War of the Two Queens

House of the Dragon: Season 2

NOTE: I’m assuming a fairly intermediate level of familiarity with the world of Westeros and the first season of House of the Dragon.

You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers. Other reviews in this series can be found here.

On a scale from one to Essos, how appropriate is it to demand that a total stranger impregnate your wives? Asking for a friend.

Anyway: Okay, THIS. THIS is a show I will happily binge. It didn’t end with the battle that is clearly coming, but it’s moody and dramatic and full of dragons and I am officially an Emma D’Arcy stan, and overall the season really landed for me. Even if we didn’t get to the first official Targaryen vs. Hightower throwdown, they’ve left us in a really good spot. Seasons 3 and 4 – I know there’s a season 4 in the works, and I have no reason to believe it won’t get produced – should be action-packed. My only note is that they’d better not stint us on the opening battle, the way GoT season 3 did.

But first, a quick family tree. (Translation: I spent most of a Thursday night making this, lol.)

Click to enlarge.

Overview

This was a busy season, and I’m having a hard time organizing my thoughts well enough to summarize it. My season 1 recap broke the synopsis into chunks by episode, but this season it seems more practical to break it down by family. As in the family tree above, Alicent’s children will be treated as members of House Hightower even though their surname is Targaryen. They’re called the greens for a reason. And also I can’t say their father ever really spent a lot of time with them.

There’s a lot of information coming up, so here’s the main points.

1. I loved this season.
2. I’ve recently learned that Viserys had leprosy. That explains a lot about Viserys.
3. Alicent has not been a good mother, and those badly raised children are coming home to roost. But I still feel so terrible for her.
4. I want Rhaenaria. I want it baaaaaaad. I know, I know, the HEA is off the table and always was, but I want them to live their best lives with each other for as long as they possibly can.
5. Rhaenys is a fucking queen.
6. I’m mad at Corlys.

House Targaryen

I’m not even gonna try to ape objectivity, fuck the greens, I am #TeamBlack through and through, I do not understand how anybody can look at Aegon II and go “Yeah, that looks like a king.” He told us himself he has no interest in the throne and isn’t suited to it in the slightest, why didn’t you idiots listen to him?

Anyhoo, it’s been a strange and unsettling eight episodes (not sure what that works out to in months) for the true blue House Targaryen, which is still nominally headed by named heir Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, though her husband is no more trustworthy than he was twenty years ago and her own council doubts her intentions and abilities despite proclaiming their loyalty. Following a vicious fight over the murder and decapitation of the five-year-old Prince Jaehaerys, Daemon leaves Dragonstone and flies to Harrenhal to raise an army, which in fairness he actually was supposed to do, though he deliberately twists the assignment and begins to pit the lords of the Riverlands against each other. (In Daemon’s defense, this is not a hard thing to do.) He is also plagued by insanely creepy dreams and befriended somewhat against his will by Alys Rivers, a witchy woman who seems to advance his personal cause while quietly putting him through a season’s worth of therapy.

Back on Dragonstone, Rhaenyra tries to hold the tenuous peace by any means necessary, setting her at odds with her council and her eldest son. Her efforts are not helped by a clumsy assassination attempt orchestrated by Criston Cole (who is still bitter), and, as war grows more likely by the day, she sends her two youngest sons to the relative safety of the Eyrie, along with three dragon eggs to ensure the continuation of House Targaryen. She also sends Rhaena, who has never bonded with a dragon, as the boys’ guardian; and she accepts Mysaria, whose observational skills foiled Criston’s assassination, into her court as an advisor. The Hightowers finally push Rhaenyra’s mercy too far when Criston leads a host against Rook’s Rest, the stronghold of House Staunton, which supports Rhaenyra. Rhaenys volunteers to take Meleys into battle, expecting an easy victory, but instead flies straight into the trap set by Criston and Aemond. Though their trap is somewhat muddled by Aegon, who shows up in the middle of the battle on Sunfyre, Vhagar kills Meleys, leaving Rhaenys to fall to her death. Following the disastrous battle, Rhaenyra names Corlys the Hand of the Queen, which he accepts despite his initial resentment. (Baela quickly slaps some sense into him.)

With Daemon’s intentions, progress, and general allegiance unclear, Rhaenyra bucks centuries of Targaryen tradition and recruits three new dragonriders from a pool of unacknowledged part-Targaryen bastards: Addam of Hull, son of Corlys Velaryon, who claims Seasmoke; Hugh Hammer, son of Saera Targaryen, who claims Vermithor; and Ulf White, self-proclaimed son of Baelon Targaryen, who claims Silverwing. This bolsters her firepower and is enough to make even Aemond back away from a fight, but it also causes a serious rift between Rhaenyra and Jace, who feels his own tenuous position is threatened by the ascension of three bastard-born dragonriders. (Baela slaps some sense into him too. I love her.) Despite Baela’s intervention, Jace’s resentment is fueled by Rhaenyra’s reluctance to incur violence as well as Ulf’s boorishness. Which, you know, is fair, because I honestly haven’t found anything I like about Ulf, but he’s also more important than either Jace or I really want him to be.

The Daemon problem grows to unignorable proportions when Ser Simon Strong, castellan of Harrenhal, becomes alarmed at the traitorous turn of Ser Alfred Broome (a member of Rhaenyra’s council who was supposed to be sussing out Daemon’s intentions but instead tries to convince him to take the crown himself) and writes to Rhaenyra, effectively begging her to come and get her misbehaving husband. Fortunately, Daemon has by now benefitted immensely from Alys Rivers’s therapeutic services, and, having had a vision of the future war against the White Walkers, he bends the knee to Rhaenyra and pledges himself and his Riverland army to her cause. While Rhaenyra warns him that a second desertion will not be well received, Ser Alfred realizes he is about to become a broom rack and quietly disappears into Rhaenyra’s new army, not unlike Homer Simpson withdrawing into the shrubbery. This isn’t to suggest that their marriage is back on track: Daemon’s attempt to kiss Rhaenyra is coldly rebuffed, partly because Rhaenyra is still angry with him but probably also partly because she shared a passionate kiss with Mysaria a couple episodes earlier and might possibly be thinking some things over.

Meanwhile, Rhaena receives an offer of hospitality from an old family friend in Pentos, but abandons her duty right outside the gates of the Eyrie and runs off in search of the wild dragon that has been ravaging the local sheep. As the Targaryen and Hightower hosts gather against the coming storm, she finally runs into the dragon – presumably Sheepstealer, who in the book bonded with the orphan Nettles – completely to her own shock. She really has a good “Holy shit I didn’t think that was actually going to work” face, though I don’t know why the dragon was the biggest surprise when if you ask me the girl is lucky she didn’t die of exposure.

NOW: I am assuming season 3 is going to begin with Rhaena finally on dragonback, because if it instead starts with the dragon eating Rhaena I’m going to have some strong words for the writers who made us spend all this time with her for no reason. I feel for the girl, who so desperately wants a dragon and has always been the odd one out in her own family, but at the same time she’s kind of the Sansa of the show for me, in that she doesn’t quite fit with the overall story and is probably having her storyline condensed with the storyline of a minor character from the book. (I said what I said. Sansa never rubbed me the right way, though I came to care for her all the same.) Even so, I hope Rhaena will have a more expanded role in future episodes. I would like to see her character do something other than mope resentfully around a castle.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the most important Targaryen issue is, of course, the question of a possible relationship between Rhaenyra and Mysaria which I am fervently hoping for even though I have since learned that the kiss was improvised between Emma D’Arcy and Sonoya Mizuno but I DON’T CARE BECAUSE I STILL THINK RHAENYRA SHOULD HAVE HOOKED UP WITH ALICENT hooooooo okay I’m done. I know Alicent is 100% straight (at least as of this writing), but I am so hopeful. I’ve never been happy with Daemon/Rhaenyra, to be perfectly honest. Leaving aside the obvious fact that the relationship is not healthy and Rhaenyra does not feel physically safe in his presence, he is her uncle, and he is old enough to be her father. But I looooooove the idea of Rhaenyra/Mysaria. I want them to have a loving, supporting relationship for however longer they both live. I want them to have a space where they can be silly and giggly and happy and maybe compare notes on Daemon’s lovemaking. I want them to co-parent Rhaenyra’s children. I would happily flush Ulf into a volcano if we could have just one scene like that. I want Daemon to get kicked out of the bedroom by both of his exes.

I’m not actively expecting anything like this, of course; I will be surprised if they actually pursue this storyline. But it’s not entirely out of the question. Book Dany was bi: though this never came through in the show, in the book she took her Dothraki handmaidens into her bed more than once. She wasn’t as into them as she was into her husband, of course, but he was dead, so needs must. I am currently wondering if HotD is going to incorporate this angle into Rhaenyra’s character though as the scene was improvised I might be reading too much into it but I don’t care just let me have my fantasy okay.

House Velaryon

While Rhaenyra struggles to keep her family and her minions under control, Corlys confronts a similar problem as he tries to connect with his two out-of-wedlock sons, Alyn and Addam of Hull, both of whom are employed by House Velaryon: Alyn is a sailor who fought in the Stepstones, Addam is a shipwright. Though Addam seems receptive to a relationship with his estranged father, Corlys’s attention is focused mostly on Alyn, who as the elder could potentially become the heir to the currently vacant seat of Driftmark. I am not kidding when I say nobody wants this thing. Corlys’s brother Vaemond wanted it passionately, but he got his head chopped in half last season, and Laenor ran away and Lucerys was killed by Aemond and Baela refused the throne. With his life running down – he’s still fairly spry, but he’s no spring chicken – and his options running short, Corlys tries to cozy up to Alyn but is sharply (and rightly) rejected.

The thing is, Corlys has never had to listen to a strong contrasting opinion from his own family. Rhaenys pushed back against him repeatedly, but was ignored and overriden every. Fucking. Time. So it comes as a real shock when Alyn angrily takes him to task for trying to play the hero after a lifetime of neglect, and then refuses to leave until he has had his say. In this unfamiliar situation, Corlys responds defensively, but is later seen looking more thoughtful; or so I would like to believe. As there is no dialogue in his final season 2 scene, it is difficult to know his thoughts. While I would really like to believe the best of him, Corlys has always been a self-made man, completely absorbed in his own pride and his own legacy. His pride gets him into all sorts of scrapes, such as the second assault on the Stepstones, and over the course of season 1 he gradually comes to realize that his hubris has been his greatest weakness. But this isn’t enough for me to say without reservation that his motives in promoting Alyn are purely altruistic. We cannot separate Corlys from his own self-interest. It is possible that he is sincere when he says he regrets distancing himself from his sons; it is equally possible that this regret stems from his need for an heir. I think it’s a little bit of both.

I don’t believe Corlys is malicious or ill-intentioned in his actions; however, he has a long and well-documented history of completely ignoring people he does not consider useful, including Rhaena, his own granddaughter. He doesn’t even acknowledge Addam’s existence until Addam unexpectedly becomes a dragonrider. And this is why he makes me so angry, even though I was really starting to like his stubborn salty ass. He doesn’t get to abandon two children and then comfortably forget about them until he needs them. His defensiveness when Alyn confronts him is a gut reaction, but I hope it is not his only reaction. I want him to learn and grow from this, to show genuine remorse for his thoughtlessness. I want him to continue to reach out to HIS SONS, who did not ask to be born out of wedlock and did not deserve to be abandoned to their own devices, no matter how much Alyn may try to push him away. I’m not sure about Addam’s feelings on the matter, but I think he has wanted all his life to prove himself to their father. I know Book Addam’s fate and I am not happy about it, but I hope he will realize, however briefly, that he has nothing to prove. I hope Corlys will instead take on the task of proving himself to his sons.

On the subject of the book: I am assuming that Corlys will indeed succeed in establishing some sort of relationship with Alyn. I would like them to reach a peaceful arrangement. Alyn is right to be angry, but I also want him and Addam to have the family that has so far been denied to them. It remains to be seen how Rhaenyra will react if and when she learns that Alyn and Addam are Corlys’s sons, but I think she won’t be overly harsh. At the same time, though, I also know Book Jace’s fate, and it seems pretty safe to say that the common-born dragonriders will play some role in pushing him over the edge. I can already see the threads of the Hugh/Ulf storyline, and I know more or less where it’s going. I foresee much more drama if – or, more probably, when – the truth about Addam comes to light.

And now if I can take a moment to be completely irrational, I really really REALLY want a modern AU where the teenaged Rhaenyra is married to Laenor (I guess their families are rival gangs or something and their marriage sealed an alliance) and finds out by chance that she has two new brothers-in-law, and completely goes over Corlys’s head and adopts them both and when Viserys or Otto or anybody tries to tell her those aren’t her kids she stubbornly insists that yes yes they are her kids she gave birth to them herself what are you talking about you’re crazy they’ve always been her kids. And since they’re all still teenagers and they’re just goofing around and being silly, maybe Addam sticks his head under Rhaenyra’s shirt and then pops back out again, and Laenor pretends to greet him like a newborn son. Corlys lumps and grumps around but inside you know he’s just bursting, and Rhaenys gives all the kids one big hug and Alicent is trying not to laugh as she sticks her head out of the Targaryen hideout to yell at them all to come eat their dinners, she didn’t slave over the hot stove all day just for the food to get cold. Viserys tries to reason with Rhaenyra when she brings her new kids to the dinner table but finally throws up his hands and tells Otto “My word is law” while Rhaenyra and Laenor fill up two giant plates for their “sons.”

I want absolutely all of this. I want a world in which Rhaenys is not dead, and Alyn and Addam never know what it is to be hungry and forgotten. I want a world in which Rhaenyra could have been a sister to Alicent’s children. I like to think that if the specter of the Iron Throne was removed, they could have been friends in time – maybe not immediately, but maybe Rhaenyra would have softened if baby Aegon had ever addressed her as “sister.” Maybe Aegon and Aemond would have grown up better, would have become better people, if Rhaenyra had spent time with them not in her role as heir, but merely as their big sister. If she’d taken them out flying and they’d all played dragon tag or hide and seek or whatever it is Targaryen children do in their spare time. If they’d all sneaked down to the Dragonpit together in the middle of the night and she’d helped them pick out their very own dragons, and then they all had to flee before they got torched by the dragons they picked. If she’d helped Alicent carry the burdens of caring for Viserys, running the kingdom, trying to raise these three kids. We’ll never know now, but I want to believe in it.

House Hightower

I have said before that Westeros pacing sucks ass, and this is a prime example: Until the second episode of season 2, I had no idea that Alicent had a third son, but apparently she does. Of course I knew about Daeron from the book, but since he never showed up in the show I assumed he’d been cut. As in the book, he was sent to Oldtown at an early age and has been raised by his mother’s family, which in retrospect was an excellent decision, to the point that I’m wondering if Aemond would have turned out better if he’d been sent away too.

But to return to the matter at hand, this was also Alicent’s season to struggle, though arguably she’s been struggling since the day Viserys announced his intentions. Having spent season 1 battling her angry stepdaughter and caring for her rapidly aging, leprosy-ridden husband around the clock, Alicent is now burned out, in the middle of an identity crisis, and clean out of fucks to give for her two idiot sons. Her life heretofore has been built around her father, her husband, and her sons, and now that her husband is out of the picture and her sons are adults she has no idea who she is or what she wants. The one thing she does know is that Aegon is unfit to be king (which literally anyone could have told her, but, anyway). At the end of season 1 she thought she wanted Aegon to be king, mostly for his own safety – her loving father corrupted her early with dire warnings that Rhaenyra would murder Alicent’s children upon ascending the throne – but now she’s not so sure, and her doubts only grow as Aegon behaves like a bored toddler at small council meetings, publicly hangs every royal ratcatcher in retribution for the murder of Jaehaerys, and fires Otto as the Hand of the King. Her secret relationship with Criston is little consolation, as it gives her a whole new set of sin-related anxieties; it also doesn’t help that Criston replaces Otto as the Hand of the King, and that he then waltzes out of King’s Landing at the head of an army, intent upon subjugating every House in the realm.

All of this adds up to a very unhappy picture, compounded by the secret abortion Alicent carries out with a special tea brewed by Grand Maester Orwyle, and for the life of me I don’t know how she managed to still carry on more or less as usual when I probably would’ve crawled into a hole in the ground to die long before the complication of the abortion. (A note on that tea: We as the audience have been trained to recognize the special tea the minute it appears, but it’s not clear to me if it’s more like an emergency contraceptive or more like an actual abortifacient drug. I thought it was something along the lines of a morning-after pill when it was first introduced, but we only see Alicent take it once and suffer greatly afterwards, and if she took it regularly then she would have been missing from a lot more small council meetings than just the one, so we’re back to the abortion theory.) The point is, she is long past the point of speaking kindly when she happens to catch Aegon at a bad moment and tells him he’s useless, thus unintentionally goading him into drunkenly gatecrashing the battle at Rook’s Rest. Smarting over Alicent’s rebuke, Aegon first gets his ass kicked by Rhaenys and then is brutally attacked by Aemond, who sees the opportunity to finally rid himself of the brother who has spent a lifetime bullying and humiliating him, and it is only Criston’s timely intervention that saves his life when the battle is won.

With Aegon more or less out of the way, Aemond takes over as regent, but his own rule is challenged by the increasingly agitated smallfolk as their food supply is strangled by a Velaryon blockade. Things get worse when Rhaenyra and Mysaria send supplies to King’s Landing, along with secret agitators who help turn public opinion against the Hightowers. To be clear, Aemond is not a good ruler; he lacks empathy for the starving smallfolk, whose hunger he writes off as a necessary sacrifice, and he needlessly burns the coastal town of Sharp Point to the ground in a fit of rage after learning that Rhaenyra has recruited three new dragonriders. Knowing that Aegon is in serious danger, and having turned completely against Aemond (who, it must be said, is a lot sharper and less prone to insipid flattery than Aegon), Lord Larys Strong smuggles him out of King’s Landing. The one point in Aemond’s favor is that he sends Tyland Lannister, Master of Coin, to Essos to negotiate with the Triarchy for the ships the Hightowers will need to break the Velaryon blockade. Tyland struggles mightily (the finale might as well have been called “Tyland and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”), but jumps through every hoop set for him by wildcard Admiral Sharako Lohar and manages to secure the support of the Triarchy.

Elsewhere, Alicent realizes that she only wants to live, and that her dream of living peacefully with Helaena is fundamentally incompatible with the decisions made by her sons. She now bitterly regrets her own part in raising Aegon to the throne, and so makes her way to Dragonstone, where she offers Rhaenyra a painless takeover of King’s Landing. Having now declared war, Rhaenyra receives Alicent with skeptical scorn, but eventually agrees to her offer on the condition that Aegon must be executed upon her arrival. Alicent reluctantly agrees to this, or seems to – no matter her exasperation with Aegon, she does still love him, and I wouldn’t put it past her either to already know about Larys’s plans, or to be planning to sneak Aegon out of the castle herself. Whatever the case, the two queens seem to reach an understanding, or enough of one to theoretically cut down on some of the coming bloodshed. Though Alicent tells Rhaenyra they should run away together, Rhaenyra gently tells her that her own fate was set in stone the moment she became the heir to the Iron Throne, and that she cannot abandon her duty now. Leaving Dragonstone, Alicent emerges into a red dawn as all over the realm the Hightowers and Targaryens ready for battle. In the final moments of the season, Daeron is briefly seen riding his dragon, Tessarion, alongside a massive Hightower host, while Otto is seen in an unknown prison.

I am curious as to who would bother to kidnap Otto. The last we saw him, he was heading for Highgarden to recruit the Tyrells after Aegon had fired him, so it’s entirely possible the Tyrells didn’t like what he was selling. On the other hand, we are talking about the Tyrells and they’re not exactly strong in the brainpan, so it is also possible he was taken by Targaryen loyalists, or that he was intercepted by Larys’s agents, though I’m not sure why Larys would do this unless it was to forward his own bid as the next Hand of the King. (If this is the case, it didn’t work.) Somewhat surprisingly, I was okay with Larys this season, mostly because there weren’t any foot fetish scenes; but also Aemond’s greatest moment comes when he calls Larys a toad and casually shoots down his ambitions. It is gratifying to see that there is at least one Hightower who won’t play Larys’s games, little as I like Aemond. Frankly, I wish Alicent had left Larys right where she’d found him in season 1.

And yet there is something so deeply tragic about Alicent’s children, because I think they could have had a shot but circumstances just didn’t pan out that way. Of the four, Daeron is the only one who has had an actual upbringing, because he was entrusted to people who actually had time on their hands. His elder siblings are pretty much what I would expect from three rich kids who never got much attention from their parents and have no purpose beyond acting as back-up heirs in case something happens to Rhaenyra, which it doesn’t. Their mother was always busy taking care of their father, and their father was too old and too ill to take much interest in any of them. Outside of her husband, Alicent’s attention has been mostly focused on Helaena, who is her favorite and also seems to need the most protection. Thus we come to Aegon and Aemond: Aegon is an alcoholic playboy who only receives his mother’s attention when he fucks up, which is often, and Aemond – though far more competent and ambitious – frequently visits his favorite brothel for the gentle comfort he never got from his mother. (That sounds really bad, but I can assure you that most of his time in this brothel seems to be spent cuddling with his mistress while she strokes his hair.)

At the same time, I can’t blame Alicent for any of this. Her life has been out of control, and she has only now begun to take some agency back for herself. I can guarantee that no fifteen-year-old marries a fifty-year-old with the thought that she will be his primary caretaker when she’s thirty and he’s sixty-five. I am glad that the marriage was more or less a happy one, but his round-the-clock needs, coupled with the running of the kingdom, were two full-time jobs she never signed up for. I can only imagine how much happier she would have been if, like Rhaenyra, she’d had time to just spend with her children. I can only imagine how much better her sons might have turned out, or at least Aemond. I’m not sure if there was anything that could have been done for Aegon. Instead she was forced to spend half of her life at Viserys’s constant beck and call, and I just feel so bad for her.

As for those two sons: I want to feel sorrier for Aegon than I actually do. Certainly the show has tried to depict a conflicted young man who wants to do right by the smallfolk, though admittedly his zeal to prove himself as king has more to do with his desire for love and attention than it does with the well-being of his people. But he is also thoughtless, constantly drunk, childish, selfish, even monstrous. He wants to be treated with respect but makes no effort to earn it. He rapes one of the palace maids in season 1 and expresses no remorse, nor even the faintest understanding of wrongdoing. He gets his kicks by watching children fight to the death in underground arenas. He seems to be a loving father to Jaehaerys, but his relationship with Jaehaera is unknown because he is never seen interacting with her. He has also fathered at least one child out of wedlock, but, like Corlys, has never troubled himself with the support of that child. Even his fury in the wake of Jaehaerys’s murder isn’t entirely selfless. “My son is my legacy,” he says. “Where were the members of this council when the murderer threatened their king?” If that had been “Where were the members of this council when the murderer threatened their prince,” I would have more sympathy for his grief.

Meanwhile, Aemond has become a monster, perhaps out of overcompensation for his guilt over Lucerys’s unintentional murder. Unfortunately, Lucerys was only the beginning, and Aemond now seems to derive pleasure from extreme violence. Literally why did he come out of Sharp Point looking like he’d just climaxed. That is beyond disturbing. As I noted at the end of the first season, he is worse in the book – all of them are – but book and show are more tightly knit in this season than they were in the last. This is both good and bad: good in that the show has been pretty faithful to the book, bad in that I didn’t actually like the characters in the book. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been some head-scratching changes; in particular I’m not sure why Helaena needed psychic powers, though I suppose they had to give her something to do. I’m curious to see how she’ll develop, if she develops.

Final Thoughts

Apparently unpopular opinion: I actually liked the finale. I can see why others have called it anticlimactic, but I loved the build-up, the armies marching, the haunting music, all of it. Most of all, I am glad they didn’t just throw in a gratuitous battle for the sake of having a battle. I believe this will give them the time they need to make something really spectacular, because violence is coming and the realm is not quite prepared.

And, as with the last season, I just really love Rhaenyra, who is so much softer than she is in the book. This should never be mistaken for weakness: she is fully capable of making hard decisions, and she isn’t above slapping Lord Bartimos’s stupid face. (Lord Bartimos had it coming. He was way out of line.) She was 100% a wild child during her earlier years, and some of that still remains. But she is also kind and compassionate, tempered by experience, a leader who will always try to do what is best for her people, a loving mother who actually gives her children real information wow, always ready to hug someone who’s really hurting. That scene where she spontaneously hugs Mysaria despite barely knowing her says it all. I love how she interacts with her children, particularly Jace, even in his tempestuous teenaged moods. (Though he really has done remarkably well so far, and I’m surprised he didn’t melt down a lot sooner.) Her children know they can come to her for comfort and protection, and they frequently do. This is why I love Rhaenyra. This is why I would follow her into battle.

One irritation, which I have been unable to math away: I don’t actually know how old any of the kids are supposed to be, because the math ain’t mathing. Daeron is said to be sixteen, which would be totally fine if I hadn’t had that in mind for Aemond’s age. There is nothing to suggest they are twins. There have to be some extra years squirreled away that I haven’t accounted for, and I really wish Westeros world would get a grip on its timelines because this is driving me crazy. For what it’s worth, this is the timeline as I know it:

• S1E1: Day 1. Rhaenyra named heir (age 14).
• S1E2: Six months later. Rhaenyra still cupbearer (presumably still 14).
• S1E3: Three years later. Rhaenyra and Alicent 17. Aegon II turning two.
• S1E4: Several months later (?!?!?! How many?). Rhaenyra rejecting all suitors. Planning to live in cave with dragon if she has her way.
• S1E5: I give up. Rhaenyra and Laenor marry.
• S1E6: Ten years later. Rhaenyra and Alicent now estimated 27 or 28. Aegon II 12 or 13.
• S1E7: Same year, I think? Laena’s funeral. Laenor runs into the sunset with Qarl Correy. Rhaenyra and Daemon marry.
• S1E8: Six years later. Aegon III and Viserys II now born. Rhaenyra and Alicent ~33 or 34. Aegon II 18 or 19. Viserys dies.
• S1E9-10: Same year. Shit hits the fan.
• S2E1-8: ?!?!?!?! How much time is passing here???

Conclusion: There is no conclusion. I fucking give up. I have no idea how old any of these kids are. It’s good, the show’s good, the book’s sort of good or at least a lot easier to read on Kindle, and all my Kindle notes are here. Gods, I’m tired.

P.S. I don’t know much about Admiral Lohar, but……….is he GoT’s first trans character? He is played by a trans woman, he looks feminine but seems to use masculine pronouns (or the lords of the Triarchy refer to him as such), and he openly asks Tyland to impregnate his wives (multiple), presumably because he is unable to impregnate them himself. I don’t know the answer to this one, but I like what I’ve seen of Lohar so far, and I want to get to know him better.