When Game of Thrones characters talked about Arryk and Erryk Cargyll from House of the Dragon

House of the Dragon is set over a hundred years before Game of Thrones, and some of the events of this era have since passed into legend by the time folks like Bran Stark, Sansa Stark and Cersei Lannister come on the scene. Take the most recent episode of House of the Dragon, "Rhaenyra the Cruel," which climaxes with twin brothers Erryk and Arryk Cargyll — knights of the Kinsguard both — fighting to the death on Dragonstone. That event is drawn directly from the book Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin. But many years later, characters from his Song of Ice and Fire series — adapted by HBO as Game of Thrones — bring it up.

For instance, here's Bran Stark, well-known for his love of stories, thinking about famous members of the Kingsguard in A Game of Thrones, the first Song of Ice and Fire book:

"Bran knew all the stories. There names were like music to him. Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. The twins Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, who had died on one another's swords hundreds of years ago, when brother fought sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the Dragons."

We're seeing the Dance of the Dragons play out on House of the Dragon; the brother is King Aegon Targaryen and the sister Queen Rhaenyra. Sansa Stark, who at this point still thought of knighthood as romantic and chivalrous, also mentioned the Cargylls in the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings:

""Prince Aemon the Dragonknight cried the day Princess Naerys wed his brother Aegon," Sansa Stark said, "and the twins Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk died with tears on their cheeks after each had given the other a mortal wound.""

Finally, Cersei Lannister, far less innocent than Bran or Sansa, thinks about the Cargylls in A Feast for Crows, the fourth A Song of Ice and Fire book, when scheming of a way to get rid of the sellsword-turned-nobleman Bronn:

"Grin all you wish, Ser Bronn, you'll be screaming soon enough. Enjoy your lackwit lady and your stolen castle whilst you can. When the time comes, I shall swat you as if you were a fly. Perhaps she would send Loras Tyrell to do the swatting, if the Knight of Flowers should somehow return alive from Dragonstone. That would be delicious. If the gods were good, each of them would kill the other, like Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk."

Martin's books are dense with cross-references like this, and it was fun to finally see this oft-cited event play out on TV.

Expect House of the Dragon to keep up the pace in season 2

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal was aware going into the new episode that it had been mentioned by characters who lived much later, and was keen to play with expectations. "Fire & Blood] depicts a few different versions of that story," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "I was always fascinated by the Cargyll twins story because that was a story that Sansa Stark romanticized — going back to the Song of Ice and Fire books. And, of course, Sansa has this very Sansa-like romantic vision of what that fight was like and how they dueled for hours, as though it was the duel fromThe Princess Bride."

"But the real thing would be much more brutal and gritty. We wanted to try to find the central line through it. There’s a version where they’re cursing each other’s names and calling each other 'traitor,' and that just didn’t feel like the characters we’d set up. We have these two people who found themselves on different sides of this conflict and not knowing what to do with this oath. I think that makes it more of a tragedy when you see these two brothers trying to hold to their oath but find themselves in literal mortal combat against each other in order to uphold it."

If nothing else, it made for an entertaining set piece. And we can expect more big events like that as the second season of House of the Dragon continues. "I’ve just watched most of the season back to back to see where we are, and it’s a pretty pace-y season," Condal said. "It has peaks and valleys, where something happens and then everybody kind of collects their thoughts and recovers. But yeah, the pace of the show is going to probably feel faster than it did in season one. We want to keep the narrative moving; we don’t want it to stall out and drag our feet. There’s plenty of story in there. There’s plenty of character to explore."

New episodes of House of the Dragon drop Sundays on HBO and Max.

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