'House of the Dragon' Season 2, Episode 6 Deep Dive | House of R
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Hello?

Welcome to House of R. This episode started with a Laris quote, and that's how you know Joanna's running the ship today. And also...

The pained moanings of an invalid in the background, and that's how you know my co-host, Mallory Rubin, is here. Hi, Mallory. How are you doing? Joe, when Orwell said his grace sleeps nine hours out of every ten, but he did open his eyes and speak, however briefly, was he speaking of Egon or of us doing this pod while riddled with COVID? Riddled with COVID.

Hello. Welcome to the House of R Season 2 Episode 6 Deep Dive House of the Dragon. I believe, what is the reference? Is this your flu game? Are you playing your flu game, Mallory? Look at you. Mallory has COVID. I have COVID. Mallory has COVID for the first time, so her COVID case is a doozy. But she is here. I am a mess. She is here. And we're really proud of her. And we tried...

To get her to skip this episode, I promise we did because we care about her health, but she is so dedicated to House of Arnast and the Dragon that she was like, I simply cannot. I simply cannot skip an episode. So here we are, a few days late, but we're here to bring you our deep dive, deep-ish dive of season two episode six. Thank you to everybody for waiting for us. Sorry for no fair pitches. You don't want to see us. You don't want to see it.

I don't. You know, we're like Grover Tully, just taking meager drink and trying our best, you know? Trying our best. It worked out fine for him, right? Where's a feather pillow when you need one? You know what I mean, Mallory? Okay.

Some programming reminders. Quick programming reminders. The Ringiverse live show is up on the feed. You can watch it. You can listen to it. You can watch us get COVID in real time. It's great. It exists there for you if you want to enjoy that. The Men's Edition crew is getting their animation on with Kite Man. Hell yeah! A Harley Quinn spinoff. Love that for all of us. And My Adventures with Superman Season 2.

The Midnight Boys of Pew Pew will be here with your Deadpool and Wolverine instant reaction podcast. Incredible. Also, they're going to San Diego.

Where surely there will be no COVID and they are going to be doing, they're going to be reacting to the Marvel panel and running around San Diego and having a great time. Steve has already had his COVID, so he will be all set. Steve is also here and also has COVID, but he's recovering quicker than we are. It's a trifecta of COVID on this podcast today. Arjuna is also here. He doesn't have COVID yet. He doesn't.

He definitely does. He's just waiting for his positive test. Okay. Arjuna definitely has COVID. But anyway. It's a truly grim week for the House of R. Here we are. We will be back with Talk the Thrones after episode seven, but it will not be in studio because I don't know if you heard, but we've got COVID. So CR Mal and I will be recording that from home, not from the studio. So...

I don't know if we're doing video for that, are we? I think we are. I think we are. Well, then you'll get to see us in all our comedy glory after... I'm going to bandage myself like Egon. Or maybe... Get a gold mask. You have suggested via text, maybe, yeah, the old Viserys season one ep eight mask. I might try that. Something to shield the... I did send you... I sent you a picture of me at one point mere days ago, and you did describe me as looking, quote, eerily lifeless. Yeah.

because I said I thought I looked like one of the 3D printed prosthetic people that they're making for House of the Dragon season two. Listen, this is just a long way of saying we're really going to try our best today. We love House of the Dragon. We love the bad babies. We love each other. We love talking about Thrones together. If we're not at our absolute best, we apologize. Please forgive us.

And that forgiveness can come in the shape of well wishes on social media platform of your choice. If you want to tweet at us, send us an Instagram message, find us on TikTok, blah, blah, blah. The ringer verse is everywhere on all social media platforms. If you want to follow the pod because you feel so sorry for us because we sound so pathetic. What a lovely time to do that. Follow the ringer verse, follow House of R.

Um, spoiler warning, of course, today is everything up through episode six of House of the Dragon season two. And then at the end of the pod, we will have a book spoiler section. And there's like a bunch of juicy stuff that we want to talk about in the book spoiler section. If our voices are still working by the time we get there.

There will be a book spoiler section on this podcast, and you will get a warning before we dive into that. So you'll have a chance to hop off the pod if you don't want that. HobbitsandDragons.gmail.com is always open and ready for your emails. You guys have been crushing it on the email front, so thank you so much for all of that. And we're doing a slightly different format today because Mallory is half dead, but more pertinently, half alive. We...

are not going to be going like scene by scene, line by line covering this episode. We're doing it sort of like character groupings. You're still going to get a healthier than us runtime on this podcast, but you know, it won't be every single second broken down. Yeah. If we tried to talk about every line and moment, like we usually did, every single piece of dialogue would take us as long as Viserys entering the throne room. It's,

Season one. We got an email. Speaking of Hobbits and Dragons, gmail.com. We got an email from our listener, Ben. We got several very... Thank you, Steve. We got several very kind well wishes. I wish you good fortune in the great war of COVID to come, etc. But our listener, Ben, said, just wanted to say if you had any delirious ramblings to share in your illness so that I could misinterpret them with realm-defining consequences. I'm all ears.

So we'll see if Milk of the Poppy kicks in a little later on if she starts pawing the air. And then we'll know. That's when the real good stuff's coming. Then our listener Kate, who's like an old school binge mode Harry Potter listener with her pal Brian, said,

They've been in this program together, I believe, if I'm understanding the email correctly. Been in this program together for a long time. Met and sort of bonded over Benjamin Harry Potter. It is like a foundational part of their friendship. And our House of R listeners, Ring of Earth listeners, Mint Edition listeners, all that sort of stuff. And I believe there's a parting of the ways coming because they're done with their program. And so she wanted to wish Brian well.

congratulations and good luck on the road ahead. The road leads ever on. How beautiful. Kate and Brian, thanks for listening. Congratulations to you both. You can still share that adventure, even in long distance. Mal and I are long distance pals. Journeys. Rings of power. You're doing well. Okay, let's go into this. I'm just doing kind of like loose word association now.

Is that going to make for a good podcast? You're like playing the greatest hits. You're like, stuff, vinyl, this is it. I actually did genuinely paw at the air like, was there a smear moments after your reference to... Great. Episode six, Small Folk, directed by Andri Parekh, who, uh...

I know best from his work on Succession. He directed America Decides, one of the most harrowing hours of television I've ever experienced in my life. Yeah. As well as won an Emmy for Hunting. Just a great Succession director. A cinematographer. Worked on Watchmen. Just a great get for House of the Dragon. Really, really good stuff.

And if you watch the House of Dragons build, they did a sort of breakdown of how they did the riot or spent a long time showing us how Olivia Cooke ran down some stairs. And some of these details of her getting hit in the face with the fish. With the fish.

Remarkable stuff. Yeah. But he was talking about how they put all these different cameras on her so that they didn't have to like cut that they could just capture her. That is classic succession house style where they would just like have multiple cameras going at once and the camera people would just be like running after. So like it's fun to rewatch this episode thinking about that sort of succession house style applied to something like House of the Dragon. And there is a shot in this episode.

of Alicent in the hallway outside of Aegon's room that was in all the trailers that I think is generally one of the best shots in all of Game of Thrones. It's just a beautiful framing situation. So I hope that Andrii comes back for future seasons. That would be great. Written by Eileen Shim. Who wrote our favorite episode of season one, episode eight. I mean...

Killer. That was clarifying for me, too, in terms of part of why I loved this episode so much. Obviously, episode eight of season one is Lord of the Tides. It's a very different episode, but so many of the things that we loved about it were those really intimate, private moments.

bedchamber, family dinner. You love a private bedchamber scene. What do you say in the dark when no one else is around kind of moment. So that felt like a clarifying connective tissue once I realized that she had written both of those great stuff. Do you think she had a kick when she was like, oh yeah, we're going back to the Seven Sisters, the Silent Sisters chamber. And then as we saw in the behind the scenes, they're like, not the candles again. No. No.

That was amazing. The candle stuff. I mean, the candle stuff was amazing. It always looks great. It looks incredible. It's a big difference between season one and season two. Season one, they did so much of the lighting was by like literal firelight. They had like actual like chandeliers of fire in the small council room and all the stuff like that. And this season, they're like, maybe we don't need to like

sweat in our costumes every day or like whatever. But they were replicating that season one Silent Sisters sort of like autopsy room. And so they had to bring all the candles back. And I feel like they were just like, this is why we don't do this shit anymore. This is why we don't light rooms entirely by candles anymore. Looks incredible. Looks amazing for like 15 seconds of screen time.

Opening credits. Mm-hmm. Finally. Welcome to the tapestry, Rook's Rest. Yeah. Great to see you. I have a question. How are you interpreting the black? So when the tapestry opening crawl was ending with the rat catchers...

The blood that was seeping towards the throne was a red pool. Now it's a black pool. And my initial idea was like, oh, that's because the main casualties at Rook's Rest were team black casualties. And then I remembered that canonically...

Dragonblood is black. Drogon's blood in Song of Ice and Fire is described as it's black and it smokes and hisses when it's spilled in the fighting pit. So do you think we're just looking at Dragonblood? Are we looking at Team Blackblood? Would we ever see Greenblood? What do you think of this tapestry moment? I took it as just a visual indicator that this was a moment of change.

Like this was the inflection point truly on the heels of the Sinby gets in. Can you identify the moment where things change and there is no going back that like, actually this is the moment where there might be other moments that you felt like you couldn't return from, but there actually is no returning from this in terms of the dance being here in full and what that will mean, not only for the realm, but for the Targaryen dynasty, et cetera. I think also just like the idea of like red and black, um,

As the Targaryen colors, like seeing both of those at play. And then of course, like fire and blood. I think it would have looked odd to try to convey fire as like an orange. So to get that kind of like ash and smoke, like the way the entire battlefield is just rendered like charcoal, gave me that kind of vibe as well. Like...

All of the above, I think. It would look great. Great to see Rook's Rest there. They got a lot of different images from Rook's Rest on there. That tapestry is going to be long by the end of House of the Dragon. I'm excited. Do you think we'll ever meet the tapestry weaver the way that they showed us A Song of Ice and Fire in Game of Thrones? It's distinctly possible. It seems like something maybe they won't be able to resist. Season four, we look forward. Okay, let us...

This is not a sentence, but an honor. Let's do our opening snapshot. Okay, so as you already indicated, this episode is written by the person who wrote our shared favorite episode of season one. This is an episode you really love. Tell us just a little bit more about that, Mallory. Yeah, I really, really enjoyed this episode. I think Egon and Lyra's

Alicent and Gawain, Aemond and Alicent, Daemon and Viserys in the dreams, Daemon and Alice out by the Weirwood, Rhaenyra and Mysaria. This was an episode built around a series of conversations and intimate moments and almost felt like vignettes between, as we talked about on Talk of the Thrones, these really deep,

deeply, deeply broken, lost people who have reached the point where they are finally able to say, either they'll admit to themselves, which is like, you know, in a case like Damon, right? Something that has to happen before he can ever admit it to anybody else. Or,

to another person. Like, I can't do this on my own. I don't know if I can do this at all. I need help from another person. Or like, maybe you could be the one to help me. I could be the one to help you. I am lost. It feels hopeless. How are we going to take another step? And

I thought that the fourth episode of the season of Rook's Rush was extraordinary. That's still my favorite episode of the season. But Thrones, when it's humming, when it's hitting that very particular, oh yeah, this can be the last bit of monoculture frequency, like,

it finds the balance on the scales between the, the substance and the spectacle. And so like this season is delivering that in a way that I find like reminiscent of, uh, what I love most about being in the world. And this episode felt like a necessary kind of like, uh,

We always, you made some lovely points about how there's no such thing as a filler episode. I think that's worth hitting again. And I certainly did not think that this episode was that, but I almost never feel that way about quieter episodes that are oriented around conversations or taking us inside of a character's perspective. Because if we understand what's driving a character, then we understand their arcs and we understand the story. And so this episode felt really essential.

to the overall flow of the season to me. And I also just thought the performances were lovely. So I really enjoyed it. How about you? I think it's really grown on me. I didn't dislike it when I first watched it. I think it's grown on me a bit since my initial viewing many weeks ago, whatever that was. It's just a few days ago, but it feels like a lifetime. A whole COVID ago. But I think I had a real issue with

Episode 5 was sort of the rockiest for me of the season. And again, it's not because there wasn't a battle or anything like that. You and I share that opinion that often I almost prefer the non-battle episodes anyway of Thrones or any given show. And so I think what I still feel about this episode is...

Is that I'm feeling a bit of the crush of eight episodes in a show where we got 10 episodes last season. And so occasionally I feel like I'm zipping around a lot. But when we have a second to stop and sit with a character, like we get a scene in this episode with Alan and Adam, which we're going to talk about.

I would love a little bit more time with them. You know what I mean? Like I, like that, that's a very quick scene and it's efficient and does a lot and tells me a lot, but I would just like to feel like I understand Alan, like a little bit more. And Adam, we learned a lot of him just like even through action in this episode, you know? So like, um, I, I, I think that that's a place where I'm like, I would love a little bit more room to breathe and,

Versus when we get to hang out in a weirwood courtyard with Damon and Alice, I'm having the best time. Or I think the Aegon-Laris exchange is my favorite of... And by exchange, I mean Aegon just moaning while listening to Laris monologue. Genuinely moving, yeah. I think it's my favorite thing that's happened this season. Just because it is so...

in line with, as we talked about in Talk of Thrones a bit, so in line with this core George R.R. Martin idea of the cripples, bastards, broken things. Absolutely. I actually agree with that completely. I think that the episode, the best scenes in the episode, that egg on Lyra scene, the Gwynne Allison scene, I'm sorry, Rhaenyra, they were so good. Everything was sea smoke, which obviously I fucking loved. Yeah.

That they elevate the entire experience. Revisiting the episode, you're right. There are... I mean, we take, you know, we break down our notes, but there are just a ton of scenes in the episode. A ton of scenes. And I think the call-out of the time we're getting with certain characters is a good one because...

It's been great to spend time with Alan and Adam so far. And obviously everything that happens with Adam and see smoke at the, at the end here is, is a huge propulsive step forward. But all of those moments with them, even though we've had a handful now have been oriented around the same thing, like Corliss. So yeah, we haven't had that like additional exposure to the rhythm of their life, et cetera. I think that's a, that's a really valid point. I, I,

I was so riveted by like that final stretch of the episode where those, and then some of the, some of the episodes scenes earlier in the episode that I enjoyed a lot as well, like Damon and Alice. I think also just that idea from Laris, another great Laris idea, the one you mentioned, obviously also my favorite of the episode and our shared favorite in the, in the Thrones verse for us. But that other one,

the enemy without may be fought with swords. The enemy within is more insidious. We had like talked about what that might be in reference to when we heard it in a trailer. And I liked the way that idea manifested in this episode as well. Like that theme that we've been talking about all season long. This is a war between teams, but it's in, it's always inside. It's inside of one family. It's now that we look, okay, it's not just team green versus team black. It's,

the deepening of and widening of the chasms inside of each faction. And then also, of course, like, Jo, I don't know if you know this, but conflict in the human heart is the only thing worth writing about. Wow. And that extra layer of meaning too, right? The enemy within, more insidious. Like, it feels very purposeful that...

amand is the character on the receiving end of a line like that oh yeah and i really loved the way that the episode explored the parallels once again and like unifying threads across the character sets because it's a difficult thing to show us how isolated and alone everybody seems while also reminding us of how their experience is really shared and then of course that's what makes it more potent like they can't

see that and use it as a bridge to each other. I think the mini coalition building that we see, you know, be it Alison Damon or Aegon and Larys or Massaria and Rhaenyra versus Aemon actively just breaking his coalition inside this episode. I think that's really a fascinating parallel. I said this on Talk of Thrones and I'll say it again. Like, I think sometimes the parallels that they draw on the show are like,

a little too cute. I don't feel great about Alison getting a cut on her arm in the exact same place that Rhaenyra got a cut on her arm. I just don't, I'm like, yeah, I get it. But some of these other parallels are really fascinating to, to see. And it almost feels like they're trying to construct this elaborate puzzle where, um,

In a way that Game of Thrones never did. I don't think that Game of Thrones was always thinking, how does this adventure with Arya and the Hound out in the Riverlands...

you know, coordinate with what's going on at King's Landing. Sometimes it did. At its best, it definitely did. You know, something like Kiss by Fire or whatever, an episode we love to talk about. But, like, I feel like Castle Dragon is sort of, like, always trying to create this interlocking puzzle of the human heart across different characters. And Aemon, as you call out, like, this idea of Aemon does...

Almost a little boy trying to pretend to be a leader. We're going to talk about that a bit more when we get to his scene. But like the fact that Allison calls out the young boy inside of him, the hurt young boy inside of him that's driving a lot of this.

Vengeance. The indignities of your youth. Yeah, is really key. They're all being driven by the indignities of their youth. Yeah, Laris, for sure. You know, like it's all over the place. And poor Helena's like, can you just let me stay in my room with my court guests? My sweet bug, stop singing. I would really appreciate it if I could just stay at home. Thank you. All right, let's go. I definitely hope that Helena next time Allison is like, would you like to go out? Says no. No.

I would prefer not to. I'm comfortable. I'm home in my athleisure with my bugs. Something came up. I actually can't make it tonight. Thanks for the invite. I'm so, so sorry. I couldn't make it. I just simply did not want to go. This season on Naughty at Island. When we were new, they spoiled me. They even gave me a phone. But then it's like I didn't exist.

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Steve, will you take us to the deep dive, please? In the bowels of a pleasure den. Ah!

How often did you hear that noise come out of yourself this last week? I haven't been able to muster that level of enthusiasm. Or diaphragm strength. My moans and wails have definitely been more like Egon weeping as he reaches for his milk of the poppy. More and more in that vein for sure. I gotta say...

We didn't know when we picked that sound cue for the deep dive that it would be the sustenance of life itself this season as we continue to wait for the return of Otto Hightower. Thank God we get to hear him for just a few words every episode. I miss him. Is he being beset at this very moment by Alan Beesbury? He's high, rise up. Every now and then we take people behind the curtains. Let's just share this one quick story, which is that

Every week Talk the Thrones ends. It's an hour long show. It's always going to be an hour. Every week it ends and I'm just immediately like, I have a panic attack about the 400 things I didn't say. And then we're like, we have a very calm conversation about how that's why we have the deep dive. But this time I turned to you and I said, you didn't mention the Beesbury shout out. Are you going to be okay for the next few days? I didn't know how long I was going to have to wait to get to talk about Alan Beesbury, but here we are. Bees hive.

Alan Beesbury, Lord Lyman Beesbury. Oh, man. Hot young grandson. I don't know what he looks like. He's never described in the book. But I hope they cast him. It would be great to see him. Bees. Bees. The bees hive is here. They want vengeance for their grandsire. As do we. But we're not going.

To the Reach. That's how we're going. We're going to the Westlands. We're going to see Jason Lannister. And this is, like I said, literally, I think last week, I'm like, are we gonna, are you gonna have any dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour? Like you keep talking about Jason Lannister. When are we going to see him? Here he is. And he rolls up to the Golden Tooth. His intro music is the Reigns of Castamere. Chill vibes. Yeah.

And he shows up with a lion and a cage. Remarkable. Wonderful, absolute nonsense tomfoolery from Jason Lannister here. The Reigns of Castamere, it's possible that people don't know The Reigns of Castamere is about Tywin Lannister and

House Reign. House Reign, that hasn't happened yet. House Reign still exists. Shout out Marty Reign, one member of the hapless pussy posse that helped start a riot this episode. But, you know, the fact that it's like a Lannister cue makes sense because it is eventually about a Lannister. Humphrey Lefford and his 500 fighting men at the Golden Tooth meet Jason Lannister, a lion, and I believe it is 8,000? 8,000?

Men that he's taking up to the Riverlands? Incredible. What is your favorite memory of Jason Lannister in season one of House of the Dragon? Tylan Lannister's twin, who we met a couple times in season one. It's a race between a few different ones. One of my top contenders is the one that you picked, so I'll leave that one for you. I do think that's the winner, but I'll... You can have it. Your COVID's way worse than mine. Take it. You can have it.

That's from episode five from season one. So I'll throw out like an episode, an episode. So we meet him in episode three, of course, during the hunt. And just that initial moment where he's just like all like the bravado and

The cockiness, the arrogance. I don't have a dragon, but I can build you one. And here's this honey wine. And oh, but oh, but oh. Gives Viserys his golden on Dixpear. I just get such a kick out of the moment when he goes up to Viserys and is like, what I offer you, the crown and your daughter, is strength in Viserys.

This is a stretch where he just is like getting increasingly annihilated. And he hates Jason Lannister. Do you think that House Targaryen wants for strength? And then Jason says, if someone offered you more dragons, would you not take them? And Viserys says, do you have dragons to offer?

It's the way... So that's iconic. It's so good. It's the way that Patty, in that moment as Viserys, is smiling the most poison drippy smile do you have dragons to offer? Like, it's just... He's like, I hate you so much. Yeah, the one from Rhaenyra's wedding banquet that Mal alluded to is when he walks up to the table, he's looking for Alicent. Alicent has yet to make her dramatic arrival in her green dress. And so he's like... And I...

You know, regrets I have a few in my life. And I will say I regret suggesting that maybe Jefferson Hall was someone we could possibly recast on the show. Let's just forget I ever said that. Because rewatching him as Jason in like these season one moments and contrasting that with his Thailand...

appearance it's just like he's doing such a good job embodying two very different people but his posture at Rhaenyra's wedding banquet in season one when he's just sort of like standing so he's got like sort of one hip out and he's like because he's like I've been sitting on this zinger and I can't wait to deliver it and he's like this is why men wage war because women would never be ready for the battle on time

And Rhaenyra's just like, I hate you. Viserys is like, I hate you. Your pleasure is always, your presence is always such a pleasure, Lord Jason. Oh my God. Go sit down. Anyway.

Jason Lannister is here with his slightly longer wig than Tylan Lannister, and that's how you can tell the difference between the two. Do you think knowing that her ancestors brought literal caged lions into battle had anything to do with Cersei's really, like, really strong yearning for an elephant from Golden Company? She was so disappointed. Yeah.

Where's my elephant? So disappointed. What's more embarrassing? Jason Lannister posturing about meeting a dragon or the little abs that have been molded onto his breastplate that he is wearing into battle. The armor is astonishing. Yeah.

It's wild stuff. I think my actually favorite little touch is that he seemed really unable to like comfortably sit his horse. That's just like a little thing that kind of tells you. I think this is a Jefferson Hall choice. I feel like Jason Lannister is unable to like stand like a normal human being stance. Like he's always just kind of trying to like angle his body in a way. Anyway, fantastic performance. I completely agree.

8,000 men, 1,000 knights, 7,000 archers, and men-at-arms. That's what he's packing on his way to the Riverlands. Daemon can't even get the Riverlords to agree on a time to meet. You know what I mean? It's just shambles in the Riverlands, and here comes the Lannister Force that we've been hearing about all season. A reminder of the state of play, right? So chaos in the Riverlands, chaos.

Jane Eyre not all that impressed with the dragons that Rhaenyra supplied. So is she going to supply any Knights of the Vale? It kind of seems like she's ready to send these kids and their painfully small dragons packing. Like that's, I don't know that Jane's going to make good on that deal. Who is to say, genuinely. Craig Stark, couple Thal, Greybeards on the March South with passage through the Twins. Thanks to Jace.

And everything is converging in the Riverlands where everything is just totally fine. Thanks. How are you? We're fine here. How are you?

What do you make of Jason sort of overplaying his hand here, asking Eamon for Vhagar? So from the Jason Lannister perspective, I made almost nothing of it just because it felt like the kind of thing that this completely arrogant idiot would say anything

without thinking about the consequences of like how he might offend a person of consequence and a person in a position of power, like power that, that tracked,

Perfectly for me. I guess the one thing from the Jason side is just like, obviously he's relying on Thailand, his twin, and his seat on the council to broker this arrangement and putting more stock in that than any weight in the insult or how this might be perceived. Jason Lannister, the older twin...

is the lord of Casterly Rock. And so it is his... It is his want to get whatever he believes he deserves on his time. He's rich. He thinks he's hot shit. Like, that all just felt right to me based on our limited time with him. Eamon's reception was the fascinating part. The crumbling of the paper. Not just, like...

Who does this guy think he is? But actual rage. Like, this sends him into...

A sequence where he is circling the high council table like a shark. Like he's prey or he's the predator and everyone else is his prey. The way that he like stops only long enough to perch, right? Like so that he can kind of hover above whoever he's trying to like intimidate or direct in a given moment. You know, I am the Prince Regent, not a dog to be called to heal, right?

We've talked about the start of the season, but that was exactly how Aegon referred to his brother at the beginning of the season. My brother at least knows his place. He's as loyal as a hound. I can set him and his dragon on my foes at will. And so Aemond resents Aegon.

He, on the one hand, I think prides himself on being considered the best dragon rider, the fiercest dragon rider, the best sword. But he resents only being seen as a tool and a weapon that other people can wield and deploy because he wants to also be seen as what he believes he is, which is the best leader, the person who is most adept to make the right decision, all of

All of which, once again, is just Damon. He's got the shiniest hair. How do people see you and what do you think you're really able to do? And why don't other people think you can do the other part of it well? He's like, my hair is shiny. I've studied history and philosophy. And philosophy, Jo. Like, he thought this feels like the thing he believed he was graduating out of. Right. Only being the summoned sword. Yeah. And I mean, similarly, if you think about it, like, Kristen Cole at Rick's Rest is

It was their plan, but it's like, sound the trumpet to call him into action. And he doesn't go then, right? Because he's like, oh, here's Aegon. But he's like, I'm not going to heed the call here in this very moment because I get to decide when my best friend, old lady dragon, and I go into battle. Not you, Kristen Cole. So this is the section we're calling Aemond and Nobody. Okay.

we'll be centering these sections on sort of people in their coalitions. We just talked about Jason and his lion. This is Aemon and nobody, which is sort of his goal by the end of, of when all is said and done here. He says, as you say, he says this thing, I'm, I'm the Prince Regent, not a dog to be called to heal. Tell your brother that if he does not deliver his host to Harrenhal with haste, Daemon's dragons will become the least of his worries. This is so close to what he saw Boris Baratheon say when Luke showed up

to Storm's End at the end of last season, Boros said, and tell your mother that the Lord of Storm's End is not some dog that she can whistle up at knee to set against her foes. And it got me thinking about this idea of Aemon sort of like putting on the posture of leadership that he has watched other older people. Because like Aegon, he was never actually trained for this. He is sort of self-taught in many ways, but no one was ever like, this is how you lead.

Right. So, but unlike Aegon who's like, well, then I'll just show up and do whatever. He's like, I will just study other, oh, self-teach. And I will copy-paste my demeanor from other people. And so, like, you've got that Boros Baratheon impression. I would say he's doing his best Daemon impression later when he says, my uncle's a challenge I welcome if he dares face me. Or that, like, shark-circling, looming predator behavior feels like classic Daemon to me. And then you and I were talking about on Talk of Thrones about how Lickspittles is used, like,

We heard him use it earlier when he was speaking Valyrian in the small council meeting to Aegon and embarrassing him. And we had fun with that because we're all like, what's Valyrian for Lickspittle? That's really fun. He uses it again here. We hear it in the Viserys flashback. And I thought that was a bug, but maybe it's a feature because maybe we're just like highlighting. That's a phrase that Viserys liked to use, whores and Lickspittles. And here we have Aemond's.

uh saying i have little patience for the self-important lord laris even less for flatterers and lick spittle so maybe like that double lick spittle in this episode which stuck out to me is maybe an intentional like here are the ways that amen is cloaking himself in his dad's behavior his uncle's behavior boris baratheon's behavior to sort of like is this is this how i lead i don't i don't know what is can we bring my grandfather back

That would be nice. So the Viserys Lixford will call it as a great one. I love the Boros observation too, because I like to think of Amon's as a character who is thoughtful. Like what you're identifying about his kind of studious nature to prepare himself, to ready himself, to position himself, to say to Kristen, like it is I.

But also that means you're observant. Like he pays attention in a way that Aegon couldn't be bothered to, etc. What's interesting about the Aemond we're seeing in this recent stretch, this episode certainly, last episode,

He's making bad decisions. Shutting the gates was a bad decision. Casting out people who are like, he says to Laris later in the episode that he doesn't, you know, he can't abide lick spittles, but everybody who's questioning him most actively in this scene, he's sending away. So what is it? Do you want people who are actually going to give you honest counsel or do you not want your decisions questioned?

modeling yourself consciously or otherwise after Boros Baratheon is insane. It's crazy. Like you watch that dipshit stand by and mishandle everything leading to the battle above Shipbreakers Bay. And the other comp that was on my mind in part because of the dog language, but I think in part because of the question of what you do once you finally have power. Like how is, Aemond is a character we think has like

observational tendencies and intellect and ability and patience. And even like we talked about at the beginning of the season, what was one of the differences between him and Damon? He was able to express remorse about Luke to Sylvie. Damon hasn't expressed remorse or contrition, et cetera. But things are shifting. Like, Eamon is feeling... We talked last week about whether Damon felt too, like,

one note in a way that we don't expect out of Damon in that episode, right? And I think we've moved now out of that. And this is, I think, kind of like Eamon's period of being a little bit more like, oh, no, you're just the bad guy. But what do we have to hold on to then? It's like the things that drove him there, which is why I really like the Alicent Eamon moment, which we'll get to. But that Tyrion's description of Joffrey, it's hard to put a leash on a dog once you've put a crown on its head. Like,

what we're watching with Amon right now. He wanted the power. He thought he would be best suited to it, but he isn't like he isn't. Yeah. And it's harder to, I mean, that's sort of the, like when we get back to Alison Damon, she's like, you're constantly trying to leave. Why don't you stay and try to rule? Ruling is different than conquering. Ruling is harder. And,

Yeah. Sorry. I got distracted by another Hamilton quote. We'll get back to a Hamilton reference later. I only need one. If I were to quote Dany, I will do what queens do. I will rule. Well, Dany or Buffy or Hamilton, my references abound. But this idea of fighting is one thing, ruling is harder. And Aemon and Daemon are consummate warriors and generals, but are they rulers? No. And Aemon going from like...

This spooky, shitty, but we feel sympathy for him sort of underdog figure, even after he killed Luke, to a character I don't really want to spend much time with, honestly. But that's just a for now, to your point. I think that's just a for now circumstance. So let's get through his firing, right? Okay, so he fires – well, he sends Tylan Lannister away.

Because Thailand... An important mission for Chris Ryan and Chris Ryan only. We're bringing the triarchy back. And a reminder for people who are listening who don't like Chris, think about the triarchy at all times.

The Triarchy are forces from Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh. And the Battle of the Stepstones, that you remember from Season 1, was Daemon and Corlys and Laenor and Seasmoke and maybe Rhaenys, who's to say, trying to keep them from getting a tollhold on islands too close to Westeros. So the Triarchy have no reason to think favorably of Team Black, right? Because it's Daemon and Corlys who beat the Triarchy back in Season 1. So Aemon is right...

And I think Otto mentioned the triarchy earlier as well. Like they're right to be like, okay, here's our navy. It's far away. But here's the triarchy right here. So they're right to be thinking about that. But then the other characters are also right to be like, these are pirates, literal pirates. Do we want to make allies with literal pirates? I'm not sure. That's the move. Yeah.

We also get a red Kraken mention, our second or third of the season. House Greyjoy, we await your arrival. Anything else you want to say about Thailand, the triarchy, or anything that happens here? On the red Kraken front, obviously, I want to talk about the Iron Rod marriage suggestion, but we'll hit that when we get to Alicent. I think I'm good on the triarchy. Unlike Chris, I think I'm good on the triarchy.

What do you want to say about what happens to Kristen Cole here? I really liked this Kristen episode. Yeah. I really did. That look that passes between Kristen and Allison in the courtyard in the Gawain scene.

like shattered me. It really, I was really affected by it in a way that kind of shocked me. But here in this council scene, Kristen is just on the opposite side of the argument from where he was just a couple of weeks ago, which is fascinating because if we're thinking again about this, it's like an episode where we were watching, um,

characters confront their own perspective or that perspective slightly evolve, then this actually feels like an important one for Kristen. Because he was the one a couple weeks ago, like, speed is my ally. And Allison was like so impatient to ride with so few men, so like to be destroyed by the first stronghold you meet. A bold scheme indeed. And what was Kristen's response to that? Well, the gods favor the bold.

They did not favor Sir R.X. Still a great comeback from Alice up there. That was wild. And she was right. And now he's the one who's like, please do not send me to Harrenhal. I do not have the man. We need time. I loved. We need time. We need time. We need to heal. Like we see the soldiers walking behind Alice in the Dwayne scene and they just have like

head wounds still and they're about to march out back to war. Gawain's face is still, it almost looks, it's not sooty, it's bruised, but it almost looks like he still has soot on his face from Rook's rest. Yeah, yeah. And I loved the little moment too where, because in episode five we talked a lot about how like Kristen couldn't make eye contact with people. He was like, I couldn't say even though he could, he just chose not to. But this was like a tiny step forward in terms of him being

challenging what Amand is saying and what Kristen knows is wrong. And even just a little moment where he was like, we lost Sodom and as you well know, like the indictment that was smuggled into that, as you well know now, like,

None of that, to be clear, absolves Kristen of his role in any of this. But that's true for every character who's made a series of mistakes. And I think that like that that it's too late idea feels like like one of the core like theses of the season. And so like I'm interested in continuing to track whether which characters have moments where they're like, does it have to be?

Like, does it have to be, you know? And even like with Alison later when she says, I'm sorry, like to egg on, I was like, does she think maybe it doesn't have to be too late for her and egg on? How interesting, you know? So it was interesting stuff from Chris Ryan's favorite character, Kristen Cole. I love that you brought that up because there's this one line that really stuck out to me when Alison says,

uh says goodbye to gwayne in the courtyard right and he says you get on with it don't you when there isn't any choice which feels he's talking about what it was like to grow up eight years old and motherless um without his father or his sister etc he says you get on with it don't you when there is any choice but it also just feels very much like

You get back on your horse still sporting the bruises from the last battle when you're called to do battle again. You know, we already had a battle episode this season and I survived it. You're going to send me into another battle episode. Are you kidding me? That's sort of what's going on. The last thing I wanted to say about Kristen, in case I forget later when we talk about the Amon's

Laris hand scene is just how sad it is that Kristen is riding off with his hand of the king chain and everybody back at the Red Keep is like, who should be hand now? Kristen's just like, it's down to me. Riding off in his hand regalia. It's again, like quite, I still have all this jewelry. Quite pathetic and sad. Okay. Alison Hightower. So we've sent Tylan on an errand. Kristen,

Off to get fucked in the Riverlands, essentially. And Alison Hightower, who refuses to be political chattel, right? You want to talk about Jasper's marriage offer here? I despise this guy. It's the worst. Kristen Cole is actually no longer the worst person in Westeros. I actually think it's Jasper. It's a tough...

tough call between Ironrod and Sir Alfred of like who has said the most outrageous things in council meetings this season. We were spared Alfred this episode. Yeah. But Ironrod just being like you know if the Red Kraken doesn't like come of his own accord we could just like we could tempt him with some honey. How about offer a marriage to the Dowager Queen? She's just like fuck off. She's like remember when I said I would send you to the wall? I will send you to the wall.

This is appalling. Yeah. This made us think of Cersei. Cersei and Loras in the Game of Thrones TV show. Tywin says it's one of the best scenes genuinely of all time. And like CR was telling us that he recently has like come across some like Tywin Lannister edits. And he's like, hey, was Tywin Lannister a really great character? And we're like, yes, he was the best.

But some of that like Tywin Tyrion Cersei shit from like seasons three and four stuff like that is so good. But when he says, you'll marry Sir Loras to Cersei, right after Cersei was like in the middle of gloating about them marrying Tyrion off. And she says, I'm queen regent, not some broodmare. And then she says, father, don't make me do it again. Yeah.

Please. I always felt so, I mean, Lena Headey was always so good at Cersei, but I always felt so much for Cersei in that moment. It was just sort of like, I was already chattel, a political pawn. You made me marry Robert Baratheon. Really sucked for me. I worked my way up the corporate ladder to basically like quasi running things. And now you're just putting you right back down at the bottom because of my gender. That's what happens to me.

In Storm of Swords, Tywin has a bunch of ideas about who Cersei should marry. There's just like a ton of people. One of them is Baelon Greyjoy. You know, so the Greyjoys. Or Theon Greyjoy. He's like, Baelon? Theon? I don't know. One of those. Doesn't matter. Oh, man. I think that's so interesting. And also, especially, I think, coupled with...

The nature of like how I mean, we'll get to all of the particulars of the Ament Allison scene, but the specifically kind of like gendered nature of the I'm sure you'll be much pleased to return to more domestic pursuits just in general for Allison. Like she made her play to be regent and they denied her. And then what is what comes after that?

you're a bargaining chip to be married off to a house that can help us gain strength. And so, of course, it's yet another thing that I think also reminds us of, and crucially, I think reminds Alicent of her own history and of Rhaenyra. And I was thinking a lot then about season one, episode four, because...

That's both where Rhaenyra and Daemon have those really interesting conversations about marriage. Daemon's saying marriage is only a political arrangement. Once you're wed, you can do as you like. And Rhaenyra says, for men, marriage might be a political arrangement. For women, it is like to be a death sentence. And there's that scene in that episode where...

Allison and Rhaenyra are sitting on the bench, you know, and kind of like reconnecting. And it's a real like the grass is always greener thing because Rhaenyra found the like marriage toward deplorable and doesn't like being like trotted out like a piece of meat. And Allison's like, you get to choose.

Like, you get to choose. You know, that's not something that she's ever gotten to do. And so, like, to have done all this and made it through all this and lived her life, sometimes through pure belief, sometimes it's that cloak of righteousness that Rhaenyra calls her out on in the first season, but believing the duty was the guide. And, like, to get to this point and then just say, do it again now. Right. We have to think about Rhaenys talking about her building a window in her prison and, like, that Alicent mistook

that window for a view that would like that window for her being outside. Like that shot of Alison in the hallway in silhouette with these bars around her. And because of the way that they've done the design on King's landing with the cross hatching on the windows, like people often look like they're inside of cages inside of King's landing whenever they're standing in front of a window or something like that. But, um,

You can compare that shot of her in the dark with bars around her to Rhaenyra on the balcony ledge of Dragonstone with the wide open horizon in front of her. It's a very similar sort of composition, but it's just sort of like Rhaenyra has so much in front of her. And yet what is also still true of Rhaenyra is...

Is that there are limitations of that because she's standing there in front of that wide open horizon thinking about all the ways in which she feels like she's not allowed to do the things that Damon's allowed to do. And that's just also true. And like, so Damon will get into like,

Rhaenyra and her gender expression a bit later, but that conversation with Daemon of like marriage is a political act and then you can do whatever you want. She's like, yeah, for dudes. Well, what did Rhaenyra do actually? She fucked Harwin Strong because she wanted to. And if she had been and done that, it wouldn't have mattered. It wouldn't have been a woman's nightmare. Which is what she said to Viserys. Yeah, it wouldn't have mattered at all. If I were a guy, I could do this. We're seeing all these...

you know, all these, uh,

targeting bastards all across the, you know, and Chris brought this up. We talked about this a little bit when Allison was taking the moon tea, but yeah, just this idea of like, anytime that Rhaenyra has tried to do what the guys would do, there are just inherent things in place, be they biological or otherwise that are just sort of, you know, when she's lactating at small council table, there's just like stuff in place that is putting her in a cage. Even if the bars in her cage are much bigger than the bars on Allison's cage. Um,

Let's get to that. So Eamon fires his mom from a position that, to be clear, she created for herself. There is no actual title. She does have her own little ball that she got made. I would be so much prouder of Allison for the fact that she just made up her own job on the small council if she hadn't felt like she had to edge Rhaenyra out in order to do so. It's complicated. I can't say, like, yes, girl boss, you're way at the top when, like,

uh alice is doing this other shit but let's hear sort of the exact language of this exchange please steve you serve the realm well at a time of need that need is ended you are no longer obliged it's not a matter of obligation this council is need of a tempering voice more than enough of those if you ask me you have the impetuousness of youth and its arrogance neither of which is to be desired of your seat such as it was sure you'll be much pleased to return to more domestic pursuits

I love that this closes with you have the gratitude of the crown, which is so like, I'm not even your son in this moment. I'm the crown, you know?

And, you know, we've heard Rhaenyra say, like, I am the crown. Like, that is... Fuck your cinnamons and your oranges. I am the crown. I am the crown. This is just so well done and also just so horrible to watch. So fucking condescending and terrible. And then Alyson just saying the exact truthful thing at the exact wrong time as is her want. Did you draw a comparison between her sort of grabbing Aemon's face and...

and Rayneese sort of grabbing at Alan's face. I couldn't think of like a thematic reason why that would be a cop, but I just like, it's just something I would, I have never done. Touched a person's face? No, I've touched a person's face, but not like grabbed at their face without like, you know. Cupped a cheek in a very intense emotional moment of... Like...

There are like urgency. There are times to do that. And I would just say a business meeting where I'm getting fired by my own kid is not one of them. Nor necessarily is like confronting your husband's bastard. I don't know. I'm just not, I'm just not touching people's faces like that. It's just not a move for me.

Um, I did not, I did not draw a parallel between those. So that's interesting. I just, to me, this was like, I think we're seeing, you know, obviously we, we're going to talk about the conversation about Darren that Allison and Gawain have, which was incredible. He plays, he plays the loot, Mallory. He plays the loot. I just, I just, I need Darren. I need Darren in the story now. Yeah.

Allison is confronting who her other sons are and her role in that. And there were these moments of like...

her holding Aegon's hand as he heals and saying, I'm sorry, or reaching out and cupping Aemon's face. What's interesting about all of that to me is with Alicent, there are always these dualities, right? Because on the one hand, I took the cupping of the face as just a motherly, a show of affection and closeness that Aemon has longed for and not gotten, but it's coming too late. If I were Aemon-ed,

If I were Eamon, I would say like, do you want me to feel okay? Do you want to know how I'm processing my childhood or are you just trying to save your job? Why is this the moment we're having this conversation? If you're Egon and you can, and through your fog of burns and broken bones and poppy milk, you can tell or know that she's telling you she's sorry and feel her holding your hand. I'm sure there's a part of you that is like deeply touched and that's all he's wanted too, right? Do you love me, mother? Yeah.

But, like, did that have to come after he was nearly killed by dragon fire? So all of that is fascinating. I thought, like, okay, I'm going to blame COVID brain for not remembering if this was on the Inside the Episode or House the Dragons built, but it was in one of them, I think, and it had to be in one of them. I believe Condal said, like, he was...

Basically, like this isn't really personal for Amon. He's like doing it because Allison, he actually doesn't think this is like a job. Like there's nothing. I'm like very badly paraphrasing. That was the inside the episode. Yeah.

The comment from the inside of the episode. And I was like, okay, I wanted to ask you about that line that I can't remember properly quote because I'm barely hanging on to this mortal coil. Because I was like really struck by that. That was so not my read on it. And then... But I mean, obviously that doesn't... Who are we to argue with the showrunner? I just...

I disagree. I disagree, actually. I think sometimes Condalyn Sarah Hess and plenty of other showrunners say things where I'm like, that's actually just not at all

You know, I don't fully believe in death of the author, but I'm just sort of like, I don't think that makes sense from my understanding of who Eamon is. And like, I don't, I choose, it is a person. Of course it is. How could it not be? And I think what's it, because the story that we're watching with Eamon and they also, everybody has said as much about like what happened with Rook's dress is like the commentary inside the episode about that was like, don't fuck over Eamon.

Eamon Targaryen. Don't laugh at him. Let that be the lesson. Yeah. And so we have seen Luke, Aegon, Alicent, obviously in a less like violent and morally perilous way, but in an emotional and spiritual, this is like an emotional, mental, spiritual attack, right? Like this is an attack on her sense of purpose. That's,

That's horrible too. That's more insidious in some ways. And so the fact that he walked into that council meeting at the beginning of the season and she said, you don't have a seat here. It's just impossible, I think, to not view this as his revenge for that. But what that did then make me think of was like,

If that's in part true, I don't think we can separate what Eamon thinks Allison has done to him from what he is doing to her. It feels impossible to me. But if he also, in addition to that, let's say, is like, what do you do here exactly? Which I think would be like in a way that's almost more galling.

If it's just a quest for petty vengeance, then it's personal. But if he doesn't think she has anything to contribute right now, he's like, yeah, you did it. You helped dad. You helped that guy. You did a great job. I don't need you. No more tempering voices. We have enough of those. For Allison, that would almost be more of a crisis. It's not just that my son is mad at me. It's like,

He doesn't think I can help. What am I going to do now? Right? Like, what have... We think back to An Eye for an Eye, Driftmark, episode seven, season one. What have I done but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law, while you flout it all to do as you please to Rhaenyra. Where is duty? Where is sacrifice? This is how Alicent has seen her life. What did she say to Otto in the season one? Under her pretty face. Under your pretty face. You always skip the pretty face.

I feel like it's important. On Laris' behalf. What did she say to Otto in the penultimate episode of season one when he was like, if that's true, then I made you the queen of the seven kingdoms. Would you have desired it otherwise? How could I know? And so she's like confronting basically the truth and lies that have defined her entire life. And for the people, like a person that

her father in that season one, episode nine conversation. Rhaenyra in season one, episode seven, her dearest friend, her son, Aemon. Like, could there be people in the world who could hurt you more by saying these things to you? And that's part of why I'm really excited to talk about the Gawain scene because like,

I had this fascinating response where my heart was broken for Allison and I felt really proud of her for asking these questions finally. Like, really proud of her. And then also, you can't, you of course kind of can't let go of the like, well, what is your own culpability in having gotten here? But that's like what makes the show so interesting and the characters so interesting. And we were talking about exactly that last week, I think it was, where we were just talking about how like inside of a scene you could feel empathy. Yeah,

similar to what we were just talking about. It's why Cersei was one of my favorite characters because like the characters where you have, where they have to work for you to feel empathy for them. And then you do, I think that's one of the most profound things that fiction can do, right? Fiction is an empathy machine. And so to engender empathy in you for characters who do things that you wildly disagree with, but you're like at the core, there's something in you that,

that is identifiable and human. And I have felt it in me and I have made different choices, but I felt that in me. And, and so then all of a sudden you can see the world from, you know, their point of view. And that's a fascinating, that's like why we like stories, why we are people or stuff like that for Alison specifically, like this confrontation with Amon's very specifically, um,

Is a nice payoff for a couple of lines we've noted throughout the season where she's like, well, you know what Eamon is. Or somehow Eamon became this way. Somehow Palpatine. Somehow I raise an absolute sociopath. Who knows how that happened? And to your point about these like physical touch moments, all the moments in which she has deprived them of physical touch. Again, I feel empathy for her because she was like,

teenage bride and a teenage mom and like did not want these kids and like all this sort of stuff like that so like I can feel empathy for her but like if we think about Aegon crying and her walking in and then just sort of walking right back out because she doesn't want to deal with it perhaps if she had like hugged him then

she wouldn't have to like hold his melty hands later and say, I'm sorry, you know? And that's when it is, as she said to Rhaenyra in the Sept too late, too late. Totally. Yeah. Like I was thinking of Amon saying to Kristen in the season two premiere, she blames me for starting this war after she plotted with my father's council to usurp his throne. And that's true.

It is like Allison sat at that at the Green Council table was like, you guys were doing this without me. But she still pushed because of a misinterpretation or not for Egon to take over to push Rhaenyra aside. Yes, she tried to save her life, but everybody knew what was going to happen after that. Did Aemond kill Luke? He did.

Did he do that because of his own foolish hubris? He did. Are all of these characters to blame? They are. But from his perspective, he's like, she is casting me as the instigator and the villain. Was there a moment, like we talked about this at the beginning of the season, how we were interested in the omission of the fire and blood, like,

That scene where Allison and Otto, when, when Amon goes back, they're like, yeah, what, how could you have been like, you only lost one eye. How could you have been so blind? Yeah. And I think part of why I really wish we had, whether it was that version or something else, just seeing that immediate response is because I really wonder if Amon was right away, like, okay, let's go like armors on. Or if there was an opportunity, like a moment for his mother to say, okay,

Not like full auto, oh, the Caprice of youth, but like, let me give you a hug. This sounds like really bad. Let's figure it out. It's going to be okay. Like I'm on your side. They don't feel it. They never, this is again, like the enemy within, right? The coalition. The people who are nominally on the same team never feel like anyone's on their side. Like how can you, nobody, it's again, like I quoted this last week, I think, but the Jorah Dany idea, like nobody can survive in this world without help. Like,

The people who are most inclined to say, I'm good, I don't need anything. I need nothing. Damon. Yeah. Amon. Like, they need help just like everybody else. All the characters do, but none of them feel like they have it. This story's deeply, deeply tragic. In all of King's Landing, is there no one to take my side? That Alison to Laris line that we like to talk about, right? And it is what...

All these other characters that we'll go on to talk about Laris and Misaria and Alice are offering to these people who are floundering where it's just sort of like Laris is like, they're going to laugh at you. Not me. I'm here and I get it.

All right. Let us talk about, I've labeled this section of the King's Landing conspiracy, but I might want to change it to like Masaria's angels, right? We've got Diana, Alinda in absentia, and Sylvie as this like trifecta of agents working for Masaria to spread misinformation. Okay.

And Ulf, their sort of like guileless recipient of their machinations. Roth's a little thin. I love this. He's like, my bowl of brown. There's not enough brown on my bowl of brown. Like, what is this? I loved this so much. I loved that they're using Sylvie for this. We did get, I had a back and forth with one of our listeners over email that they were sort of pushing back on this idea that we brought up on Talk of Thrones about like Sylvie feeling it all like,

jilted by Eamon, but I don't think jilted is at all the concept. This is a very cordial exchange of, uh, uh, ideas that I had with our listener, but like, I don't think jilted is at all what we were like going for. It's almost like, cause I don't think Sylvia actually like cares about Eamon at the end of the day. Really? Um,

I think it was more like there is a possibility for like an, like a fronted, right? Like even if you're, even if it's just a job and you're not thinking about like something like that emotionally, like having worked retail, I can still be pissed at a customer who disrespects me. You know what I mean? Even if I don't know them or care about them or something like that. But then there's also this idea that like Sylvie was like kind of trying in her, like what's good for the small folk way to,

To guide and teach Aemon. No one was teaching Aemon how to be a ruler except for Sylvie. Sylvie's like, here's what's true about princes. When they throw tantrums, we suffer. And what is the first thing that Aemon does when he gets into power? He locks the gates and people are suffering. And so if she's mad about anything, that certainly could be on the list. But whether or not Sylvie is personally invested in what Aemon specifically has done...

She is like, pro, let's get these people fed and like, fuck what's going on in King's Landing for sure. Yeah. And she is on Team Misaria here. Yeah. I don't... I still don't think it's like... I guess they don't strike me as like mutually exclusive circumstances that, you know, I think we agree that it seems probable, maybe even...

absolutely true. How could something like this have happened so quickly? Otherwise that she was in Masari's employee already previously before Eamon, that that would be part of the network that you gain information, uh, proximity to powerful people, et cetera. But I think like, if we think about our glimpses of relationships between people like in positions of power and a, uh,

sex worker on the show. The number one example that we have so far that we spent the most time with is Miss Arianna Damon. Oh, that's so funny. And,

I was thinking about Tyrion and Shae, but you were talking about this show. No, I was just saying House of the Dragon. Yeah, in House of the Dragon. And so that's why I say they don't feel mutually exclusive because I think whatever independent agenda Sylvie has or like mission and quest that she as part of this network are on and the dominance of the emphasis on the small folk as a guiding principle, that all feels true. Right.

I don't think that means she couldn't have been like, wow, this guy really made me feel like shit, just like Masaria felt about Daemon. And I think that feels even truer for me because of the corollaries between the Daemon and Aemon storylines. And it's almost something where maybe meant to be pinging in some respect. The way that

The dressing down that Masaria gave Damon when he failed her and then the number of things that we have heard her say to him subsequently, like the way we tracked that over time, or then about him to other people, I don't think you could say, like, Damon didn't leave an impression on Masaria. Now, I'm not saying it's the same with Sylvia and Eamon, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad read that she would also be carrying some personal slight.

I don't think, like you said, either of us use that word or put it that way. But I think people can have their mission and also feel a certain type of way. Why not both? You have two minds, two hearts about it? Conflict inside of the human heart? What's going on? Okay, listen. Ulf says this thing about Viserys that I just keep coming back to, right? Where he said, King Viserys...

Loved his feasts and wine, but never while his small folk went without. And this is just such an interesting further burnishing of Viserys' legacy, which we've seen people in all levels of power do throughout the season. After his death, we're just remembering Viserys' legacy.

as this great, generous king. I can't remember. I was racking my brains and I could not remember my COVID riddled brain. And I could not remember a single moment in season one where I really felt like Viserys, champion of the people. You know what I mean? Like real champion of the people guy. Like,

So Jaehaerys and Alysanne, yes. Viserys, I don't think he was bad. I don't think he would have locked the gates on them. I don't think this, that, or the other thing. But I don't think he was ever like, what's the infrastructure like down in Fleabody? Yeah, I mean, he says in the small council meeting at the beginning of season one when they're talking about

The demon and his like mass castration and limb removal with the gold cloaks. And, you know, he says King's Landing has been in decline since my grandmother passed. In the end, this new city watch might be a good thing. His grandmother, of course, the, the, the, the recently mentioned a good queen, Alice. And so like,

he almost owns the fact that he does nothing for the people and has just been letting the city that they live in steadily crumble. And the attempt to bring order through the gold cloaks is not for them. It's to keep Daemon busy and give him something to do. So I think if anything, we maybe have like the picture we have is the opposite. Exactly. So the fact that like Ulf is saying this, King Viserys loved his piece of wine, but never well as small folk went without. Yeah.

We did definitely, you know, we saw Viserys hold a tourney, hold a hunt. Like, we saw him, you know, wedding banquet. Like, he certainly was a host of events in season one. But as we talked about in Talk of Thrones, this idea of, like, Viserys as a party king, which is how he's depicted a bit in Fire and Blood. And certainly, like, if you look at the illustration in Fire and Blood, where he's just sort of, like, this...

jovial round man with a goblin on the throne that's just not at all who we think of when we think of Viserys. It just goes to show a couple things, like, once again, that, like, this generous read that Viserys is getting that Rhaenyra certainly feels like she's not getting on any of her actions. And then, like, um...

this... Who wrote Fire and Blood? And, like, who came up with this idea of Viserys as jovial party king? And why did no one tell him about his Lego habit? And, like, all this sort of stuff like that. Like, these are the ongoing questions we have about the unreliable narration and depiction inside of the book Fire and Blood. So... Yeah. Yeah, and also, like, you know, Otto couldn't wait to break out the Viserys the Peaceful moniker and start, like, printing the legend. And, you know, I think...

Also, there's the Ulf-specific element of this, because you observed when we heard him make the...

Bail on the Braves bastard boasts a couple episodes ago that he was like, couldn't have been quicker to take the on-ramp into the connection to sharing his story, right? So like, anything where he's like, I can say something and like, pretend I know what I'm talking about, about this family that I can't wait to tell people I'm connected to. My brother would never have done this. Yeah, it had that.

that as well 100% very very enjoyable Ulf then goes and like spreads the word of discontent in the street right like oh sheep for your dragons and where's the meat in my bowl sort of thing poor cat cannot even get a moldy cabbage and she waited all day in line and it is just an absolutely genius idea from Asari to send fruit and veg etc to the commoners under Rhaenyra's banner and

This is such a beautiful moment. It looks like a little fleet. It reminded me so much of Dany arriving from Essos with her sails with the incorrect number of legs on the dragon Targaryen sigil. But yeah, it looked like a little fleet, a little Rhaenyra fleet coming into the bay here filled with grocery store folks. And Daemon... This was great. Daemon Targaryen, for the record, this is what you should be doing under the banner. Right.

The black and red banner should bring people their DoorDash order. It should not be atrocities. It should be ding dong, here's some stofers. Not ding dong, we're taking your wife and children from you. That's just my small note for Damon. Yeah, you know, two halves of one whole-ish. Yeah, this was really great and I liked to...

you know, seeing what to the discontented rumors or feed, what that plan was going to look like, put into action and kind of the phases of it. And like how on the one hand rumors are based in truth because they're like embellishments, right? Like we're not seeing revels at the red keep actually, but people can believe it. And like you, like you said last week, like,

lemons for sword cleaning cabbages. You can't get a cabbage for food, but they've got them to treat wounds. Right. And like what is true, but they might not be fucking partying all night, but they're not helping. And so it's tantamount to the same thing. And then you turn rumors or feed into actual feed. And when we get to the riot in the streets later, like the way that we're able to track the progression across episodes from the

from like, what, what did the, what did the people say during J. Harris's funeral? A curse on Rhaenyra the Monstrous. And then we build toward the Maelys procession. Rhaenyra will answer this. And then what do we hear during the riot in this episode? Long live Queen Rhaenyra. Like, I thought you were just like, Queen of fishes. Here she comes. Queen of fishes. Um, I love that. That's a, that's a fascinating way to track that progression. Um, yeah,

We get a riot, as you mentioned. We'll come back to the riot. We got to do a little Helena stuff before we get to the riot. But Hugh cuddles a dog. It is not Ira Gretchen Forry Mew. She's a dog. Very different face. Different coloring, different eyes. Same sort of size and mongrel shabby coat sort of stuff, with love and respect. Yeah.

But I do want to let you and anyone who doesn't also listen to Trial by Content know that Dave Gonzalez has started calling Cheezus dogs are crackers. And I just think it's wonderful and should be emulated forever. Good stuff. All right. We're going to come back to the right, but here we are in my favorite part. You're like, isn't your favorite part witch stuff? Maybe. But it's got a close competitor.

In a section I'm calling Aegon and Aemon and Alyson and Larys, cripples, bastards, and broken things. First, before we get – basically, we're going to hit the three people who come to visit Aegon. It's Aemon. It's Alyson. It's Larys. Before we do that, we should do that second small council meeting, of course, Aemon and Larys and Jasper. And the abject humiliation of Larys Strong.

In the Hand of the King fakeout here that Laris tries the exact playbook he that worked like a charm on Aegon.

uh and guess what lick spittle's not invited to the party uh at amon small council and just the well okay you didn't think i met you did you uh matthew needham uh if i have to pick an mvp of this episode it is him uh and uh he is that full body that just

slight full body inflation when he's like oh my lord I never expected to honor like this you know to that like absolutely curdling of like you and me we got a problem for life now is what that felt like that moment felt like to me like he's like you are toast if I have anything to say about it um tell me tell me what you felt about all this and Jasper eating popcorn watching it

I really loved this scene. I was struck, too, by Eamon's... He seemed really petulant in this scene. Across the entire exchange, he's pouty and sulky. Why don't they blame Rhaenyra? That was really, I thought, striking. He's often so solution-oriented, and here he was just really stewing in his resentment.

And then that resentment just further fuels his meanness, you know? And like he has been bullied and responded poorly. And of course, like now he's, he's becoming the bully. He's bullying other people, Taylor's all this time. Very sad, painful to watch.

I thought that Laris, before he made the, like, play for the hand pin, the way, just, like, that minute, that beat where he was imploring Eamon to take the situation with the small folks seriously was also important. Because with Laris, Chris was kind of asking us about this with Laris, like, well, how much is driven by genuine feeling? How much is driven by agenda? And, like, of course, that's what's so interesting about Laris. And, like...

You know, when he said, this is where we get that great line, the enemy without may be fought with swords, but the enemy within is more insidious. But also where he said, like, they still look to you to ensure their well-being. That is the burden of authority. Now, of course, that gives us an Alice echo. Like, that's a very tantalizing Laris. To the burden. To the burden of authority. Wonderful stuff there. But, like, he's trying not just to work Aemond. He is...

trying to help him rule the kingdom. It's both at the same time. It's both. Yeah, exactly. And so that's what I thought just... This was a really short scene, actually, but we kind of got the whole Iris experience inside of it, so that was really cool. And yeah, like you said, with the hand play, he made the exact same maneuver with Aegon in the first episode. That was your father's hand. It worked perfectly. By the next episode. And...

What happens here, I thought, you know, the way that we're clocking a couple things at once. One, there's just the intellectual response. I'm not going to be able to control this guy. I'm not going to be able to work him. I'm not going to be able to maneuver him. He's not going to be my puppet. So that's not going to work for me. Right. And that's kind of the rational, logical, how do I further my aims part of Lyras, which is very tantalizing to watch.

And like you said, I love your description of the curdled and the way that he sunk in on himself and deflated. Twisted.

When he said, you toad? You toad. Yeah. Like, why? You know, like, there are just, there are ways to crush somebody. And the other thing was, it was such a, like, it was an alley-oop, right? Like, he set it, he set Laris up. Oh, it was cruel. Just so he could destroy him. Yeah. Yeah, it was like a play thing. And I think Laris doesn't, as we will hear him say to Aegon,

doesn't ever like when people make him feel small. And if it's accidental or it's reflexive, you catch somebody laughing at you, bad enough. But Amon went out of his way to make Laris look like a fool. And that's not something that Laris is going to forget. Nor should he. Amon, like Damon, does not know anything about diplomacy. And I would suggest both of them call Jace. Jace can help you out.

Heels it down. If I were Jace, I would just, like I said, I would just continue to go around shouting scoreboard at everyone. I would just be, I would just become like a consultant, a private consultant, earn so much money, fixing the problems for these dumb blondes. Okay. Great, great idea. Honestly.

A lot of people leave that small council chamber, that particular small council chamber, and go say hi to Egg, right? Because Orwell's like, guess what? He's not going to die. The cabbage leaves have been doing their work. It's great. So Eamon comes in and does his best. Stronger than I thought. Does his best Kristen Cole impression by smooshing a small ball into some soft tissue. This time it's the...

sticky, goopy chest of his freshly burned brother as he threatens Aegon into silence. Aegon is smart enough to play dumb here, right? What do you remember? Nothing. You challenged Maelys. It was foolish. I remember nothing. Yeah. This is a bargain for his life. Yeah. He's like, so, you know, he's not so milk of the poppy addle that he can't figure out what he's supposed to say in that moment. Yeah. I mean, the fear with which he greets Aemon's arrival is

He's absolutely terrified of him. And then obviously later we'll hear him like choke out a help me, you know, asking Laris for help. Like he is obviously desperately afraid because he does remember, he does know what Eamon has done. This is like an interesting dynamic because he knows, Eamon knows he knows. The way that he put that, first of all, let me just say the peeling the cabbage off the wound in the running now for the most disgusting thing they've ever done. It was astonishingly gross. Yeah.

But shut up. I respected it. I gotta say. The Tywin Lannister voice, I respect that, but it was gnarly. I gotta say, Tom Gwyncarnie, who we already were admiring in the first half of the season for his charisma, all this brat prince, brat king sort of thing that he was doing.

The moaning and whimpering game on him is just like, and the quivering. It's unbelievable. It's so good. He's really been sensational. And like the tears, the emotion in the Laris scene, obviously some of that is the pain of yearning for the milk of the poppy, but most of it is like the response to what Laris is saying. Like you're not going to be the same. It was heartbreaking. Eamon putting the small ball, not just to precedent and the pain he's causing him, but what does it mean to you? What does it mean to you?

I took it as just a taunt, right? Like, a taunt and a declaration. I literally hold the symbol of your power in my hand. And I...

I don't even need it. I am so in control. I don't even need it. I can leave it here with you and you can hold it in your sick bed and you're not going to have the strength to move it or give it back to me or do anything else with it. Like, you used to sit there and spin that around like a dipshit and I'm here to push it into the burns that I gave you to remind you that I'm better than you and that I won. Do you think...

Vicious. Of course it was vicious. Do you think there's a total act of torment? Do you think there's any way in which this is the end of the small balls at the small council? Cause they don't use like when we get to Game of Thrones times, there are no balls there. So is this the moment when we stop using, I mean, he's like fired half the small council and he's like, I don't even need this ball that belongs to the King. I don't fucking need it. Who cares? Is he just like, we're done with, with balls. You know, I hadn't confronted this possibility until right now.

I think you might be onto something, but I have to say, I don't know that I'm ready to say goodbye to the small balls. When we first saw them, we were like, what are these? But they've been an endless source of delight. I agree. RIP bees. We miss you still. All right. Eamon also counsels Orwell to make sure that Aegon is out of commission for a long, long, long time, which serves two purposes.

One, it's like, make sure the king doesn't recover quickly or maybe at all. Right? Like that's the implication there. Also, it keeps Orwell occupied and that's another person out of the small council room. Right? Like if Orwell is constantly tending to Aegon. And then there were fucking two, Jasper and Larys. And that's who's left in that room until I guess Ifado comes back, you know? So it's like...

Um, it's, it's an efficient, uh, efficient move from Eamon. Allison comes in or while gets to do some nice exposition on what's going on in the reach or well is like round the clock, keeping the King alive, but also got his finger on the pulse of, uh, of the movements over the reach. Uh, really could run for more while. Yeah. Ever since I was like, fuck that guy. Yeah.

And he's like, actually, I am the best. And then, yeah, and then we get the Allison apology. I feel like we've kind of already covered this. Anything else you want to say about this Allison moment here or want to talk about Beesbury some more or any of that? I mean, do you want to talk about Beesbury some more? There's more. I bet he's really smart and kind. Yeah.

And handsome and daring. Alan Beesbury. Thank goodness. Sure. Loves to read. Great cook. Yeah. Oh, God. I'm happy for you. I am. Larry Strong. Speaking of seduction, this is a masterful seduction. Incredible scene. This was gorgeous. Pay off from something we saw in the very first episode of the season. There's Laris and his Aegon agenda, right? I love, like, you know, this Chris Ryan on Talk Thrones being like, oh, so you fell for it? I love it.

feel very confident that Larry Strong is both making a calculated move here for proximity to power and having a genuine emotional moment contemplating his own circumstances in life. This is him fresh licking his wounds fresh off the small council meeting where he was humiliated. First and foremost, though, before we get to that, he's wise to Amon's milk of the poppy tactics, right? Yes. And...

So we get a version of this line when Orwell is talking to Alicent elsewhere, right? But from the book, it says, quote,

I don't think it's a cruelly cutting the king off. I think it's advising moderation, right? He says the king will be most eager for his draft in an hour. Not like, don't give him any more milk of the poppy, but don't give him so much milk of the poppy. And before we get to the big Tyrion comp...

I thought this feels like a minor Tyrion comp because there's a couple instances in the book with Tyrion post Blackwater when he lost his nose, not in the show, but in the book. And with Ned after his fight in the street with Jamie, when he took a hit to his leg, where both of them are sort of taken off the board by generous doses of milk of the poppy for Ned in the book.

Quote, how, how long the sheets were tangled, his legs splinted and plastered, a dull throb of pain shot up his side. Six days and seven nights. A not very good Harrison Ford movie. And also too long for Ned to be off the board at a very crucial time of politicking and power in King's Landing, right? And then for Tyrion, he wakes up.

And this is what happens post-Blackwater. He wakes up. His, quote, his wits were coming back to him over slowly. That was good. His wits were all he had, which is what Lara says later, right? The next time he awoke, the drapers had been pulled back and Podrick Payne stood over him with a candle. When he woke up,

When he saw Tyrion open his eyes, he ran off. No, don't go. Help me. Help me, he tried to call, but the best he could do was a muffled moan. A short while later, Pod reappeared. This time, a stranger was with him, a maester chained and robed. My lord, you must be still, the man murmured. Your grief is hurt. You will do yourself great injury. Are you thirsty? He managed an awkward nod. The maester inserted a curved copper funnel through the feeding hole over his mouth and poured a slow trickle down his throat. Tyrion swallowed, scarcely tasting. Too late!

He realized the liquid was milk of the poppy. By the time the maester removed the funnel from his mouth, he was already spiraling back to sleep. And then later another maester comes in and Terry grabs the chain around his neck and says, no more. Send him away. Hear me. Talks hard. Need dream wine. Dream wine, not milk of the poppy. Like,

stop drugging me. I need to be involved in what's going on politically. And they do a version of this in the show where Tyrion wakes up and basically Tywin's like, oh, we would have kept you, kept you medicated for the rest of the show if we could have. And so this idea of a grievous injury not just taking you off the political board or out of the game because of a literal injury, but of what the people who are quote-unquote caring for you

uh, will do. And, you know, this is something that like Damon and Rhaenyra were either paranoidly like accusing or concerned about when it came to Viserys and the book of the poppy. Same room. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think we're meant to think of, of that given that Agon's bandages are sort of like the, the, the just, you know, mirror image. Like, yeah. How Viserys looked in that bed and the way that Viserys was like, my tea. Yeah. Damon's like, you're,

Let me give that a little sniff. And, you know, the way that he outright confronted Alicent about that, like how exactly is that wisdom expressed in blinks and wheezes? I'd be surprised if he could remember his own name. So I think like with Laris,

I think that him holding the milk of the poppy has more than one thrust behind it. Like, I think he's just like everything else with Lyra's, right? He's, he doesn't, for Aegon's benefit, doesn't want Aemon's instruction and the care that he's receiving as a result of that to leave him in this like drug addled stupor where he can't tell what's happening. But in the span of this moment,

It's selfish. Like he needs, he needs, he got focused. He needs them to hear him. You know, you can't have them like blitzed out of his mind and like unable to absorb the message that he's trying to share. So it feels like all of those things. I completely agree. Um, the opening gambit is this, right? Lara says the drink takes the pain away, but it dulls your mind. Um,

He says,

King Bran the Broken is, of course, in the room with us, right? The last line of Bran's chapter in A Dance with Dragons, a book that will have a sequel someday, is, quote, you will never walk again, Bran. The pale lives promise, but you will fly. And Bran, of course, becomes only a mind in a certain sense once he's hooked into the weirwood.net. But then we get the real juice, the Tyrion and Jon comp that we absolutely love. Anything else you want to say about the

Think about Rob and Bran at all? I think just, yeah, on the Bran front, certainly the you'll never walk again. I was also thinking of what just when Bran wakes up and realizes what state he's in and the way he says, I'd rather be dead. I'd rather be dead, yeah. And Rob is like, don't ever say that. That was on my mind here, certainly just the way that Aegon is...

absolutely just despondent to like hear Laris describe basically what his life is going to be. And also, you know, there's that moment where Alicent asks Orweil like,

What will it become? What's that going to be like? And so everybody is confronting that. And I don't know, that moment with Bran, I'd rather be dead, for obvious reasons, it's so devastating when he says that. And all the different ways that

Bran then finds new meaning and new purpose. Forget, like, how Bran's story ends. The end of Bran's story on the show, you know, is, like, one of the most meaningful parts of the story. And if you're Aegon and you're, like, rich prince, king,

the most beautiful dragon in the world in my cosplay armor and like now what like so many characters are at their now what moment you know and especially to say to say something like your mind is all that remains to you to an Aegon who is like with love and respect he's like oh no oh boy and I can't I can't ask more I can to make a war

Yeah, that was really effective too because, you know, we love now to joke about like the end philosophy line, but when Aemond is ripping off all of those achievements in season one, it's like, it's the opposite of Aegon, right? He's like, he doesn't take any of this shit seriously. But then, like, where does Aegon get to this season? He's like...

you know what, grandpappy, like, I'm not going to listen to you, actually, when you tell me that I don't have to take the small folks seriously. Like, why doesn't anybody on my small council listen to anything I have to say? Now, were those things sandwiched around him moving all of Viserys' books out of his bedchamber instead of reading any of them? Yes, but he was starting to show, like, some inclination to, like,

I think it would be fair to say, was it because he wanted people to respect him and take him seriously and not think him weak? Or was it because he had a genuine interest in learning how to be better? That would be a fair question. But he was engaged, like for our awareness, like the first time in his life, right? And so like there was this brief moment of a tether to some new possibility. And like, now what? Here we get the real juice. The quote that started this podcast and reminded us both of Tyrion and Jon in A Game of Thrones. Ugh.

The Tyrion quote, never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you. And that's such like a concept for Laris to engage with in the first time in this show when we've really seen him get caught off guard by someone. You know, Laris has been like, like, sure, he's like,

a little ticked that Alison was like ignoring his calls, but taking Kristen Cole's calls. You know what I mean? Like there, there are moments that we've had with Laris where he's a little like, but he has seemed so in control at all the time. So for him to give this speech coming right off this, in front of Jasper, this like shame, really this indignation that he had to suffer in front of Jasper is like so potent. And then what do you want to say about this?

where like armor concepts, I think you and I have talked about like a jillion different times and different podcasts, but like, what does it mean for you for this to come up here? I mean, this is like, this is everything. This is the story. This is like the heart of the story. This is the heart of A Song of Ice and Fire. This is, there are a lot of different strands of story that connect parts of the universe and character sets, but I think you could fairly and convincingly argue that this is

Number one, that like the most characters who are most central to the stories fall into some aspect of this bucket, like the unifying theme of the underestimated. Right. And so I, that I really loved like the way that Lyra's put it and they will underestimate you. And this will be your advantage. Like that's the make it your strength. Yeah.

then it can never be your weakness. Part of what Tyrion says to Jon, you know, cripples, bastards, and broken things. It's always been, it's a wide tent, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, it seems like a very specific list, but it's a wide, wide, wide tent. Second sons, women. Exactly. Like, whatever you prefer. Like, any character who has felt like they were

outside of whatever the expected or accepted norm was in any sphere of their family life or the realm has been a part of this. Jamie and Brianne. Yeah, this has been there for Laris. Going back to the very beginning when we see him kind of make his way during the hunt into the circle, the conversation circle, because he's...

not participating. Right. Or when he says to Alison in the garden and in episode five, when one is never invited to speak, one learns to observe. Like we've always understood that this was, that Laris was a part of this, a song of ice and fire, George RR Martin tradition, but to, to hear him so emotionally share like his truth with Egon and, and,

for us to learn about like his birth and his feelings about his father and the way that like not just other people have made him feel small or different but like the people closest to him in his life including a figure like Lionel Strong who we've really like held up and touted as a good guy is he like the only good

And then you hear this from Lyris and it just fucking breaks your heart. And it's like the people, all of these, so many characters in a Game of Thrones story at some point do a terrible thing. And then you have, this is like what you were saying earlier, you have that moment where you're like, well, why? Like, why did they think that they...

We're so alone. And it's like, really, it's meaningful when we get to understand what that origin point is for somebody. So to hear Lyra say this and share this was just incredible. And then for Aegon, like the way that he was receiving this, like thinking about everything that is like different for him now and everything that he has lost. There's this like invitation from Lyra that I thought was really generous, whatever the agenda is. I don't think that diminishes the fact that there was like a generosity at play here and a desire to say like. Enough for a fellowship.

You're not alone in this. Yeah. Yeah. So I can be a person who understands. Like I will also be a person who tries to use you as a pawn in my game. But I can be a person who understands. When you feel alone and you feel like nobody else gets it and you feel like everybody's mocking you and laughing at you and making you feel small. Like I will understand what that feels like. Know that? It's like amazing. There's also this something I love about this is this is really trusting the audience. It's not like super subtle. Yeah.

at all the comp between one of the most famous lines in all of Game of Thrones and what Larys says here. But what I really appreciate about it is there is at least like some mild degree of allowing the audience to draw that connection themselves. What really frustrated me in the latter seasons of Game of Thrones is that they would often have characters just like literally repeat lines that other characters had said, like keep your shield up or I'll ring your head like a bell or like whatever, you know, like these things where I'm just sort of like,

why are they saying... It doesn't feel like an actual connection. It just feels like you're just like, let's copy-paste this line over and then people will be like, oh my God, it's the thing that the other person said that one time. And that just doesn't satisfy me the way something like this does where we're just sort of like, it's the same concept phrased differently enough that you have to do some slight investigative work yourself into your thoughts about this theme. And I just think that like,

I just think it's absolutely brilliant and I'm thrilled. And I've always been interested in Laris and I'm just like really, really glad that, you know, they gave him this moment. The Lionel thing that you brought up, this idea that like we meet Lionel and Harwin strong in season one and we like them both so much. And Harwin is the like quarterback and Lionel is like, you know, the principal of the school. And how do they get, how do they, how do they, how did this kid,

wind up this way in this house. And like, we didn't really interrogate it beyond like, you know, the idea that Simon Strong, as you rightly pointed out a couple of times, like the way that he says clubfoot with this like poison and his, and his voice, something that Laris has, it has nothing to do with his foot, but like the poison he has earned by trying to burn Harrenhal down. Like that is something that he did that we're going to like definitely hold him accountable for. But like,

How does this dynamic happen? Like there is that one moment in season one that served as a little bit of exposition to us when Laris and Harwin share that moment at the feast where he's talking about the color of what color, you know, is the fire that's at the high tower. So war green, like that's a brother. That's like kind of the only brotherly moment we really get before Laris kills his brother. I want to know so much more about this dynamic and it has shades of

of a sort of dark mirror image of like Jamie and Tyrion where Jamie was the like golden boy Tywin the destructive father but Jamie loved Tyrion and protected Tyrion and you don't get the sense that that is something that Harwin offered to Larys or maybe I'm extrapolating I don't know um we'll have to ask his ghost next time we have ghost therapy at Harrenhal but like

We're thinking of, you and I both thought of this scene in season four of Game of Thrones when Oberyn comes to visit Tyrion in the Black Cells to offer Albir champion. Before he says that, you know, he talks about the way that Cersei brought Oberyn in to meet Tyrion and described him as monstrous, you know, blah, blah, blah. Your arms and legs are a bit small, but no claw, no red eye, no tail between your legs, just a tiny pink cock.

We didn't try to hide our disappointment. That's not a monster, I told Cersei. That's just a baby. Like, thinking of Lionel Strong in a Tywin Lannister bucket is a wild thing for the show to do a season later and such a smart thing for the show to do. We meet Larys. We're not questioning Lionel's, like, complicity in what happened here. But as we get this description of Lionel, like...

Going on a literal witch hunt when his son is born this way makes us rethink everything, which is interesting. I love that Oberyn-Tyrion conversation and scene so much. It's just so heart-wrenching. And it's really... It never stops. You don't hit a point in your life where you're like, it doesn't feel like shit if somebody makes you feel bad, right? But to think of...

To feel like you were alone from the moment you were born through no fault of yours. Like nothing you did. He killed my mother. You are who you are. Yeah. And people blaming you for that, holding something about just like you against you, your very nature, uh,

Obviously, there are, you know, any number of different ways that that can manifest. And it's just like a hideous thing to feel that prejudice before you did anything simply because you exist. People hate you and they blame you and they judge you. Of course, you would feel alone in the world. Like, how could you not?

If Lionel Strong blamed Alice Rivers for Laris' birth, which is the implication... Aligned spells. What does that tell us about her potential relationship with each individual Strong? We don't have a firm answer, but it does add to the mystery, right? We don't know. But, like, did she know... We know that he sent...

two guys wearing his little firefly bug pin for no good reason, uh, you know, to, to burn down Aaron Hall. So it's not, I still would not have my murder team wear a jacket that said I'm with Laris. Yeah. And you simply would not be in the body part of a friend where you're freezing in the wilderness, but like, for me, if it were simply would not, um,

But was Alice complicit in that at all? You know what I mean? Like, did Lionel keep her in his employ or did she only come back to Harrenhal after he was dead? That's the question I have is like, whether she actually had anything to do with what happened, who knows. But it feels like certainly the malign spells thing is meant to make us think of Alice. And so then it's like, it does heighten that question that we kind of already had. We've been like, well, does Simon like, seems like he keeps finding Damon like,

falling through doorways or like, you know, with his wine goblet knocked over at the table, et cetera, et cetera. Like, obviously you can tell something's up. Like, what level of awareness do the members, the inhabitants of Heron Hall have at a given moment of time? Not a visitor like Damon, but the inhabitants of this place of like, what,

Alice is connected to and then why do they let her stay? Is there a possibility that they actually cannot cast her out? I think the way that Simon Strong describes her later when he says our own healer Alice Rivers volunteered her renowned skills. Mm-hmm.

All of that sounds like laudatory. Like he doesn't have anything negative to say about Alice. Yeah. But it doesn't sound like that would have been the case about Lionel. So why would he have let her stay?

my head cannon and i can't wait to find out more is that she got fired she left the fire happened and then she just because remember she's like what happened to the last maester oh he left like that feels like a recent development you know what i mean that she showed back up and she's like oh i don't know their maester's gone simon strong do you need some help i'm 400 years old but you don't need to know that okay let's talk about alicent and her two good children um

Alison and Darren via Gwaine. This is the scene you loved. I loved...

Freddie Fox is going like this, the smirk, the gentle sneer as Alison, who's clearly looking for Kristen and not for him comes into the air. She lies. He knows she's lying. She may even know that he knows she's lying. And when he says, well, my thanks to the queen dowager, like he's just so like, okay. Um, which is such a, such a huge difference between, um,

They're almost like conspiratorial air when we last saw the three of them in a courtyard together, that it was like Gwaine and Allison sort of allied somewhat against Kristen Cole.

I like the idea that it was a feature, not a bug that we were like, why didn't Alison go talk to Gawain after Rook's rest and find out what happened? Like blah, blah. And Gawain's like, why didn't my sister come talk to me after Rook's rest to find out how injured I was or what actually went down? Like, it seems like they haven't had a conversation since he returned from war and he's like a little pissed about it. Um,

I would go further and say, like, it seems like whatever little whispers they were sharing in the courtyard in that initial arrival, I feel like he was like, where's dad? And she was like, let me quickly tell you what happened. And then he went to talk to Kristen about his giddy ascent. It seems like these two don't have a relationship. And, like, that's really...

devastating to confront, but one of those effective parallels across the character sets, you know, Chris was, this seemed to really strike, Chris loved the scene we were chatting with him about on Talk of the Thrones. That aspect in particular, in addition to just the wonderful performances from both Olivia Cooke and Freddie Fox, shocking stuff that these two are wonderful always, was like, oh, nobody in these, like these families don't know each other. It's like,

And they don't, you know, and that is so central to the heart of what we're seeing. And it makes something like, you know, the family you find, the family you build, the family you choose, like a friendship like the one between Rhaenyra and Alicent, the fact that that then is sacrificed for your blood ties with people you don't like or give a shit about even more damning, like genuinely tragic. Yeah.

I loved this going in Allison's team. The comedy of the initial, yeah, clocking that she was clearly there for Kristen was so good. I also just loved how he kept trying to go back to his horse. Yeah. He's like, I know you're gonna talk to me, so, like, you don't have to keep reengaging me in conversation. I don't need your favor. But this was just like...

I don't need to revisit our childhood. You just kind of get on with it, don't you? When you have no other choice. Let me go. Thanks. So I loved this. I loved the way they talked about their past. Like I, I, Alison sort of having her Frodo, I wish none of this had happened moment. Yeah.

Because she's like, what if he had brought you to court instead? Right? Like, what if I had never come to this place? Of all the many myriad beautiful references and comps you could have in your bag of... Your literary bag of holding that you carry with you wherever you go...

is alice in front of baggins was never gonna be on my list that's that's just the one and only time i will ever say this just the like uh i really wish i could have done this it happened and then and then quayne gandalf is like so do all i guess we'll have to welcome to king's landing and then ed sheeran comes in is like a worst place in the world we'll have to watch her wound to see uh if it heals or not okay go ahead um

I liked, you know, again, we chatted about this with Chris, but like I did, I really liked the way that, cause like Eamon, when he's dunking on Laris with like the, go find my grand sire, go get Otto Hightower. He'll be my hand. It's like, he always puts his family first. And then again, we have to confront like, well, what does that mean? And what does that look like? Because Gawain, when Alison is like, have you heard from dad? He said. He would write you. If you wrote letters, it would be to you. You were always his favorite. So we get a nice, like,

Viserys, Daemon, Alyssa, like who was the favorite kind of comp there. Smothers Brothers. Another moment to mention the Smothers Brothers. Yeah, he's officially a streak now. And, you know, can you truly say you care about your family, care about the advancement, but do you care about the well-being of any actual person inside of it? Right. Fascinating to parse.

And it was heartbreaking that like, you know, you, the line you've mentioned, like you get on with it. Don't you? When there isn't any choice was crushing, like eight years old. Great stuff. Cool. Yeah. Great. You're like the, you're the, the air dog. You're, you're, you're the eldest son and you're the air old town. Amazing. Cool. What a life, beautiful city. People always talk about how great it is. You have no one. Your dad left you behind. Your mom's dead.

It's going to be eons before you and your sister have a meaningful conversation about anything. That's heart wrenching. And so like then when Allison mentioned Darren, I mean, honestly, my first response was I was like cackling. My son Darren, what's he like? It was just so funny. It felt like such a little like wink to us. So the Darren stands waiting for him.

But then we're treated to just this gorgeous, generous conversation. You described it on Talk of the Thrones as the gift that Gawain gives her. And that was exactly what I had put in my notes. What a gift, because...

It would feel like the most precious thing in the world to Alison for somebody to say to her as she is confronting everything that happened with Aegon and all the things that she felt about him. And what Aemon has somehow become. And what Aemon has somehow become. And he's like to say, I mean, we get this wonderful description of Daeron that I guess we should just actually share in full. Yeah. My son Daeron, what's he like? Does he not write to you? Less and less these days. Ten and six now.

Letters perhaps hold less of his interest. He's stalwart, clever. As adept with his loot as he is with his sword. And a feature in the fancies of many a young lady, I'll wager. He's kind. Kindness is a quality I found lacking in his brothers. You did well to send him to ward. Yes, it seems the Red Keep, for all its privileges, may in fact be a less than salubrious environment for the forming of young men. Was it the court, or was it their mother? I'm sure you did your best.

On the one hand, the boon of knowing that one of her sons is a good person, that Darren is good. But then, like, the agony...

Of having to confront that the one who's good is the one that... She had nothing to do with raising. Wasn't with her. I know. I know. Holy shit. Like, which feeling would be more dominant there? Relief and gratitude? Or misery? It's, like, hard to know. But again, this was what I was referencing earlier when I said, like, I felt proud of Allison because it shows us that she is reflecting. And while it's painful, I think that points to, like, growth...

and consideration. And then just in general, I thought like the tenderness on display in this conversation and that little like gift of generosity in a really, really bleak world was a meaningful balm. I really loved the scene. Loved it. I loved all that. I love that you mentioned that. I love the way that Freddie delivered all of this, the way that Olivia played the reception of it. I thought that was tremendous stuff. And again, it's just like another deepening. It's, I'm going to reach into like a shallower part

literary reference to the Lord of the Rings. Again, similar to like we meet Laris and, and we think we understand exactly what archetype bucket, you know, he is a plain dealing villain from Shakespeare's short list of, of bastards, resentful bastards. And then we're like getting more information about him. Right. Um,

Similarly with Gwaine, who's a very different character who serves a very different function in the book. So this is a show invention, which is great. He's reminding me again, shallower level in the bag, like Finnick O'Dare. When Finnick O'Dare shows up in Hunger Games Catching Fire and he's just this like shitty character.

But charming, handsome golden boy has it all. Just like the most handsome to ever handsome. Like all of his stuff like that. And he's just sort of like the swagger, which he seems to have earned. It's just like, and so like to, we've already peeled back some of the layers on Gwaine on the road when he's like, oh my God, you know, like, like all that stuff. It's like, we've seen him, we've seen him react to things.

But this sad backstory, this is his like Annie backstory for Finnick where you're just sort of like, he was wearing like a mask when we met him and this is who he really is. And I was thinking a lot about

This idea of at least Allison engaging in a what if, and he's like, I don't do that. But we're going to talk a bit more later about Rhaenyra and Daemon sort of trying on each other, cosplaying each other in this episode. So this idea of like another pair of just sort of like, what if I had been the man? What if I...

If I had the armor and you the dress sort of thing. We're back to, that's Cersei and Robert, back to Cersei and Jaime. There's also some strong Margaery and Loras vibes coming off these two. For me, the Tyrells. But maybe I'm reaching. Okay. Interesting. Walk me through the Tyrell one a little bit more. I'm curious. I feel like, I'm interested in the Margaery-Alicent comp there. The Margaery-Alicent comp

is that Marjorie's just so much better at a similar game that Allison is trying to play. That, like, Marjorie has had guidance from Elena on how to play this game successfully. And then Allison... I mean, I'll admit to you that it might be, like, slightly just a physical comp between, like, the long, wavy, reddish hair of Marjorie and Allison. Like, that's just slightly coded for me. But, like, I think that idea of, like...

These women through their advantageous political marriages, trying to wield some soft power. And for both of them, Marjorie, again, much better at the game, but for both of them, it winds up not working out. That that is not the way that they found that they could play the game. What's interesting. What's interesting about that is of course, like Marjorie and Laris are so close. Like they have such a,

they know everything about each other. Yeah. They have no secrets. So then you, but it's almost like a, it's like, it's one of those like dark mirror comps, you know what I mean? Where it's just sort of like, it's a bizarre version. I think that's part of why it struck me to hear you say it is because it's like, oh, in a, in a way that I find sort of like dismaying, but dramatically compelling at like, it's almost a challenge to the like, because I feel like I always have the tendency to be like, oh, these people just like talked and like hung out more. Yeah. Wouldn't it,

It's like, maybe not. It wasn't. Actually. Unfortunately. Maybe not. I really hope we get more time with Gawain. I just think he's been such a delight. I think like the other moment that we understand now better is like that worse I'm rational. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like had to like to, I was thinking about that here. You make the, which is great. Like great little Finnick who broke out of Finnick comp. I love it. It's like he had to, you know, when you have no choice, like he had to learn how to become rational early. Right.

10, 16. This is a 16-year-old kid. We did get this email from our listener, Ryan, who says, I know the show Hot D is girly with the ages of all the kids, but Gwaine casually dropping that Darren is 16 made me realize the truvility of Viserys Targaryen. He made his child wife, Alison, give birth to four kids in four separate pregnancies in a four- to six-year time span. Wow.

with Westerosi medicine. And he did it right after he butchered his last wife and childbirth. It's a little harsh, but okay. But then he didn't even have the good grace to parent those Tark Tower kids at all himself. I'm sure we all have thoughts about Allison's parenting, but she had no shot. It's a miracle she survived to parent her kids at all. So when Gwaine said she tried her best, I hope no one scoffs. So I like that from Ryan.

Yeah. This is just how I know I'm just too deep in the Darren. I'm waiting for Darren. Honestly, where my mind went when I heard the 10 and 6, I was just like, so Darren and Jace, the milk brother of a Sarah's plot lives. It does. Did you start dream casting? Yeah.

I actually... So I don't have any actual ideas, but I was thinking... You don't have binders full of 16-year-old actors that you care to share with the class? Okay, cool. Please just say I do not. But I was... I did find myself thinking... I think this show has been so expertly cast so far. I have no doubt they'll knock Darren out of the park as well. But I did have a moment where I was like...

Darren mentioned, we've gone from like, where the fuck is Darren? When are we getting Darren to like, Darren mentioned after Darren mentioned after Darren mentioned. And now, and now this like really amazing description from Gawain, the expectation and the hype, um,

for book readers was already high. Now for show viewers too, it's going to be like, this Darren guy seems pretty interesting. Like, they got a nail casting for Darren. He's got to come in and be like a charm offensive from minute one. And they will definitely remember this in 2026 when Darren shows up on the show. Okay. Allison and Helena in the hapless pussy posse.

A moment for spoiler-free cricket prophecy speculation. Okay. I love this. Yeah. We've missed Helena's little dispatches. One of her crickets has stopped singing slash is possibly dead. So what could she be talking about here? Couple inside this very episode options are...

The Dragon Keeper that's about to get roasted during Stefan Darklin's attempt to ride Seasmoke. Seasmoke himself, who was singing mournfully, hooting mournfully off the coast and surely is no longer. Anyone else that you got on your spoiler-free list? We'll come back to this in the spoiler section, but anyone else?

I like the Dragon Keeper one just because they were quite literally engaged in song. Yeah, I like that one. Alicent is a cage cricket who used to have a voice in small council meetings and now has been silenced. Yeah, I like that one. I know why the cage cricket sings. Okay, here we are. Alicent's like, let's take a trip to the Sept. Helena's like, I don't like to leave my room, but okay. Welcome to a more visible position in the Kingsguard, Sir Rickard Thorne.

Rickard has been here for a couple episodes now, but mostly background because we had other, we had Chris Cole to pay attention to. We had some car goals to pay attention to. We had the pussy posse pay attention to, but we're down a pussy posse member. The car girls are dead. Kristen's off to war. So Rickard Thorne, step on up to the plate. What could possibly go wrong? Alison, queen of the fishes gets pulled out of the set with poor Helena. Wild.

Why they did this rather than just shelter in place, the world may never know, except that the Pussy Posse themselves perhaps were involved in some bad decision making here. The mob, which as you mentioned before, offered them sort of tears and sympathy, turns vicious, an old dude gets his arm chopped off.

And then Tom Bennett in the House of the Dragon built a docu show that went up on YouTube. It's just there in a pink polo being like that escalated quickly. Incredible, iconic stuff from Tom. Remarkable. This is wild. Obviously a ton of parallels to the riot in season two of Game of Thrones. Joffrey,

Got a cow pie to the face. Allison's got a wad of fish guts to the face. Which of those is preferable in your mind, Joanna, if you had to pick? Fish. I'll take the fish. Yeah, I think so as well. I mean, they're both a pass, but I think if you had to pick, you'd take the fish, not the literal shit.

obviously, is the cause of both of these riots. While we did not see the High Septon pulled into the throng and then pulled apart limb by limb, as we did in Game of Thrones Season 2, we did see our guy, Leo, pulled down and stabbed viciously by the angry mob. At first, I was like, who is that? Because, you know, they're wearing their helmets. But thankfully, the subtitling gave us very helpful estimates.

As he's just subsumed by the crash. Marty and Eddie are like, no! Estimates. The other thing that struck me about this sequence, other than the... And I think it's very clear that Leo was the best of them. They're all three of them shitty. But Leo was the first one to catch on that Aegon was kind of serious about the chastity vow when Marty's like, sure, sure, sure. And Leo was already like, oh, he's serious, man. He's never fucked. Oh, God. Great stuff. I...

So seeing Alicent like throw herself in front of Helena to protect her, maybe think of Alicent doing the same thing, putting herself shielding Aegon, like putting herself in front of Aegon in the ill-fated, let's never speak of it. And yet we somehow find a reason to bring it up every single episode. Dragon pit sequence from season one, episode nine.

And so for all of the things that have gone wrong between Alicent and her children, it is always worth remembering that in the moment of urgent peril, she has continued to put herself in front of them to keep them safe. I think it's very important. Alicent Damon. And Viserys.

Patty Constantine. Patty at last. Shuffle on down to the throne, my guy. Here you are. If you've ever wanted the most delightful behind the scenes, like maybe you're someone who doesn't watch the behind the scenes. I just really need you to see how Patty Constantine was having the time of his goddamn life playing Viserys Targaryen again, playing air guitar on the ancestral Valyrian sword.

No notes. Love it. No notes for that. Great stuff. We broke this down a bit on Talk of Thrones, but we finally get, as we had been hoping, Patty in the dream space. And we replay one of our shared favorite scenes from season one, episode one, a scene that we have genuinely...

again and again and again. And the writers of the show were like, we also think it's an important scene. This is a different, slightly different version of a scene we've seen before. Steve, can you play this clip? Did you say it? The air for a day. Did you say it? You can't possibly still be angry about this. My family was just destroyed. You should have been at my side. But instead you chose to celebrate your own rise.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioioio

Open the door!

We're going to talk in a second about the second Viserys dream situation. This idea that I sort of cherish in stories like this of like, um,

these, these moments is almost like supernatural trials, right? Like you have to figure out what, if you're stuck in a loop on something as the people who are irritated with this timeline, this storyline definitely feel like, uh, Damon is stuck in a loop of, of nightmares and hair and all. How do you break out of that loop by doing something different, right? You make a different decision and it breaks out of that loop. This happens again and again and again. And in the sci-fi fantasy stories that we love, um,

But what I love in this first iteration is Viserys says, I have decided. And then Daemon says, don't. He says to name a new heir. That's Daemon trying to change what Viserys did.

When the lesson isn't that Viserys did something wrong there, the lesson is that Daemon did something wrong there and he's not... He's close, but he's not quite ready to accept that that's true. And what I talked about on Talk of the Thrones is, like, watching the two scenes side by side, there's some key differences in terms... I mean, the sound design for one, but, like...

In the real version, there were other people in that room. This is like a very public shaming that Viserys did, draped in all of the crown, the sword, all of that sort of on the throne. This isn't a brother-to-brother conversation. This is a king-to-a-subject conversation. So there's no one else there in the room with them. Yeah.

But I think most crucially that locked door idea is that, as Alice will say in the whereward grove a bit, like you always, you just leave, you just fuck off, you just go. And he does fuck off on Caraxes right after Viserys said to the, this day in season one, episode one.

You can't leave. And in not leaving, you have to confront the fact that Viserys here, as he did in that original scene, breaks down because he's so upset. But Daemon is so focused on his own hurt in that original scene that he cannot...

what that moment meant to Viserys. And this dream locking him in here forces him to hear, as we all just heard, the anguish that Viserys is going through in grieving his wife, grieving his son, and then grieving this support that he would seek from his brother. That this betrayal and sending his brother away, which is something ultimately...

Damon's like, you're always doing this to me. But ultimately, it's not something I think Viserys wants to do. He loves Damon. He wants to have Damon close to him. But that's something Damon can't possibly absorb or acknowledge in that version of him that we met in season one, episode one. It's a character, I don't know if you've heard this, Mallory, on an arc. I love an arc. I love a character on an arc. What are the compare and contrast you want to do between that original scene and this dream version we get?

Yeah, I mean, I think in general, just as like a backdrop for the Viserys arrival more broadly, like, obviously this is the defining central relationship in Daemon's life, and so this had to be what we were building toward. And then also the fact that, you know, we talk about this line a lot as well, but like the fact that we...

heard Daemon say to Rhaenyra during their fight in the season one finale, my brother was a slave to his omens and portents. Anything to make his feckless reign appear to have purpose. Dreams didn't make us kings. Dragons did. It's like,

there couldn't be a more delicious place for Daemon to have to confront and work through his history with Viserys and the way that he failed himself and Viserys than in the arena that Viserys put stock in and Daemon ridiculed. So that was just, I thought, quite enticing overall. In terms of this first dream, I like that we got dream one,

an altered version of a scene we actually experienced and they experienced and we were there with them. And then Dream 2, which we'll talk about later, like, a moment that we... We definitely understand they did not share. And that's, like, a moment Damon is inserting himself into because he wishes he had been there. So there's that crossing of the threshold then. And so, like, when we're going through the differences in this scene, I think the reason we return to this... I mean, there are a lot of reasons we return to this sequence from season one so often. But, you know...

I think top of the list for me of like why it comes up so often is because it feels like the, the, this great handy encapsulation of like what Damon cares about this heiress, but also who he thinks he can be better than this heiress. So it is the duality of Damon in one sequence, um,

You know, when he's like, you've only ever tried to send me away. But then also when he's like, he doesn't protect you. I would from what yourself, you're weak. All of that is there in that first encounter. So the things that are the same, or I think almost as interesting, right? It's like the air for the day and impetus, the lick, spittle, rebuke, no allies at court, name a new air, return to runestone by order. Not if your brother, like you, like, you know, but your King, like what is it? What is Damon actually carrying over? What's stuck? That's kind of the list.

The difference is, I... So the... The activeness of the challenge struck me as a big difference. Like, Damon is really actively challenging Viserys in the real scene, the first scene in season one, and focusing on other people. It's not just... I think what I already... I also had, like, what you noted of there aren't other people in the room. That's a big difference. But...

just in terms of the content of what they're discussing, Damon is so hung up on Otto in the

the season one scene, right? And what we get in Dreamland here is just entirely oriented, literally, physically, but also the substance of what they're discussing around them. The fact that there are no guards present, no Kings guards lined up, it makes it more intimate, it makes it more personal and more private, so it's less of a public shaming, but it also just literally allows for a different level of proximity. In the first season, when Damon tries to move forward, the guards...

They stop him. He's reminded that he's not shit, right? He can't even get near his brother if he wanted to. Here, he walks up the steps toward the throne. Obviously, like, the clanging of the crown and the removal of it, given with that crown and it falling off of Viserys' head, Daemon picking it up and then placing it on Rhaenyra's head and then him being like to Rhaenyra, did I not put it on your head? Was it not me? Like, that obviously felt huge. Chopping your head off. The pinning in, the way that...

I don't, I don't think we're necessarily supposed to think, think this to be clear, but like, it's just something about the sound design and the like pitch of Damon's voice as he was screaming, open the door. It like really made me think of hold the door, you know? And it's like, so then there's something about just being trapped in this, like, or trying to trap something in, in this like desperate moment. Um,

The other big difference I had is the finger cut. Like, Viserys cuts his face. So I actually, I will say, I didn't have, I had Viserys weeping as a difference. Like, he doesn't, like, he doesn't weep, but he, like, when, once Daemon's back is turned, his face, like, breaks and he, like, crumbles. He doesn't, like, sob the same way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, yeah.

He, I read what, in the first season, in the first scene, like, I read Viserys' response to the emotion there. I mean, I agree with you. I think he is devastated and Daemon isn't confronting that. I was struck that, like, because what he, he's almost like he slumps back, he crumbles, but he's almost like, he's just, like, defeated, right? And, like, when he cuts his finger, like,

Like, reminding us that Daemon didn't see that was so interesting to me because that's, like, the throne's rejection. Like, that's when it begins. Viserys casting Daemon out is the moment that the throne rejects him. And so there's another lesson there, right, about the separation and these families pushing each other away and pushing each other apart. But Daemon was on the march out. Like, he didn't see that that happened. And the thing that I think is most interesting to me about that is if he had...

I think he wouldn't have taken the lesson of like, this is where we're being told we're meant to be together. He would have said one more reminder that you're not worthy. Right. So the throne, the idea of like the throne standing in judgment and Damon not seeing the beginning of that for Viserys was,

was interesting to me as well. I like, but I think kind of like that. The only pushback I would give is I don't think Damon believes in signs importance. So I don't know that he believes that the throne cutting you means that you're not worthy, you know? But now, I mean, obviously he'll like say exactly that to Alice and, you know, mere moments. He's just like enough of this fucking drivel. But I think that's part of what this is like this whole stretch of hair and all is about, right? It's like, and I, was it Condal in one of the earlier inside the episodes who was like,

We had wanted to put him in a circumstance where like he couldn't deny that supernatural influence. And so that's what would have been interesting to me about it. If that had actually been there was like Damon having to be like, huh? Right. Like I, but he, but he didn't see it. So he couldn't, how would he know? And thus it can't carry over. But, but his mind is bringing the weeping, the outright weeping, which Viserys did not do in front of him. Like,

Damon, that's Damon's guilt, like manifesting. Right. And he's just like, this is how I believe I made him feel. But it's also like, it's also like Damon's memory of that moment. My read on this is that Damon's memory of that moment is that was his story.

That only happened to him. It didn't happen to anyone else. And what this dream is making him confront, to your point about like, you're like, that was the moment with the throne cutting Viserys, that was the moment that was started all of Viserys' story, right? And so this is like a huge moment for Viserys and Daemon couldn't consider that at the moment. And so what all of this nightmare-

Playground time at Heron Hall has been pushing Damon towards in concert with Alice's overt. Do you hear the screams of the people that you're putting under the sword by proxy by by unleashing people to do evil is empathy.

It's not just consequences of your own actions. It's empathy. What does her nearest say? Like you do whatever you want. And I got to sew this little baseball head back on this body. You know, I got to clean up your messes. It's not just about you. You didn't just do a funny thing with blood and cheese. How does this impact me? Right.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I really loved this first scene because you take the pain of something that he's carried with him and known and confronted actively for years upon years because it's like his defining resentment being stripped as air. No, don't. But then...

You trumpet the pain of failing the people that you love in the world. That's the thing he runs from. He runs from Viserys' disappointment. That's the thing he's trying to escape and flee because he's not ready to confront it yet. Air for a day. He doesn't want to hear it again. I'm going to name a new air. He doesn't want to hear it again.

But he's carried that with him. Having to see Viserys shake and quiver, it's too much for him. He can't bear it to know that he made him feel that way. Then we get Alice and Daemon next to the weirwood tree. Daemon's packed up his bag. Are we going to talk about the little moment with Simon before he goes there? We can. What do you want to say? I just thought that the way that... First of all, I thought the way that Daemon...

Three quick things. One, I thought the way he invoked peace was interesting. Like, he's like, are you perhaps the culprit who's been tampering with my peace? Because later we hear Rhaenyra say, like, he is incapable of knowing peace. And also even just the idea that for Daemon, what's his version of what it was, won't peace be just fleeing to go do your own thing and be in control?

The hysteria in his voice, I don't know what other word to use to describe it when he's like, is it Rhaenyra herself? Is it Rhaenyra herself? Yeah, Matt pushing his voice to a break on that was really good. And then the way that Simon was like, I thought almost like shushing him like a little baby who needed to be calmed, which is incredible. I want to know what the season was like for the three, the strong grandsons.

Who just got to sit in a room and watch Matt Smith and Sir Simon Russell Beale act all season. It was incredible. And like not eat red currant, but other things. No red currant. Yeah. No. I mean, I don't mean to rush past the Simon moment. I love Simon. He is perfect in everything that he does. The, the Alice scene. Yes. Phenomenal stuff. He has packed a bag. He's about to fuck off on his dragon again. He's like, fuck this Riverlands. Fuck this. Where would bed?

Fuck the goose and the duck. I don't want any of it. Fuck your weird paste that you gave me in the kitchen that one time. I've had it. Is that bag capacious enough to carry all the things that Damon brought with him to Heron Hall? We say no. We say that man has a serious suit of armor and I don't know where he... Was that already on Caraxes? Who's to say? Anyway, very small bag for all of his...

As good as he, as he stomps out. Um, let's talk about a few specific things in this scene. I was struck by you, you brought up on talk thrones and I, I had agreed. I had had it in my notes, this journey from when he, when she asks, um,

Damon Turner asked him for help and he says, he corrects her and he says, counsel. And then by the end of the scene, he says, I need help, Alice. So this really feeds into this theme of coalition building or vulnerability or saying, I'm sorry, or I need help or I need, I want, I need, I want, I'm sorry. Like all of that stuff that we're seeing across the playing field.

The board here. And then the titles thing. Daemon, who has been insistent upon his king consort title elsewhere, lets Alice off the hook, right? He calls her Alice, which is intimate, yes, but not like out of the realm of possibility. She is a member of the household staff. Like he would call her Alice. That's appropriate. But she says Daemon Targaryen asking for help.

right she calls him Damon like she doesn't say Damon or she doesn't say Dame as Chris Ryan is fond of saying but she says like Damon Targaryen she doesn't say like my liege lord my consorts my holy you know like you know like all this sort of stuff like that and he doesn't like stop her and I I just think that that again there's this has been sort of from the jump this odd level of intimacy between them um that I really that is very potent uh works really well

Should we listen to Alice here talk to Damon? There are older things in this world than you or I or living memory. You are not the player but a piece on the board. As am I for that matter. I'm not like you. In some ways no. You struggle to see there's an anger that blinds you. She never even wanted it. The crown.

You spared it no thought. That's perhaps why your brother gave the crown to her. Perhaps those who strive for it are the least suited to wear it. Don't lecture me! Viserys never wanted it himself, if you recall. He came to him and he did his best. It's not a prize to be won, but a burden to bear. Little echoey hoots and hollers from Caraxes throughout this stuff. Great, iconic work from Paula Fairfield, as always. Oh, Caraxes. Shout out, Paula. Shout out, Caraxes and his deviated septum. All right.

Molly Rubin. We're smack dab and I don't want it country. What do you, what do you want to say about that? I don't want it. Don't want it. Oh, fast. This is, this is all, this is just boy. There's a lot here to parse. Um, I, I'm fascinated. And obviously like, we're just fascinated by everything about Alice, but like how she knows what she knows. And like, that's maybe let's put a pin in that and, and come back to that in a minute. I think, um,

the state that we find Damon in, we've kind of been like all season, like, why doesn't he just like leave and we know the answer, right? He can't admit defeat, but then he does actually reach this moment where he's like, I just gotta get the fuck out of here. And I thought it was interesting that he was like, there's something wrong with me, but then immediately it's someone else's fault. Because I was like, oh, is he gonna, there's something wrong? Oh, no, no. Someone poisoned me. Someone, it's the swamp bear. Like someone else, something else, never me. Fucking where would bed? Yeah.

So like Alice just being like, here are all the very specific places that I know you went or like, let's talk about how Viserys never wanted the crown. Like, this is just all really interesting. I want to know your thoughts on where we are in the like, um, green seer, uh, uh, the theory corner with Alice and just in general, this like connection to the old magic and the where would network, which like she invokes here, right. This is kind of fascinating and very rich text here. Um,

You know, we talked about already elsewhere today, like, this ripple of the, like, that's the burden of rule idea that we hear from Laris. So, of course, like, this is where we get it here from Alice. And, you know, Daemon lamenting that Rhaenyra didn't want it. This was interesting to me because, like, it made me think of... So, on the one hand, I think he's, like...

He holds her in judgment for that. He's like, how could you not want it? But on the other hand, it made me think of what you've been tracking and noting the last couple weeks of like,

Maybe Damon is just like, you're not the person I thought I had signed up to do this with, right? In a number of different respects and reasons. So that was kind of interesting. But I mean, the thing that Alice says here, like perhaps those who strive for it are the least suited to wear it. This is just like literally quoting Deathly Hallows. This is actually what...

Dumbledore says to Harry, it is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who like you have leadership thrust upon them and take up the mantle because they must and find to their own surprise that they wear it well. So like, obviously we talk about this a lot. This is a tradition in many fantasy stories. I think it's true that not all reluctant leaders who think they're bad at it or not worthy end up being good leaders. Aegon, for example, he was like, I'm not suited. And guess what? He wasn't right. Um,

We talked a little bit on Talk to Thrones about how I think this is one of the reasons that Rhaenyra's arc has been interesting and satisfying because she's kind of occupied multiple different places on this do you want it or do you not want it spectrum. And then in this episode, I think this is all being put out to us in contrast to someone like Aemond who has said out loud a lot like,

I would be the best at this. I would be better suited for it. I'm going to do it. It's my time. Oh, you guys decided it's me. I'm going to walk right to the edge of the table and start issuing edicts without a second thought. And that's not going.

so great for him right now. So all of this stuff feels like it's in, like, a conversation with each other in this episode. You know, we've heard Alicent, like, voice something about Viserys, like, with that he would have been, you know, this was in the Rhaenys conversation last season, like, would have been more content as, like, a country lord. And I think it's interesting to consider that in light of what you were noting earlier about kind of, like, Viserys' glossed-up post-death legacy and, like, you know, did the fact that he, like,

wasn't in line for it and his choosing was the product of the great council and he never thought he would be in that position, et cetera, and then he didn't want it. And then does that mean he was equipped? Like,

I don't know. Maybe not. I mean, one of the Targaryen rulers who was held in the deepest state of ridicule across the canon is our guy, Aenys. Out loud by Simon as Aenys. Which I guess makes sense because Rhaenys, Aenys, etc. But devastating still. I will just keep calling him Aenys. Nice to meet you. Thank you. But, you know, we won't get into all of the particulars, obviously, but...

basically like anus just couldn't make a decision. Couldn't get anything done. You know, a reign that was defined by indecision and a lack of confidence. And I think as we chronicled at length, you could say the same was true for Viserys. And so the idea that he is now propped up as like,

Well, and he was great. It's quite odd. Like, this is... What is happening right now is Viserys' legacy. Period. Well, no, I know. And that's what we love about Fire and Blood. That line in Fire and Blood is about, like, the, you know, seeds of...

was it discontent war being sown in times of peace? Like we quoted it like four pods in a row. And Dave was like, you guys have to stop quoting this same passage because this is always true for all wars. Why, why are you guys so taken by this one line? That's true about everything. That was a really classic Dave Gonzalez moment. By the passage and our tendency to turn to it. This is what Viserys is wrought by his indecision. And, and you know, all that sort of stuff is still interesting. Like,

I guess to go back to the like reluctant leader thing, which we will continue to hash out on many pods to come. I'm sure I go back to, I think one of the first times we talked about this was in the context of Lord of the Rings. And I go back to this idea is like kind of a more modern idea that like, um,

I think is meant to satisfy people who like, don't believe in a monarchy or double, which I don't, I'm not a monarchist. I'm a, uh, you know, I believe democracy. Um, I don't believe you have a right to rule. Right. So like, I think, I, I think if you compare Aragorn as, as Tolkien wrote him, which is a guy who's like, Hey, I'm the king.

guess what? I'm the king and I'm going to be pretty good at it. Cause that's who I am versus Aragorn, the Peter Jackson films. Who's like, I don't want it. I'm not sure. That was just like a huge adaptive choice that I really feel like Peter Jackson was like the reluctant leader idea will sit better with people who aren't like, this guy thinks he should be king. Why for why? Um, I mean, the reason is he is awesome. Like he's Aragorn. He's the best. Um, and,

But so, yeah, I just, I really think of it as a, you know, I'm not opposed to a pro-democracy modern idea that like people would think that they deserve the crown, but like inside a Targaryen dynasty, it is a particularly hard like idea for me to swallow when like the divine right of Kings is like so fundamental to who they think they are. So the idea of like Viserys and Rhaenyra being these like a

a don't want it kind of rulers. I don't know. It's interesting to me, but, um, I think of Viserys and I don't want it guy with the, with dragons, right? That's like the, that's the, that's the fascinating part of his characters. But that's, that's even again, that's a little bit more of a, of a show invention than it is a book invention. Like it's there ish in the books. And then they decided to really like hammer it in the show. Um,

One of our listeners that don't have the email in front of me, I apologize, brought up Sansa Stark, show version of Sansa Stark as someone who felt like they should, wanted to and felt like they should rule. Inside a more elegantly done final couple of seasons of Game of Thrones, I could relish that a bit more, but I'm still just always traumatized by her turning to Bran at the council and just being like, by the way, can I have the North?

Cool, thanks. I still, every time I revisit that, I just want Yara to be like, wait, can I have a take back? Can I have the Iron Islands while we're doing this? But I do get emotional watching Sansa walk towards her throne with her crown and stuff like that. So yeah, that's an interesting counter. Something to think about. Hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. Our emails are always open. Alice, about to talk about some owl stuff in a hot second, but Alice...

kills Grover Tully for Damon because he showed some emotional growth. So where are you on this? Like, where are you on what does Alice want? Watch. Like, what do you think her... Because she could just let Damon go. She could let him mount cracks, he's fly off, the Riverlands would not align behind him. Yeah.

I don't think that Alice believes that that means war would not come to the Riverlands. I think everybody in the realm, the show has gone to pains this season to make clear that no matter where you are, whether you're in the Vale or the Twins or the Riverlands or anywhere, you know that you're not going to escape this. What is Alice... Why does Alice choose to help Damon here? I don't know, and I can't... I mean, I have some spoiler stuff that I want to talk about on this front, some book spoiler stuff, but in the context of what the show has given us, I find that I don't know

And I'm excited to hear what Gil Ricken thinks about this. And Ryan Cudlentier has, of course. But like, I don't know. I find everything that Gil has said about Alice so far to be so fascinating. Great interview with Roxanna Hadidi over at Vulture with Gil. So like, I'm really fascinated to hear what she thinks. I find myself confused in a way that excites me and doesn't frustrate me.

How do you feel? Yeah. Same, I think. The one line that I was kind of like latching onto was river men are made of mud. Like the way that she was just describing the stubbornness and the state of play in the region and the way that like it because it just kind of heightens that I think question we have of like

this maybe longer connection, older, mysterious, mystical connection that she has to this place. For me, the most crucial line was, you are not the player but a piece on the board, as am I for that matter. So that she thinks of herself as just a piece on the board and not the player is interesting to me. That all feels connected because it's like, okay, Rivermen are made of mud, so unless I help...

We're not going to maybe... The thing that needs to happen won't happen for what end, to what purpose. This is, I guess, connects this, like, is Alice a skin changer or the owl? Is Alice a greenseer? We've mentioned, we've talked about in other episodes, like, the proximity to the Isle of Faces, the idea that the children, you know, like, are...

when we talk about the player, like who's the player then? Like what kind of old magic is, is dry or is motivating maybe what Alice is talking about? Um, so that's all really interesting. And just in general, again, I think it's cool to be in a point in the timeline where like, you know, we've talked about like the, the, the, the Lewin brand season two conversation a lot in other episodes were like,

Llewyn's just like, the dragons are gone, the giants are dead, and the children of the far is forgotten. Right? And to be in a moment in the story where like, there be dragons! You know? It's just, it's a rich moment to think of like, what other magic is driving affairs? And how is Alice connected to it?

I can't wait to find out. Not since Peter Sarsgaard on the finale of Presumed Innocent said, No spoilers. What if she never consumed the Rangoon? That's not a spoiler. I thought you were telling me that already. What if she never consumed the Rangoon? Genuinely, one of my favorite things I've ever heard. You putting your finger in the air and declaring, Here be dragons! Is one of my favorite things I've ever heard.

Through the COVID fog. Okay. We'll go back to this hilarious quote we've mentioned a few times, but this idea of Harrenhal is a place of judgment, right? It passes judgment on all who pass beneath its gate. So this idea that like,

Folks watching at home who don't like this storyline and feel it's going nowhere, I wildly disagree. And I feel like we're really pushing Damon towards growth. We call it growth, character development. And he passes the test by offering empathy and support for his brother in this moment, as you said, that never happened. This is the brother... If he told himself a story that he was a good brother...

Which I think Daemon has told himself that story, that he was a good brother to Viserys. And then had to confront this idea that he made his own brother weep on the throne earlier. And then here's a dream wherein he gets to be the good brother that he kind of maybe thought he was. Interesting email from our listener Sarah, jumping a little bit ahead on the Rhaenyra stuff. But Sarah says...

Rhaenyra this episode uses fear and violence to exhibit power slapping Lord Keltigar more sexually liberated dominant making out with Vissaria and more impulsive with her dragons taking Cyrax to go investigate Adam and Seasmoke. Daemon acts more like Rhaenyra this episode focusing on love reverence for Viserys asking for counsel from others and listening to it waiting for things to happen instead of charging out without a plan. It'll be interesting to see if they strike a balance between these two sides of who they are and who they wanted to be like. And this is in response to that thing that

Rhaenyra says later. So perhaps I should have saved that email for them. But, um, I do find that interesting. This idea of like, we've been talking so much about like, Alison walking Rhaenyra's path, but this idea that like Rhaenyra and, and Damon have to be sort of like pushed towards the, like each other seems from a marriage. Um,

Yeah, I mean, you know, we hear Rhaenyra talk about two halves of the same whole, but also, like, that idea of possession, like, which, you know, when she's saying that to Mysaria and describing Daemon, like, he wanted to possess, but he didn't want to be possessed. Obviously, she means more in terms of the dynamics of their relationship, but then you can apply it into this literal possession that is taking place here at Harrenhal, right? And, you know, I was thinking, too, of just that moment, like, when Daemon sees, in the context of, like,

pushing through and passing that passing the test you know Galadriel like just like Galadriel damn it he's passed the test the is he gonna diminish I don't think so I don't think he intends to diminish you know the way that he's like all right

What do I fear? What do I long for? What do I regret? This was a moment that I failed. I was not here. He needed me. I told Rhaenyra at the funeral, your father needs you more now more than ever. I could clock it. I knew what he needed, but I couldn't give it to him. I'm going to now imagine what that would have been like so that I know how I failed. Like I was thinking of when he saw Viserys at the, at Lena's funeral and Viserys was like, the gods can be cruel. And he just looked at him and how he had like started, you know, like shedding body parts. It was like,

Seems they've been especially cruel to you. And like the idea of like the cruelty of the gods and what is visited upon you and Damon having his, his torment and his trial. And like, can that lead to true healing for him is then I think the question. So we did talk to Thrones. I told you I was going to hit you with some owl stuff. And did COVID prevent me from doing that? Nay. Okay.

It shall not. Verily. So here we go. Which stuff go really briefly. We got a bunch of owl emails. These are only a few. Our listener, Olivia said in native American culture, the owl is a sign of death. If you've seen killers of the flower moon, you'll remember the significant debt scenes of owls visiting Molly's mother and later herself while on their deathbeds. Cat who sent us an entire tropes course syllabus. It is.

a masterpiece. This is only one little morsel of this feast that she sent us. She says, the legend of La Lechuza is one that can be heard all over Mexico. It is said that a lechuza or owl is a brujer or witch that is taking the form of this owl out of vengeance. So that's this idea that owl crops up again and again in mythology to signify one thing or another. But the one that I think is really interesting

Maybe perhaps most on Condal and the writer's minds is perhaps this Welsh version. Our listener Maggie wrote in, there is this Welsh figure. I am Welsh, but please forget my pronunciation. I believe it is Blydywyth.

which is this owl figure that I'll talk about in a second, but Maggie was looking into how sigils in A Song of Ice and Fire that have owls in them. And she found that George created House Garner and a member of House Garner is Alan Garner spelled A-L-Y-N Garner.

Alan Garner is the name of a Welsh writer who wrote a book called The Owl Service in 1967, a Welsh YA book that I have read. That's a retelling of the story of the Blydaywith myth. And that book takes place in the 1960s and it's about a group of people who get sort of

locked into essentially playing out the events of this myth and the events of this myth basically bloody with is a woman created out of there's this guy he's cursed to never know the love of a human woman bummer hot bummer okay and i actually believe it's his mom who did this to him uh so you'll never know the love of a human woman and so some friendly neighborhood mages were like what if we make you a woman out of subflowers and various weeds and brambles and he's like

Great. Hot. Love it. So they make him an extremely hot woman and they call her Bledewyth, which means flower face. And as women in Welsh tales want to do sometimes, she fucks around on...

intended here. And when this is discovered, the person who changed her from flower into human changes her into an owl. And it's sort of like a creation myth. It's like explains why owls, certain owls have faces that might look like they have a flower on them, like a flower face sort of thing. So this like Welsh sort of goddess, witch magic figure that it was like flower made of flowers and then turn it to an owl. And the, the,

What I love thinking about in terms of The Owl Service, the book by Alan Garner, which was written in 1967, takes place in the 60s, is about this cycle, this spiritual cycle where every generation, three people are forced to basically enact the events of this Bloody With myth. Like two guys and a girl are sort of locked into, as avatars, into reenacting this. And only by breaking that cycle at the end of the book, spoilers for The Owl Service,

um, are they able to sort of like break this curse of having to reenact this mythical story of this owl woman and these two men? And, uh, uh, just thinking about Damon breaking out of this cycle at Heron Hall, thinking about owls and Welsh people and witches and all this sort of stuff like that. I just thought, um, I would bring that up. Intriguing. So,

But the fact that like... That's some bird. 12th doctor. Little 12. Great. That's some bird. Love it. Breaking out of a cycle. That's my contribution. Breaking out of a cycle. But I love that like George can sometimes do the dumbest things like...

Oscar and Grover and Kermit Tully. Justice for Kermit. And then sometimes he's like, you know, I liked that owl service book. It was a classic. And he's like, you know, I like that. So I'll do House Garner, Alan Garner. I'll put some owls on a sigil in honor of this author that I like, which I thought was really fun. Wonderful stuff. Wonderful. Less fun. Love it.

Less fun than calling an owl to you, which also made me think of Shogun and Toronago, but less fun than that is what happens to Stefan Darklin. We're just going to spend a quick second and honor Sir Stefan Darklin, who is dead now. Anything you want to say about Sir Stefan? Yeah. I mean, the cruelty of hitting the three-hour mark on our COVID cast and not having time left to talk about the dragon stuff. Devastating blow. Yeah.

Let's see. What do I want to say about Sir Stefan? You know, I thought that all of this was interesting. I like the idea of like the king, the queen's guard as a starting point for, you know, obviously Rhaenyra is like, hey, we found out Ariana Targaryen princess, your grandma's grandma, which that's like a new character, not somebody we knew. So that's interesting. Yep.

Yep. Good stuff. But I liked the just like in general pro. Okay. Queen's guard. Someone who is definitely willing to die for you. And someone you can trust. Yes. Khan.

you compromise your strength even further if this goes badly. Yeah, on the trust front, I was thinking, of course, of like Stefan's season one loyalty test that Damon made Stefan and Laurent go through, right? If you choose treachery, if you swear fealty now only to later turn your clothes, then no, you'll die screaming. It's like, well, I don't know. It's one thing to like... He died screaming anyway. It's one thing to swear fealty in front of Caraxes. It's another to put on a whole...

and smuggle your queen into King's Landing, which I feel like was Stefan's real test of loyalty. It's a true act of heroism. No, yes, I just mean, you know, sort of like died screaming. No, no, I got it. I got it. The approach, the way that Stefan approached Sea Smoke, um...

I thought it was an interesting mix of reaching for your sword as a first reflex. Not good. Wouldn't do it. And then moving right to the... Giving the commands. And then from that until I've done it. Celebrated a little early. None of that went well, obviously. I thought this was heartbreaking in a number of ways. Seasmoke, obviously...

He bends his neck at first. He leans down like he wants the bond so badly. I can't wait to talk about him choosing Adam. We know how lonely he is, but this was just, this was not right. It was interesting to hear the dragon keepers sing the same lullaby that Damon sang to Vermithor. Cause like we have the, the lyrics, um, the, the, the price has been paid with blood magic line. Like really feels just worth, uh,

as we move towards speculating on some of the possible, what are the explanations for Adam and Seasmoke pairing, et cetera, because we always have this question, this history with Old Valeria and the blood mages and the blood magic that tied the dragon riders to the dragons to consider there. So that was very interesting, but also it made me think, like, again, when that, I don't know, when that dragon keeper slices his throat, I'm just like, this feels like a blood magic thing to me. I just don't know what the other

explanation for that is you're burned alive by dragon fire you die faster from bleeding out than from dragon fire yeah I saw Randall and Tickon Tarly turn to ash in like four seconds two point two seconds no no I think it's to put yourself out of your own misery to die faster than burning

I think. Looked like he and Stefan died at the same time anyway. Feels like a blood magic thing to me. I'm standing on that corner. That's my corner. Lonely. What a lonely, sad corner for you to stand on. Do you think the lyrics of that song with clear eyes to bind the three is a Friday Night Lights reference? It's amazing how it's impossible to think of anything but Coach Taylor when you see clear eyes. Literally impossible, I think. Absolutely demented cut from Stefan on fire.

to Adam at the shipyard and Corlys is calling Alan's name and we get to the Velaryon voice. Here comes the Hamilton reference. Alan wants nothing to do with Corlys who wants everything to do with him, right? Legacy, legacy, legacy. I'm thinking about it. Corlys says,

Corley says, I was younger than you when I took my first command. This is literally, as you just quoted Harry Potter, this is literally live from Hamilton. When Chris Jackson as Washington says to Hamilton, I was younger than you are now when I was given my first command. This is the second time Hamilton has come up. So I feel like someone on the writing staff is either a Hamilton fan. I feel like they're a

Hamilton fan possibly in the way that like they listen to it so much when it first came out as did I that it's just sort of cooked into their brain and just sort of like comes out in sentences I don't know that they're necessarily were like I'm gonna do a Hamilton lyric here I feel like it's just sort of like cooked their noodle a little bit but maybe that's the COVID talking um

trying to beat the Nepo baby allegations by keeping his hair hidden. You love to see it. This is a very fascinating, lengthy part of the House of the Dragon builds inside the episode. And then we get this back and forth between the brothers. And this is where I was like, I would love you more of this.

But this refers to something that Steve Chasson said to us in the interview that we had with him where he talked about how the boys grew up sort of in the shadow of Driftmark, right? And Alan says, as we said, the hole of our lives in the shadow of the Sea Snake's Great Castle, I do not wish to dwell in it any longer. To me, as we noted, there are many different ways to be a crippled, bastard, broken thing in George R. R. Martin's universe. But this specific case

preoccupation of the unacknowledged bastard. The way that like, I was just thinking about Jon Snow as I sometimes do when I watch House of the Dragon. Jon Snow doesn't want the throne, right? Don't want it in like sort of the Alan model. But he did want some acknowledgement from Ned. He wanted love from Kat. That would be nice. That sort of like

I feel like these two guys are representing like two halves inside of Jon Snow, which is like... Or not that Jon Snow is that conflict on the front. It's just like, I don't have ambition for that, but I do want to be a part of that, you know? And Adam seems to like...

He's just like full of piss and vinegar and has like just wants, you know, and feels like he's owed. And we can't help but agree. And Alan's just like, leave me the fuck alone. Just scrape my barnacles. But at the same time, like he could have moved away. Like why is he still live? Why does Alan still live here in the shadow of Driftmark? He's got, you can scrape barnacles almost anywhere along the coast. Why are you still here, my guy? I'm not saying he should have to leave. I'm just saying if he's that repulsed by Corliss or Driftmark,

Why hasn't he left yet? And on a character level, that's interesting to me. Yeah, I like how totally distinct they seem in their relationship to ambition and what Corliss represents in that respect, but just in terms of how they're programmed, right? And when Adam says...

So you've a little, you're a great opportunity. Or he says, do you never think about what could be ours? And the, in this scene, like it sets the stage for the sea smoke pairing quite nicely. And like, it's something that we've been hearing from Adam since we met him, like in the second episode of the season, um,

when he was talking to Alan to serve with the sea snake is to make your fortune. If I had such a chance, I would leap at it or another opportunity to distinguish yourself. Like when sea smoke pursues Adam and stares him down and looks at him and sniffs him,

Couldn't help but think of Jon, Drogon sniffing Jon. Just sniffing for that, sniffing for a certain, I'm looking for something in the blood there. What's the M count on this one? Anyone seen Torben? Does he have any? Anyone have a syringe? You know, like, we know. I think what you said at the top of the episode is really right. It would be great if we had more time with these characters, but we, in our limited time, like,

It's unmistakable to us that Adam won't miss that chance. I feel like he's going to hop on with a woo-hoo. You know what I mean? Yeah. Once he's finished shitting himself in fear. And I loved the sequence. I loved... It's fantastic. And the way that Clinton Liberty is like... The actor who plays Adam is like...

so excited that he gets to talk about the fact that he's a dragon rider now. Who wouldn't be? And his socials are just like, my favorite thing that he posted was on TikTok. He posted like he did the Leo pointing meme. Like he sat in a chair and then just like snapped and pointed at the screen. And then it like, it's like him on the screen is very cute. Great stuff. I would also be thrilled if I got to become a dragon rider. I, this makes complete sense to me. I hope he's having the time of his life. This is the most shocking thing you've ever said. Yeah.

I'm thrilled for Clinton. I'm thrilled for Adam. I'm thrilled for Seasmoke. I'm thrilled for us. I'm thrilled for the magical creature lovers and the dragon lovers. I'm thrilled for all of us who are interested in the bond between a dragon and rider and learning more about it. We're running long. We're both exhausted. I'll really quickly rehash what we talked about on Talk to Thrones because I think it would be an auto mission to not hit it on our deep dive today. But the two questions with this pairing that are just worth quickly hitting are,

There's the living writer question and the Adam blood question. Which we should say, we've been talking about this ad nauseum in the spoiler section, but how lovely to bring it into the main. Not for years. Yeah. Actually years. Literally years. Yeah.

Since Laenor lived, we've been like, wait, how are they going to... Because that was a show update. So how are they going to pair Seasmoke with Adam if his rider is still alive? Because our understanding, based on canon, is that a dragon cannot take another rider if their rider lives. So we were like, what are they going to do? How are they going to explain this? Now, it is certainly possible that the explanation is Laenor was killed offscreen. I...

I remain really opposed to that and just think that would be exceedingly, exceedingly strange if they did this big thing and made this change and caused all these like odd political complications for Nira. And then we're just like, just kidding. And the whole point of it was like, lean or go live your life. Maybe they'll tell us that's what happened at some point. But who the fuck knows? I think it's more interesting ultimately that,

Chris was confused by me saying, I've been worried about this, but now I like it. I had been worried about whether this was going to be canon shattering and how they would explain this. What I like about it is that because George R.R. Martin is constantly saying in the text, we don't know anything about this. Like, we're just looking for any little shred of evidence or data that we can say, now we understand something about the nature of this bond. Maybe the answer is, Seasmoke decided that being abandoned...

was not acceptable to him. And that is the same to him as his rider being dead. Because he left him. It's fine. And so why should he live his life alone, unpaired? Because Laenor went to have an adventure and to live his life the way he wanted. Now, Sea Smoke just has to be alone. I've decided to live my life the way that I want, which is to not be worried about this anymore. But...

I just don't understand why Seasmoke... How did Laenor convince Seasmoke not to follow him? Did he throw rocks at him like Nymeria? Like, why wouldn't Seasmoke just fly across, you know, the water to follow Laenor wherever he went? Maybe he was like, I don't want you anymore. Maybe that's why Seasmoke's been crying. Mournfully. Devastating. Very sad. The M count. So very quickly...

the, okay, what is, what is Adam, Adam's, uh, what's the blood here? So we should say in the book, there's like speculation that Adam and Alan are Lenor's sons before the Corliss possibility arises. Obviously in the show, there's just no universe where that's the case. They are Corliss's sons, period. So here are the, because of the, like, uh, you gotta be a, you gotta be a Tark to ride, like backdrop of all of this, which like,

as Jace and Rhaenyra discuss, right, is a question, right? So in the fifth episode of the season, Rhaenyra says a dragon will only accept a dragon lord to ride it, or so say the histories. And Jace replied, Valyrian histories written to gild us in glory. So let's keep that in mind, right? And let's also keep in mind that there were 40 dragon riding families in Old Valyria. The Targaryens were just one of the dragon riding families, hardly the most powerful. They're just the one that survived the doom. So other families could ride. They were other families with

the blood of old Valeria. Okay, so here are the possibilities. One, anybody can ride no matter their blood. Anyone. Anyone. This is all, it's not just specific Targ propaganda. It's like all of this is propaganda. Anyone could do it. They just haven't tried because they didn't think they could. Two, Adam has the blood of old Valeria. He doesn't have Targaryen blood, but he's got blood from one of those other dragon riding families somewhere in the family history there. That blood magic that

leads to that bond. Three, Corlys might have a drop of Targaryen blood in his bloodline. It's possible the Targaryens and the Velaryons have intermarried over the years. Let's not forget Aegon the Conqueror's mother was a Velaryon. Jaehaerys' mother was a Velaryon. Lots of marriages between these families over the years, so that's possible. Four, Asgard

So Adam's mother was a dragon seed or the daughter or granddaughter of a dragon seed. So that would be the side on which the Targaryen blood, if you do in fact need that dragon, dragon-y targ blood comes into play. Or five. Seasmoke is like, you and my prior rider have the same father.

Corliss. And... You're both extremely good-looking. That as well, yes. Like, he made an exception because the similarity to Laenor is the thing that matters more to him. And it's this, like, one more... Yet another instance of George being like...

just the full eager at you know nothing about the Bond and giving us a new data point. And for the people of the realm and the people writing the histories, they don't know Laenor's alive. So they don't, they're just like, his rider died and then he paired with a new rider. Here we go. They're not asking those questions in fire and blood because they don't know that Laenor's alive. Last thing on the Adam front, I just, because in the Rhaenyra-Missaria scene,

which we actually haven't talked about yet. It was a reckless thought that an ancient Valyrian beast would suffer a Darkland to ride it, like Rhaenyra's response to what happened with Steffen. Looking for the Highborns, thinking Steffen had a chance because he's from House Darkland, Duskendale, Nobleborn. Jace's plan, his whole, oh, Gildas of Glory, he's still like,

What about the other Targaryens who didn't rule but married into highborn families? So how will they receive this news? Like, is it going to be, oh my God, we can cast a wider net? Is it going to be, well, this is like a threatening thing? Like we've been talking about this since the Maelys head parade, right? The idea of kind of like chipping away at this illusion. Is that going to be how Rhaenyra greets this? Or is Rhaenyra going to welcome Rhaenyra?

what this means. I'm really curious to see what she does now that she has flown off on Caraxes in pursuit. On Cyrax, yeah. Okay, so we... Excuse me, yes. Now that she has flown off on Cyrax. That's how you know Mallory's tired. She got a dragon name wrong, which she literally has never done in all the time I've known her. COVID! All right. Let's talk about Reyna and Lady Jane just really briefly to just say, here we are in the Vale. There's a giant, massive dragon here.

Stealing sheep. And tiny baby storm cloud, more importantly to me. Okay. Tiny baby storm cloud, massive dragon stealing sheep. Reyna seems not thrilled by her job as babysitter. She's nice enough to joff, but she does not seem a natural at it. Or joff. She's like, I want that job. She's like, Lady Jane, Erin, you lied to me. There is a big fuck-off dragon in the Vale. What are you talking about? Jane, Erin's like, yeah, it was wild. So what good is it to me? I don't know. I can't tame it. And also like,

If I told you there was a giant dragon here, would you have sent one of your other dragons here? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like Lady Jean had every good reason to keep this a little bit of a secret.

Will Reyna have a chance to meet this tall, dark, and smoky dragon stranger before Lady Jane plunks her on the gay abandoned ship bound for Pentos? This, just everything in the storytelling DNA of my life, this would be a massive change for Reyna if this happens. We go back and forth on this, about whether or not we can talk about this stuff in the non-spoiler section, because I'm like,

But it feels weird not to talk about it because like it's not in the book. So it's not a thing that I know is going to happen. It's just every single storytelling indication is that Reyna, the character we've heard five times this season, tried and failed to claim a dragon. Reyna, who since we first met her is like, I wish I had a dragon. I wish I had a dragon. There's a big dragon in the veil and Reyna's like, hmm, like that's – how is that going to go?

I don't know because it's not in the book, so I don't know. But are they on some kind of collision course? It feels inevitable. Okay. Rhaenyra and Mysaria. I'm so glad that we saved this extremely juicy section for last and we were both a bit tired. This coupling between Rhaenyra and Mysaria is not quite a coupling yet. This smooching. Coupling. Thank you. This is an old book reader theory.

In Fire and Blood, there's this line where Rhaenyra says, let demons like his hungers where he will and we shall do the same. You know? And it's just sort of like a... I don't know how that could not have launched a million different fan fictions for people who think Mysaria and Rhaenyra are together at some point. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So...

As we've discussed on Talk of Thrones elsewhere in this episode, we really do think that this Missaria scene is meant to align with the Lara scene and with the Alice scene where it's like these are three people who

making a bid for proximity to power by using actual genuine vulnerabilities in their own life to do so. I think she does believe in Rhaenyra. I think she does want to share her own vulnerabilities about what happened to her. But I think she also wants this proximity to power and perhaps revenge on the Hightowers if it's on offer because...

Otto Hightower, she thinks, burned down her pleasure house in King's Landing. And Rhaenyra, in the meantime, is in flirting with her own questions of gender, and is there a way for a woman to rule without the trappings, sword, violence, etc., of a man? Let's hear Rhaenyra herself on this subject. My own son questions my capabilities. He thinks I need Daemon at my side. And Daemon himself. He has ever done what suits Daemon.

He was everything I wanted to be. Carefree, dangerous. A man. And I was what he wanted. Cherished by my father and made my father's heir. We were halves of a whole. He wished to possess me but not to be possessed. And to see me take hold, finally, of what he always believed to be his. I fear what he may now do. I fear he may have turned against me. It is more his way to disappear. In either case, I have lost him. And Caraxes with him.

I think it's fascinating that ending there, like the way that she's thinking about Damien as not just a husband, but like a piece on her war board. Because like you lose a husband. To lose a husband is a misfortune. To lose a husband and a dragon. Carelessness. Like this sexy, scary dragon rider coalition that they formed at Laedra's funeral has been fractured.

On this, like, people questioning Rhaenyra and how she's responding throughout this episode. Mm-hmm. Do you want to talk about her slapping the face off of Lord Keltigar in the hallway? Oh, man.

I couldn't have loved this more. Just Keltigar haunting her steps to be like, most regrettable, if perhaps foreseeable. And, you know, saying that, calling her approach sensational. Like the gall to spend all season being like, do nothing. I did do nothing. Let us do it. Just go for a spa day, do nothing. And then like,

To paint her action as sensational and rash and reckless. The haste with which Rhaenyra turned around, slapped him, and then the delivery of, it is my fault, I think, that you have forgotten to fear me. I just loved everything about that. The performances, like the little eye flicker from Keltigar, who saw that later? We hear Jace, like, the castle is abuzz! Of course, how could it not be? But I just loved...

everything that was driving that for Rhaenyra because it's, it's impatience. It's frustration. Like it is a loss of control in a way that I think Rhaenyra plenty of points in the story would really have regretted, but she feels completely vindicated in it here. And how could she not like,

you're made to sit still and be quiet until it all just boils over. And it's the same exact thing on display when she rushes to the dragon mount to climb onto Cyrax and fly after when Lauren's like, should I assemble your council? She's like, fuck that. I'm going to go do it myself. Finally, nobody's going to tell me not to. I'm going to slap this guy in the face and tell him to remember who I am and nobody's going to tell me not to. And like, that's the point that it's gotten to for her. And then you balance that with,

I thought the Rhaenyra scenes were so good in this episode. And the measure, there's a lot of heat and emotion that is fueling what Rhaenyra is saying. But the measured, thoughtful assessment with which we move from her trying the sword and Mysaria's like, this becomes you. We had heard in the fifth episode, she's like, I never learned the difference between a hilt and a foible, right? They know it. I was never taught that. And then you build to something like the Jace scene.

And it's just really measured thoughtful assessment of like, what do people expect from men, from women, from me? I bring to mind too much their mothers or their daughters. They must see in me a ruler and the symbols of authority are not jewels and gowns, but the shield and the sword. Like,

I thought this was so amazing because it's how Rhaenyra thinks other people perceive her, but also it is what she genuinely thinks she lacks. She has grown to worry that she lacks. There's a reason that she's studying Visenya. Right? She's like, this is a thing that I don't possess that I need or I'm not going to be able to do this. So the thing that other people doubt in her has become her own genuine insecurity. And a thing she's determined to correct. Something she's lost touch with. Like, why?

When she leaves, when she sees King's Landing to Alyson and leaves, and Laenor, in that episode, Laenor's like, you always said that if you left, like, you know, she'd box you out entirely. And she's just like, my family, you know, essentially her family's more important to her in that moment, that, like, peace of mind for her and her children and stuff like that. And so, like, I think that the fact that she has embraced the role of mother, like,

for so long that we always praise her for being a kind, warm, mothering figure to her children.

This is like a real like lean in moment. Can you have it all? Can you devote yourself to that? Because we've got, we got, I can't even begin to tell you how many emails we got last week. And I don't know why last week was the breaking point from people being like, where's the old Rhaenyra? I miss the old Rhaenyra. This is the new Kanye. I miss the old Kanye. Like, where is like Rhaenyra we met in season one, played by Millie Alcock, who would just like hop on her dragon and

you know, walk through a campsite covered in blood, fuck her Kingsguard, like all this sort of stuff. Like, like where is she? Um, I miss her here. She like, she's like, like hopping on a dragon, slapping Keltigar, uh, uh,

Kissing an employee at a moment when probably she probably shouldn't. That's classic season one Rhaenyra. This is what some people were clamoring for. And I'm excited to see where we go from here. But it's interesting that she's just like, I tried it.

a certain way. I tried it my father's way or I tried it like the way that we tell women to do, which is be quiet, listen, take counsel from other people, blah, blah, blah. You know, try to broker peace. Try to, you know, keep things calm. Listening to Renise, which she should, like, listen to Renise, but now Renise is dead, man. You know, Renise is gone and Luke's gone and Luke is the one who in the end of season one, Luke is like,

I'm not like you. So perfect. You know? So, so that shot and her, she had to send her other children away. So that like adoration of her children, that reflection back Damon's gone. That like, sort of like, I'm, I'm like someone's partner. I'm someone's wife. Like, did you find what you were seeking? Like all of this or something like that's gone. And so it's just Jace who I love, but Jace,

Gently also undermining her, you know, and just sort of like, you know, and she's just like, fuck you, Damon, Damon, Damon. Like, are you kidding me? Like, you know, I love this progression for Rhaenyra as character. I love this performance from Emma as a tremendous actor who can play all these notes. Our frustration with Rhaenyra this season, if you had any at home,

It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's like, yeah, Rhaenyra's also frustrated with who she's become and who she's had to be this season. And now we're seeing how is that...

popping out going forward, you know? Yeah. Like I think for Rhaenyra to reach the point where she says out loud, I do not think I can win this war. That is a meaningful moment for her to have to confront. Right. And like the Jace call out is, you know, it's interesting because I think on the one hand he's like, my mother's my ruler and I do not wish otherwise, or it was a bold attempt. I admire you for it. There's like this real kinship and love and belief between them. But then also like he's top of her list when she's like saying to Miss Aria, like,

my own son questions me, how am I ever going to get this done? You know, how? Um, and I thought that the way that she like Raniera moved in from into then like explaining like in that clip we heard, you know, the nature of her relationship with Damon and like what did they, what they like provided each other. Um,

Which like almost strikes me. It's, it's much, I mean, lust is still, I think I play there, but it's less like true love, genuine affection and more like survival instinct. Yeah.

coveting, you know? And that was like an interesting way to think about the seed of their union and then like whether they can evolve beyond that or even just whether that can bring them back together again, right? Arriving at a new moment. I love what the blend in there from Rhaenyra is empathy, right? To be able to think

What was I that... I mean, this is a little bit like I've been in too much therapy, Rhaenyra mode. Let me analyze exactly what Daemon wanted, exactly what I wanted. And as someone who's been in too much therapy, I support it. But the empathy that's available to her inside of her frustration with Daemon here, I think is a fascinating part of Rhaenyra. As far as the kiss between Rhaenyra and Mysaria...

Both Emma Darcy and Sonoya Mizuno have been giving interviews talking about how this kiss was improvised. It was something that Emma Darcy concocted in the moment. There have been some pushback from people. We got a lot of very strong feeling emails from people saying like they thought it was, you know, they didn't really love the close juxtaposition between Masaria's sort of

confession of her own sexual trauma to then like a kiss. And then I've heard plenty of takes from people being like, actually that's exactly when, especially queer women perhaps will be like, here's an opportunity for a sexual or romantic experience outside of that trauma experience at the hand of a man or somebody like, you know, there's like a lot of complicated factors here. I don't think there's one easy clean way to read this. I don't think anyone would say that.

this is an uncomplicated thing that happened between these two characters. But I think there is also some uncomplicated aspects of it. Like Sonoya says in an interview with the rap, she's, she was talking about how she's like, I don't think either one of these women like has been hugged this way in a long time, maybe ever the simplicity of that, um,

what that offers is so important. I think there's like the, there's a really, you know, the way that Masaria says like, you have me, right? There's this real, when Masaria is explaining that she thinks Rhaenyra actually would be a good ruler and has the qualities to be a good ruler and to further Masaria's desires to protect the small folk, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's all of that, but like,

two people in that moment who seem to feel just real gratitude that somebody else sees their worth. That felt like very palpable in the scene. I'm going to round this out with an email we got from our listener, Neve. And then we'll head into the spoiler section. Neve, and I believe I pronounced that correctly, said, um,

The confirmation without a shadow of doubt of Rhaenyra's bisexuality is a vital piece of her character and her story. It has always been there inside her when her mother told her her battleground would be the birthing bed, when she talked about running away with Alicent, when Alicent told her that was silly to even think about, when she longed to fight and ride and be allowed to all the rights that men had, when she was forced to parade herself around the country to find a husband she didn't want.

When Allison shamed her and felt betrayed, that she had sex with a man. When Allison betrayed her by marrying her father. When she told Leonor she was happy he was the way he was. And they invented their own model of family facing censure at every turn. When she helped him escape and have something like the life she once dreamed of having. When she risked her life on the hope that whatever made up her relationship with Allison could end the war and on and on and on. Um...

I love pulling that thread all the way through of Rhaenyra's, both her sexuality and then also this question of like gender, which is separate but entangled at the same time. I'm really interested to see where this goes. I'm fascinated. This is a really cool and exciting thing. I think, I think Seasmoke claiming Rhaenyra,

which is a fun way to diagram that sentence, right? Seesaw is the one who claims Adam, right? And, you know, Masaria and Rhaenyra here are the two things I think that people really got excited about in this episode, among other things. Let's go now, briefly, alas, because genuinely we are on our final legs here through our book spoiler section. ♪

Multiple choice question for you at the top here, Molly Rubin. Does Jason Lannister's lion, A, eat Jason Lannister, B, clash with a dire wolf from the north that the Graveyards are bringing down? I looked up the BBY timeline. It checks out. Gets absolutely torched by a dragon. D, none of the above, but we see the lion limping and singed and bloodied at the fish feed as a symbol of House Lannister's utter failure. What is your pick?

pick here. I think D seems probably most likely, but I'm very intrigued by A. If Jason Lannister gets eaten by his own lion, I'm going to have a great day. Helena in the scrum of the riot gets pushed up against a bunch of spikes on the wall. This is a sad little preview of how she will end her life, perhaps if it goes according to the books, on some spikes in the dry moat that

Maegor, a real normal guy built around a tower in Kingsland. The Songless Cricket.

Any other theories? I liked the idea of Darren, who has put down the loot to come to war, really cracked me up as one that I saw floating around. For me, it was the cut from Gwaine to that. Like, cut from Gwaine being like, goodbye, to Helena being like, this cricket seems dead! I don't know. I just like, again, Gwaine Hightower is nowhere near the fish feed, the battle that we are assuming is going to be the subject of the finale of the season. Um,

He's a member of the Gold Cloaks. He's in King's Landing, but he does die in King's Landing. So he, you know, if you stuck around King's Landing, he wouldn't make it out of the season anyway. So if he's going to the Riverlands to die, to give us like, as we mentioned in previous spoiler sections, some characters at the fish feed, we actually care about, AKA Kristen Cole, Gwaine Hightower. Um, then I'm sorry. I'll miss you, buddy. Um,

Yeah, I'm hoping that he finds a way to survive and go join Taron and the Hightowers. Let's get Gawain at least to Honeywine, please. I just am not ready to say goodbye yet. I'm going to put that on some merch. Get him to Honeywine at least. All right. I mean, now that we're saving Honeywine for season three, we might as well get Gawain there. Get him. Get him there, please.

The shepherd, there is the man who gets his arm chopped off in the riot. It's probably not the shepherd. The shepherd is an unhinged religious one-armed leader of the small folk who is anti-dragon and will be a major figure. Think like the high sparrow, but more unhinged and less one-armed. And...

So this is probably not the shepherd or if it's meant to be the shepherd, they're going to recast him because they're going to, this is a stunt guy. They're going to cast like someone to play the shepherd. But like, yeah, but this felt like a little nod to that of like, Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Raina and the nettles erasure. This one's goes out to our, our pal, David Jacoby seems inevitable at this point.

People are really frustrated by this, or some people are really frustrated about this idea that Reyna is going to take over the Nettles' role. And Jacoby, among them, the argument is we really like this narrative that Nettles is someone without Targaryen blood who just like sort of slowly, by feeding him sheep, sort of drew this dragon to her. Yeah.

What if Adam is kind of playing that role? Like if it turns out per your like rundown of the list that Adam doesn't have any Targaryen blood on in him and it doesn't really matter. But he still has the blood of old Valeria through Corlys. So that doesn't, I don't think that can completely check the like, it truly anyone can ride a dragon the way that Nettles would have. I don't disagree. I just wonder if they, if they're like,

Yeah, I guess we'll see how it all plays out and if there's another figure at all that could... I don't know. I guess I've... The thing that I find myself bumping up against with the Nettles thing is that I always just kind of believed that she was Damon's daughter anyway. So that's always where I was. I was just going to say, not that it was 100% that she had no blood tie. It's a theory, but we don't know for sure. Can't wait to find all of this out one day. Rand is definitely going to claim that dragon. Okay.

Hugh Hammer. The hammer will fall. We saw a side of Hugh in this episode that we had not yet seen, which is the, I will do anything for my family. I will steal a sack of food and fuck you if you get in my way.

It's justified violence, but it is violence. And if they are moving the Hammer family to Tobleton, then we can kind of see that that's where the Hugh Hammer Dragonrider betrayal might happen. Jane Aaron says, A merchant cog, the gay bandit, will take you to Pentos. A merchant cog? I'll send six good men to protect you on the crossing.

I'm sorry, but this is not acceptable from Jane Aaron. Obviously, like, knowing what's going to happen, this is just astonishing. But, like, even...

you know, I'm watching this episode with my husband. He hasn't read the books. He doesn't know what's going to happen in the gay band. And he paused the episode and was like, six men? Like, this is just crazy. I mean, it's six men? Three royal, four royal children. If we count Raina as a child. A dragon and eggs. A dragon, eggs, and a hatchling. What are we doing, Jane? Come on. Jane sucks. Uh, for this one. Whoa. Yeah. Uh,

The gay abandon getting a mention in episode six of an eight episode season made me go like, are we going to actually? I know. I got pulled back. I'm just the

father three meme with gullet all season long I just can't quit the gullet I can't it's there's no way we just don't have enough we don't we simply don't but I start a season three I guess I guess they're gonna let the toddlers walk to the ship and uh and they'll get there by the beginning of season three I don't know um what did you make of like Amon getting Otto's triarchy plot or do you think Otto was already also with the triarchy

Well, it just Aemond being like, yeah, go, go, let's, let's, hey, let's bring the triarchy in because that's, that's Otto's idea in the book, right? Well, he's like, yeah, when, when, when Aegon's like, why aren't you doing anything? Otto's like, I am doing something. I'm working on this plot with the triarchy. Like, do you think that we're just going to find out that Otto just is with the triarchy already and arrives with them?

Or did Eamon pitching this to Thailand here make it seem like Otto's not going to be connected to this, actually? Which would be very odd. Otto gets his head chopped off when Rhaenyra takes King's Landing, which is what we expect is going to happen at the end of the season. So the question is...

Eamon's like, bring my grandpa. He gets fired. He leaves. Someone calls him back. So bring my grandpa back. Is he coming back to King's Landing in time to just get the chop in the final episode? And is that why we're kind of cut? Because we're moving the gullet. So we're cutting him out of the triarchy conversation because he's already to be dead. That like Reese Fodds is going to die in the finale. Yeah. I feel like if that were the case, they should have given us a little more time with him.

I simply would not have sent him. I simply would not have sent him. The arrival. Oh. Like, I don't think we'll see any fallout from it. I think it will be like they, the season will end with like them, like them, like landing in King's Landing and taking it. But no, no fallout, no executions. Like that all feels like season three. So season three, Rhaenyra sitting on the throne and a cut, a cut I still like. Yeah. A cut to the leg. It's a nice image to end on. So season three, episode one, Otto Hightower gets the job.

one or two yeah execution because maybe they just want to keep him around and give us a couple more scenes it's like it would be really weird to keep him off screen for like six episodes bring him back just to kill him um so maybe that's also one of the timeline things they'll change maybe Otto will just hang around in prison for a while before they execute him and he'll get to do some great speeches that would be nice oh my god like an autumn classic auto monologue I was just thinking about Ned Stark and the Black Sails love that for us okay

Alice, what the fuck is she up to? Here's a triarchy of emails from listeners. Simon writes, could Alice be planning on Daemon's insecurities to drive into Aemon together in the Battle of the God's Eye to sacrifice the two of them, plus Vhagar and Caraxes, in some sort of cosmic eldritch blood sacrifice? Think Euron's Old Town blood magic shenanigans, which have been theorized to come later.

in the winds of winter. So she's just trying to get as much royal dragon blood as she can over the god's eye and just sort of drench the Isle of Faces and the god's eye in royal slash dragon blood. I find this very compelling. Okay. Austin says, is it just me or did Aemon make an enemy of Laris in the council meeting? Makes me wonder how Aemon might get caught up in his saddle atop Vhagar when he is eventually killed by Daemon later in the story.

Laris fucking with the ropes on Vhagar. I don't know. That sounds hard. I don't know how you approach Vhagar to do that, but if anyone can do it, I believe in you, Laris. Okay, last but not least, Billy says, given her care for the Riverlands and its small folks, and let the destruction Aemon will cause there, I begin to think Alice is shepherding them towards the battle above the God's Eye to end Aemon's reign of terror. Right? Like...

We know that Alice and Eamon are going to shack up together, that she's going to claim to be carrying his kid. But is she like, guess what? You've torched one too many. The Riverlanders are made of mud, but I didn't say you could roast all of them. So we're going to draw David back here and we're going to get rid of both of you. Get both of you off the board, plus your dragons. Okay. I'm so interested to see. I'm really interested to see how this goes. I'm also interested to see if there's like any...

How much equivalent time are we going to get with Amon at Harrenhal in Alice's dreamland after the kind of mixed response? We've loved it, but not everybody has with Damon. Curious. But I think they hopefully know that they have a good thing going. Here's the thing I will say. Sonoya Mizuna in the rap interview, I don't know if you... They very intelligently CEOed it out into several interviews. And one of them was about her accent. And she says...

I don't know if she's just throwing them under the bus or what, but she claims that they made her ADR, that entire thick accent in, and that she originally did the accent we're hearing this season. That they made her ADR in that thicker accent last season. Anyway, that's adjacent to the point. The real point is, Masaria was the thing that everyone was like, what the fuck, get her out of here. And they're like, no, we're going to make you like her.

And now she's, uh, making out with the main character and it worked. So I, I feel, I hope that they're the opposite of like the Kathy Kennedy area, Lucasfilm, where they're not going to like shy away from this. They're gonna be like, no, we're going to make you like it. Um, cause I really need a lot of payment, uh, dream stuff. Uh, here's the subject that I, uh, a subject line that I've stolen from, uh, my friend and yours, Neil Miller from the trial by content. He calls it the sunfire revenge tour. Uh,

Rhaenyra says, I have directed Lord Moonten to march on Rook's Rest and send another raven to the Vale of Persuade Bulba. So are we going to get a moment in the finale where Sunfire like pops up out of the, long in the dying Sunfire who's still alive, pops out of the treeline and makes a charcoal briquette out of Lord Moonten? I think it will be important to establish by the end of the season that Sunfire is in fact alive. Not such a good idea now, Keltigar. All right.

Rickard Thorne this is like a way forward looking question but like without Mailer on the show what is Rickard Thorne here for what is he going to be doing I don't know his whole job is to like that's a good question run off with the royal baby and pretend it's his and all this other stuff like that so we'll see what Thorne gets up to Rhaenyra plus Alicent Roger says with Alicent's main motivation for the civil war gone and Rhaenyra's queerness clearly established do you think there's a possibility of a quote meeting between the two ladies that makes shippers everywhere

Just a fun thing that I saw this week that I thought I would share, which is that in the where's Tootie, where's sacrifice scene that we love to talk about,

Here are the stage directions in the script. Rhaenyra and Alyson stand as close as they have been in 15 years. They grapple against each other, eye to eye, breath to breath. You've gone too far. I? What have I done but what was expected of me? Alyson strives against Rhaenyra. They are roughly evenly matched, and the struggle is strangely intimate.

So yeah, something that we're not allowed to talk about in the non-spoiler section is like, yes, when those of us who have read the books watch Misaria and Rhaenyra make out, we know that in like two episodes time, Rhaenyra and Alyson are going to be living in the same place again. They're both going to be in King's Landing. How is that going to play out? Can't wait to find out. Thrilling prospect. It's...

Some episodes of House of the Dragon. I'm Joanna Robinson. I've lost my mind.

That's Molly Rubin. She's basically sleeping on the mic right now. I'm spent. I am spent. This was a joy. We are just about done, but our COVID-riddled producer, Steve Allman, now has to cut all this audio into a legible podcast. So shout out to Steve Allman. Steve, are we perhaps the culprits who have been tampering with your piece? Arjuna Rangapal, who surely has COVID burgeoning inside of him,

has to put together a lot of details for our next recording. He's the best. Joe Miederon, so far COVID-free as far as we know. John Richter, did not work on this episode because it's not a video episode, but I just thought I'd shout him out because he's great. And I'm sorry that we have not gotten to work within the last two weeks because of his illness and now ours. We will see you on Talk the Thrones.

on Sunday if we ever gained our ability to speak by then. Till then, keep your eye out. I release you of your seat. There you go. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.