House of the Dragon season two, episode five, Regent, opens with Driftmark. We see Lord Corlys (Steve Toussaint) walking slowly to his throne at High Tide, his face a mask of grief as tears run from his eyes.
We then see Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) in Dragonstone, looking at the horizon, grieving as well.
In King's Landing, citizens look up as the herald yells and soldiers march, parading the head of Meleys. Ser Criston Cole (Fabian Frankel) looks expectant, but the smallfolk are quiet. Some of the smallfolk bow at the sight of the fallen dragon.
The death of a dragon
“Behold! The traitor dragon Meleys! Slain at Rook's Rest by your king!” the herald yells again.
Two things: one, dragons follow their riders so how is the Red Queen a traitor? And Aegon did not slay her at Rook's Rest. It was Aemond.
However, the smallfolk don't know that. What they do know is that the Blacks will never let their dragon's death go unanswered.
“Rhaenyra will answer this! This is an abomination!” This coming from the onlookers.
Cole looks confused.
“Don't they know we won the battle?” he asks.
Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox) is more perceptive and replies, “Strange victory. If it was one.”
Then the blacksmith who petitioned Aegon for payment arrives with his apprentice who says, “I thought the dragons was gods.”
“It's just meat,” the blacksmith responds, trying to sound nonchalant.
Up on the Red Keep's parapet, Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) are looking at the crowd. They see a litter being carried behind Meleys' severed head, most likely Aegon's body.
Inside the keep, Alicent slowly walks towards where the body is laid on the bed. She asks if Aegon is still alive and the maester tells her that he still remains with them, for the moment.
The maester and his assistants remove part of Aegon's armor from his badly burnt body. As the maester removes Aegon's armor, we see the extent of his injuries. His body is badly burnt.
Aemond arrives and looks on his brother rather dispassionately.
But first…
“Someone will have to rule in his stead,” he tells Alicent.
Elsewhere in the keep, Criston is cleaning his sword. Alicent interrogates him about what happened at Rook's Rest. The Greens took the castle at the cost of at least 900 men. He left a few of their men to protect the castle and Sunfyre, who he describes as “long in the dying.” The epitome of sensitivity, Ser Criston is not.
This is a departure from the books. Sunfyre did not die at Rook's Rest and she was never left there.
However, that's not Alicent's concern right now. She wants to know what happened to Aegon.
Cole just replies, “His Grace fought valiantly.”
“And Aemond? What was his part in this?” Alicent forges on.
“I could not say,” he responds curtly.
The Aftermath of a death in the House of the Dragon
At Dragonstone's small council, Ser Alfred Broome (Jamie Kenna) tells the rest of the table, “Our largest dragon has been killed. Crison Cole marches about the Crownlands unchallenged. Duskendale and Rook's Rest are gone. We still have no ground army but the one we hope that Daemon will raise. He who has left us after some marital spat.”
Rhaenyra takes issue with Ser Alfred having a non-issue with her. There's a back-and-forth between them where he tries to one-up her by saying that “the gentler sex, heretofore, has not been much privy to the strategies of battle, or their execution.”
However, Rhaenyra isn't going to take this sitting down.
“There has been peace in our lifetime. You've seen no more battles than I have,” she tells him.
“Send to Maidenpool and to Cracklaw Point. Let them man their garrisons and give them stores or weapons if they find them wanting. If Cole pursues his campaign, our allies must be ready,” she directs them.
Her guard, son of Lord Staunton, who was at Rook's Rest, insists, “We must answer Rook's Rest and Duskendale.”
Lord Bartimos Celtigar (Nicholas Jones) tells him, “They are lost already. But Vhagar is depleted after such a hard-fought battle.”
The rest of the table agree that even if Aegon is dead, it would be a victory in name only. They will have another take his place. With Vhagar exhausted from battle, now would be the best time to strike.
Rhaenyra volunteers to do it herself, but the council disagrees. She is the crown.
This frustrates her and asks what they want her to do. No answer, though.
Prince Jacaerys makes his move
Elsewhere in the castle, Baela (Bethany Antonio) is alone in her room and sees Jacaerys (Harry Collett) passing by.
He tells her that he's going to Harrenhal and get Daemon to re-affirm his loyalty to Rhaenyra and update them about what's going on.
Jace seems very determined, but Baela stops him, asking, “And you think you will tame him when the queen herself could not?
But he's going stir-crazy. Ever since Luc's death, he's been stalking around Dragonstone with his hand at the hilt of his sword.
“My mother gladly sends you away to scout, to fight whilst I'm here being forced to play the coddled princeling. It's humiliating, Baela,” he tells her bitingly.
Baela reminds him, “She only protects you. You are the succession.”
Jacaerys knows this and acknowledges it. And then something occurs to him.
“The Freys. They control the crossing at The Twins. Cregan Stark's graybeards are marching south. If his men had a direct route into the Riverlands we would not have to wait for Daemon to act. I will treat with the Freys to secure it,” he says.
He then tells Baela to keep it from his mother, at least until he's away.
Will Daemon ever learn?
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Riverlands, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) is on top of Caraxes, in front of soldiers.
“The hour is late and my dragon is hungry. You have no choice but to submit. Our terms are simple, Lord Bracken. Renounce the false king Aegon as a usurper and bend the knee to me or your house burns,” he says menacingly.
However, it isn't effective. The Bracken representative tells him that he would sooner be the Lord of Bones and Cinders than bend his knee before the Blackwoods and his hired dragon.
Miraculously, Daemon doesn't take offense to this. Still, the Brackens choose fire and they walk away.
Ser Willem Blackwood (Jack Parry-Jones) preferred that Daemon burn them, but he needs them alive. He was there to raise swords for Rhaenyra, not corpses. But he gives him leave to do “things the crown itself must not be seen to do,” and extols him to show the Brackens his worst.
Either Daemon has forgotten what happened the last time he wasn't specific in his instructions or he just doesn't care at all.
Meet the Lady of the Vale, Lady Jeyne Arryn
At the Eyrie, Lady Jeyne Arryn (Amanda Collin) tells Laena (Savannah Steyn), “Over the centuries, many and more armies have broken themselves against my Bloody Gate. Are you listening?”
She wasn't, but no matter, Lady Jeyne continues pointedly, “The Eyrie itself is impregnable. Unless, of course, we're descended upon from the sky.”
Laena flexes her political savvy in reminding the Lady of the Eyrie that she promised Rhaenyra 15,000 swords in exchange for a dragon. She now has two.
However, Lady Jeyne is older and savvier. Laena may have come with two dragons, but she points out that they were “both still wet from the egg,” and that she has “hunting hounds that are more fearsome.”
Laena tries to argue semantics, but Lady Jeyne reminds her that her “bread and shelter” depend on her pleasure. However, she tempers this by saying that she “mislikes feeling powers.”
Sensing a detente, Laena agrees.
Back at Dragonstone, Rhaenyra bemoans how the small council treats her to Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno). She understands that she's unprepared for war. The men don't trust her with matters of war because she's a woman. And Daemon has all but abandoned her.
But Mysaria points something out.
“Criston Cole made a mistake. Parading a dragon's head through the streets like a prize of war but the people see an ill omen,” she tells the agitated queen.
“They are afraid. Bread is scarce, the king has fallen, they whisper to each other that when Viserys lived there was peace,” she continued.
Rhaenyra wondered if these whispers could tear down stone or break shields.
Mysaria lived among the smallfolk and was one of them for most of her life.
“Do not underestimate your subjects. They are a thousand-thousand living in the shadow of the Red Keep and forgotten for too long,” she tells Rhaenyra.
“And you think they will turn to me,” the queen of the Blacks concluded.
Mysaria tells her that the discontented will feed on rumors. She is queen. What she cannot do, she should let others do for her because there is more than one way to fight a war. With that, we see Rhaenyra's most trusted servant Elinda (Jordon Stevens) leaving Dragonstone in the rain.
Remembering Rhaenys
But in order to fight a war, she needs trusted advisors. She turns to her stepdaughter Baela. They talk about Rhaenys (Eve Best) and how she claimed Meleys. How Daemon was furious, “his own mother's dragon, the fastest beast ever known and she'd have none of him. But bent her neck to Rhaenys.”
Baela tells Rhaenyra how she wished she'd known her grandmother when she was younger. Her stepmother reassures her that she is like Rhaenys in some ways.
“And with her gone, I must rely on you, I think,” she tells Baela and hands her a metal box, asking her to give it to her grandsire Corlys.
“I do not wish to stand alone,” Rhaenyra told her.
Back at Harrenhal, we continue the Haunting of Daemon.
He's dreaming again, this time of a blonde woman.
She tells him, “You were always the strong one. The fearless dragonrider. Your brother had great love in his heart, but he lacked your constitution. Viserys was unsuited for the crown. But you, Daemon, you were made to wear it. If only you'd been born first. My favorite son.”
While I know that the Targaryens practice marrying their own relatives, there is a line drawn somewhere, and that should be between parents and children. That's your mother, Daemon!
Ser Simon Strong doesn't interrupt him this time, but he does call his attention to their meal and the bad news at Rook's Rest. Daemon tells him that Willem Blackwood is on task to bring House Bracken to heel. And when he's done, they will have an army to host at Harrenhal so they need to repair it as best as they can.
A reckoning for the dowager queen
Back in King's Landing, Aegon is still in a coma. But the business of ruling Westeros must be attended to so the small council needs to name a regent. Alicent volunteers to be regent again, having played the role for Viserys. However, the small council disagrees. They prefer that Aemond take that mantle, as he's the obvious choice.
Alicent persists in telling them that Aemond is young and his lack of restraint has cost them dearly. She points out that she has experience in this while Aemond is needed in the field as a dragonrider.
However, even Larys, whom she counted on as an ally, rebuffs her.
“What would it say if, in response to Rhaenyra's crowning, we raised up a woman of our own?” And one who is not of Targaryen blood.
Now it's Cole's turn. Will he stand by Alicent or will he go against her?
“Aemond is the next in line.” Against her it is.
Oh, Alicent. You will never have power of your own. Anything you held was always temporary and borrowed.
The volume of the men's speech seems to be turned down, reflecting Alicent's hearing. She's only paying half a mind to the conversation while she musters control. All the while, she sits there stewing in her frustration, side-eying the hell out of her youngest son and now prince regent.
We see the blacksmith in his home at Flea Bottom. I think we're shown the plight of the blacksmith's family as a microcosm of what life is like for the smallfolk in times of war. Most of the time, we're only treated to the grandiose expressions of those in power, who without thought of practicalities or logistics, will order men to go to war and for weapons to be built. They never think of the families left behind, their main provider gone off to war. Or the materials to be bought and labor to be paid for.
Alicent goes to see Criston at his post, asking if his loyalty is only during the night. Um, what did you think that was? Did you really think those nights were payment for his loyalty?
Criston, on the other hand, doesn't seem to register why Alicent is even angry — or that she is angry. He tells her about what he saw at Rook's Rest. How men's armors melted with dragonfire.
“We have given the war to dragons. A dragonrider should lead us,” he tells her.
Alicent asks about justice and temperance, as if she's shown any.
“So you cast me aside?” she asks him.
“Have I not spared you? What we must do now is terrible. Will you preside over it? Is this who you are, Alicent?” Oooh, are they on a first-name basis now?
“I did not ask to be spared. And I did not give you leave to speak my name.” Okay, so not on a first-name basis then.
The smallfolk are attempting to leave King's Landing, but the soldiers have closed the gates, effectively trapping them inside. All this is done by order of the Prince Regent, Aemond. This is news to the smallfolk. What happened to the king? But there are no answers forthcoming.
A prince and diplomat of the House of the Dragon
Somewhere in the Riverlands, Vermax is looking at a bridge, while Jacaerys is treating with the Freys.
“Our Lord Grover Tully has not declared for Rhaenyra. It means death to bare steel against your liege as I'm sure my prince is aware,” the man tells Jace.
“And against your queen? Jason Lannister is marshaling to the west. We need to check him before he reaches Riverrun. That requires passage,” he insists. He's a man on a mission. Unsanctioned, to be sure, but a mission nonetheless.
“And if Stark's army is too slow? The wind's rising. Winter is nigh upon us,” the man counters.
However, the woman assures Jace, “Our hesitance does not lie in Rhaenyra as queen nor in the rumination of Lord Tully, the oaf. Our fear lies in Vhagar.”
To this, the prince has an answer, “You fear a dragon leagues away when mine own sits outside your walls?”
Since this is a negotiation, there's a bit of back-and-forth, until Jace cuts to the chase and asks what they want.
“You want Harrenhal. For that, my mother will want more than your crossing,” he tells them.
And what does Her Grace desire?
“Bent knees.” Jace is flexing!
With that, he leaves them.
Say the quiet part out loud
At Harrenhal, Daemon is chopping wood, all the while hearing voices.
“Let it not be said that Daemon Targaryen failed to dirty his hands during this war,” he tells Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin).
She tells him about what she's heard in the wind: atrocities being committed in the Targaryen name — his name.
Willem may have gone overboard — is Daemon repeating the same mistake?
But then, he finally says the quiet part out loud.
“She cannot succeed, Alys. Even if I willed it to be so. The people who support her will not be led by her. They look to a man for strength. Who's better suited to it? The Hightowers with their scheming? Or Viserys' first true heir? When I take King's Landing, Rhaenyra's welcome to join me there and take her place by my side. King and queen, ruling together,” he tells her.
And what if he loses?
“Then I'll be dead and none of this will be my problem,” he replies. Easy for him to say as the consequences will not be visited upon him, but for those who bear his name.
Just then, Ser Simon brings news that House Bracken has fallen to the Blackwoods. House Bracken is Daemon's.
Fire and blood, sea and salt
At Driftmark, Baela approaches Corlys. He wasn't at High Tide, his seat, but here at the docks. He tells her, “My castle is a tomb. Empty. Haunted.”
Baela commiserates with her grandsire. She says, “I am sad to have missed its highest days. I imagine your Hall of Nine filled with lords and kings, all eager to treat with the legendary Lord of the Tides. The wealth you brought back from Yi Ti and Asshai inspiring awe and envy. I wonder if any of them knew it was all for her.”
After a beat, she informs him that Queen Rhaenyra wishes to name him Hand.
Corlys doesn't see this as an honor. In fact, he's rather offended.
“Even the death of my wife does not content her. Has she not asked enough of my house?” he asks.
Baela reassures him that it is a sign of her great esteem.
“Or does she think the position will compensate me for my loss?” Corlys isn't about to let this go.
He may be the Sea Snake, but she isn't a wilting flower.
“Pledge you peace to King's Landing, then. They will accept it most gleefully,” she says, exasperated.
Corlys responds that he would rather sail into the West and be lost.
He's done this before though, but it cost him and the ones who loved him.
“Rhaenys was not only your wife, not a thing to be taken from you. She was a Targaryen princess. The Queen Who Never Was. And she flew to Rook's Rest of her own will. In defense of her kin,” she reminds him.
“And she died.”
“She died as she would have wished to die with honor, in dragonfire. The way my mother chose and the way I, myself, wish to meet my end. I grieve my grandmother who loved me but I carry her on with me. I will see Rhaenyra ascend the Iron Throne, as Rhaenys wished. As Rhaenys herself should have. You yourself may do as you see fit,” Baela says, quite resolute, before walking away.
Corlys calls her back, “Granddaughter. I would make you my heir.” Finally!
However, she refuses, “I am blood and fire. Driftmark must pass to salt and sea.”
Back at Dragonstone, Rhaenyra asks Ser Alfred to check in on Daemon. Ser Alfred thinks he's being removed from her small council.
She doesn't exactly answer, only telling him, “We cannot challenge King's Landing without the Riverlands, but I will not send a message by raven for Daemon to disregard. I ask you to reason with him. Find out his state of mind and his intentions.”
Intentions? I find myself echoing Ser Alfred here.
“Whether he means to raise a host for me or for himself,” she says. However much in love and in awe Rhaenyra may be of Daemon, she isn't a fool.
So Ser Alfred sets off for Harrenhal.
The consequences
There, my earlier question has been answered: yes, Daemon made the same mistake. This is twice now. The heads of the Riverlands families have come to tell him that Ser Willem, under Daemon's banners, is committing atrocities left and right. They tell him that with or without his dragon, they will never fight for a tyrant.
At King's landing, Rhaenyra's servant Elinda has arrived on an errand for Mysaria. She's there to meet the servant girl that Aegon abused and now works for the brothel.
At the Red Keep, Aemond is eyeing — pardon the pun — the Iron Throne. He looks back and sees Helaena who asks him, “Was it worth the price?”
He doesn't answer.
Alicent is at Aegon's bedside, but only briefly. She doesn't hear him call for her.
Jace returns to Dragonstone, none the worse for wear, if a bit soaked. He meets Rhaenyra in the library. She asks him about his errand. The one she didn't send him on.
He reports back that the Freys asked for Harrenhal at war's end. Rhaenyra tells her son and heir that she's proud of him.
However, Jace sees that she still looks angry. He asks her why.
“You chafed at being prevented from action. Imagine my lot. I'm a dragonrider as well with a war being fought over my ascension. And yet, I must wait here, always prudent, sending others to fight and be felled in my name. Even you have managed to do your part,” she tells him honestly.
“You are the queen, the tie that binds us. No harm can come to you,” he responds.
Mother and son finally let it out. They both make sense in their arguments. There's no one else to do what Jace did. Baela went to Driftmark to exhort Corlys. He's the only one who can treat with their allies.
However, Rhaenyra lost a son to the Greens fairly recently.
“And when Aemond comes hunting for you? Your dragon is young. Will you fly before Vhagar as Luke did?” she gives voice to her nightmare.
The search is about to begin
Their biggest problem is Vhagar. Rhaenyra tells Jace that they have no dragons to answer Vhagar. She needs dragons.
“We have no dearth of dragons. We have two large enough to stand against Vhagar. They are called Vermithor and Silverwing, and they sleep just beneath our feet,” Jace tells her.
“Yes, and if only they had riders, none could stand against me. I would go forth in strength and not from necessity,” she counters.
But then Jace remembers that there could be others who can ride dragons, those of Old Valyrian blood who married into other noble houses.
“A dragon will only accept a dragonlord to ride it. Or so say the histories,” Rhaenyra reminds him.
“Valyrian histories. Written to gild us in glory,” Jace says with a smile.
Rhaenyra thinks it's a mad thought, but they have no other options. And they are in a library…
A peace of sorts
While I will forever mourn Rhaenys' loss, the story needs to continue. I wonder how the rest of it will go with Sunfyre seemingly out of the picture. She becomes quite important to the story later on, but I guess another dragon will do?
As for Alicent, she miscalculated her strategy. I thought it quite naïve of her to believe that she still held power as dowager queen. While she was able to act as Viserys' regent when he was ill, her father Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) was there as Hand. She never held it on her own, and that was during peacetime. And for her to think that she could leverage Ser Criston was short-sighted. He became Hand without her help. I don't think he believes he owes her anything other than his nights.
Now she has to contend with the son she has no hope of controlling, Aemond. And as for what he's like, as she was telling Cole, he knows exactly what he's like. They work together.
Mysaria agreed with me that Cole misstepped when he paraded Meleys' head to the smallfolk. They have been ruled by the Targaryens and their dragons since the time of Aegon the Conqueror. It never occurred to him, since he's a Dornishman, that seeing one of the nigh-indestructible creatures dead would have the smallfolk thinking this wasn't the good tidings he thought it was.
I'm glad to see Jacaerys and Baela doing something. As direct descendants of the claimants, they have the authority to broker treaties. Baela may have the easier job as Corlys is her grandsire, but I thought she did such a great job in reminding him that Rhaenys was more than just his wife. Maybe he forgot in his grief, but he was right there when she volunteered to be sent to Rook's Rest. Or maybe that was his guilt talking. They didn't exactly have the best last conversation.
And speaking of their last conversation, now that Baela has told him that she cannot accept Driftmark, he'll have to follow Rhaenys' advice to raise up Alyn (and Addam) as his heirs.
As for Daemon and his time at Harrenhal, that was… It was his mother! It's difficult for me to get over that. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Oedipal complex much?
But Jacaerys and Rhaenyra's conversation at the end fully opens up the idea of dragonseeds. We already knew about this when Ulf appeared in the third episode, claiming to be a Targaryen bastard. In the book, Jace runs with this idea and offers land, riches and knighthood to any who can master a dragon. He sweetened the pot by promising to ennoble their sons and marry their daughters to lords. We also have the foreshadowing of Addam looking up to see Seasmoke, which in the book, he ends up claiming.
All in all, it's a peaceful episode. As it should be. We are still mourning the Queen That Never Was, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen and the Red Queen Meleys.
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