, he doesn't get any real respect from anybody at all amongst his counsel.

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We've seen this frustration brewing since the first episode of the season, and it's boiled over in this episode because he decides that he is going to do something, he is going to take charge, and he's going to do it by participating in the field. And this is on top of the fact he gets cut out of any discussion of the war. He has no involvement in any of the battle plans. He feels frustrated that his own hand, that he chose himself, opts to do a lot of the battle planning with Aemond rather than with him. Everybody knows that Aemond having control of Vhagar makes him the trump card that the green faction has in the war. But just the same, Aegon really does feel frustrated that he has no say in anything. And can you honestly blame the guy? He is supposed to be the king and yet no one respects him. And of course, he makes his fateful decision to head to Rook's Rest.

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Now, of course, you guys are all aware that I am someone familiar with the lore, and therefore I know pretty much everything that we're about to see happening in the Dance of the Dragons. And that, of course, means that I was also aware that Rhaenys was going to die in this battle. And also, I knew that Aegon was going to get seriously injured in the same battle. I was somewhat dreading, but of course, I was also pretty excited about this because I knew that it was going to be a pretty epic battle. And for the most part, what we saw in the TV show was pretty much what I was expecting it to be. And if... The episode is any indication of how some of the other battles we're going to see turn out. I am actually pretty excited about it. I just hope that Max is prepared to cough up a lot of money to film some of these battles because... I can assure you guys that there are going to be a few more pretty significant battles between the blacks and the greens in the season and probably in the next season as well.

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But yeah, I would say that along with the tragic death of Jaehaerys in the first episode, this was one of those events that I already knew was going to be a huge talking point. We're talking about things that are on the level of Ned getting executed and, of course, the Red Wedding, the Purple Wedding, and Oberyn getting killed in his trial by combat, amongst other events.

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Rhaenys went down like the queen she almost was. And I have to say, I respect her for being willing and able to go out into the field and fight against who knew for sure which dragons, though I'm pretty sure everybody suspected that it was going to be Vhagar or she would have to go up against.

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Because when you think about it, the greens only have four dragons. They have Sunfyre. They have Vhagar. You don't really see them in the show as of yet, but Helaena does have a dragon. She has Dreamfyre. How likely Helena would actually go into battle on Dreamfyre? Not very likely, but she still counts. She does have a dragon. And the yet to appear Daeron definitely has a dragon, which is why I seriously wanted to laugh when I read on X and a few other places online a running fan theory that TV watchers had That, oh, what if Daeron is actually Criston Cole's kid?

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And my answer to that is there is no way in hell he could possibly be Criston Cole's kid because if he was, he would not have a dragon. And I can confirm to you guys that Daeron definitely has a dragon. Why he hasn't appeared in the show yet, there are some reasons, but that's neither here nor there.

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So Rhaenys' death is a big blow, but not the only card that Rhaenyra's faction has left to play with. They, of course, still have Caraxes. They have her dragon, Syrax. Though, again, how likely Rhaenyra would actually go into battle, we can't really say for sure. And of course, Jace is very eager to show his mettle, and he wants to fight, but Rhaenyra, being the concerned mother, is very reluctant to have him go out to fight, not only because she is his mother, but also because he wants to fight. But also, he is her first heir. In case something happened to her, he would be the one to take up the claim in the Black Faction. But again, I can't really spoil what happens because we'll see soon enough.

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But they are on Dragonstone and there are plenty of dragons on there that don't have a rider. What will we see in the next episode? We will undoubtedly see the fallout from what happened at Rook's Rest. We will find out what happened to Aegon.

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Now, I have to say it was really interesting how in the show, Aegon ended up injured is very interesting to me because fire and blood makes it very vague. Fire and Blood basically explains that a majority of the participants in this battle were killed, as we saw. Which means that the number of witnesses as to what exactly happened was already very low. And on top of that, because of all the smoke and the fire and the dust kicking up and everything... It was also difficult for people to see at times what the heck was actually going on up in the sky with these three dragons flying around.

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And so in the book, it basically says that there were three dragons up in the sky battling. And once the dust settled, only one dragon remained to fly. And that was, of course, Aemond on Vhagar. We, of course, saw that Rhaenys and Maelys were killed in the battle. And we saw that Sunfyre was severely injured. And we are left to assume that Aegon was also severely injured, if not killed.

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But in the book, it's just not made very clear exactly why. How did Aegon and Sunfyre get injured and everything? It's assumed that Maelys and Rhaenys did a lot of the damage, which is why it's very interesting in the show. We see that actually some of the injuries were caused by Aemond and Vhagar. Now, you could try to argue and debate as to whether Amon intentionally attacked Aegon. And there is a very strong case to be made that, yeah, he was probably actually gunning for Aegon. And I've seen a few people online trying to make an argument that he was making a calculated risk, which is, to be honest, a very weak argument, in my opinion, because Aegon is the king. And why would you risk injuring the king when you are trying to kill a dragon and their rider on the opposite faction? That is supposed to be your primary goal. That was one of the major objectives of this battle of Rook's Rest. It is an opportunity to set up a trap for someone in the Black Faction to get rid of a dragon and their rider. It just doesn't really make any sense. Like, why would Aemon and Vhagar attack Aegon unless Aemon was actually planning on taking advantage of the situation and potentially get rid of his brother?

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Because it is actually a quote in Fire and Blood as well that Aemon feels that he is the one best suited to sit on the throne and rule. And in some respects, you can see why he feels that way. And you could also see why other people may actually feel that way as well. However, Aegon is the king and is supposed to be the king. What are the implications of what happened to Aegon? We will have to wait until the next episode.

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But yeah, so that is this week's episode of House of the Dragon. Again, if you are interested in reaching out, sharing your thoughts and opinions of this week's episode, your opinions of my podcast overall, just head over to thewesteroseeprimer.com where you have multiple ways of reaching out and starting a conversation with me.

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You have, of course, the poll to participate in, which will let me know what you are interested in listening to in season two. You also have the newsletter, which I will periodically post some interesting stuff on there, including some announcements about the podcast. I will also include some behind-the-scenes stories regarding the process that I do every time I make an episode of this podcast.

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And I haven't done this yet, but during the hiatus in August, I will start writing some essays in the newsletter that will be some interesting essays in relation to A Song of Ice and Fire as a whole. There is a possibility that some of these essays could be the foundation of episodes in future seasons of the podcast, but I can't say for sure.

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But regardless, I do encourage you guys to subscribe to the newsletter because it is for free. I'm not going to spam you every single day. You will, however, get something from me every few days, generally at least once a week, maybe twice a week, depending on my schedule. And also the newsletter will act as a backup to the X account and the Instagram account that I run for the podcast as well. You have all these different ways to reach out and let me know what you think of this episode, what you think of House of the Dragon, what you think of anything and everything related to the saga. So tune in next time as we talk about the next episode of House of the Dragon. So Valar Morghulis.

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