'House of the Dragon' episode 8: A family dinner becomes a last supper
You'd be forgiven for assuming that last week's climactic confrontation between Alicent and Rhaenyra was the last straw, the triggering point, the singular event from which there was no coming back, the moment that finally touched off the ruinous dragon-on-dragon war that's been so long in coming.
After all, accusations were made! Knives (well, a dagger, anyway) came out! Blood was drawn! Both sides returned to their respective corners to nurse their wounds and their grudges until they festered and suppurated.
Back on Game of Thrones, a show about disparate, scattered clans battling for supremacy, that might be the case. But House of the Dragon is about a single clan. A family.
And "family," as everyone knows, means: "Guys can we please pretend that we can stand each other long enough to get through one lousy meal?"
Ask anyone who's spent an interminable Thanksgiving dinner pretending not to hear the stream of racist invective burbling out of drunk Uncle Darryl, grinning too fiercely at Aunt Sherri as she sanctimoniously interrogates any life choice that does not match the precise ones she has made, and ignoring cousin Steve-O's earnest entreaties to fund his bold multilevel initiative to market a line of bodybuilding supplements that the FDA is "too soyboy cuck" to make legal in the United States and its territories.
You grin, you bear it, you wait until Gramma and Grampa excuse themselves to bed. That's when you uncork the evening's ninth bottle of wine — and the year's worth of bottled-up resentments with which it pairs no nicely.
You know: Family. That's why this episode depicts one last doomed, smiling-though-gritted-teeth attempt to smooth things over — or at least, to be publicly seen as trying to do so.
Just give Rhaenys the damn crown already
Open on: The Driftwood Throne, on the island of Driftmark, seat of House Velaryon. It's been six years since Laenor Velaryon faked his death and sailed away to Fantasy P-Town. His father, the Sea Snake Corlys Velaryon, has dealt with his grief by taking to the sea and successfully conquering the Stepstones. (Finally!) But word has now reached Driftmark that Corlys is suffering a fever from a nasty battle wound, and is headed home to receive care. The prognosis is not good.
Corlys' younger brother Vaemond knows that Corlys wants Driftmark to pass through his son Laenor and his wife Rhaenyra to their second son, Luke (their oldest son Jace is still officially the heir to the Iron Throne, remember). But Vaemond also knows that since Luke is not a true Velaryon but instead a "pup of House Strong," this would effectively end the Velaryon bloodline. He insists that he himself should inherit the Driftwood Throne instead, and feels strongly that the Queen will agree with him. "The winds are changing," he says.
You'd think a sailor like him would be better at reading the prevailing conditions.
On the nearby island of Dragonstone, seat of House Targaryen, Daemon discovers that his wife Rhaenyra's dragon Syrax has laid three new eggs. We will of course not add these adorable li'l yolklings to the official Dragoncount until they hatch, but we will note that the Foley artists and prop people are doing everything they can to establish that a clutch of dragon eggs is a gross and squelchy thing.
We meet teenage Jace, who's a bit of a try-hard; he's doing his level best to learn Old Valyrian, but it's almost as if his mouth was not shaped to pronounce it correctly, if you can imagine. Damnedest thing.
Daemon and Rhaenyra worry about Vaemond's petition to the Iron Throne, and wonder if Rhaenys will back him, because her true allegiance is a mystery. On the one hand, she believes Daemon and Rhaenyra killed her son Laenor, yet she's also accepted Daemon's daughter Baela as her ward.
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