The death of an old king made war within the realm a likelihood. The death of a young prince made it an inevitability.
House of the Dragon’s suspenseful, action-packed season finale, “The Black Queen,” changes the Game of Thrones prequel’s calculus forever. When Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) died, blood was sure to flow through the city streets of King’s Landing and the further reaches of Westeros. Now, that blood is flowing furiously, thanks to a dance of the dragons miles above the Seven Kingdoms, between two children playing as men, armed with fire-breathing weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically enough, when director Greg Yaitanes’s “The Black Queen” begins, Prince Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault) has death on the mind, just not his own. He’s still mulling the potential passing of his injured grandfather, Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), whose death would mean possession of Driftmark falling to Luke. For his part, the young prince wants none of it, a line he’s held as far back as when he was a small boy in episode seven, when he told the Sea Snake, “If I’m the Lord of Driftmark, it means everyone’s dead.” Oh, sweet summer child.
Luke’s mother Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) doesn’t have much time to assuage Luke’s concerns over these looming responsibilities. In no time at all, a visitor comes to Dragonstone with ill tidings: Princess Rhaenys (Eve Best), newly arrived from King’s Landing with the dark wings and darker words about Viserys’s death, and the Hightowers taking the crown in kind. The two-pronged bits of bad tidings are enough to send Rhaenyra into early labor, leading House of the Dragon to yet another childbirth scene, and still another with an unhappy ending: Rhaenyra’s child entering the world, twisted and dead. It’s the first child Rhaenyra has lost, and as we learn by the episode’s end, it won’t be her last.
Meanwhile, Rhaenyra’s (one last big sigh for the Kingsroad) husband-uncle Daemon, having previously lost a child of his own under similar circumstances, has no desire to go through those motions again. Instead, he has only one item on his agenda: war. The Rogue Prince makes his preparations to take the fight to King’s Landing, to challenge the Hightowers directly and remove Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) from the throne by force. Daemon threatens a pair of knights into service, and does so in the presence of Rhaenyra’s heir Jacaerys (Harry Collett), to make sure the young prince knows the stakes of the moment. Consider the stakes learned, especially when the news flies across Dragonstone about Rhaenyra’s tragic labor.
The Targaryens receive their first and nearly only bit of good news sometime shortly thereafter, during the funeral of Rhaenyra and Daemon’s unborn child. (In Fire and Blood, this baby has a name: Visenya, so named after Aegon the Conqueror’s sister-wife, a fearsome warrior who has been name-checked in relation to Daemon and his temperament throughout the season.) As the funeral pyre rages, one of the brothers Cargyll, Ser Erryk (Elliott Tittensor), arrives with an item in hand: Viserys’s crown. Erryk publicly declares loyalty to Rhaenyra, bowing before the Queen Who Oughta Be. The remaining attendees all bow in kind, with one notable exception: Princess Rhaenys, who is waiting to make her declarations until she consults with her husband, Corlys, said to be on the road to recovery following his recent injury.
Josh Wigler
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