The Red Sowing - House of the Dragon: Episode 2.07

(00:00:00):

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.

(00:00:57):

Welcome, fellow acolytes, to another episode of the Westerosi Primer. If you're new to this show, my name is Liz. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. As usual, before I get into this week's episode of House of the Dragon, I'm going to get some housekeeping business out of the way. As my regular listeners know, I've been running a poll asking all of you what you'd like me to talk about for season two of the podcast.

(00:01:25):

Next week's episode will be the season one finale, and I will go on a short hiatus. I'll be releasing new episodes in October. If you didn't already participate in the poll, the link to it can be found on thewesterosiprimer.com. There are five choices in the poll.

(00:01:45):

One major development happened since last week. There are now six responses. To my shock, it's also a three-way tie. There's literally two votes each for me talking about the following. Two votes for fan theories that book readers have come up with. Two votes for real-world culture and history used in the saga. And two votes for a spoilerific deep dive into all things House Targaryen. Do you agree with these votes? Do you wish it was a different choice instead? You have until August 14th to participate.

(00:02:30):

Since I have a regular full-time job, I will check out and see what the results are by 11 p.m. in my time zone on August 14th. Whatever the results are by then, that's what I'll go with. I will also disable the link to the poll from the website, so there won't be any more votes after that time period. August 15th, I will post the results on the newsletter, the blog, and also the different social media accounts. This will allow all of you listeners to find out what I will be talking about in Season 2 before I actually start working on it. In the event there is a tie in the results, I will make the final decision to break the tie.

(00:03:20):

One other announcement I have to make is actually about the first episode of Season 2. The very first episode of this podcast was a fairly brief one where I explained what this show was about, what I am covering in Season 1, and also I gave a little introduction to me.

(00:03:42):

I am planning to do something similar for the Season 2 opening episode, where I will be explaining what exactly I am going to be talking about over the course of Season 2. However, I feel that just talking about that may create a really short episode. What I am thinking of doing is actually a Q&A session If you go to the contact page on the website, I have a list of multiple ways that you can actually send in questions for this Q&A.

(00:04:17):

So my plan is that the first episode of Season 2 will be released on October 2nd. So the weekend before that, I will be doing the recording session for that particular episode. If I get any questions between now and recording day, which would be the weekend of Saturday, September 28th, or possibly September 29th, Sunday night, If I receive any questions between now and that particular weekend, they are eligible to be included in this Q&A session.

(00:04:59):

If I don't get any questions, that's perfectly fine as well. But I am just leaving it open for all of you listeners to send me questions and participate in an episode of this podcast. I am, of course, willing to answer questions related to all things Westeros. And I am willing to answer some questions about me personally. But obviously, I have the right to not want to answer certain questions. But overall, I'm pretty open to answering just about any kind of question you may want to send in. Again, you're not required, of course, but you have about two months to send questions for this Q&A.

(00:05:45):

Now, with that bit of housekeeping taken care of, let us get into this week's episode of House of the Dragon. Obviously, this will be a spoiler-heavy episode, so hopefully you did watch it this week. If you haven't, then feel free to pause the episode and come back after you've seen the episode.

(00:06:07):

So the episode, of course, picks up where the last episode ended, which is Rhaenyra wanting to find out who the heck is riding Seasmoke. So we do get a nice little scene on the beach where Rhaenyra confronts Addam, wanting to find out who the heck are you? Who do you think you are riding a dragon? How did you even get the dragon to obey you? What sort of trickery were you about?

(00:06:35):

That's the general attitude she has coming into it, which, to be fair to her, is not an unreasonable position to take on this situation because as far as anybody else is aware of, you need to have dragon lord ancestry to... even consider getting on a dragon because dragons have a tendency to not like most humans approaching them.

(00:07:06):

So naturally, she is completely confused who in the world is this guy because she knows that he cannot possibly be related to her. So what is the deal?

(00:07:18):

He doesn't admit that he is in any way, shape, or form related to Corlys, but he does acknowledge that he genuinely has no idea how he ended up getting himself a dragon, but it happened and the dragon chose him. Of course, he ends the tension between the two of them by declaring that he recognizes her as his queen and swear fealty to her. She really has no choice but to believe his words of fealty because he now has control of a dragon and she needs dragon riders on her side. So off they go back to Dragonstone together.

(00:08:00):

And understandably, everybody is completely shocked that this random commoner has control of a dragon. And naturally, everybody is also very confused how that's even possible. Corlys, understandably, is a little concerned about this, but he decides to go with it. And he later has a conversation with his other son, Alyn. And acting as Hand of the Queen, he passes on instructions to Alyn so that he can pass along a message to someone else who will eventually get word to someone who is still in King's Landing and essentially works for Mysaria.

(00:08:44):

But of course, exactly what they were doing, well, it is to find other potential dragon riders for the other dragons that are on Dragonstone. But we'll get back into that later. The other interesting aspect of this conversation between Corlys and Alyn is this. Who in the world is Addam and Alyn's mom?

(00:09:08):

Now, we won't be seeing her on screen as far as I'm aware of, but it does bring back to what I said in the previous episode, which is the question as to how it's possible for Addam to even get a dragon at all.

(00:09:24):

I'm not going to repeat myself here because I already spent enough time in the previous episode explaining the possible theories as to how this happened. It's looking like the angle they're going with in the show is that it could be through their mother's bloodline. which again is something that I mentioned in the previous episode, is a possible theory.

(00:09:49):

The other possibility is that it could actually technically be through Corlys, but the dialogue in this scene does indicate that potentially their mom does have some Valyrian ancestry of some sort, which would not be a terrible surprise because, of course, the Velaryons are a Valyrian family originally, right?

(00:10:11):

And many people that live in Driftmark can claim some Valyrian ancestry as well. Whether some of that could include some illegitimate mixing of Targaryen blood is hard to say. And even in the book Fire and Blood, we never fully know. But that's just pure speculation here.

(00:10:33):

So the next thing I'll talk about is that little scene with Larys and Aegon. So again, continuing the previous interaction of the two characters in other episodes in this season, to some extent... Larys could sympathize with Aegon a little bit because of now Aegon's situation where he is somebody who is physically damaged and have a lot of struggles given that he didn't actually die from his injuries and he's going to have to live with them for the rest of his life.

(00:11:06):

But mostly Larys is clearly interested in helping Aegon because Aegon would in return be more interested in helping Larys out and by helping elevating him into better and higher positions in the small council. Because as we know from earlier in the season, it's very clear that Aemond is not a dumb person. He is very aware of what Larys's game really is about. And Aemond is definitely not going to play ball with this guy.

(00:11:42):

Larys realizes his best chance of rising up in the world is to deal with somebody who is more malleable, and that would be Aegon. How much further this dynamic develops, we'll have to wait and see. Probably in season three, we'll see more development of it because next week is the finale episode. There's only so much we're going to get about them.

(00:12:06):

Okay, so then the next thing I'll talk about is Daemon. We seem to have kind of a resolution to this ongoing situation of Daemon in the Riverlands. After a lot of time he spent at Harrenhal, he now is able to get the swords of a good number of the river lords. There are, of course, some houses who are staunchly supporting Aegon as the king. But there are still plenty of others who feel that because they swore fealty to Rhaenyra as the heir to the Iron Throne, they feel duty-bound to honor these vows.

(00:12:55):

But of course, Daemon has to acknowledge that some of his actions in the Riverlands created a whole lot of problems. And that is why you could make the case that one of the notable characters of this week's episode is actually young Oscar Tully.

(00:13:15):

Young Oscar Tully is now the new Lord Paramount of the Riverlands. And he definitely showed that he is fully capable of being a good leader of all the Riverlords. And he had to demonstrate this by challenging Daemon and putting him in his place to some degree by reminding him that his interference with local internal relationships and politics created a very difficult situation that needed to be resolved. And he had to give him an ultimatum, which is that you need to acknowledge that you created a problem and you need to do the king's justice here to end the tension, which, of course, Daemon does.

(00:14:10):

Also, we do get one last little scene between him and Viserys, which was a particularly interesting scene because it reminds both the audience and to Daemon is that everybody says that they may want the crown, that they want to be... the king on the Iron Throne. But the truth is that just because you are sitting on the throne and you're wearing a crown, it doesn't mean that it's not also a huge responsibility.

(00:14:50):

Way too many times, both within the Song of Ice and Fire saga and even in real life, A lot of people get into positions of power. They can either turn out to be pretty effective leaders or they basically don't actually know what the hell they're doing and they wind up creating way more problems than they solve. And way too often, these types of leaders, they want to be the king ruling, but they don't fully appreciate or understand how much responsibility there actually is when it comes to having this power.

(00:15:38):

Which is why if more of you guys actually vote for me to talk about House Targaryen as a whole... In season two of the podcast, I will definitely demonstrate how many times in this dynasty there were a lot of kings that were not that great at their job. It is a burden, and you don't fully appreciate this when you go after the throne and you're forced to actually rule. This is something that also comes up in the actual novels that Game of Thrones is based off of, which is something that even the audience needs to remember and be reminded of.

(00:16:22):

So we also get a couple of scenes where Alicent is very lost and not even sure what her place is in the Red Keep anymore. Because for a large portion of her adult life, she has been actively involved in the ruling of the Seven Kingdoms, especially as her husband got older and sicker over time. Now, even her own son has rejected her advice. So now she's completely lost and doesn't even know what she is to do with herself.

(00:17:00):

And in a way, I feel a little bit sorry for her, but mostly I don't. Mostly, I feel a lot of this was your own fault because we've never really seen many scenes of Alicent with her children where you actually have strong bonds established between her and her children. There's just no real emotional connection. And by that, I mean, you don't see what you would typically describe as like a child and parent. bond between them factually they know that they are mom and son mom and daughter but a lot of times their interactions don't feel like they have strong connections with each other which is very sad to me because I have a pretty good relationship with my mother I can't say what some of your relationships are with your family members but I imagine that some of you may have sensed this as well.

(00:18:08):

Yeah, we'll have to see how her relationship is with her youngest son. For all we know, that could also be bad as well, because we've never actually seen this kid on screen this whole time. We can't really say that they have a good relationship either. But who knows? Maybe we'll finally find out in season three.

(00:18:28):

Another interesting thing to mention is Rhaena. Now, I'm not going to really discuss too much about this because, for one thing, the show seems to be indicating that her storyline is going to go in a certain direction. And the reason why I can't really discuss it too much just now is that we have to wait and see what happens in the next episode.

(00:18:59):

But given the little clues, there is a very strong indication that she is about to get herself a dragon after angsting over this issue for who knows how long.

(00:19:14):

And I can tell you right now is that in Fire and Blood, Rhaena did get a dragon, but her dragon is not this mysterious dragon flying around in the Vale. It's actually a dragon egg finally hatched for her while she was in the Vale. The dragon was named Morning, and even though it's still a baby dragon and not capable of fighting, it's still a PR boost for the Black Faction that, on their side, they are continuing to gather more potential dragon riders.

(00:19:54):

Meanwhile, the Greens only have four dragons, although, in essence, Sunfyre is mostly out of the picture. So in truth, they technically have three dragons. And one of those three dragons is probably not even going to be used for fighting anyway because it's Helaena's dragon.

(00:20:14):

So I think I'm going to wait until the next episode to actually explain a little bit more about Rhaena and why this change in her storyline in the show is a big deal. But yeah, it's going to have to wait until next time. So I don't spoil anything just yet for you guys.

(00:20:36):

And yeah, so the next thing I'll talk about is Aemond. We only get a couple of scenes with Aemond really in this episode. And of course, one scene we get is him sentencing two of the Kingsguard to the wall and for the riot and the fact that his mother was injured and his sister was nearly injured because of their lack of proper security for the two queens.

(00:21:12):

Regardless of what he may personally feel about either his mother or his sister, still as the regent ruling the Seven Kingdoms, he has to punish people for the injury of his two family members. While Aemond is doing his sentencing, we do get this little conversation between Larys and Lord Ironrod over the rumor that somebody is now riding Seasmoke.

(00:21:47):

Of course, you can't really blame Larys for being skeptical because it is still just a rumor. No actual confirmation has been made of such a thing. But I feel like he's a little bit too ready to dismiss this. Then again, most of the other characters on Dragonstone were very shocked and could hardly believe it. That somebody actually was able to claim a dragon.

(00:22:14):

So you understand this. But of course, I won't be surprised if Aemond is pissed off when he gets back to King's Landing after visually getting confirmation that, yeah, There are other people riding dragons now, and why did we not know about this sooner? We're going to have to wait until the next episode to get that. But yeah, that final scene in the episode where Aemond realizes that, oh crap, we're in trouble now. That was fairly amusing and clearly a really big setup for a big thing happening in the next episode.

(00:22:56):

Just to close out this episode, we have to go back a little bit. What led up to this final scene that I was just talking about? Of course, Rhaenyra had a lot of things happening to her in this episode. Once she realized that Addam as a dragon rider is a thing, she may have to go search for Targaryen bastards for potential dragon riders.

(00:23:22):

Now, I'm not going to repeat too much about why this is such a huge deal because they already explained it to some degree and they actually explain it a bit in the episodes. But it is a very significant, huge thing because it has always been a rule that only members of House Targaryen would have dragons. This is on top of the fact that that it's heavily implied that there's magic in their bloodline, which leads to them being able to bond with dragons, which is, of course, another reason why Targaryens tend to practice incest.

(00:24:12):

And even if they don't marry amongst family members, they will have a stronger preference for marrying people who are at least Valyrian in origin before a later generation will involve cousin marriages to bring some of these descendants back into the Targaryen bloodline again.

(00:24:39):

As has been mentioned multiple times throughout the saga, it is a major thing in Westeros that bastards do not have any legal rights to inheritance. This has come up multiple times, not only within House of the Dragon, but in Game of Thrones, it has come up a whole bunch of times.

(00:25:04):

And this is a reflection of real world history where there are reasons why it is a big deal that people with property need to get married and have children. If they don't have a spouse and children themselves, other members of the family need to get married and have kids because the idea is that With inheritance, a lot of property, a lot of assets stay within this family and doesn't get divested off to elsewhere, which is why it's such a big deal also in Westeros. It's the same principle that they fall under.

(00:25:43):

We also got a conversation between Rhaenyra and Jaeserys, which is pretty interesting to me. Because in the book, actually, Jace was the one who suggested the idea of searching for dragon seeds, which is the nickname for some of these Targaryen bastards. Meanwhile, in the show, he's actually one of the opposers of this idea. And Rhaenyra points out that he is the one who brought up the idea to her, even if he didn't intend for her to be looking for Targaryen bastards to be dragon riders. Because as he points out in their conversation, One of the big things that people use to attack Rhaenyra is the fact that her three oldest sons, who are legally Laenor's sons, are not really Laenor's. They are very clearly children she had with Harwin Strong. She swears that these boys are her husband's boys.

(00:26:52):

People are questioning their legitimacy as her legal, legitimate children creates problems. Because if they are not actually her sons with Laenor, they are her sons with another man, they are bastards and therefore they have no legitimate right to anything. They have no right to the Iron Throne.

(00:27:19):

Unsurprisingly, Jace is also against the idea of using dragon seeds because it's just going to bring into question yet again his own legitimacy because the idea that other bastards could theoretically get a dragon, it just reaffirms the suspicion that he and his two younger brothers are also bastards. Their whole claim to their legitimacy is not just Rhaenyra stating left and right that they are her sons with Laenor. It's the fact that all three of them have dragons. Now you're creating another problem.

(00:28:06):

In a lot of ways, Rhaenyra actually creates her own problems. Granted, she gets forced by circumstance into these situations, but still, she is making these choices to do what she does, and they create problems. For her and for other people so you do kind of sympathize with Jace on this point another interesting part is what we call the sowing of the seeds in the book or another name this becomes known as is the red sowing which is also the title of this episode so And yeah, it's pretty grisly.

(00:28:49):

The book doesn't get into much detail as to how the whole claiming thing worked during this red sewing. But yeah, it's very grim the way it's done in the show because she's just basically like, okay, these are dragons. I summoned Vermithor. Have at it, you guys. Which is why we get that very grisly scene where Vermithor basically attacks pretty much all of them. And the only one he doesn't kill is Hugh the blacksmith.

(00:29:23):

Now, to end this episode, I'm going to explain a little further a couple of revelations we got in this episode. Now you know why there were scenes in this season involving Hugh and Ulf. Because like I said in a previous episode, that when the production team of House of the Dragon bother to create scenes involving characters, there are reasons for it. And now we know exactly what those reasons are.

(00:29:58):

One interesting thing we discover in this episode is a little bit more about Hugh, the blacksmith. In the episode, Hugh reveals to his wife and, of course, to us that he doesn't know who his father is, but he knows his mother. And his mother was apparently a sex worker in a brothel. And that apparently she told him that you are no different from my brother's boys. And he says that by her brother's boys, she was apparently referring to Viserys and Daemon, which therefore means that Hugh would be their bastard cousin.

(00:30:41):

Which is a very intriguing thing for Hugh to say, because there is, in my opinion, only one possible explanation as to who his mother is. Though I have to say that in Fire and Blood, we don't really know who his parents actually are. I have not watched the inside the episode for this week's episode yet. So I don't know if Ryan Condal actually gives an explanation about this. I can't really comment on it. But either this really is the explanation as to Hugh's ancestry in the TV show or Or it could be another situation where the TV show may change this.

(00:31:34):

Because like I said in the previous episode that Sir Steffon Darklyn does not actually have Targaryen ancestry in Fire and Blood. In fact, knowing the general practices and preferences of House Targaryen, the idea that any of them would actually marry into House Darklyn is extremely unlikely and was just to create a reasonable explanation as to why he would even agree to try to get a dragon married.

(00:32:09):

With this little bit in this week's episode, it suggests that Hugh's mother was actually Princess Saera Targaryen. Now, if you guys vote for me to do a full-on deep dive of House Targaryen, I would further explain this a little bit more, but Jaehaerys I had multiple children, as I've mentioned a couple times before. Of course, one of his children was his son, Aemon, who was Rhaenys's father. And another son of his was Baelon, who was the father of Viserys and Daemon. One of his many other children was a daughter whose name was Saera.

(00:32:59):

Saera has a very scandalous reputation. And some of her adventures did involve her getting into a lot of romantic entanglements. And she does end up becoming a sex worker. In fact, actually, she becomes a madam of a brothel in Essos. Or at least that's the talk that's mentioned in the book.

(00:33:32):

Because what was also not included in House of the Dragon was the fact that during that great council at Harrenhal where the Lords of Westeros were in essence allowed to vote for which grandchild should become the heir to the Iron Throne. There were three people who arrived from Essos claiming that they were Saera's bastard children, and they decided to throw their names into the proverbial ring.

(00:34:06):

But of course, nobody voted for them because, number one, there is no absolute proof that they actually are her children. And secondly, even if they were her children, they are bastards. And again, bastards have no legal rights to claim inheritance in Westeros.

(00:34:27):

So according to the show, it sounds like that is who his mother is. But again, I don't know if this is meant to be the actual truth based off of what George told Ryan, or if this is just something that they made up for the TV show. But this is just to give you guys some understanding as to what that was all about if you've never read the books.

(00:34:55):

The other thing that I will discuss before we close out this episode is the two dragons. So the main one we got the claiming for was Vermithor. Now, Vermithor the Bronze Fury, what is the big deal with this dragon? We did briefly see this dragon last season when we had that little scene of Daemon going into the caves and he starts singing to a dragon to summon it. And we briefly saw Vermithor.

(00:35:29):

Vermithor is a pretty big deal. Now, it's already been mentioned a couple of times this season that in terms of size, Vermithor is the only other dragon that could challenge Vhagar just by size because Vermithor is not as old as Vhagar, but it's a big boy. We'll say that much.

(00:35:54):

Also, Vermithor is a very aggressive dragon, which is why it was pretty violently angry when the red sowing happened. It had no issues with killing anything and everything that tried to approach it. Now, the reason why it's such a big deal is that there are only two people that have ever ridden this dragon. The second person is, of course, now Hugh the blacksmith. The first person to ever ride this dragon is the person who also hatched this dragon from an egg. And that person is King Jaehaerys I himself. It is a huge deal, not only to be able to ride a dragon in the first place, it's also a pretty big deal for you to be able to ride a dragon that was hatched and ridden by a king. The fact that it is large enough to challenge Vhagar is another big deal.

(00:36:57):

The other dragon that Ulf accidentally claimed was Silverwing. So why is Silverwing a big deal? Similar to Vermithor, there are only two people who have ever ridden this dragon. The second person is, of course, Ulf, who just claimed the dragon. The previous rider is was also the person who hatched it from an egg. And that person was Queen Alysanne, King Jaehaerys's sister wife. So again, it's a pretty big deal that you're able to ride a dragon that was previously ridden by a queen.

(00:37:43):

Alysanne and her dragon Silverwing does get talked about quite a bit within the lore, which again, if you guys vote on the poll for me to do a deep dive discussion of House Targaryen for season two, I will get more into this relationship. But it is a pretty interesting development.

(00:38:05):

And incidentally, unlike Vermithor, Silverwing does have a reputation of being relatively friendly towards people. So that's another reason why we got a very funny and a way gentler claiming between Ulf and Silverwing.

(00:38:26):

Yeah, that just about covers it for this week's episode. A lot of things happened in this episode and they are clearly leading up to some major things happening in the finale next week.

(00:38:40):

If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to reach out on social media, send me an email, or leave reviews wherever you can, including on the website. Tune in next time as we talk about the season two finale of House of the Dragon. So, Valar Morghulis.

(00:39:36):

What did you think of this episode? Check out thewesterosiprimer.com and let me know what you think of this episode. If you have a friend or two that might like the show, make sure to share.