Partway through the first season of House of the Dragon, a young man named Willem Blackwood is among a long line of suitors seeking Rhaenyra Targaryen’s hand in marriage. He’s heckled by another potential suitor named Jerrel Bracken. Rhaenyra tires of the whole business, but before she leaves the room, Willen and Jerrel have already gotten into a fight, and by the end of it Jerrel lays dead.
This is an example of the kind of sectarian nonsense people have to deal with in Westeros every day, but this particular nonsense is more specific: in Game of Thrones lore, the Blackwoods and Brackens have been fighting each other for generations, to the point where neither side quite remembers how the conflict began; think of them as the Westerosi version of the Hatfields and the McCoys. And come House of the Dragon season 2, these Riverlands families will be at it again.
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The Battle of the Burning Mill is coming in House of the Dragon season 2
According to the Twitter account Wake the Dragon, which has been leaking a few interesting things about House of the Dragon season 2, the second episode will feature the Battle of the Burning Mill, the first real battle of the war between Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and her half-brother King Aegon II Targaryen.
As laid out in George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, when this war begins, the Blackwoods declare for Queen Rhaenyra while the Brackens declare for King Aegon. Always eager to be at each others throats, Lord Samwell Blackwood sent raiders into Bracken lands, causing Ser Amos Bracken to react in kind. The two sides meet near a mill and fight. The mill is put to the torch, and by the end of it both Lord Samwell and Ser Amos are dead.
The Battle of the Burning Mill isn’t the first time blood is drawn during the Dance of the Dragons — that would be when Criston Cole kills Lyman Beesbury, or maybe when Aemond Targaryen murders his nephew Lucerys Velaryon — but it is the first two armies, however meager, clash. It will only get worse from there. It’s also possible that the Battle of the Burning Mill could introduce us to Lord Samwell’s sister Alysanne Blackwood, who becomes a more important character later in the book.
The second season of House of the Dragon wil premiere on HBO and Max sometime next summer.
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