If the fraying tapestry and drifting cinders of House Of The Dragon\u2019s opening credits haven\u2019t already made its dominant focus clear, let this week\u2019s hour spell it out in big, bold letters: DOOM.<\/p>\n
Doom, and the grace to accept it. No character has embodied this dramatic tension more distressingly than Ser Criston Cole, the series\u2019 resident sad-boy knight. Since his unlikely ascent in season one, Ser Criston\u2019s gnawing preoccupations with ambition, guilt, and death have finally metastasized into self-annihilation. Born to a minor house in contested lands and elevated far beyond his station, he never sat comfortably at court. To compensate, Criston indulged in two ill-advised love affairs\u2014first with Princess Rhaenyra, then with the Queen Dowager Alicent Hightower\u2014the first discernible blemishes on the honor he regards above all else. His pristine Kingsguard cloak is filthy with sin, and he\u2019s been cleansing it with blood ever since.<\/p>\n
Marching alongside Ser Gwayne Hightower and their diminishing army, Ser Cole\u2019s campaign against Team Black has become incidental in this dance of dragons. King Aegon is broken<\/a>, Ormund Hightower broods in Tumbleton<\/a>, Prince Aemond is missing, and Rhaenyra Targaryen sits the Iron Throne<\/a>\u2014Criston is a soldier in a losing war. Yet so long as Aemond lives and this dance limps on, he\u2019ll continue to seek absolution, if not in the eyes of the realm, then in the eyes of those he regards most affectionately: Alicent, and of course, himself.<\/p>\n Last week, he marched into Harrenhal expecting Aemond, only to find an empty castle and Alys Rivers haunting its corridors. Faced with this latest failure, Criston weighed his next move in Harren\u2019s great hall and decided to finally drop any lingering pretense at knightly virtue. \u201cOur fight will not be clean but it will be pure,\u201d he said to Gwayne before ordering a nighttime assault on the Tully encampment. This week, the Hightower army saw his orders through, cutting throats and setting tents ablaze under the cover of darkness. Fire, that recurring symbol of purification and ruin, illuminates Gwayne, Cole, and their army, finding them smeared in blood and stained by treachery. What Criston said was true: this fight was not clean. As for \u201cpure,\u201d that comes down to perspective.<\/p>\n In a busy episode preoccupied with finality and Westerosi history (over a game of cyvasse, yet!), sitting on the precipice of doom offers time for reflection. Some are forced to take a hard look at themselves, like Aegon, who\u2019s given the straight dope about his fall from grace by an exhausted Larys Strong: \u201cYou were a terrible king. But worse than that, you are a terrible man.\u201d Later, in a fit of impotent fraternal rage, he draws blood and a dragon stirs within him. Over in Tumbleton, reflection is obscured by hate and ambition as Lord Ormund recounts the exploits of Princess Meria Martell, the fabled \u201cYellow Toad of Dorne,\u201d praising the military mind that thwarted the Conqueror at his peak. We can chart the depths of Ormund\u2019s destructive misogyny during this conversation with Prince Daeron; he drools over Meria\u2019s strategies while taking every opportunity to dog on her appearance, praising one female ruler from a cozy historical distance while fighting to depose another in the present. \u201cA cunning mind can resist the most savage of beasts,\u201d he says. Idiotically, it\u2019s not Rhaenyra\u2019s dragons he refers to, but her gender\u2014and Daeron\u2019s victory over Ormund at cyvasse suggests an additional blindness to the dragons who remain in his midst.\u00a0<\/p>\n This week\u2019s episode provides more examples of people finagling an escape from fate. While Ormund grooms Daeron for rule, Aemond, surely no stranger to the encroaching abyss, finds himself ensnared by Alys\u2019s maternal affection. As he cries out for his mother, Alys hums a soothing tune that echoes all the way to King\u2019s Landing, her influence bleeding across the realm in a way Aemond\u2019s never will. Her gift of greensight\u2014seeing beyond what is to what was and what will be\u2014has little trouble locating Aemond\u2019s icky mommy issues. Exploitation in this respect is easy. Alicent\u2019s love has warped many things: Aegon is jealous of how she favored Aemond; Helaena sees through her schemes; Aemond is a love-struck puppy seeking a way back to her, only to collapse into the comforts of Alys\u2019s lap.<\/p>\n As for Alicent, she\u2019s suffering from buyer\u2019s remorse. After helping Rhaenyra secure the throne, she\u2019s learned that the queen\u2019s appetite for vengeance leaves little room for mercy, making the child growing in Helaena\u2019s belly a potential threat to Alicent\u2019s family. As Helaena speaks of dark visions and has moon tea foisted on her, Alicent plots a way out\u2014or through. Wriggling under the gaze of Mysaria, the White Wyrm, she quaffs Helaena\u2019s tea to spare her daughter from Rhaenyra\u2019s wrath, a choice that only deepens her desperation to escape King\u2019s Landing, its new queen, and her own insidious part in this war. Helaena finds one in Maegor the Cruel\u2019s secret passageways; unfortunately, they pose their own immediate dangers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Which brings us back to Criston Cole, whose own path is blocked by events a less nihilistic mind might have foreseen. Being denied passage south by the young Lord Tully (who plays Criston\u2019s game of sabotage on his terms) makes plain the fallen knight\u2019s true plan: a glorious death as the greatest warrior in the realm, unbent\u2014a deliberate word choice that evokes Dorne and its legacy of defiance. \u201cThey will sing songs,\u201d he says, pausing. \u201cAnd Queen Alicent herself will hear them.\u201d As Ser Criston marches toward oblivion, determined to meet it with sword in hand, leagues away his queen wanders into the same darkness in search of a door that might lead her out. Their paths may never cross again.<\/p>\n Stray observations<\/p>\n \u2022 Truly terrific moment between Freddie Fox and Fabien Frankel toward the end of this week\u2019s episode. A beautiful, minor-key exchange of defiance in the face of doom that encapsulates Criston Cole\u2019s surprising character arc in this series. That poor idiot.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Alyn\u2019s cats appear to be working, ridding the Red Keep of Aegon\u2019s rats and constantly being underfoot, as all good cats so often are.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Perversely curious to see Freys and Manderlys so cozy on the small council. It\u2019s like the folks who make this show are fans of the books, or something.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Look! A game of cyvasse, as old histories are shared and pondered over\u2014has HOTD stumbled into a Tyrion chapter of A Dance With Dragons?\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u2022 Is Helaena keeping Jaehaera from touching a nightshade-nibbling caterpillar\u2014\u201cyou can\u2019t touch that\u201d\u2014another poke in the ribs at George Martin for his \u201ctoxic butterflies\u201d post? Maybe! Plus, the symbolism takes on another dimension when it puts that caterpillar in a cage, which Helaena clutches miserably.
\n\u2022 Aegon, seeking revenge on Aemond: \u201cEvery one of my miseries is of his making, and I swear before the Warrior himself, I\u2019m going to find him and fucking kill him\u2014or die in the attempt.\u201d
\n\u2022 Baela laments the turn her life has taken and fears she\u2019ll one day be married off to bolster Rhae\u2019s rule\u2014that\u2019s why she seeks Vhagar with such selflessness, wanting to be seen as worthy to her queen. Addam offers her adventure and a happier future. Maybe they\u2019ll fly off together to wherever her uncle Laenor went.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u2022 Fun bit of subtle foreshadowing this week as Cole and Gwayne march their men through a bog\u2014note the spider\u2019s web, indicating they\u2019re walking into a snare.\u00a0
\n\u2022 \u201c[We\u2019ll] melt into the streets of King\u2019s Landing,\u201d Alicent says. Thankfully, this time she dons something a touch dowdier than Hightower greens and blues.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u2022 \u201cWho are you?\u201d \u201cOne who has been grieved.\u201d\u00a0
\n\u2022 I think the bandits who attacked Alys were Ironborn; one used \u201csalt wife,\u201d an, erm, unique term to those people.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Rhae says something stirs against her, crouched and formless. Rhae is correct about treachery in King\u2019s Landing; Hightower loyalists are slaughtering goldcloaks. A raven flies from the capital to Tumbleton with the message: \u201cGold blood spilled. Three marked in the tally. The account lies open.\u201d Eerie!\u00a0
\n\u2022 Rhae\u2019s quest for vengeance for Jace\u2019s death makes her too busy to visit her living son and heir, Joffrey, returned from the Vale.
\n\u2022 Tyland Lannister lives! It\u2019s a glorious day for Jefferson Hall fans.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u2022 Aemond impaling a man on the roots of a weirwood tree after Alys\u2019s words about Harrenhal\u2019s founding stones, drinking deep the blood of men, is a fun and demented bit of immediate foreshadowing. I also appreciated the goofy Hammer Horror thundercracks this week.
\n\u2022 Ser Luthor and his goldcloaks are clearly assembled at their feast for traitors like Jesus and his disciples at Da Vinci\u2019s \u201cLast Supper.\u201d But I\u2019ll draw another parallel: the Hightower murders compare to those of the Sons of the Harpy from A Dance With Dragons\u2014and, more distressingly, season five of Game of Thrones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the fraying tapestry and drifting cinders of House Of The Dragon\u2019s opening credits haven\u2019t already made its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-534506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}