'House of the Dragon' Episode 6 Reactions | Talk the Thrones
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Hello and welcome to Talk the Thrones. My name is Chris Ryan and I am an editor at TheRinger.com. Joining me this week as always is Ringer senior staff writer Joanna Robinson and someone who will never stand under a King's Landing window for as long as she lives, Mallory Rubin. You are the challenge, Chris.

You are the challenge. It's great to see the two of you. It's great to see a new episode of House of the Dragons. What we're discussing this week, it's the Princess and the Queen. Funnily enough, the backup name for the watch with me and Andy, we were going to go. It was either Princess and the Queen or the watch. We couldn't decide. Which is which, Chris? Which is which? This one was written by Sarah Hess. It was directed by your boy, Miguel Sapochnik, and it featured a 10-year time jump.

which, you know, it's become kind of common in modern television to mess around with chronology, to jump ahead of things. I don't remember 10 years in any of my fave shows that have done this. And I certainly don't remember a big casting change or two or three or five or whatever after only five episodes. But that's what we got in the sixth episode of House of the Dragon.

Gosh, this one was a doozy. And it was a doozy because not only what happens on screen, but just it was so dense. I'm so glad I'm here to talk about it with Mallory and Joe. Why don't we start with the big changes, Joanna? How about that? Great.

What did you think of Emma Darcy as Rhaenyra and Olivia Cooke as Alison? You and I had talked a little bit, Chris, about like how much we've loved Olivia Cooke's other work. And so we were certain that we were going to love her. Slow horses gang. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Just Mallory is a slow horses fan erasure here. Very tough. I can never tell. Sorry. So sorry. Put me on the slow horses group chat next time.

I know you have a constant me, Earl, and the dying girl just like playing in a loop in the background all the time. I enjoy that movie. It's a great movie. Ready Player One. Okay. So anyway, Olivia Cooke fan, definitely. Emma Darcy was a bit more of a question mark for me, but I just loved this introduction, the long walk and talk.

um unlike all the birth the birth sounds were just elite squelching i think is what we got yeah but i just i i love emma's take on raniera i can see millie alcock in this performance but also see what the 10 years have have uh done to this woman and i i'm thrilled honestly by this change how about you mel

Loving the new cast. Had a great time in the first five episodes with our original cast. And I am quite impressed with Emma and Olivia so far. Delighted by John McMillan as new Laenor. It's cool to see all of the new cast members. The time jump is obviously something we'll chat about a lot today. I think that in some ways it's

going to be quite jarring for people. In other ways, it worked a little bit better than I was anticipating. But in terms of the performers capturing the essence of the characters at this point in their arc, I thought that was a...

It hit right away. So Mal, we've known each other for 10 years. Oh my God. Nine, I think, but yeah. Plenty has happened in those years. We haven't done anything as interesting as what the characters on this show have done. But one of the things that I was struck by was...

All of the things that we are to intuit have happened in the intervening years between these two episodes, because obviously some of the standout scenes from Princess and the Queen are those that involve the Princess and the Queen facing off. First with her being forced to, or at least refusing to just have a midwife take the baby to Alison, but she's going to walk herself all the way to the Queen's room, show the baby off.

you know, you've got that face off in the small council. There's a lot of proxy battles going on, but I think that for, you know, regular Joes and Janes, like, like myself, it might be kind of hard to understand, like, well, so they're just as mad as each at each other 10 years later than they were at the end of episode five. Do you think that that is the correct read that there's just been no thawing that things have just gotten progressively worse and that Rhaenyra being with Harwin is as a like poorly kept secret or,

has just exacerbated the problems between Rhaenyra and Alicent. I would go a step further and say not only is the read that time has exacerbated and entrenched this divide, I would say that was the entire point of the first five episodes to help us understand how that came to be such a deeply rooted and deeply felt division that impacted not only Rhaenyra and Alicent, but every single person in their family and orbit. And...

You know, we chatted previously about like the idea of starting with the Council of 101 AC as a prologue to this series, but...

Those first five episodes were the prologue to this series. And so on the one hand, I would have loved to spend every single minute with those characters in this 10 year gap in between. I would have loved to welcome all of these new children and all of these new dragons to our screen directly. You wanted the Richard Linklater's boyhood version of House of the Dragon. One of my favorite movies of all time, as you know. So honestly, yes, exactly. I like to grow up alongside the characters and watch the characters grow up themselves. But

The thing that we had to understand, the one thing, is how these characters came to feel this way about each other. What history led them there? And so that's why we got those five episodes to understand where Allison and Rhaenyra are now. Jo, the time jump. Yay or nay? Yeah, I mean, I think if you had just started the show with this episode...

I think Alicent especially is someone hard to root for in this episode. And I know that, you know, like book readers have their opinions of Alicent. And so I think to show her in, you know, as a person who was pushed around by her father and all these other things to make her younger, to make them have a friendship in the first place that they lost is,

I think that was really smart to gain our sympathies before things get tougher. And I think also to root that misunderstanding between them, that initial rift in Rhaenyra's sex life, and then to make Rhaenyra's sex life such an ongoing important part of what happens here and now, I think that was a clever link. Because basically when we meet them in the book, it's just sort of like,

They were okay, and then they hated each other, and we don't know why. And so they had to invent a reason why, and I think this was a smart way to connect it with events we do know about. Should I recap this episode? Let's do it. I don't really have a cool Midnight Manifest nickname for this. Maybe we could get one. Christopher C-Word Countdown. Every week you get a couple new utterances to... I get one every week. You got two this week, yeah. This episode...

Well, you could call it Back to the Future. You could call it Call the Midwife. Call it what you want. The new episode skips years ahead, and we join our regularly scheduled programming with Rhaenyra in labor. It is her third son. I think I'm right on that one. This one is called Joffrey, and she is immediately summoned to intro the kid to the queen, Alyson, who continues to flex green dress energy all the time.

these years into the future. Alice, it has Kristen as her bodyguard, Viserys as her one armed old ass husband and some serious attitude about Rhaenyra's son's hair and its relationship to the paternity of Joffrey. Back in her room, Rhaenyra exchanges some tender one liners with Harwin Strong, the dude who broke up the brawl at Rhaenyra's wedding dinner. He is also obviously the bigger, stronger son of Lionel Strong, Hand of the King.

either way, there's just a ton of real Maury Povich, you're the father stuff happening here. Next, we get into serious how to train your dragon territory with the sons of Rhaenyra and Alicent. Rhaenyra's boys are all brown haired, while Alicent's sons have traditional Targaryen locks. Alicent isn't having it and tells Viserys as much. In return, he tells her a story about horse sex. I mean, when I say she isn't having it, I think she is very dubious about whether or not

Raniro's kids are the product of, uh, Lane or, uh, and, and their, and their union. Uh, Alison goes to chat up her eldest son, Agon immediate coaches, pull preseason. Number one, believable, absolute national champion and waiting for me here, Agon. And she interrupts him acting out. One of the, my favorite lines from Rick Ross's mafia music, uh,

I'm not going to read that line, but you can Google it. It involves masturbating from a very high, high place up in the sky. Damon and his wife, Lena Valerian are flying dragons and making friends, scoring the invite for a second residence in Pentos, which I hear is really nice for tax purposes, provided that they throw their superior air power into the fight against that pesky triarchy. I definitely know what they are now. And the army of Dorn, uh, Damon likes being a mercenary, but his wife misses life in the drift mark.

A sword fighting exercise goes wrong between the Targ kids and the Valerian boys leading to a Christian Harwin brawl and turning up the volume on the Harwin is daddy talk among the Royal court. This hangs over a small council meeting where Rhaenyra tries to make peace, but is rebuffed by Alison. Lionel strong tries to resign his post because he refuses to say, but when he refuses to say why, uh,

Viserys refuses to accept, instead agreeing to let Lionel and Harrowin beat it to Harrenhal. This turns out to be a bad beat for two-thirds of the strong family because limping Larys uses this trip as an opportunity to reform the Westeros prison industrial complex, cutting out the tongues of some criminals and having them burn his dad and brother alive. I guess all to put him in good with the queen, she is a bit taken back by these developments, as are we all. Wow.

Uh, Joe. Yeah. What was your favorite part about this episode? It's really hard to pick one. And I know you don't want me to go on forever, but I, I have, you can go on for as long as you want. I have a few. Okay. Number one, uh, we get a mention of Grover Tully. And I just need you, Chris Ryan to know that George R. R. Martin decided to name the members of house Tully, uh,

at this era, Grover, Elmo, and Oscar. That is a real thing that happens in the book. So get excited. He's the one who's getting made fun of at the table, right? Like they're like, oh, Tully's, right? They're like, this is Tully business. You know, Alicent is preaching non-interventionist policy and Rhaenyra's like, but what if we actually cared about our kingdom? And then...

The Olivia Cooke's line read of one and all-timer great Alison Byrne from the book, do keep trying, Sir Leonor. Sooner or later, you may get one that looks like you. This is a great line from the book, and she just absolutely knocked it out of the park. But I think...

My real MVP moment is Rhaenyra saying goodbye to Harwin and they're not allowed to like actually say goodbye to each other. So Emma just has to make their face do the entire thing for us. And I just thought that was really incredible. Love, love watching little Jace tracking all that real time with their eighties bowl cuts. I love those kids. Oh yeah. The seat is strong indeed.

I had a lot of scenes in this episode that I really liked. I had some, some nits to pick as well, but favorites. Oh, you know, I loved really everything that we got with Alison and Raniera across the episode. I think the, the small council moment where they're going from challenging each other on policy and really not only issuing some portents about the future, but also signs and portents, Joe, our fave also, um,

showing their differing leadership styles, but the many different layers at play when Rhaenyra makes her peace offering, this version of, okay, reaching out with this olive branch, but also this is the same desperation that Rhaenyra

We saw with Viserys when he went to High Tide last episode and everybody sniffed out, which Alison does here too. The way that we tracked that thread across the entire episode was to highlight. I think in terms of my favorite scene, though, I really loved the training sequence in the yard with Kristen and Harwin and the boys and...

8,000-year-old somehow still alive, Viserys watching and smiling. Awesome scene. Alongside Lionel from the battlements, and then his face just slowly melting like a candle or like a tower at Harrenhal as he realizes, oh my god, something's really wrong here. I think it felt like a vintage classic throne scene where so many characters...

are mixing into this little cesspool of bitterness and resentment. And so that was my favorite. And I think while not every aspect of the time jump worked, and while I think some people will have a lot of questions, literally including who are some of these characters and how did they come to be in this show and how did they come to be together, a scene like that, I think, doesn't work. Or even a moment like Laenor...

and Rhaenyra walking into and out of Alyson's chambers past Kristen. Scenes like that don't work as well if we don't understand those characters' history with Kristen and Kristen with them, et cetera. So I think it's emblematic of why, even though it's not perfect and might have been a half measure, those five episodes were ultimately necessary. You know, a lot of thronesy stuff happens in this episode, right?

And I'll be really curious to see how people feel about it because on Thrones, when a big character death happens, when a big twist happens, when a big fight happens, typically we've spent 8, 10, 12, 15 hours with that character. We spent 40 minutes with Harrowing. Maybe. Like, we did not know

This version of Lena Velaryon. And she obviously... I didn't even get to that in the recap, but she had this incredibly tragic end to her life. And I liked it. I thought it visually was stunning. I thought it was dramatic. But I don't... I can't say that we're talking about

Thrones-level emotions, because typically you had this level of investment with these particular performers playing these particular roles. I'll just shout out, we talked a little bit about Olivia Cooke in the beginning of the episode, but we talked a little, and you also mentioned the writing mal of the Harwin-Kristen training sequence. I thought Olivia Cooke was just great across the board in this episode. I

Allison, obviously a divisive character. You know, there are people who are like, I totally get why she's mad. Some people are like, why is she making such a big deal out of this, that, or the other thing? Did Rhaenyra lie? Did she not? Should Rhaenyra be the one who's mad because Allison's the one who married her dad? You know, there's a lot of like very complicated stuff, but she just did a great job of doing things like

expressing the vulnerability, but also the hostility that comes probably with being a person in her position. I thought that the scene with Aegon, while hilarious, because he's masturbating out of a window, was also quite stunning because she's just like, when he's like, well, I just won't challenge the throne. And she's like, you are the challenge. You know, like just your existence is like, it puts a target on your back. And then later on in the episode, when she's talking with Larys, she's like,

And she's like, I just wish my dad was here to give unbiased counsel to the king. He's like, well, your dad wasn't unbiased or impartial. And he was like, he was partial to me. Like, I need somebody to be on my side. And it's cool. You watch her go through this episode and there's a version of it where it's just like Alicent just being like essentially some hybrid of Littlefinger and Tyrion and kind of Cersei and moving everybody into place.

But instead, it's like you get to see all different sides of her. And I think that's a testament to Cook's performance. And I think the Cersei comp is, I think, a really popular one for Alicent. But watching her sort of grab Aegon's face and say, you're the challenge. Like, we never saw Cersei do that even to Joffrey. You know? And then, like... Unless Mallory remembers something that I'm forgetting. And then to watch her tenderness with Helena, who...

you know, Mallory and I were texting before we started recording is giving us the strongest Luna Lovegood vibes we've ever seen on the character. Just like a real, you know, interesting case, Helena and, and her, she looks, Alison looks bored, but is also patient, you know, like, as I imagine, we're not parents, none of us on this call, but like, you know, if your kid gets really into bugs, I guess you sit there and listen to them talk about the bugs patiently. Um,

So, you know, the complexity of her role as a mother in this, I think is really nuanced and great. Yeah. I mean, Mallory, can we talk a little bit about Allison Raniere's relationship? Sure. Because it feels like there's been almost like this...

I don't know if it's trading places or a transference, but when we're introduced to these characters, Rhaenyra is strident, confident, wants to be this change, this kind of progressive leader. And she's not expecting to be made queen, but once she does, I think she starts to realize the enormity of the role. And obviously she's been let in on this secret that Viserys probably hasn't even shared with his wife.

And Alison is a nail-biting wallflower who gets kind of plucked out of nowhere to be the queen of Westeros. Now they seem to have flipped. Alison runs this shit and Rhaenyra is kind of

a little bit more of an outcast, you know, and it is like a little, it's prone more to like sort of social faux pas and like her business is sort of on front street. What did you think of, of the two of them? But like specifically, is there anything I need to know or the listeners need to know about what could have transferred transpired in the 10 years since we've last seen these characters, uh,

to now? Or is it just like, it's always been cold. It's just always been like this. They've been basically biting at each other for 10 years. First of all, when you call me Mallory instead of Mal, I always feel like I'm in trouble. Just wanted to note that.

There is a lot that happens in this time. I think it will be worth highlighting a couple specifics for some of the characters we lost, specifically Lena and Harwin when we get to them later. And obviously they connect to then other character arcs and pairings as well. You know, for Alicent and Rhaenyra, I guess it's just worth spelling out...

the new arrivals in the family. So Rhaenyra is a mother of three now. Jocerys, who goes by Jace. Lucerys, who goes by Luke. And I know you're delighted by that, Chris, because you don't want to learn the complicated names. So you got a Luke in there. It's even spelled the normal way. It's not even like L-U-C. And Joffrey. Little Joff.

We had obviously met Aegon and Helena as babies. We meet Aemond in this episode for the Alicent Viserys child set, get sequences of the Dragonpit, et cetera, see these kids interact with each other. I like the way that you framed it, Chris, with something that feels almost like an inversion. I think that even within that, there's a lot of nuance and we see the characters moving in and out of different circumstances across the episode.

But so much of our early time with Rhaenyra, for example, was spent with her really rebelling against this idea of marriage as a trap and an institution, childbirth as a death sentence. And so for our first moment with this new version of Rhaenyra to be bringing a child into the world, Joffrey is in her arms in so many sequences across the episode when she's standing up to make her

to make her big pitch at the small council. She has milk leaking out of her breasts and Alison, instead of responding to her offer, just says, Rhaenyra. And,

forces her to basically sit down in needless and cruel shame. Alison also never sits. Right, right. When Viserys tells everyone else to sit, Alison and Rhaenyra are the two who stand. So this dynamic of Rhaenyra, on the one hand, you could read that opening scene where Alison summons the new baby to be brought to her, obviously, to inspect the features and the hair, and is this another bastard son of Harwin Strong? You could read an element of...

Right away, Alicent is in command and in charge. Also, with the stubbornness for Rhaenyra of refusing to allow her to win or to make her feel like she is not in power, there are so many fascinating and really, like...

harrowing elements to that relationship. I think it was such an interesting Alicent episode because she has those dynamics with every character. It's there with Rhaenyra across the entire episode. It's very present in her exchanges with Viserys. We see Alicent sitting at the small council chamber. She is in essence ruling for him, unafraid to speak and make decisions. She calls the session to an end and everybody is wrapped up in what she is saying, right? So we can see the extent of

of the hold that she has not only over Viserys, even though he pushes and challenges a bit, kind of like laments how he's being fussed over. You look at the element of her as a caretaker. She puts him in that chair, fluffs his pillow, wraps him in the blanket. But as soon as she's pissed that he won't listen to her and won't heed her warning about how dangerous the parentage of these children could be, how offensive it is to her sense of virtue and rightness, she just leaves like, can you help me?

She just peaces out, right? She has these incredible exchanges with all of her children. I thought that the drag, you already talked about the Aegon sequence, which was iconic. And I would just like to say, we see already with the masturbating out of the window and the leering at the maids in the courtyard that Aegon is a horndog. But how fucked up is this kid's sex life going to be moving forward when he's like holding his erection in his hand and his mother is just leaning forward?

grabbing him on his little floor mattress in his masturbatorium. Everything she says to him... Masturbatorium. Everything she says to him in that conversation is what Otto said to her. The royal masturbatorium. The royal masturbatorium, exactly. Everything that Allison says...

is the speech that Otto gave to Allison in episode five when he was departing. Like, the exact sentiment is something she has internalized and is espousing. So in some ways, they've each become their parent, even though they are still totally individual and unique characters. And I thought it was fascinating when she was pushing

aim on on his obsession with the dragons because it's a quiet quick moment not quiet but it's a quick moment it reinforces and so does like having the children dressed in Hightower green instead of Targaryen red that she is not a Targaryen this is this other element inside of this aspect of the family which is really important and then you know we got all of the the Larys Criston elements to these guys these men who were in her confidence and

And I think the most important thing is that she is espousing and touting throughout the need for decency, stopping in her tracks when Kristen calls Rhaenyra a cunt, right? Saying to Larys, this is not what I wanted. The people who are helping her further her end are doing things that challenge the very notion that is at the heart of what she is saying she is trying to protect. And she has to confront that.

Or will she? I mean, like the fake propriety of...

you know, that Allison puts forward and then the horrible people that she surrounds herself with. I like how that stands in contrast to Rhaenyra, you know, dragging her, like, afterbirth blood through the halls. A little trail of blood. Yeah, or, like, leaking milk in the small council. It reminds us, of course, of her, like, walking in from the hunt with the boar blood all over her. Like, there's a part of her that is still very much the same, but who...

who is she surrounding herself with you know like people who seem much you know better she's surrounding herself with Carl I love Carl Carl and Harwin like they've got a cool open marriage like you know it's just like yeah Carl just likes to party what's going on exactly oh god Carl

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Joe, you mentioned the people that Allison's surrounding herself with. And I was personally struck with just how tender Kristen's still feeling these days after 10 years down the line. I don't want to keep repeating the question where I'm like, well, what's happened in the 10 years? Am I just supposed to read that that's calcified and that he has become a very bitter person?

who also owes his life to Alison, but like plays into her most jealous or most like sort of angry kind of tendencies when it comes to Rhaenyra? I don't often mind holding back spoilers because I want people to like get...

the news when they want to get it from the show. But I have been biting my tongue about Kristen Cole because that dude is a psychopath. Like when he grabs... Yeah, and he's just like a hot guy. Yeah. And we've been blinded by that. And I was like, oh, Kristen Cole. And I just want to be like, no. When he grabs Jace in the training yard and just sort of like yanks him around, you know, it's like... And like, let's look at this thing.

Look at this thing he said. He says, the Princess Rhaenyra is brazen, relentless, a spider who stings and sucks her prey dry. Spoiled C word. Like, this guy, you know, we spent some time last week talking about the ways in which he had a reason to feel vulnerable and exposed. But the fact that he holds on to it for as long as he does is...

smells of like real incel behavior to me. Like remember that time a teenage girl said, no, I don't want to give up my entire like throne and life and crown for you. That's what I'm saying. And he's like, you know, C word for life, I guess. I just, uh,

Yeah. So the quote in the book, and we don't know the reason why Kristen hates Rhaenyra in the book, but the quote in the book is the love that Ser Kristen Cole had formerly borne for Rhaenyra Targaryen turned to loathing and disdain, and the man who had hitherto been the princess's constant companion and champion became the most bitter of her foes. So I would say message received loud and clear in this episode, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, I think like a moment like that yard training sequence, obviously Harwin probably should have controlled himself a little bit better and things might have gone differently for dear how strong had he. However, it is also true. And I think I love my time with Harwin. Let me just say that really got to miss our guy break bones or burnt bones, as I guess we will now start calling him tough, tough end.

Yeah, it's sad. Sad to see him go. Those beautiful curly locks. Baked bones? Baked bones I like. But it's also undeniably true that Kristen is relishing baiting him. And not only the line, like, brother or...

A son. But the way that as he's sitting there on the ground bleeding, he's in this inverted position from where he was when he was pummeling Joffrey in the prior episode. There's a Kristen Harwin fight, but it's at a tournament in the book and Kristen actually wins. And I think you could read this scene and say, oh, this is like flipping it because Harwin wins. Well, he wins the physical portion, but Kristen wins that encounter. He comes out on top because he got what he wanted. Yeah.

He's spitting blood into the ground saying thought as much, relishing the fact that he has gotten this person who he thinks so little of, who is connected to somebody he deplores to out himself and reveal this scandalous secret. And he's doing that for Allison. Sure. But he is also doing that for himself because it brings him joy to see people he hates miserable.

To your question, Chris, about the 10-year time gap, we don't have any information from the book, but something I think this episode underlines for us is that Kristen...

Chris and Cole felt so out of place, so lower class in King's Landing, even though he's a member of the Kingsguard. But 10 years on, and being the Queen's go-to guy, he has this elevated position. So Harwin Strong, who technically is from a higher born house than he is, et cetera, et cetera, he feels like he can push around. But my question to you, Chris Ryan, is what do you think the employment policy is for?

In King's Landing that Kristen Cole can beat the face off of someone at a wedding. And also, I don't know, throw the future, the heir to the realm around in the training yard in full view of the king and still keep his job. How do you feel about that, Chris? So this was we're getting to a little bit of my nitpick here, which is that this entire thing is sort of, I think, hinging on.

The politics of this world, which are not unlike the politics of our world. Let's like, like, like there's lots of rumors. There's lots of gossip. There's lots of innuendo in here. Say that fuel like our politics, right?

But Allison is just as kind of like sketch as Raniera is to me. You know what I mean? Like there is a world in which Raniera could be like, okay, here's the truth. I had sex with Kristen Cole that night, not Damon. Allison then like basically has like conducted a decade long smear campaign of me.

I may be with like this guy, but Alison like basically like took my father away from me as like a ploy by her father. Like I just think like both sides are pretty fucked up here. Well, I don't understand how Chris, like there's no like whisper, like when you can't ever grab Viserys and be like, it's kind of weird that your wife's bodyguard is this dude who ruined my wedding.

big time committed murder and now is just like her bodyguard and we don't really talk about that. That's like, that is like either like

what's missing in this in between episodes part. And I wonder whether some people, other people might trip over it because for as much as I loved the like drama that I was seeing, it did annoy me where I was just like, so Rhaenyra has everybody speculating about every single thing she does, the color of her kid's hair, who her bodyguard is, what her husband's doing, yada, yada, yada. Alison just gets off scot-free with her murdering bodyguard.

I mean, I think obviously throughout the episode, we feel once again and really feel here how ineffectual Viserys is as a leader. But I think you're right, Chris, because it's not only that. It's like Laenor, the king consort and the heir to the richest and other than the actual ruling family of the Targaryens, most powerful family in the realm, was punched in the face by this guy who murdered his daughter.

lover and dear friend. Obviously, they're naming the child Joffrey here after the Night of Kisses, after Joffrey Lonmouth, R.I.P. Took took Lane or three kids to to be allowed to name him Joff. But he got there, has to walk by this guy every day. And so I believe because of of

how Viserys functions as a ruler and as this person who is constantly at odds and pulled in all directions inside of his own family, that he would not have an effective solution if pressed on that point. But I would like to know, to your point, if anyone had pressed him on it, if anyone had asked about it, push. It is impossible to believe that everyone would just be okay after what happened with everybody just conducting their affairs in this fashion.

It's also a question of what does Allison want? Does she want justice or does she want power? Because when Rhaenyra is like, hey, let's squash this. We used to be friends. This is bad for the house. I'm going to give you a dragon egg and I am going to marry my daughter to your son, right? Or my son to your daughter. I can't remember. My son to your daughter. Son to your daughter.

And Viserys is into it. He's the king. And Alicent walks off and is like, well, we'll think about it. But you're... You gotta go milk. Does Alicent want Rhaenyra to be ostracized or killed or whatever it is? What is the goal here for Alicent, I guess, is the question. I think it's a combination of what you just said. She thinks that she's pursuing...

And it ends what Joe said earlier about like, well, will she confront? Will she show that self-awareness and introspection? Because she is saying to Kristen, to Laris, to herself, to many people throughout the episode that this is a great,

crusade in defense of virtue and decency almost. And I think that she does sincerely feel that way, but she has begun to do the thing that she used to challenge and push back against her father and her family for doing, which is to pursue power and to pursue her identity

son, Aegon, the path for him to be the heir to the Iron Throne. She is actively pursuing that without question. She is saying to him, you're almost a man grown. How do you not see that these people will try to eliminate you because of the threat that you pose? And I loved the moment. You mentioned it already, but I loved the moment where she shows this real vulnerability in her conversation with Larys when they're discussing Otto and says he would be impartial for

for me, toward me, in my defense, in my favor, because that is a thing that no matter how like much, how righteous she wants to think she is, she is a human being desires. And she says like, well, no one in King's Landing helped me align with me. And this idea of her loneliness has fueled her for so long. So she does want power. She does want her side to win. She does want to eliminate

There's no, to your point about like, could Rhaenyra just say, yeah, smear campaign, hard ones to that? No. Like the realm would not accept it. Look at what happened with the War of the Five Kings and Game of Thrones when people, when the rumors started spreading about, about Joffrey being a bastard, about Myrcella and Tommen being bastards. They would not allow those kids to have a path to the throne. The realm would not allow it. I feel like they might if Viserys were a stronger ruler. Like there is a world in which maybe, but like,

Slim to no chance, and certainly not with Viserys in charge. Yeah, and I think also what I love about this episode is it subtly shows us a few ways in which Rhaenyra...

Rhaenyra, who was deprived politic lessons as a kid, has learned politicking. I loved listening to her talk in the small council. And if there's anyone in this episode who seems worthy to rule, it's Rhaenyra. And actually, one of my favorite lines is she's arguing with Laenor about the name Joffrey for the kid, right? And she hasn't conceded yet. But there's a moment when she's

She turns to Laenor and she says, Laenor, Ser Harwin would love to meet Joffrey. So it's a concession to Laenor. Here, you get your way, but also please... Let him hold his child. Can you let this guy hold his child? I just thought that was a really smooth moment. There's a lot of smooth moments from her. And I think that's a real maturation that we see in her.

You know, I was going to wait until the end of the episode to talk about this, but because you're talking about Harwin and because we've been talking all about who Allison is talking to and surrounding herself with, let's talk about Laris now. So with Laris, he obviously chooses his family. He chooses a new family because he's essentially had his own family murdered. Essentially. Joe, a little bit. I mean, he does. And...

I think in the earlier episodes, I was like, this is a guy he's kind of like left out in the cold because of his limp, because of his leg. He can't fulfill the usual, like, you know, male military duties. That's maybe somebody would, um,

But to have your father and brother burned alive is like a step in a much further direction. What did you kind of, what was your read on, I mean, I assume you know, like, oh, Laris becomes this, but is Laris just a pure political animal looking for power? Yeah, definitely we won't look forward. But what I will say is that in that 10-year time jump, you know, when we think about what are we missing, and I know Mallory has a decent list,

I would say I would have loved to have seen a scene between Laris and his father, which we never saw. And we saw one scene where Laris and his brother actually talk to each other. And that's it. And so I would have loved to know more. And the book has no answer for me.

how Larys feels about his dad and his brother. Obviously not too attached to them, but I would have loved to have seen that dynamic because, you know, a huge moment, you were talking about comparing it to Thrones, like huge moment in,

in Thrones is Tyrion killing his father Tyrion killing Tywin and it's like what does this mean and we know what it because we've spent years understanding what it meant for Tyrion to kill Tywin so for Larys to make this move we could draw some conclusions but again I would have loved to have seen some of those interactions

This fire at Harrenhal is one of the really fun mysteries of the book because there's like five different suspects. Mal, let me know if I miss any. It's did Viserys do it? Did King Viserys do it to get rid of Harwin Strong to like quelch the scandal? And that was like, shit, Lionel!

Did Corlys Velaryon do it because his son Laenor was cuckolded by Harwin Strong? Did the ghost of Harrenhal do it because Harrenhal is like... Oh yeah, the blood and the mortar. Yeah, considered haunted. What am I missing? I feel like I'm missing one, Mallory. Uh, Daemon.

Oh, Damon, of course. We always suspect Damon of killing anyone. If anyone sighs, Damon is to blame. So did Damon do it to get Harman out of the way to... And of course, Laris is also... Yeah, and Laris is a suspect as well. Laris is suspected, but he's like the last and wildest suspect. They're like, maybe Laris Strong, I guess. And so...

you know, this, this episode made it very overt that it was Laris who did it. So, um, yeah, that's just one of the fun aspects of this adaptation is that we're getting answers to the lingering mysteries in the book. Now, Laris just has access to, uh, incarcerated Westerosi like that. Once again, I have some notes for our guy, Laris Strong. Yeah.

I, first of all, I just want to say I strongly agree with what Joe said about feeling the missing time there in a tough way. Like we saw Harwin and Laris at the wedding feast, like whispering to each other about what the green dress meant.

And then the next thing is him burning his brother alive. Like, kinslaying's a huge deal. It is among the gravest sins you can commit. This is, like, not a small thing. So the fact that he is willing to do that, I would really like to better understand why. Cutting out a tongue so that

the people in question can't speak, it's been done before or more accurately in the future as well. Like, you know, I know you miss your guy. You're on Greyjoy, Chris. The ship wasn't called silence for nothing. Cut out all the tongues. But if you want to ensure that people don't rat you out and yes, Joanna, we should talk about the rat at some point because the rat is back. We'll talk about it. Don't show your face and go make the plea directly and then don't put your bee emblem that is on your cane on their chest so that they...

That was a weird move. Visibly like Brandon is your murderer crew. Yeah, the pins I have a lot of questions about. But like Laris is in the book, he's what's called the King Confessors, which is basically like the royal torturers. So this is technically his job. He gets to go down there and cut people's tongues out if he wants. And falls under his management. Exactly. It's in his purview. But the bee pins. The bee pin. Got some notes. I loved though the closing speech.

for a few different reasons. I know you did, though. Joe knows exactly what I'm going to say here. I was like...

So, first of all, just phenomenal line reading, great writing. This is the relationship between Laris and Alicent. You're like, boy, are you having these candlelit dinners every single night where, you know, he's obviously passing along this information that he's hearing and they've built up this trust to the point where somebody walks in the room, everyone stops speaking. This is a true cone of silence relationship. Yeah.

And to see him at the end. Yeah, if I was Rhaenyra, I'd be like, what's up with this shit? You guys are getting crazy mad at me. I don't know if you bring up someone else's relationship with one of the strong sons as a general matter of principle. He's playing with this plant.

As he's speaking at the end. And it's the same. It appears to be at least a little snippet of this bush that he is, this Bravosi fauna that he's making this big speech about in the prior episode to show how not only he, but someone like Allison could thrive in circumstances where they're not meant to. But that speech, this what are children but a weakness, a folly, a futility,

It gave us shades of so many prior iconic Game of Thrones quotes. There's just a few of them. One, it's the inversion of Tywin's fabled

do you know what legacy is, speech? Because the whole idea for Taiwan of legacy is that it's what you pass on to your children, right? It's what remains of you when you're gone. And Laris is saying, what if the thing that you pass on to your children, or rather the fact that you were worried about that, specifically is what leads you astray? This is a really interesting and compelling idea to flip that on its head. The ultimate Zach. Wow.

And then this idea of you may know what is the right thing to be done, but love stays the hand. Love is a downfall. This is the classic thing we talk about all the time. Amon's love is the death of duty idea. But there's this real purity and heartache driving it when Amon and Jon discuss it in Thrones. And there's something so...

Like malicious and frightening about the way that Laris is saying it. And I found myself thinking of Varys saying of Littlefinger, he would see this country burn if he could be king of the ashes. Like literally now the Lord of Harrenhal on a pile of ashes. So we got all of those connections, which was really rich and fun. And we're cutting to all the other characters and scenes that this is about. Rhaenyra arriving at Dragonstone, Daemon and Pentos, the Harrenhal sequence, et cetera. And what's interesting is in that same sequence,

As he's invoking Littlefinger, he also calls himself a servant of the realm, which is what Varys would always call himself. You know, and I'm like, are you? So at the end of that scene, at the end of this episode, I think most charitable, even a charitable read of that is that he is blackmailing her because he says, are you going to write your father? I was curious whether that meant

to invite him back to court because now there's a help wanted sign for hand of the King. Is it because I want your dad to know that I looked out for the Hightower family at the expense of my father and my brother. And I expect to be sort of made well for that. What did you, what was your read of his intention there? You feel like, uh, he wanted it to be till auto. I want him to know it was me. Um,

Game recognizes game. Oh my gosh. A new meme. I love it.

I feel like it's the help wanted aspect is part of it. But also, I mean, he overtly says, I am confident that you will reward me, you know, when you can. So there is a bit of, I think, blackmail in there. And also, yeah, I just, Alison's sort of like mock horror or, you know, whatever. I'm just like, what, who did you think you were dealing with this whole time? What are you, what are you playing at, Alison, in this scene, you know?

Let's talk a little bit about two characters that we love and lost this episode. So specifically, Lena Velaryon. And I mean, we've talked a lot about Harwin, but I want to talk about Lena because we find her and Damon at an interesting point in their lives. Damon seems to have adapted to life on vacation.

You know, he's quiet quit being a bastard and like lighting people up and killing crab feeders and everything. He just wants to read, wants to hang out in Pentos, have dinners, be told he's the best. If it means loaning out a dragon from time to time, so be it. But she really wants to get back to Driftmark. She wants to get back to...

like where she feels comfortable. She wants her child to be born there, et cetera. I thought it was like we talked about in the beginning of the pod, Mal, like I thought it was quite a moving scene, but I also was like, it's, it feels like we really got like 11 minutes of screen time with this character. Everything about this episode to me, and maybe this is just because where my interests lie are pushing Damon and Raniera back together. Uh, but,

What did you, what did you think of the Damon and, and, and Lena Valerian stuff? This is where I would like to spend a moment or two talking about things I wish we'd seen. If you'll, if you'll allow it, because I think that Lena is one of the characters who really suffered from the time jump here. And I'm, I'm bummed. I,

I really wish we'd gotten more time with Lena and with Lena and Damon and to see how this union came to be. Obviously, we get the, you know, making eyes at the high table and the dancing and that fun, flirtatious conversation at the welcome feast in episode five. But that's it. Ten years in the future, we're not only saying hello, we're saying goodbye. So...

I love a dragon, Chris. I know you also love a dragon and I'm sure you carefully tracked how many new dragons we were introduced to in the story, not only visually, but by mention. Yeah.

I so badly, one of the things that Joe and I have been talking about for weeks, I so badly wanted to see Lena claim Vhagar. Like we cannot overstate the magnitude of claiming Vhagar as your dragon. Vhagar is the oldest living dragon in the world. The biggest was Visenya, Aegon, one of Aegon's sister wives. That was Visenya's dragon. Balon, Viserys, and Daemon's dragon. Like

This is a huge thing. And what's strange to me is that we got these mentions, like a lot of Vhagar mentions in early episodes, including Lena asking about Vhagar. And we'd hear the song at Spicetown, which is on Driftmark. I wanted to see it. And I was confused why it hadn't happened because when the Lena Viserys match is proposed in Fire and Blood, she's a dragon rider.

It's like it could have happened earlier in the story, and I just wish we'd gotten to see it. And like 12, right? 12-year-old. Yeah. She's such a badass. She takes Vhagar at 12. Here she says she didn't take Vhagar until she was 15. That's fine. But we still just never got to see her claim this massive scary dragon. And it would have been very cool. I really, really wanted that. And I think it also would have made, you know, that end sequence even more impactful. With the Daemon marriage...

Just to mention, in case anyone's wondering, in Fireblood, that Bravosi betrothal that we heard about happens. Lena is engaged to someone else and then Corlys just keeps delaying, delaying, delaying. And eventually, Daemon makes his way in and kills that kid who challenges him to single-kindness.

I can't believe we were cheated out of another Damon single combat sequence. But the thing I really wanted to mention, and Joe, I suspect this was on your mind as well, is that in Fire and Blood, Rhaenyra and Laena are super close. They have like a really rich relationship to the point where when Laena is in childbirth again, Rhaenyra goes to be with her and is there when she dies. Like, I just...

I'm sad that we did not get that time with the character and really, really, really wish that we had. I also, what I really like, again, is they try to sort of shade Damon as gray as they can, given all the things that he actually does in the book and the show. So like the line in the book is Prince Damon fell in love with Lena. The singers would have us believe that.

of a more cynical bent believe the prince are as a way to check his own descent. Basically, ally himself with House Velaryon, which has a lot of money. What I like in this episode is, you know, we hear Lena say, I know it wasn't your first choice for wife, but we also see genuine affection from him for her. He's not treating her shittily. They have, like, yeah, they have a

bond and a relationship. And so I think that we've seen Damon treat wives worse. Let's put it that way. Yeah, sure have. I guess the bar was on the floor for Damon to, uh, to be a good husband, but also it's all upside from here, but also remind, like you asked about this idea of, of Damon seems he doesn't want to go back home. He's uninterested. Like maybe he, he doesn't have, he doesn't have the taste for politicking is, is the, the sense we get.

And it reminds me of, I mean, this is like a trope that like the gunslinger hangs up his guns and goes settled down in the homestead with the wife and a family. And then someone comes in and murders them all. And he's like, well, guess what? I mean, the best example I can think of is Magneto and the terrible X-Men Apocalypse movie, but there are better, better,

Better versions of that trope. But I feel like this is, you know, Damon's attempt at hanging up his guns and just being like, maybe I can be this. Maybe I can be a husband and a dad. Not the best dad, because I only pay attention to my daughter who has a dragon, but, you know, a dad. Teaching new languages to Bela because she's a dragon rider and Reyna's just like, dad ignores me as I hold my egg in front of a fire, praying that it will one day hatch. Damon!

Yeah. Was I right to read some parallels between obviously, I mean, it was pretty clear. And obviously, you know, Viserys made the choice to try and save the baby at the expense of Emma. This, in this case, Damon at least doesn't say save the baby. I don't care about my wife. He's kind of

In the process of thinking about it when she makes the decision for him and goes out in a literal blaze of glory the way she wanted to as a dragon rider, right, Mal? Yeah, we hear earlier in the episode, at my end, I want to die a dragon rider's death, not that of some fat country lord. And I will, so I will say this.

It's a dark scene. We're watching on screeners. I definitely want to revisit this and make sure that we have this completely right. And I'm looking forward to checking this and confirming this before we do House of R. But my when when Damon is asked this, you're right, Chris, we don't we definitely don't hear him say, yeah, go for it. He's in silence thinking it looks like maybe he does a little shake his head. No, no.

Yeah. But I also think we cut to Lena and it seems that the camera lingers on Lena for a moment in a way that implied it's at least possible she hears this exchange and decides perhaps because of hearing that, well, I'm not going to leave this up to anybody else. But regardless of that particular interpretation, I

She wants to die not in the birthing bed. And we've heard throughout the series this idea, the royal wombs from Emma in the first episode and the child bed is the battlefield. And that's manifesting in so many ways, not only, of course, the women who do die in childbirth, but the way that the children who enter the world are then part of this battlefield and part of this war and the succession crisis. So that idea is stretching throughout the story in all directions.

but Lena did not want to leave anything up to anybody else there. And I thought one of the really, you know, hearing the way that she is calling out to, and we see, we see Damon run after her and the look of like horror and sadness on his face when he sees Vhagar's flames consume her. I do think you can read that as he's, he would have made a different choice than Viserys. I also think, again, you can read it as Lena wasn't going to wait to find out. So Vhagar,

When she's calling out to Vhagar time after time after time saying, "Jakars, Jakars," there's this, like, cry from Vhagar. And this moment where we see this bond between Ryder and dragon,

And it's so, so sad because in Fire and Blood, one of the details is that she tried. She had been in this state of fever for three days. The baby is born, malformed, and dies. And Lena is gravely ill on her deathbed and tries to go reach Vhagar and can't and

And Damon finds her on a staircase where she died. So the fact that she was able to reach Vhagar was, I think, probably an improvement over the version that we got there in the book. I think also we're meant to think of Emma when I believe Viserys is looking at her ring when he's like sitting in front of his model. And he's like, my current wife is really mean. Remember when I had a nice wife? And that happens. And I love...

I love what you said, Mal, about just like... Where he sees the rat, by the way, that moment. Yeah, it is. The generational... There was a line that stood out to me in this section of the book, which is a very short section of the book, but like,

There's this line, the sins of the fathers are oft visited on the sons. And I think I thought of that most clearly in that courtyard scene when we see Harwin and Kristen using the boys to sort of work out their own issues. And these boys, which, you know, Aegon's a little shit, but what I like is that none of these boys are

Are Joffreys at least not yet? You know, I think we see. I think I was definitely waiting for like some pulling the wings off of butterflies. Joffrey wouldn't have said pink dread. He just would have shot somebody with a crossbow.

Yeah, exactly. So they're just like they're boys at this point and they're being pushed and pulled in various directions just like their mothers were. Episode ends. We've got Rhaenyra heading to Driftmark. We've got Larys establishing a new foothold with Alicent. We've got Viserys kind of isolated and alone.

And Damon, you know, really just doing some top-notch fathering. Just kind of letting his kids soak up the grief there on the wall and just be like, you know what, you'll thank me later. I'm gonna go, yeah. You two figure this out. Any closing thoughts? Like, we haven't seen scenes from next week, so we don't know whether we're gonna get another time jump. But I, for one, I would love it if episode seven picks up like the second six ends. Like, if we just literally get, like, Rhaenyra finding out Harwin's dead and...

you know, Alison finding out Rhaenyra's left and Daemon being like, I guess I'm going to go to Driftmark or whatever. I would also love that. I would also love that. We didn't mention Vermax, another dragon we got to meet. We see Jace's dragon, little sweet little Vermax. Darling little Vermax that...

needed a snack and boy did he get one there and uh you know we learned that there are other dragons in the mix beyond that vagar and vermex are the two we see but we hear sunfire mentioned that's agon's dragon so raniera's kids can't get them to dracarys because they don't have that special targaryen no no jace can he says dracarys and his command works and we see also that

Luke is there and thus also we understand Luke is paired with a dragon. They say that Aemond is the only one who doesn't have a dragon. So that's kind of the clarity, right? That everybody else does. And we see as well that Jace and Luke have picked an egg for Joff, sweet little Joff. And we also have an egg with Reyna

the Damon and Lena's other daughter. So we have a lot of new dragon energy in the mix here, which is cool. I wish we would see a little bit more of the actual initial moments with the dragons, but that's why it was fun to see the training with the

Jace and Vermax there. And yeah, Chris, I'm glad you asked that because there's actually a lot of the parentage rumor mongering and whispers in the books kind of boils down to those eggs are not going to hatch for those plain featured brown haired children. And they do. So the fact that Jace has Vermax, et cetera, is...

Something that quiets those whispers. And what's wild is that they're as, they have as much Targaryen in their blood as the blonde kids do. They're both half Targaryen, so. Right. Let me tell you one more wish I have, Jo. Yeah. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice with this triarchy. Yep.

And shame on George R. Martin. You know? These guys better... Dorn mentions, too. Yeah, you gotta Dorn mention. I love Dorn. Represent. I want nothing but triarchy next episode. You don't need that.

Like a Triarchy Bottle episode? It's the Charlie Brown football. You can't keep introducing it. It's like, if you keep mentioning the Triarchy, let me get the ambassador of the Triarchy comes and talks to somebody. It's just, we have to have it. Agree or disagree, Jo? We got a mention of this wild figure from the books.

um, Lenore mentions a Tairashi general who dyes his hair purple and wears women's frocks. This is a, a, when a giant, I think is what he calls them. Uh, this is Ricalio Rindoon. Like what a name, a Tairashi captain general. So I don't feel like they're going to drop the mention and not show us this guy. I hope so. I don't know the answer, Chris, genuinely. I don't, they could, or they could not, but I hope for your sake. Yeah.

That's the only reason I'm still watching. Triarchy bottle episode just for Chris Ryan. I love it. Mal, Joe, it was great talking to you about House of the Dragon. People can listen to Mallory and Joanna talk about House of the Dragon extensively on House of R. The deep dive is on Tuesdays. Andy and I are taking tomorrow off for the holiday, but we'll be back on Tuesday. We'll be talking a little bit of House of Dragon. We'll be talking about some other shows, Abbott Elementary, its sets. But, you know, like we'll definitely have some Westerosi episodes

gabbing going on. And then we'll be back with you everybody next Sunday night for the next episode. So thanks so much to Steve Altman for producing us as always. And thanks to Mal and Joe. We'll talk to you soon.

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