New week and new episode of House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones spin-off which continues this October 10 at 9 p.m. on OCS City.
After an eventful episode 7, episode 8 of House of the Dragon continues on the same road and even tends to pick up the pace a bit with just two episodes left in the season. It must be said that this new episode, entitled “The Lord of the Tides” and which is already available on OCS, starts with a jump in time – Yes again. This time six years have passed and this causes a new cast change which always raises some questions. Like the first time jump which unfortunately replaced Milly Alcock with Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen and Emily Carey with Olivia Cooke as Alice Hightower, this second timeskip only changes a handful of characters. , namely children. Rhaena and Baela Velaryon, Jace, Luke and Joffrey Velaryon and finally Aegon II, Helaena and Aemond Targaryen are therefore played by new actors.
Apart from the fact that it is strange to see that the children have aged while the adults have not aged a bit (except Viserys who took for all the others obviously), it is also strange to see the actor cast to play Aemond Targaryen, Ewan Mitchell. The latter, who lost an eye because of his nephews, is supposed to be the youngest of the three children of Alicent and Viserys but seems to be played by an actor older than all the others. And while these changes don’t affect the story in any way, it may be difficult to immerse yourself in a series that changes cast several times in just three episodes. So hopefully these heads will be here to stay – except for Vaemond Velaryon’s…
The king is dead, long live the king… or the queen
Always on the form and if the ellipse was inevitable to lead House of the Dragon at the heart of its plot, namely the Dance of the Dragons, it is shame to have skipped some development, including religion in King’s Landing. Over the years Alicent and the court have embraced the Faith of the Seven and it might have been interesting to see this new religion take hold. Again, these are just details, but details that are sure to be missed by fans who have followed all eight seasons of Game of Thrones and eagerly awaited its spin-off. Basically, episode 8 of House of the Dragon, as mentioned above, does not waste time. Exit the scenes of little necessary glances that episode 7 had proposed, the story must move forward, and this is in particular the reason why episode 8 ends with a scene with serious consequences: the death of King Viserys I Targaryen.
Badly affected by his illness, King Viserys ended up succumbing in a last gasp which, supposedly, was addressed to his daughter Rhaenyra. Yet it is his wife, Alicent, who will have been the last to see him alive and who, because of her husband’s confused spirit, is about to unleash the Dance of the Dragons. Because the last minutes of the episode bring Viserys back to a subject discussed earlier by his daughter Rhaenyra: the story of the song of ice and fire, the prince who was promised, and the dream of Aegon the Conqueror. The heiress to the throne’s question on this high-stakes subject went unanswered, and it was only later that King Viserys gave it… to his wife. Only when the king speaks of Aegon the Conqueror, Alicent understands that he is talking about their son Aegon IIand that it is meant to unite the kingdom to repel the ultimate threat.
A fleeting reconciliation
The thing is, the Targaryens and others have the bad habit of all using the same first names by simply adding numbers to their sequence, and it would seem that, in the series House of the Dragon at least, that is at the origin of a misunderstanding which will precipitate the fall of the Targaryen dynasty. In fact, the story holds since it is quite plausible that Alicent thought that the king was talking about his own son. However, it remains disturbing, when you know the franchise that pours so easily into drama and the serious issues it has always exposed, to accept the fact thata misunderstanding will be the major trigger for the rest of the story. All the more so when the screenwriters proposed, a few minutes earlier and no doubt to support the weight of the conflict to come, a reconciliation between Rhaenyra and Alicent. Touched by the king’s speech, the former friends seemed to regain their bond and even their affection for each other for a moment, despite clearly vindictive children.
Was it essential to dangle the possibility of a real reconciliation to better snatch it a few moments later, when Alicent convinces herself that Viserys wants to see Aegon II on the Iron Throne? In the book Fire and Blood by George RR Martin, the story of the Dance of the Dragons does not mention any reconciliation between the queen and the princess, the latter having always been in competition for the throne. The book that tells the entire story of Targaryen and on which the series is otherwise based House of the Dragon tells that if Alicent tried to put her son Aegon II on the throne, it was because she decreed that Rhaenyra was unfit to reign following a long and painful delivery of a disfigured stillborn child – in addition to the fact that it is a woman and therefore that she is not a priority. Despite a very good episode, and a family meal scene as embarrassing as it is entertaining, it is regrettable that the screenwriters chose a detour through a misunderstanding to ignite the first spark that will ignite civil war among the Targaryens. If wars sometimes break out for ridiculous reasons, Game Of Thrones had accustomed us to workings a little more complex than that…
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