This week’s House of the Dragon tackles an event in Westeros’ history known as The Red Sowing, in which Rhaenyra gathers up a whole bunch of her family’s illegitimate offspring and hopes that some of them will be able to make friends with/not get broiled by Team Black’s remaining, riderless dragons. And she turns out to be right about two of the “dragonseeds”… and wrong about all the others. Eh, details!
ADDAM JOINS #TEAMBLACK | We open on Syrax and Seasmoke facing each other on a beach, making Lost smoke-monster noises at each other. Addam approaches Rhaenyra on foot; she is incredibly wary. “What do you want?” she wonders. “To learn the ways of dragonriders, and to serve my queen, your grace,” he says, kneeling. As she draws near, he reiterates that the dragon chose him, not the other way around, and that he’s a shipwright for House Velaryon. “If the gods call me to greater things, who am I to refuse them?” he asks. When she inquires about his parentage, he says his mother was a shipbuilder and his father was someone “of no consequence.” All of this pleases the queen greatly. “You have done something I feared impossible, Addam of Hull,” she says. “I am glad of it.” They make plans to return to Dragonstone together.
Rhaenyra’s black council has its feathers ruffled mightily when its members learn a commoner is the dragonrider they’d been wondering about, and they get extra huffy when they find out that the queen is insisting that the man be treated as a guest. Corlys has a big hunch who the dude in question might be, though, so he advises them to wait and see what Rhaenyra has to say about it. Except they’re going to have to wait a while, because she’s skipping the council meeting in favor of having a brainstorm with Mysaria.
While Rhaenyra is in her quarters, prattling on about how they have to go through the genealogy to find more potential riders, Mysaria points out that she’s missing the bastard forest for the highborn trees: Targaryen blood flows through all the illegitimate children the house’s men have fathered throughout the years, and there likely are some potential riders right there at Dragonstone. Rhaenyra balks a little — but won’t the high born have more honor, she wonders? — and Mysaria doesn’t mince words in her reply: “A common shipwright vows to serve you while your brothers seek to destroy you. The order of things has changed, your grace. Why not embrace it?”
“Well then,” Rhaenyra says, thinking of her own two, creatively fathered sons, “let us raise an army of bastards.” Corlys finds Addam and basically has only two words for his unacknowledged child: “Well done.”
‘THEY ALL HATE YOU’ | Young Lord Oscar Tully comes to see Daemon, now that the kid officially is head of his house, and swears his fealty, however begrudging, to Rhaenyra. Daemon’s like, great! Let’s get all your bannermen and march to glory! But the young man isn’t dumb: He knows that those loyal to his grandfather likely won’t be quick to do what a boy tells them. Oh, and one more thing? “They all hate you.”
Daemon says he doesn’t care, and they walk out to meet the riverlords who have gathered at Harrenhal. Oscar immediately proves himself already a better leader that Daemon when he answers his vassals’ questions with openness and honesty, and he earns my undying love when he is a sassy little thing to and about Daemon, right there in front of everyone. “The word of my house stands,” Oscar says, “even if certain people are unworthy of it.” MEOW. This kitten’s got claws!
Lord Blackwood is the first to swear his house to his new leader, but before anything else can happen, Oscar wants to talk about how the Blackwoods committed savage crimes against House Bracken “because you wanted to,” not just because Daemon ordered it. So he has Lord Blackwood seized, and tosses the ball into Daemon’s court: If Daemon wants to prove himself worthy, Oscar announces, he’ll denounces Lord Bracken’s crimes and dispense justice. “Oh dear,” Ser Simon says to himself, moments before Daemon pulls his sword and kills Blackwood.
The silver-haired weasel stumbles back into the castle afterward to find Viserys, circa just before his death, holding his crown and sitting on the bed. Dream? Vision? Delusion? Does it even matter anymore? Daemon sits next to him. “I never wanted it,” the (actual) king says of his role. “I was right not to, all the pain it caused. It crushes whoever wears it.” He wonders if Daemon, who’s been thirsty for the throne forever, still wants it.
SOW WHAT? | Back at Dragonstone, Jace isn’t psyched about his mom’s plan, calling the potential dragonriders “mongrels.” But it soon become clear that what he’s really upset about is his place as her heir, given that he knows that Harwin Strong was his dad. If he has a dragon, he reasons tearfully, his claim is that much stronger. But if any part-Targaryen small folk ALSO have a beast on their side? Rhaenya draws him close and says she mislikes all of it… but this is how it’s going to have to be.
So via Elinda, Rhaenyra’s handmaiden who’s stationed in King’s Landing, the word spreads: Rhaenyra wants Targaryen bastards to come to Dragonstone. This is great news for Ulf, right? Well, as he sheepishly admits to his friends, he can’t be 100 % sure that the story he’s been spinning all this time is actually true. But they don’t want to hear it, and instead cheer him on to meet his true destiny.
Meanwhile, guess who else is a dragonseed? Hugh! He explains to his wife, Kat, what he’d not shared with her before: That his mother had silver hair and worked in a pleasure house. “She used to tell me that I was no different to her brother’s boys: Viserys and Daemon,” he says. “But I was ashamed of her.” Then we learn that Hugh and Kat’s daughter, who had been ailing since we met her, died. He argues that if he can claim a dragon, they’ll never want for anything ever again. But Kat is afraid he’ll die in the attempt.
Still, when the boats leave early the next morning, both Hugh and Ulf are on them.
FLAMES, ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE | The dragon rodeo… doesn’t go well. First, the ancient order that trains and keeps the dragons refuses to help Rhaenyra with her plan. But she carries on anyway, rallying the potential troops with a rousing speech about how they can (maybe) help her avoid war. Then they all go to meet Vermithor, the biggest dragon after Vhagar. The thing is truly scary, but Rhaenyra is able to get it to nuzzle her hand like a sleepy kitten.
Unfortunately, that’s the last gentle thing it does. After Rhaenyra leaves, Vermithor either burns, eats or knocks to their deaths pretty much everyone standing on the ledge. It’s chaos. Ulf and Hugh aren’t immediately killed, however, and eventually the latter draws the beast’s attention away from a terrified woman who’s also floundering about on the cave floor. Hugh stands there, prepared to die as Vermithor regards him, and even yells “Come on!” when it’s taking too long. And that, apparently, is the cheat code to getting a dragon to love you: Vermithor finally shuts its yap and puts its head near Hugh for scratchies. From a balcony above, Rhaenyra watches the entire interaction with wonder.
Elsewhere in the scary dragon lair, Ulf grabs a torch and runs, winding up running into a dragon I think is Silverwing, but don’t quote me on that, because I have dragon-face blindness. He thinks he’s done for, but she seems to like him, and he laughs in unhinged relief.
HOT TIME, SUMMER IN THE CITY | Let’s get caught up on the goings-on in the Red Keep. Lord Jasper lets Larys know that Seasmoke has been seen with a rider on his back. But Larys is uninterested (or at least seems uninterested — this guy is slippery!) in using the (admittedly eighth-hand) information, telling the man that “perhaps this is one of those whispers best left to the wind…” Alicent muses about how ineffective [ waves hands ] everything she’s ever done has been, then informs Ser Rickard that they’re going camping for a while, just the two of them. She rides her horse. She floats in the lake. It’s basically Queen Camp for One, and she tells the knight that she may never come home. And honestly, can you blame her? … Aegon has improved enough that he can start taking small walks around his room, with assistance, but those walks are filled with groans and sobs of pain. Grand Maester Orwyle chastises Larys for pushing the king (who, by the way, is now missing an ear) too hard, but the Master of Whispers won’t hear it.
Toward the end of the episode, a dragon does loops in the sky over King’s Landing. Aemond quickly mounts Vhagar and flies to catch up with the new threat, but turns around when he realizes that it’s heading back to Dragonstone, and that Rhaenyra now has three dragons with riders on her team’s newly deep bench.
Now it’s your turn. Are you looking forward to the finale? Hit the comments and let us know!
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