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- Warning: Spoilers ahead for "House of the Dragon" season one, episode three.
- See which references to "Fire and Blood" were included in this week's episode.
- The royal hunt might be a nod to George R.R. Martin's least-favorite scene in "Game of Thrones."
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This is a neat costuming detail that helps connect the pirate leader to other people of Essos. In "Game of Thrones," Daenerys Targaryen's reign in Slaver's Bay was impeded by the Sons of the Harpy — a group of terrorist-like fighters who would attack her military in an effort to drive the Mother of Dragons from their city.
The costuming choice helps show how the Crabfeeder is a cruel, chaotic leader who would have had to scrap together his pieces of armor and the mask that covers up his Greyscale-infected face.
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In the first episode of "House of the Dragon," Rhaenyra and Alicent were learning the history of Princess Nymeria, and how she fled Valyrian attackers by leading her people on ships across the Narrow Sea.
Nymeria was fleeing dragonriders from Valyria, which could explain why the song Rhaenyra is having sung to her repeats the phrase "under the dragon's eye."
Aside from having narrative significance, this scene was also a great orientation for how Rhaenyra is feeling cut out (if not outright attacked) by the rest of the lords and ladies at court alongside her father, who seem to all be focused on the sweet baby Prince Aegon II.
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The show's version of events (adapted from "Fire and Blood") have tweaked the ages of some characters. Actors Milly Alcock and Emily Carey, who play Rhaenyra and Alicent, told Insider in a pre-season interview that their characters are 14 years old at the start of "House of the Dragon."
In the books, Rhaenyra is significantly younger than Alicent. But the show has made them close friends (with romantic undertones), and the exact same age.
You can read our timeline of the major events in "House of the Dragon" here, which helps put the longer jump ahead into context with the rest of the series.
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In this episode, we're introduced to Otto Hightower's older brother, Lord Hobert, who came to King's Landing from Oldtown. Hobert seems to be incredibly keen to push Rhaenyra out of the line of succession, and maintain his house's influence over the Seven Kingdoms through his niece, Alicent.
Lord Lyonel Strong has already been in the show so far (he's the Master of Laws who sits on King Viserys' Small Council), but this episode was the first introduction to his sons Harwin "Breakbones" Strong and Larys Strong, who has a birth defect in his leg that makes it difficult for him to walk without a cane.
When Rhaenyra came back from the Kingswood with the dead boar, Harwin Strong looked particularly enamored by the sight of the princess.
Last but not least, this episode introduced twins Tyland and Jason Lannister. Tyland was the one who first brought news of the Stepstones war to Viserys at the beginning of the episode, and Jason Lannister is the one scheming to marry Rhaenyra.
Jason is currently the Lord of Casterly Rock in this time period, which makes him the ancestor to Tywin, Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister once the story reaches the events in "Game of Thrones."
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Throughout these first episodes of "House of the Dragon," Rhaenyra only wore her dark grey and black outfit while she was riding her dragon Syrax. Whenever she was inside the castle, she had on light gold and red gowns, not too dissimilar from Alicent's youthful dresses.
But now, Alicent wears the regal style of dresses fit for a queen, while Rhaenyra has begun wearing her sturdier dragon-scaled dresses around her father and the rest of court. This goes along neatly with her more defensive demeanor as she feels disrespected by her father and his subjects.
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By the end of the episode, we see plainly that Viserys now has two infected wounds on his left hand, where his pinky and ring fingers can be. But that wound was subtly noticeable earlier in the episode.
Viserys now wears large black gloves whenever he is in public. This is presumably to keep the knowledge of his illnesses a secret from the rest of the realm. But the gloves aren't foolproof. If you watch the way he holds objects in the gloves, you can see that the two fingers never bend with the rest of his hand.
This injury seems to have come from the Iron Throne. In episode two, Viserys cut his finger on the Iron Throne right after banishing Daemon from King's Landing. In the books, it's made clear that being cut on the throne is a bad omen for kings.
Three years later, Viserys' wounds have only worsened. Now he's missing fingers, and his hair also seems more thin. Overall, the show is taking care to depict the slow-but-steady aging that is effecting the once prosperous king.
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Back in 2020, "Game of Thrones" reporter James Hibberd published a book about the HBO series called "Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon." When speaking with Hibberd for the book, author George R.R. Martin said budget restrictions in season one of "Game of Thrones" led to his least favorite scene in the series.
"Where we really fell down in terms of budget was my least favorite scene in the entire show, in all eight seasons: King Robert goes hunting," Martin said. "In the books, Robert goes off hunting, we get word he was gored by a boar, and they bring him back and he dies. So I never did [a hunting scene]."
He continued: "But I knew what a royal hunting party was like. There would have been a hundred guys. There would have been pavilions. There would have been huntsmen. There would have been dogs. There would have been horns blowing — that's how a king goes hunting! He wouldn't have just been walking through the woods with three of his friends holding spears hoping to meet a boar."
In this episode, we get to see the full production of a royal hunt in the Kingswood, complete with the pavilions and huntsmen and dogs that Martin spoke of. Plus, we finally see what it really looks like when a drunk king tries to kill a wild animal.
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When Viserys and Rhaenyra were fighting in front of the lords and ladies, Otto Hightower managed to change the subject by announcing that the hunters found the trail of a "White Hart" stag.
"The stag is the king of the Kingswood, a regal portent for prince Aegon's name day," Otto said.
But King Viserys didn't kill the white stag. Instead, he clumsily killed a large stag that had been trapped by other hunters — it took him two tries to do it (and he had to close his eyes to deal the final blow).
It was instead Rhaenyra who came face to face with the real White Hart stag, and she stopped Ser Criston Cole from trying to harm it. If the animal is indeed a regal portent (a sign of something momentous), then its importance was saved for Rhaenyra — not her half-brother Aegon.
The fact that Rhaenyra also personally dealt a death blow to a wild boar — the same type of creature who kills King Robert in "Game of Thrones" — is a stark contrast to her father's actions in this episode.
While the "Fire and Blood" book doesn't favor one side or the other when it comes to this House Targaryen dispute, the HBO adaptation seems to be setting up Rhaenyra as the primary wronged party in King's Landing.
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The clearest parallel between "House of the Dragon" and "Game of Thrones" comes with Princess Rhaenyra and Queen Daenerys Targaryen. Both are young women who wish to rule Westeros, and are told it is their birthright. But both are tasked with the monumental task of "breaking the wheel" of current Westerosi customs.
In the final season of "Game of Thrones," Daenerys told Jon Snow that she felt cornered by the people's resistance to accepting her as their queen.
"Far more people in Westeros love you than love me," Dany said. "I don't have love here. Only fear."
Rhaenyra expresses a similar frustration in this episode when she tells her father that everyone at court is only there for Prince Aegon II, not for her.
But when she strides back into the hunting camp, covered in blood and bearing the corpse of a giant boar, she seems to realize that sometimes commanding respect through fear will be necessary.
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As is fit for castle life, Queen Alicent has taken over the same bedchambers that Queen Aemma once lived in.
Alicent visited Aemma in that room shortly before the latter died in a gruesome childbirth. Though Alicent's first baby, Prince Aegon, was birthed without difficulty when Alicent was 16 years old, she still seems very aware of the dangers that carrying a child bring.
Now she's nearly full term with the pregnancy of her second child, and the staging of certain scenes in Aemma's old bedroom serve as a reminder of the pressure and anxiety that childbirth brings to the women of Westeros.
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Throughout this episode, Alicent refers to Viserys primarily as "your grace" or "husband." It's not until their final scene of the episode that she calls him "Viserys."
At her father's urging, Alicent goes to speak one-on-one with King Viserys about the Hightowers' belief that Prince Aegon was born to rule the Seven Kingdoms. She sees a letter on his table, and asks to read it.
When Alicent realizes that the letter is a desperate plea for help from the people dying at the Stepstones, her demeanor changes. She hadn't realized how dire the situation had become, and wants the king to do something about it.
That's when she uses his first name for the first time, signaling a shift in her approach to managing the politics of her husband's rule.
For more fun facts about the new series, read our breakdown of the details you might have missed in second episode of "House of the Dragon."
New episodes air Sundays on HBO at 9 p.m. ET.
11 details you might have missed in the latest episode of 'House of the Dragon'
Source: Kalayaan News
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