Rhaenyra has a duty to the Iron Throne. The first scene of the sixth chapter of The House of the Dragon, already available on HBO Max, it proves it and makes it clear. Ten years have passed since their marriage and the third son of the family is born to the heiress. Only it is not a Velaryon, but a Targaryen. A subtlety that the argument will remember, again and again, throughout the hardest and most unique of all the chapters released so far.
Queen Alicent has become a pillar in a weak court. Viscerys I languishes and it is the only daughter of Otto Hightower who deals with what happens in the court circle. It is she who orders Rhaenyra to carry the newborn baby in her arms. She is also the one who receives her, the one who holds the new member of the royal house in her arms.
But even more disturbing: it is the one that makes clear the first crack in the House of the Targaryens. “Try to make him look like you next time,” she whispers angrily to Laenor, who is holding the child in her arms. With that single sentence, the abyss between the factions of the dynasty with fire in their veins begins to be more evident than ever.
The sixth chapter of The Dragon House marks a before and after in the course of the series. Rhaenyra became a woman and a stranger to her court. She is also an heiress who must forge alliances or prevent the queen from outdoing her influence.
The House of the Dragon is the new series of the Game of Thrones universe
The secrets that can shake the throne in The House of the Dragon
One of the hardest points of the chapter of The House of the Dragon It has been his way of narrating the isolation of Alicent and the deaf and sorrowful fury of the successor of Viserys. Both dispute power, they battle in a pathetic fight between rumors and accusations. But underneath all the dialectical diatribe, something more fearsome lurks. “What you insinuate is so serious that I will ask you not to repeat it again,” Viserys murmurs, crushed by years and frustration.
Laenor and Rhaenyra did their duty to their parents and the Seven Kingdoms. At least that is what the couple appears to be walking through the halls and corridors of the Red Keep to carry the newborn baby into Alicent’s arms. “You should rest,” he murmurs, bewildered. The heiress grits her teeth and bears the pain stoically. “I will never give him the pleasure”, she replies furiously. As she passed, a trail of blood proves that the princess who will claim the Iron Throne fulfilled the ancestral pact of succession.
However, the deceitful promise is broken from origin to The House of the Dragon. The future queen fathered three children and they all have jet-black hair. “This is against the law, even decency itself,” Alicent protests desperately. But no one listens to her. In the same way that no one looks Rhaenyra, mother of the future kings of Westeros, in the eye. The murmurings are more and more indiscreet, the direct accusations. The truth is obvious. The next to rule the kingdom will be bastards.
An open secret in the midst of the ashes
The word is never spoken during the chapter of The House of the Dragon, but the bastardy of Rhaenyra’s children becomes a weakness. Especially when the Commander of the Guard and son of the Hand of the King, Ser Harwin Strong, is standing next to him. Beyond, Laenor, keep your distance.
The promise of tolerance between the royal couple is fulfilled at the price of an increasingly obvious scandal within the Red Keep. But as the Velaryon heir departs, Ser Strong is a formidable presence next to the future queen. The truth is obvious to everyone at court, except for Viserys I, increasingly weak, fragile and overcome by the rigors of power.
“Only I see it or everyone is in a blind sleep,” Alicent tells Ser Criston Cole. The latter, losing all dignity and restraint, lets go of the rancor macerated for a decade by the heiress who took away the only value of his rank. “The princess has always been a spoiled whore,” he says furiously. Alicent is terrified, but does not contradict him. “The truth is obvious, everyone can look at it”.
So much so that Ser Criston dares to challenge Ser Strong in public. While Princes Aegon and Aemond Targaryen train their cousins Jacaerys and Lucerys Velaryon in weapons, Cole provokes a confrontation between the children.. Violent enough for Strong to make sure to intervene and prevent Jacaerys from ending up being hurt by Aegon’s bellicose enthusiasm.
“No one would defend another in this way, unless it was his friend, his brother and his son,” says Ser Criston in the sixth chapter of The House of the Dragon. The provocation is enough for Strong to forget that the eyes of the court are watching him carefully. His face bruised by the Commander’s fury, Cole smiles. “What I supposed,” he murmurs.
In a game of veiled references to the book fire and blood by George RR Martin who adapts, chapter six of The House of the Dragon takes liberties with history. For this reason, Ser Lyonel Strong and faithful Hand of the King, faces his son. “You expose yourself to a frightening, fearsome danger. What is said about you can lead to death”, he reminds her. But the Commander refuses to listen to reason, he resists. “What has happened condemns us all,” his father reminds him.
Buoyed by a fading integrity, the Hand of the King decides to step back. Either because of pressure from the vigilante Alicent or because of the shame he can no longer hide, he offers Viserys I his resignation. “My judgment is no longer complete,” he confesses. Although he is unable to explain what it is that clouds his ability to advise the monarch. In the end, the sovereign does not accept the request of his adviser. “I have to take Harwin to the Harrenhal house,” the courtier then announces. The king accepts. But the promise of the Hand is to return.
A green tower alone in the darkness of La Casa del Dragon
Alicent is in the midst of a storm of rumours, debates and the constant fear that her children will be murdered. “You do not get it? You’re a threat just by breathing,” she yells at her son Aegon. But no one shares her suspicions.
She is also alone on the throne, with a Viserys who will never accuse his daughter of any crime and a fearful court. “There is no one to support me, here, I am always alone,” she confesses to Larys Strong, whom she chose as her confidant. The youngest son of La Mano del Rey listens, manipulates, moves pieces in her mind. “He’s not quite,” he says with a crooked smile.
It is Larys who makes the decision that will change the course of everything that happens then in The House of the Dragon. Plotting against one’s own blood is a common strategy in Westeros. The youngest of the Strongs makes the decision that he will uproot the history of his House. With his brittle and silent step, he goes down to the dungeons. “You guys will be hanged tomorrow, won’t you? There will be mercy if there is a service for me,” he tells the captives.
Serving no one and having no allegiance, Larys carefully weighs the next move on the board of pieces in his mind. One as dangerous as it is definitive, that she ends up sealing her fate, that of her family and perhaps that of Viserys.
The news of the death of The Hand of the King and his son, locked in the old tower of Harrenhal, arrives soon. Alicent immediately understands who was the architect of the terrible fire that consumed the ancestral house and those who took refuge there. Larys Strong just looks at her.
“The queen asked for a favor, I have only fulfilled it.” She is horrified, backs away. “I never asked for this,” she reminds her ambiguous confidant. “Now, you’ll owe me a favor,” Larys announces, with a crooked, confident smile. Around the queen a circle of manipulation is closed from which she will hardly be able to escape.
An ancient dragon, the fire that conjures pain, loneliness
Daemon Targaryen is now a father of three on distant Pento. He has lost power, momentum, drive and any desire to get into the power play. Ten years have passed since his battle at the Stone Steps. An entire decade that seems to have placated his ambition and his need to claim his right to succession. Over and over again, he insists to his wife Laena Velaryon that he no longer belongs anywhere. That he will not return to the old places, nor to the stories that once obsessed him.
But for Laena nothing is easy in The House of the Dragon. The woman capable of riding on the rump of Vhagar, the greatest and oldest dragon in Westeros, needs her blood near her. “Rhaenyra has had another child,” she reports quietly. “Surely, with the same casual resemblance to the commander,” Daemon sneers. However, he is as aware as his wife of what that means.
The already weak succession of Viserys is more than threatened. For Laena, the decision is obvious. “We must go and be with those of our blood,” she insists, pregnant, sorrowful, worried. Daemon refuses, insisting on keeping his distance from the intrigues of the circle of power. “I’m not interested in anything more than just living.”
But the inevitable decision will come with the birth of their third child. Laena screams, she struggles to give birth. However, the maester soon discovers that he will not be able to do much for her. “I have exhausted all my resources,” he explains to Daemon, who is faced with a decision identical to that of his brother. Laena will have to die for the baby to be born. “My poor brave girl”, Daemon laments, confused, tired and in the end alone and without hope.
It is Laena who makes the determination about her life. She standing in front of Vhagar, she opens her arms. “Dracarys”, she screams and dies in a flash that spares her the affront of being killed to give birth to a child who, perhaps, would not have survived. “Love binds us, holds us, leaves us without will,” says Daemon’s voice, widowed for the second time and now without a purpose to continue.
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The fire of the dragon and the story that never ends
Without a doubt, the history of the Targaryens is unforgiving and that is demonstrated by Rhaenyra’s decision to leave the court. After forging an unpredictable alliance between his family and his father’s, he decides it’s best to leave the Red Keep. “We should have done it years ago,” he says to Laenor, who is still unaware of his sister’s death.
The future heiress is also unaware of Harwin’s death. Together they make the only possible decision. That of moving away from power to become stronger. At least find a foothold in the midst of the danger of accusations and suspicion.
“Children are frivolous,” recalls the future heiress standing in front of Dragonstone, the place chosen to get away from the intrigues of the throne. She carries her son Joffrey Velaryon in her arms. The little newborn named after the lost lover her father loved. That he became the symbol of a betrayal that will divide the kingdom.
But for now, the crown princess only came to the ancestral home. “The rest is written in fire”, she whispers, surrounded by her young family, at the foot of the place where she will see the fall of The House of the Dragon in an increasingly near future.