Season 3, Episode 4
Daemon Targaryen is a hard man. He has left a trail of dead enemies across the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and done it with a smirk on his face. His preferred tactic of negotiation is “take it or leave it.” It is exceedingly rare for him to display any negative emotion at all that doesn’t end in violence or its implied threat.
It’s with this Daemon in mind that we watch him encounter his daughter Rhaena in the wilds of the Vale. Daemon’s dragon, Caraxes, leads him right to the cave where Rhaena’s own dragon, Sheepstealer, has made its lair. Sheepstealer’s disastrous rampage through the Battle of the Gullet helped drive Queen Rhaenyra’s son Jace to his death, and she wants its rider brought to justice. Now Daemon knows the horrible truth: To avenge Rhaenyra’s child, he would have to sacrifice his own.
“No,” he gasps, doubling over. The reaction staggered me nearly as much as the revelation staggers the Rogue Prince. He has displayed a devil-may-care attitude all season long, but it turns out the devil does care after all. Rhaena demands that her father prove his love by leaving her to live out her life as an exile, rather than report her to the queen.
Daemon flies back to King’s Landing and drops the dragon-roasted severed head of a shepherd on the meeting table of the small council, claiming falsely to have found and killed Sheepstealer’s rider. The sight of the head brings back the dull roar in Rhaenyra’s own. She is furious she didn’t have the chance to face the man herself. Her mistress of whisperers, Mysaria, is skeptical it’s even the right person’s head … but as a champion of the small folk, Mysaria distrusts her ex-boyfriend Daemon on almost everything.
While those two snipe, Rhaenyra works to fill other seats at the small council. She appoints the gregarious nobleman Ser Torrhen Manderly (Dan Fogler) to be her master of coin, primarily so there will be a scapegoat when the money runs dry. She allows Grand Maester Orwyle to retain his position, provided he remains loyal. The hand of the king, Lord Corlys, leaves the city to fight the Triarchy’s pirate raiders, angered by Rhaenyra’s refusal to legitimize his sons. But he leaves one of them, Alyn of Hull, to serve in his place.
Corlys is not the only key ally who feels alienated. Ser Ulf White, one of her newly knighted dragon riders, petitions her for various lavish gifts for his drinking buddies. “Allies,” he says. “From a tavern I frequent … ed. Frequented. Previously.” The actor Tom Bennett has a blast with this Monty Python-like peasant dialogue, but Rhaenyra is less amused. I really, really hope Rhaenyra can hear the anger behind Ulf’s faux-friendly tone after she shoots down his requests and forbids him from ever returning to the tavern. (When he reports sightings of anti-Rhaenyra graffiti to her, I suspect his sympathies lie with the vandals.) But Targaryens tend not to face reality until it’s holding them at knife point.
That’s certainly the case with Aegon. He and Larys Strong visit the corpse of his dragon, Sunfyre the Golden, who is golden no longer. Against all evidence, Aegon insists that the beast is still alive. Is he right? He rarely is! From a storytelling perspective, however, it’s hard to see the show placing a potentially still-alive dragon on the mantel without firing it by the final act.
Either way, the two move on to the ruins of Rook’s Rest, where the garrisoned troops left behind by Aegon’s hand, Ser Criston, rule the place as their private fief. A tyrannical soldier named Janos (Oliver Coopersmith) puts Aegon on latrine duty, then forces him to kiss his filth-encrusted boots. It takes a steel blade and a lip lock with human waste to make Aegon realize that in the war-ravaged reality his own ego helped create, even kings must sometimes kneel.
Far away, Ser Criston reaches the dragon-scorched Harrenhal, only to discover that Prince Aemond has vanished with Vhagar, their air support. Ignoring his comrade Ser Gwayne Hightower, who advises that they hurry south to join House Hightower’s army in Tumbleton, Criston decrees that they will instead wage guerrilla war on Rhaenyra’s much larger host of Rivermen and Northmen. It’s the only way they can keep their honor, he insists — maybe the most unconvincing thing anyone says in this episode, which with this pack of serial liars is no mean feat.
Speaking of liars, let’s talk about Lord Ormund Hightower. We get our clearest look at Alicent’s insufferable cousin yet in this episode — very literally so, when the swaggering snob gets out of the bathtub naked to confront the lord and lady of Tumbleton.
Hightower’s men have taken over the town, billeting in people’s homes, including the one occupied by the family of Kat, wife of the dragon-rider Ser Hugh Hammer. When a soldier sexually assaults her, the resulting melee leaves her brother and sister-in-law injured.
Ormund plays the part of the firm but fair lord to a T. He has the soldier gelded and his arm broken, and he sends a maester to tend to the family’s wounds. His ward, Daeron Targaryen (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) — the real Daeron this time, whose hair seems to have been dyed red to preserve his anonymity — appears impressed.
But Daeron also knows enough about his adoptive father figure to shoo a cupbearer from the room when Ormund gets the bad news from Harrenhal: No one is coming to their aid. The ostentatiously religious Hightower explodes, screaming obscenities that would scandalize a septon while hacking at a table with his sword.
It isn’t clear whether what happens next is a change of plans or was the plan all along. (Orwyle discovers that Ormund never replied to his uncle Otto’s many letters, implying that the younger but higher-ranking Hightower may have had his own ideas about the war for some time.) Ordering Daeron to kill Kat’s brother for striking a soldier, Ormund says he plans to have Daeron installed as king. The boy has been raised as a Hightower, not a Targaryen; Ormund sees this as a chance to end a line of savages kept in power only by the fire-breathing abominations they ride into battle.
But Lord Hightower seems plenty happy to have Daeron’s abomination at his disposal. Despite his aversion to unpleasant odors, he doesn’t flinch when the beast burns the slain prisoner. “And now we begin,” he says as the flames crackle.
Disappointing male role models are a through line for this episode. Daeron is shocked at his mentor Ormund’s dishonorable conduct. Criston tells Gwayne his own father died of despair after falling out of favor with their capricious liege lord. Rhaena confronts Daemon about his neglectful parenting, which always made her feel like “the least” of his children. While Aegon is off nearly getting himself killed, Alicent discovers that his sister-wife, Helaena, is pregnant — presumably with another of his children.
The issue of difficult dads is addressed directly in a quietly touching scene between Alyn and Rhaenyra, as they gaze upon King Viserys’s scale model of Old Valyria. They bond over their similar experiences with their formidable, frustrating fathers.
But Rhaenyra seems just as impressed by the sailor’s suggestion to use cats to replace all the rat-catchers King Aegon killed. It’s an adorable little Easter egg — you may recall Arya Stark chasing a distant descendant of one of Alyn’s feline hires into the bowels of the castle in “Game of Thrones” — and a light moment in an episode where light is in short supply. Unless you count the fire in a dragon’s maw.
The post ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: Heavy Is the Head appeared first on New York Times.
