House of the Dragon' Episode 2

Daemon makes a bold play as House of the Dragon episode 2 begins to develop some bad habits.

The production value here is so high and Martin’s original tale so rich that it’s probably not possible for House of the Dragon to turn in a truly bad episode. The opening and closing shots of very literally-named warlord Craghas “The Crabfeeder” Drahar surveying the destruction he hath wrought are quite beautiful. Rhaenyra’s immediate understanding of her father’s plight does open her up for an even more acute betrayal when he chooses to marry her best friend, but that doesn’t make the scene before it any less of a missed opportunity. Anything you ‘wish’ you can make happen?” Instead she opts for the shockingly congenial “You are a king…and your first duty is to the realm. Truth be told, “The Rogue Prince” is filled with talky scenes where the quality of the talk just doesn’t pass muster. Forgive the potential hyperbole but Viserys’s brief conversation with his Master of Laws Lord Lyonel Strong (Gavin Spokes) might be among the least interesting and least necessary GoT/HotD scenes ever filmed. While one dragonrider flying to a fiery island to treat with another dragonrider may sound fairly epic in the annals of history, in practice viewers must concede that there’s not much to it. A lot of those educated guesses made their way into “The Heirs of the Dragon” and it’s perhaps why the episode so closely resembles the early Thrones seasons. But when Daemon announces his betrothal to the “Lady” Mysaria (Sonoyo Mizuno) and steals a dragon egg for their eventual child, the king is forced to act. Daemon folds far too quickly and the scene’s dialogue doesn’t really hold up – though newly-minted Kingsguard Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) reminding Daemon of who knocked him off his horse is admittedly satisfying. “The Rogue Prince,” however, doesn’t have many, if any, of those well-sourced scenes. This is an awkward hour of television that doesn’t fully extinguish the show’s hopes of being a worthy heir to the Iron Throne…but it does dim them.

Episode 2 of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel is about King Viserys' awkward duty to remarry.

"And so your first duty is to the realm. "You are the king," she says. "I will speak of my brother as I wish," he says while villainously staring over the fire. Because that is the order of things." In order to save his finger, which the maesters have presumably been treating with cauterization (fire), the King's medical help submerge his hand in a bowl full of maggots. "My father named me Princess of Dragonstone," she says as she confronts her uncle, "that is my castle you're living in." "Is that what your father told you to say?" (Valyria is a region in Westeros, for those struggling to keep up with the lore.) In episode 1, we were introduced not only to King Viserys, Prince Daemon and Princess Rhaenyra, but also Hand of the King Otto Hightower, his daughter Alicent, and the "Sea Snake" Lord Corlys Velaryon. "The King's own brother has been allowed to seize Dragonstone and fortify it with an army of his Gold Cloaks. "Sea Snake" Lord Corlys Velaryon has been complaining loudly to the Small Council about "the Triarchy," an alliance between the Free Cities of Myrs, Lys and Tyrosh. [House of the Dragon's premiere episode](/culture/entertainment/house-of-the-dragon-recap-the-heirs-of-the-dragon/), King Viserys declared his daughter, Princess Rhaenyra, the heir to the throne.

At the end of the strong opening episode to this Game Of Thrones spin-off, everything seemed to be unusually hunky dory for Westeros. Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly ...

After storming out of council when the king announces his plans to marry Alicent, Lord Corlys retreats to his home on Driftmark and invites Daemon to visit. Given that the wedding seems to be news to Mysaria, and that she isn’t pregnant, this is acting out on a royal scale. Smith, meanwhile, is great at the sort of sudden turn that Daemon does, arguing for his rights one minute and flipping over the disputed egg the next, apparently on a whim. Sure, he’s offended his brother, his niece, and his girlfriend, but Daemon knows when to cut his losses and wait for the next chance for mischief. Ifans does a lot with very little in this episode, showing a wariness of Rhaenyra, an iron fist with Alicent, and a delicate sense of what will sway the king. Watch the early scene where he talks of the wisdom of a match between Viserys and Laena, but bemoans the “pain” of marrying for duty that the king must bear. [Wheel Of Time](/articles/the-wheel-of-time-premiere-review-episode-1-3) for example, because it’s one thing to conceive of dragons but another to conceive of sexual equality. She’s the king’s first cousin once removed, so continues the Targaryen tradition of intermarriage; she is also the daughter of his oldest ally, House Velaryon, and marrying her would show that the two old Valyrian houses are as tight as ever. The problem is not simply that he’s marrying Alicent – though marrying your daughter’s bestie is simply not a good look. This seaside carnage is the first sign we’ve seen of the large-scale massacre we’re accustomed to in Westeros; if last week was all about the carefully limited violence of the joust and the all-too-real dangers of childbirth, here the scope widens to whole battlefields of victims at once. That rift is torn wider by the episode’s main plot: the question of the king’s remarriage. A mysterious figure, he fires on Westerosi ships and stakes out his victims on the shore at low tide to be devoured by Westeros’ apparently vicious crustacean inhabitants (I suppose it makes sense that even the crabs are cursed with an insatiable bloodlust there).

In the second episode of HBO's 'Game of Thrones' prequel, Daemon makes a play, Rhaenyra wins the day, and Viserys gets the final say.

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