The in-fights between Alicent and Rhaenyra have just become their children’s war.
All season long on House of the Dragon, we’ve watched the adults of the Targaryen clan slowly circle into two factions — the Greens, led by Alicent, and what will eventually become the Blacks, led by Rhaenyra. We only just met their children properly in the previous episode, halfway through the season — but in this episode, “Driftmark,” the younger generation abruptly takes center stage.
This episode gives us a pivotal moment in our build-up to what already feels like an inevitable civil war — and one twist involving a fake-out and a surprising fate for one minor character. But it also gives us a major shift from focusing on Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke) to focusing on their children, the ones who will inevitably have to carry out the conflict they’ve each so far skirted around. “Driftmark” shows us a court that’s become so completely entrenched in its own in-fighting, distrust, and paranoia that a single spark could ignite the powder keg.
Instead of a tiny flame, however, the catalyst is a whole fire-breathing dragon.The kids aren’t all right
It must have royally sucked to be a kid growing up in this court. At Driftmark (the seat of House Velaryon), where Viserys (Paddy Considine) and his court have assembled to mourn the death of Lady Laena, Rhaenyra’s kids have the disorienting experience of being unable to mourn their own father and grandfather, who also died in the previous episode — but who Rhaenyra can’t allow them to acknowledge as family. So on top of getting shunned, whispered about, and mocked by everyone else at court, their own mother gaslights them, insisting that they can’t go to Harwin Strong’s funeral because he is not their father.
She and Viserys both seem to believe that if they just keep insisting on this obvious lie, they can bend reality to their will. Instead, the years of lying, all while Rhaenyra has had three illegitimate sons who are clearly not her husband’s bloodline, have set Jace (Leo Hart) and Luke (Harvey Sadler) up for a terrible, vicious awakening to their real roles at court.
They get it when their rival, Alicent’s bullied second son, Aemond (Leo Ashton), tries to regain his dignity as the only prince without a dragon. While Laena’s daughters are still in mourning for their mother, he sneaks down to the beach and bonds with Laena’s dragon Vhagar, one of the oldest, largest, and mightiest dragons in the realm. While Aemond is flying around and having his big coming-of-age moment, Laena’s daughters are watching in horror as this upstart steals their birthright. When they confront him, along with Jace and Luke, things immediately get physical. After Aemond calls the boys “Strongs” — after, you know, their actual father — they read it as the insult it’s meant to be and attack him, with Luke ultimately slashing him with a knife and taking out Aemond’s eye.
Until now, the children of both houses have seemed completely uninvested in their parents’ fights. That’s partly because they’re oblivious kids, but also partly because until now, their parents’ fights have been conducted primarily through the rumor mill and passive microaggressions.
Viserys, again trying to make his distorted halcyon view of his court into reality, has always viewed the conflict between Rhaenyra and Alicent as petty. Even now when it’s spilled over into open conflict, he refuses to see the fighting as anything more than disruptive squabbling. Luke’s violence is an unfortunate accident; Aemond’s sin of openly challenging the boys’ parentage is by far the greater transgression. After Aemond says he heard the rumor of the boys’ illegitimacy from older brother Aegon, Aegon bluntly confronts his grandfather with the truth: Everyone knows Rhaenyra’s kids are illegitimate — just look at them.
So far, every major ceremonial event of this show has been disrupted in some way by an outburst of violence, but this is the first time the younger generation has participated, let alone instigated any of it. Although Aemond seems to be willing to let the hostility go for now, the rivalry this fight has created, between Aemond and Lucerys especially, will go on to fuel open hostility and violence for decades.
