Rhaenyra tries to beat Ormund and Aemond at their own game of subterfuge, only to prove she isn’t nearly as ruthless.
Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO
Team Black? Team Green? Or just Team Dragon? Join forces and sign up for our subscriber-exclusive newsletter dissecting House of the Dragon season three.
Episode six is a sprawling and kinetic hour of TV. Shit gets stirred, and lines get crossed. Name any character, and they likely did something of real significance. Baela? Last week, Baela was low-key macking on her uncle Addam; this week, she and Uncle Alyn bond over their unavailable fathers and end up making out. Mysaria? Last week, she kept mum about Helaena’s pregnancy; this week, she straight-up lies to Rhaenyra’s face about it, then has a maid imprisoned to cover her tracks.
Even the Black Queen of doing nothing finally approves a tactical response to the hostage situation in Tumbleton. With the Rivermen still weeks away, she sends a handful of soldiers from House Baratheon to assassinate Dareon the Daring and his puppet-master uncle. The meager platoon was a consolation from Lord Borros, who claims to be too busy repelling the Dornish to come to his queen’s aid. As you’ll recall, Borros gave Aemond the go-ahead to attack Prince Lucerys in House of the Dragon’s season-one finale. Does Rhaenyra intentionally send his men into Tumbleton to die? No, but perhaps it’s good optics. Borros might be the only dude in all of Westeros to face an actual bad consequence for defying the Leader of the Realm.
“Kick this dog, and it will bite your hand.” That’s the note — scrawled in paint on a Baratheon yellow tabard — that Rhaenyra receives back from Lord Ormund after the failed attempt on his life. It’s a fun little taunt, you see, because of the double meaning. Hand could mean Rhaenyra’s own human hand, or it could mean Corlys Velaryon, Rhaenyra’s capital-H Hand. It’s too easy to imagine the pathetic grin on Ormund’s face the moment he struck punny gold: “Daeron, listen to this. Hand, two ways. GET IT?”
For the record, I do think the kid would get it. Daeron’s mostly been a silent presence, but in this episode, he actually speaks. Full sentences! And it turns out he’s pretty sharp. Unlike Ormund, he understands that his chances of ever sitting on the Iron Throne are daorun. But what is a ward to do when his family deserts him and his mother leaves him in the care of a Holy Roller? Daeron had no choice but to shut up and let a war start in his name.
When Ser Gwayne at long last crawls into Tumbleton, he is too worn out to care about what he finds. He doesn’t care that Ormund despises him for deserting Ser Criston. He doesn’t care that his nephew is essentially a hostage. Frankly, it’s a miracle Gwayne can even stand when a conspicuously rank Arrion Baratheon shows up to pledge fealty to Daeron on behalf of all Storm’s End. Ormund disdains Gwayne for being soft, but those years at court lend him a distinct advantage over his cousin: He knows that the real Arrion is way hotter than the guy about to bend the knee. The Greens kill Rhaenyra’s assassins, and Ormund projectile-vomits from the smell. Who’s soft now?
Elsewhere, the episode is preoccupied with the lofty notion of loyalty and its real-world demands. The Gold Cloaks haven’t gotten paid since Rhaenyra took the throne, and now 25 of their colleagues are dead. The queen approves Alyn’s plan to bolster the Watch with Velaryon soldiers, but otherwise, she does nothing to address the situation. Has she been disloyal to the men who faithfully serve her? If so, what recourse are they entitled to? Following the murder of Ser Luthor, there’s a mass resignation of guards, who feel caught between the needs of their hungry families and their loyalty to the man who made them into soldiers.
For Daemon, who calls the men “shameful,” the idea of loyalty is monodirectional — to behave loyally is to give what is owed. Later, as he patrols King’s Landing dressed as a Gold Cloak, he runs into Ulf, who has already been forbidden from leaving the Red Keep. Is it disloyal of Ulf not to heed the demands of his Targaryen overlords? Without them, he wouldn’t have Silverwing, and despite the nostalgia he feels for his pre-dragon life of market days and feather beds, he’s sure he wouldn’t trade away this new life that Rhaenyra enables.
Ulf and Hugh are still trading surveillance duties at Tumbleton when Hugh decides to flout orders, too. He hijacks a merchant’s cart and sneaks into the city to find his wife and bring her to the safety of the life he can provide now that he’s tamed Vermithor. But Hugh doesn’t get the reception he longs for because Kat’s not impressed by the wingspan of his dragon. She needed Hugh by her side as she mourned their daughter and fled starvation at King’s Landing. To Kat, loyalty is a synonym for steadfastness — a willingness to share in someone’s pain.
Perhaps the thorniest cases are the subtle forms of loyalty at play between Rhaenyra, Alicent, and Helaena — the women of the Red Keep with relationships spanning entire lifetimes. When Alicent and Helaena are found trapped in the castle walls, Rhaenyra feels taken advantage of by her old friend, whom she compassionately allowed daily walks in the Godswood. Pressed to justify her escape attempt, Alicent confides about Helaena’s pregnancy and her fears about how Rhaenyra will be forced to respond, especially if Helaena has another son.
Fascinatingly, Alicent continually assuming the worst of her is the betrayal that Rhaenyra finds most infuriating. In their conversations, she is no one’s queen. She is a person looking for someone who can still see her as she tries to be. Her loyalty to Alicent is an extension of her loyalty to her father. She commits to protecting Helaena as long as she can, but that requires keeping her pregnancy a secret.
Unfortunately, Helaena struggles to bear the containment, eventually refusing to eat. Before the episode ends, Alicent barters with Rhaenyra again. In exchange for their freedom, she offers the whereabouts of Aemond, who Helaena has seen in Harrenhal as she wargs about the Seven Kingdoms. But Aemond’s location isn’t enough for Rhaenyra; she wants Alicent to kill her own son. Relationships like theirs, in which trust has been compromised, require topping up. Loyalty, by this measure, is what a person is willing to do for another.
And it seems Alicent is willing to do this terrible deed to save her daughter and unborn grandchild. In fact, “safety” is how Alicent justifies marrying Helaena to her evil brother in the first place. She thought it would be better to keep her daughter close. Now, though she’s loath to leave Helaena, keeping her safe requires Alicent to cross the son who has always been so perversely devoted to her. She must believe it will be easy enough to get close to him. When she last saw Aemond, he kissed her on the mouth and promised to throw a valedictory banquet in her honor.
But Aemond’s convalescence may turn out to be the most consequential period of his life. It’s the first time he’s ever been without family, which means it’s the first time he’s had space for a relationship with a woman other than Sylvi, the kindly prostitute who took his virginity. When Aemond informs Alys that he’s leaving to find Vhagar, she persuades him to remain at Harrenhal, where Vhagar’s absence functions as camouflage. She senses a kinship between them, a shared history of loneliness. They can be the mutual cure to each other’s sorrows.
Alys Rivers always struck me as completely self-sufficient, loyal to the Riverlands and the dark whispers of her castle and to the magic of her own being. But here she betrays a desire for more. She has a clutch of five dragon eggs, laid by Dreamfyre and left at Harrenhal by Rhaena Targaryen before Aemond was even born. Alys didn’t show them to Daemon when it could have advantaged her. She hands a warm egg to Aemond and tells him the future she sees for them. She will be his lady of the water, and he will be her dragonrider. Their sons will be blond men born from the mystical mud of this place. Alys isn’t throwing this daydream together on the fly. She’s been gestating the idea of them, and when they finally work up to a kiss, they’re already panting. Helaena’s patchy visions do not prepare her mother for this version of the son who will greet her.
Westeros is a world of fragile egos and shifting alliances. Lady Jeyne pledged herself to Rhaenyra, and yet she knowingly harbors Rhaena. Larys and Tyland, who both despise Aegon, are about to board a boat to Essos, where they’ll wait until he is well-positioned to reclaim the Iron Throne. At court and at war, loyalty can be a vulnerability. Survival is knowing which dog you can afford to kick and which dog’s bite you need to fear.
And it is against this vast and honorless sea that Ser Criston Cole has come to greatness. He was born in Blackhaven, the son of no one. He ascended to the rank of lord commander in the King’s Guard and even served as hand of the king. In episode six, he walks the forest with all two dozen men who remain in his service, chasing after an enemy that’s already beyond their reach. No, walking isn’t the right word for it. They plod along with the leaden feet of men with nowhere to go.
Ostensibly, they’re trailing the Tully host, but an advance party finds something inexplicable. Soldiers from the Riverlands have been felled, their encampment destroyed by some other enemy, but who could it be? A rogue dragonrider, like Aemond? Scouts sent by Ormund? Criston’s men are still surveying the field, trying to figure out what happened, when the “dead” soldiers jump to their feet and attack. There can’t be more than a dozen of them, and Criston kills most of them himself with his trusty morningstar. A chain flail is a brutal but cinematic way to die.
The skirmish lasts a couple minutes, but I’ll be damned by the New Gods if that sadboy hasn’t been right all along: War is better without dragons. This pocket-size battle is more engaging and intelligible than what we got at far grander scale in the Gullet. Their enemies dead, Criston and his guard shout the motto of House Hightower into the open air. “We light the way! We light the way!”
Surely, they didn’t think it would be so easy. As the exhilaration settles and Criston looks out toward the horizon, he sees that they are surrounded by the host of Oscar Tully and Roddy the Ruin. Criston makes a futile plea for the lives of his men, but his men just spilled the blood of a dozen Rivermen. And besides, like him, they came to this valley to die. Ever loyal, Criston takes Alicent’s handkerchief, which she gave him from her bodice back in season two, and wraps it round the hilt of his sword, which he never even lifts. An archer pierces him three times, including through the cheekbone. He lies on the hard dirt, the handkerchief catching the breeze like a white flag of surrender, as they’re swarmed from all sides.
War was always going to kill Criston Cole eventually. Did love hurry death along, or did it give the soldier something to live for? It feels like watching the last good man in Westeros die, until you take a step back and remember he wasn’t very good. No one’s been good for a long time on House of the Dragon. Daemon’s consumed by the mad scramble to find purpose in the absence of power. Corlys reclaims his sons only to be kidnapped by Lord Ormund while running from their company. Rhaenyra’s reign has been short, and already faded from memory is the queen of the people — the woman who stole from the rich’s storerooms to give bread to the poor. She’s the most awesome ruler in Westeros, and she’s its most scared mouse, unable to even face her son if he’s not fast asleep.
Our highborn characters seem to agree on the same premise — that insufficient loyalty marks a deficiency in the person offering it. But the show itself offers a compelling counterargument: Most betrayals are a measure of the person demanding loyalty in the first place.
Meet New York staffers in the comments section to discuss the same burning questions we’re trying to answer in House of the Dragon Club, our subscriber-exclusive newsletter. Sign up here or enter your email below to get the latest editions.
Sign up for House of the Dragon Club
Watch and dissect House of the Dragon season three alongside New York’s writers and editors.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice
See All
