House of the Dragon gets grimmer and meaner in Episode 6

This is it, folks, the big transition between the old and new versions of House of the Dragon. Out with Milly Alcock and Emily Carey, in with Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke; out with Rhaenyra and Alicent being friends, in with them being bitter rivals; out with King Viserys having no control over his court, in with…well, some things never change.

But a lot has changed, and I wonder if audiences are ready for just how much. The biggest shift is with Alicent Hightower. Played as a young girl by Emily Carey, Alicent was meek, careful, and poised. Even when walked into Rhaenyra’s wedding feast wearing her scene-stealing green gown, she kept her thoughts mostly to herself. Now, she’s working hard to flex her power as queen, actively pushing her husband the king to acknowledge disquieting rumors about Rhaenyra, dissuading her children from hanging with those no good Velaryon boys and plotting with Larys Strong to improve her position. Olivia Cook looks a lot like Emily Carey, but there isn’t much resemblance.

And I’m not sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, I wish was there a bit more continuity between the characters; I wish especially that the last episode had made clearer why she decided to stand on her own and start repping her own interests. But on the other, who’s to say Alicent couldn’t have evolved this sort of spine in the intervening decade as she made her own way at court without the help of her father? I keep trying to think of ways they could have bridged the gap and I’m coming up empty.

Plus, Cooke is extremely good as this new, more assertive Alicent, so perhaps we should just enjoy what we have. She’s one of the big enervating forces of this episode. There’s one scene where she’s trying to impress upon her teenage son Aegon the importance of pushing his claim to the Iron Throne. It’s not getting through, so she snatches his face and shares exactly how much danger he’ll be in should Rhaenyra become queen. She means business, does New Alicent.

Rhaenyra Targaryen 2.0

The other animating force behind the episode is, of course, Rhaenyra. The episode begins with her giving birth to her third son by Laenor, and it’s brutal. Director Miguel Sapochnik does not want to spare us the grisly details of childbirth; I think the thing that stuck with me the most was the sound effect of baby Joffrey sliding out the birth canal. Even more harrowing is the scene after, where in order to avoid looking weak, a wobbly Rhaenyra insists on showing her new baby to Alicent, who has requested to see him. Her post-pregnancy walk up the stairs with Laenor is riven with tension, and proves that the show is still plenty willing to challenge us with uncomfortable, violent moments, on the battlefield and off. (It also lets the series show off its interconnected sets, which are very impressive; you could live in this Red Keep.)

Emma D’Arcy is also very good as the older Rhaenyra, and not as changed as Alicent. This Rhaenyra is older, wiser, and more mindful of her political situation, but I can still see the ambitious girl she was shining through. She also has a lot of new people to play off. In addition to the newborn Joffrey, we meet her older children Jacaerys (Leo Hart) and Lucerys (Harvey Sadler), as well get better acquainted with Harwin Strong, the Commander of the City Watch and son to Hand of the King Lyonel Strong.

Without even being told, it’s obvious that Harwin is actually the father of Rhaenyra’s children, not Laenor; remember, Laenor is gay and he and Rhaenyra have given each other leave to satisfy their own appetites even as they continue their marriage for the sake of political optics, an agreement that has held over the years. The deal allows room for kindness between the two, even if they’re sometimes at odds, but it also leaves them vulnerable to Alicent and her followers. All that’s protecting Rhaenyra and her children is her father’s belief in their legitimacy, and I wonder if Viserys isn’t just keeping up appearances. As he once told Rhaenyra, “The truth does not matter. Only perception.”

House of the Dragon: The Next Generation

The animosity between Alicent and Rhaenyra is passed down to their children, although Alicent seems more invested in it. I enjoyed the new energy the younger cast members brought to the show. Jacaerys and Lucerys both seem like nice kids. Alicent’s children are the ones who are a little sideways; growing up with a zealot for a mother and an older father with one foot in the grave may have warped them a bit.

Aegon II (Ty Tennant) is a callow, intemperate lad, stealing glances at passing serving girls in the yard and standing naked in the window of his room to masturbate onto passersby. In an odd turn from the source book by George R.R. Martin, Fire & Blood, Helaena Targaryen seems to have some sort of precognitive sense, and is introduced fondly handling a millipede, which…okay.

Young Aemond Targaryen may actually have the most compelling arc here; he doesn’t have a dragon, and is bullied for it by both his cousins and his older brother (although it must be said that Aegon seems like the main instigator). There’s a tense sequence where he steals into the depths of the Dragonpit and gets a wonder-struck glance at a fire-breathing behemoth before fleeing in fear. It’s a vulnerable moment for a character I know will be going interesting places when he gets older.

The rivalry, such as it is, between the two sets of sons comes to the fore in the yard, where Ser Criston Cole is training them in the ways of swordplay. Criston is obviously favoring Alicent’s sons, which angers Harwin Strong, who is showing a lot of interest in Rhaenyra’s kids for someone who should effectively be just some rando. Criston, of course, knows the truth about Harwin. He hints at it, which crosses a line and starts a fight between the two.

These adults are passing their grudges and trauma onto these children, not unlike how Otto Hightower used his daughter to advance his own interests. And King Viserys watches from above, happy in denial and convinced that the lot of them are just going through natural growing pains. There’s a sense of looming sadness and doom around all of it.

Daemon Targaryen, family man

Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea, Daemon Targaryen is visiting Pentos with his family: wife Laena and daughters Baela and Rhaena. Yes, Daemon has become a dad, and if there’s one thing I wish we saw from the past decade, it’s how he managed to let go of his whirlwind ambition long enough to settle down with Laena. I’d be curious to see how Rhaenyra took up with Harwin, too, although I also get why the show skipped it; both characters are dead by the end of the episode anyway.

At the same time, both come out of this looking pretty memorable, so it’s hard not not to want to see more of them. What do you think? Should we have gotten an episode in between this one and the last exploring how these two couples got started? Cause I’m torn.

Anyway, Baela and Rhaena both seem sweet, Laena is supportive, and Daemon restless. There’s only so much time to dive deep into these new characters when the show has to introduce, like, 30 news ones, together with new versions of old ones. That’s one of the shortcomings of “The Princess and the Queen”: it has a lot of heavy lifting to do, possibly more even than the pilot. And there’s no sequence as bracing and powerful as the death of Aemma Arryn to kick it up a notch.

That said, there is a parallel back to that moment. Laena is in labor with her third child with Daemon, but it’s not going well. He’s given the same choice Viserys was: let the birth continue naturally, which will kill both mother and child; or perform a C-section on Laena, which will kill her but could save the baby. It looks like Daemon refuses to knowingly kill his wife, and unlike Aemma, Laena is at least given a choice over the manner of her death. She staggers out of the manse where her family is staying and commands her dragon Vhagar to to blast her with fire, dying a dragonrider’s death. It sucks to lose her this early, but she dies with more dignity than Aemma. This is also a more dignified death than Laena herself received in Fire & Blood.

“The Princess and the Queen” can’t save House of the Dragon from itself

So “The Princess and the Queen” struggles with having to establish a lot of new baselines. That’s true of any pilot, and this is essentially a second pilot. It also struggles with being a follow-up to “We Light The Way,” which had a couple of big plot holes this episode can’t paper over no matter how well it’s put together. For instance, Alicent’s actions seem extreme here, but they would have made more sense had the first half of the season done a better job of convincing us why Alicent felt she had to break with Rhaenyra and protect her own interests in the first place.

And then there’s Criston Cole, who’s continued employment on the Kingsguard is ridiculous considering what he did in “We Light The Way.” After Harwin beats on Criston in the yard, he is let go from the City Watch and his father offers to resign as Hand of the King, so grave is the scandal. And yet Criston is still allowed a place at court despite punching the future king consort of the realm in the face and beating an anointed knight to death at the wedding feast of the heir to the Iron Throne.

It’s absurd on its face. It’s a hypocrisy the show will have trouble living down. Having Criston act the way he did in “We Light The Way” was a huge error in scriptwriting, and it’s making him hard to swallow as a believable character. The best the show can do is be good enough to distract me from this blotch.

Whoa, nobody piss off Larys Strong

We end on a chilling note as Larys Strong, who until now had seemed a sneaky schemer at most, orchestrates the death of his father Lyonel and brother Harwin as they sleep in their beds at Harrenhal, the home castle of House Strong. His men light the place on fire. This he does in order to free up the position of Hand of the King for Alicent’s father Otto, based on an errant comment from her. And I suppose Larys killed his brother because he’s evil.

I say that flippantly, but the show sells us on the idea that Larys is willing to go places and do things that other characters are not, at least not yet. It’s frightening stuff, and now Alicent is tied to it. Things are coming apart, and we have dark times ahead.

House of the Bullet Points

• I liked the brief bonding moment between Rhaenyra and Viserys after the birth of Joffrey. I remember warmth…
• As many new characters as the show is throwing at us, I promise we’re getting to the point where the main cast is more or less set for the rest of the series. Someday soon, we’ll be losing more than we gain.
• There was no mention of Daeron Targaryen, the fourth child and third son of Viserys and Alicent. My guess is he’s cut. He has some stuff to do much later in the story, but it probably won’t be that hard to write around.
• Shoutout for an appearance from a scatterbrained Lyman Beesbury, the Master of Coin on the Small Council. I’m keeping watch on him cause he features in a scene later on I’m looking forward to.
• In Fire & Blood, we’re told only that Harrenhal burned, killing Lyonel and Harwin inside. It’s left unclear who, if anybody, was behind it. The show made its choice and introduced the most ice cold motherf**ker we’ve met so far.
• As part of his plan to torch Harrenhal, Larys pardons a group of criminals sentenced to death and cuts out their tongues to make sure they can’t talk. Weirdly, he also has them wear little bug pendants, which is sort of the symbol he’s adopted for himself. I get the show did that so the audience would know who these guys were, but obviously that’s not a great move if you want to keep things quiet.

Episode Grade: B-

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