Warning: This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 3.
To be a Targaryen alive during House of the Dragon is, for the most part, to have a nuclear arsenal at your beck and call. Sometimes, all you need is the threat of dragons to keep things at bay, which is part of why characters like Rhaenys (Eve Best) and Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) are so reluctant to let them loose: They know unleashing their dragons as full-on weapons of war is like opening a can of worms, so they’re trying to prolong it as long as possible.
Rhaenyra and Alicent’s (Olivia Cooke) reunion at the end of Episode 3 paved the way for the inevitability of the destruction that war brings. But perhaps so did a confrontation between brothers on the same side—and a full-frontal nude scene that is as consequential as it was shocking.
While at a brothel, King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) runs into his younger brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) once again naked and curled up in Madam Sylvi’s (Michelle Bonnard) lap. Having just been convinced to stay put in King’s Landing by Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), he takes a couple of members of his Kingsguard out for a night at the brothel (and buys the bar a round), promising to take a squire to see Sylvi to relieve him of his virginity, before he runs into Aemond. Whether Aegon’s insecurity about who was truly in charge bubbled up or he fell into old habits to impress his knights (or a bit of both) is irrelevant. But Aemond is in a rare position of vulnerability, and Aegon can’t resist kicking someone when they appear to be down.
“Aemond the fierce!” Aegon says, laughing. “You have come so far, and, and yet, you still lie with your very first. What a fine, sweet thing.”
Aemond quickly recovers as he stands up, fully reveals himself to the men in the room (and the audience), and suggests that the squire can have Sylvi if he wants. He’s not wearing a single article of clothing (not even his eye patch). As he walks away, something in him seems to switch off. The fact that he’s naked makes him even less vulnerable than most people if they were in that position.
“He’s humiliated by his brother and all his crew, and it’s like this switch flips,” Mitchell told Vulture. “The madam is no more. All of these people in front of him? They mean nothing. He stands up, he owns it. ‘Yeah, I’m bulletproof. Anything you say, it will not work.’”
For fans watching, it was a reminder of Aegon’s lifetime of relentlessly bullying Aemond and may have justified anything Aemond does (or could do) next. But it’s a pure demonstration of Aegon’s shortsightedness: Why on earth would you taunt your kinslaying brother, who seems to know how to run a war council and who rides the biggest dragon in the world? Is it hubris, too much wine, or something else?
If Aegon is worried enough about Aemond seizing power that he stays put, how does he not think about what Aemond could do if they still reside in the same city? Nearly two centuries later, after the events of House of the Dragon, an exiled Viserys Targaryen (Harry Lloyd) would warn his sister Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) not to set off his temper and “wake the dragon.” It’s possible that by taking a cheap shot to humiliate Aemond, Aegon just did that to Aemond, someone who already thought he was better suited to rule and wields the most powerful weapon of them all.
House of the Dragon Season 2 has demonstrated that there’s more to Aemond than meets the surface. He might regret killing Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault) and his dragon Arrax at the end of last season, something he only revealed to Sylvi; Aemond also knows it was more of an accidental death caused by losing control of his dragon Vhagar. But the rest of Westeros is operating under the belief that Aemond is a cold-blooded killer who took out his nephew and said nephew’s young dragon—petty and deadly revenge for a slight when they were both kids.
Aemond’s public mask makes him seem cold and calculating. He grew up in a household with little affection and care for his family. A self-aware Alicent thinks him a monster when she tells Rhaenyra, “You know what Aemond is.” He’s a mirror of Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), a younger brother who thinks his older brother is unfit to rule; instead of shying away from the fact that his uncle wants him dead or being frightened by it, he embraces it by rolling a coin he found from his would-be assassins in his room over his knuckles. Mitchell’s performance, which leans into that psychotic nature and vulnerability, paints a portrait of someone we can hate and understand; he’s often one of the most compelling characters on the show.
It’s all armor, in a manner of speaking; a shield to survive growing up in the Red Keep with someone like Aegon Targaryen as your brother and a mother who despises you. But don’t let the lack of clothing on Aemond’s body as he walks away from his older brother laughing his ass off after an attempt to humiliate him, fool you.
Earlier in the episode, Aegon tries on Valyrian steel armor that once belonged to Aegon the Conqueror. His two newly appointed Kingsguard dutifully hype him up, noting that the armor is “worth more than a castle” and is a “sight to stir the passions”; he’s “Aegon the Conqueror reborn.” But you can see the insecurity and doubt creeping in as he tries it on; he is irritated by his hype squad, and it doesn’t take long for Larys to outmaneuver Aegon and convince him to stay put for now.
But in contrast, that armor—made of a material so strong due to its magical properties that regular fire alone cannot destroy it—is nothing compared to the one that Aemond donned. Spurned by his older brother and king, he stood tall and unabashed with a glint of something stirring in his sapphire eye in the candlelight. Of the two, I’d be more worried about the Targaryen brother wearing nothing at all.
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