House of the Dragon' episode 3

House of the Dragon is based on George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, which was mostly a straight recounting of Targaryen history. But Game of Thrones' ...

Only the gods ( [and book readers](https://www.polygon.com/23057740/read-fire-blood-house-of-the-dragon)) may know. [Aegon the Conqueror’s dream from episode 1](https://www.polygon.com/game-of-thrones/23289499/house-of-the-dragon-aegon-conqueror-prophecy-ice-and-fire-game-of-thrones), is a step back toward the more supernatural world of Thrones. The book itself is a fairly dry recounting of the events as told How to read the moment (or even how she reads the moment) is opaque, by design. It is, as one of the helpers holding it in place so the king may kill it notes, still a “big lad,” but the animal is not white. At a hunting party thrown in honor of Prince Aegon’s second birthday, many push for Aegon to be next in line (him being the firstborn son of King Viserys), while others insist [the throne is still Rhaenyra’s](https://www.polygon.com/23321956/house-of-the-dragon-episode-2-review) (being [the actual firstborn and named heir](https://www.polygon.com/game-of-thrones/23058669/house-of-the-dragon-cast-characters-story-fire-and-blood-targaryens)).

This slow-burn episode of House Of The Dragon is Game Of Thrones as we know it – for better or worse – but the Targaryens' internal squabbles are still ...

This is Game Of Thrones as we know it, almost to a fault, with all the same backstabbing and family dramas. Back-up arrives in the form of the Velaryon forces and dragonfire to warm both the heart and all the other bodily organs. Whether he can hold the Stepstones is another matter – he’s not a details guy – but he appears to be on the up once more. Since they do, we’re back to resting on questions of marriage and babies for all the principal women, and old women discussing the fate of those who fall to enemies: namely, being exiled to a brothel to be raped. When Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) suggests that Rhaenyra marry her toddler half-brother to set things to rights, and he actually has a point dynastically speaking, it’s clear that something is rotten in the state of Westeros. Jason’s sensible twin Tyland Lannister (also Hall) is around, and appears to be the brains of the two. These men (so many men) all feel like the upcoming victims and villains of whatever schemes the show is cooking up, so they’re probably worth keeping an eye on. There’s lots of public bickering in this episode, the kind that would start unsettling rumors in a more stable court than any in Westeros. Viserys (Paddy Considine) and his court are off into the woods to celebrate the second birthday of his son, Aegon. The noblemen of Westeros have assembled to pay tribute to the baby, who they assume will eventually become the king’s heir – however much he protests that he’s still backing Rhaenyra (still Milly Alcock), his anointed heir. Rhaenyra looks and feels isolated – though she also doesn’t seem to have much grasp of the politicking that might make her position more secure. But after that familiar theme plays and those clockwork credits spin, this week’s episode comes with a little homework: time to start making notes on the Lords of Westeros, because the movers and shakers have arrived in great numbers now, and they’re beginning to look like sharks in the water.

Viserys sought a stag and clarity while his brother, Daemon, tried to bag a Crabfeeder. Who had the most success?

Speaking of levity, this week brought multiple reminders of another humorous “Thrones” character, the dissipated old Robert Baratheon, with a king getting hammered on a kingswood hunt and a wild boar out for royal blood. Viserys was plagued by existential struggles and we learned that Daemon has spent the past couple of years unable to defeat the Crabforces with a dragon. The tension between love and duty was a prominent theme in “Game of Thrones,” culminating in Jon Snow killing the freshly tyrannical Daenerys in the series finale for the good of the realm. But the bulk of the action unfolded around the hunting party to fete Aegon and his father. He also again displayed his penchant for mercurial cruelty, braining the messenger who brought shaming news of the king’s aid in the failing Stepstones war effort. Discuss.) The white hart, that symbolic stag everyone was excited about until they settled for a humbler one for Viserys, cast his vote in her column. The dragon queen’s ancestors wrestled with the same issue in “Dragon” this week, with Viserys weighing his old dream about a baby boy “wearing the conqueror’s crown” against his decision to name Rhaenyra his heir. Off on a hunt of her own, Rhaenyra bonded further with Ser Criston and, with his help, laid waste to the wild boar that attacked her, foreshadowing future battles by wearing the animal’s blood for the rest of the trip. (Conquests are always easier to propose than pull off, a fact generally ignored by every hawkish leader who decides to blunder off into one.) How Daemon and the Velaryons are losing to an army with such lousy archers is anyone’s guess. Which is what Viserys spent a chunk of this week’s episode doing, finally just pouring his own wine as he wrestled with his choices and responsibilities. Stories like this are possible because of our deep commitment to original reporting, produced by a global staff of over 1,700 journalists who have all dedicated themselves to helping you understand the world. And that was before his top adviser turned father-in-law tried to hook up the king’s teenage daughter and 2-year-old son.

In the third episode of the new Game of Thrones prequel, family parallels become dangerous. Here's a recap of what happened in season 1, episode 3 of House ...

But it’s also a sign from House of the Dragon that this character is not a real character but a symbol. He is not meant to stand apart as his own person, but merely as an entity in opposition to Daemon, as a sign of what the prince is willing to do to his opposition. Waving a white flag before the Triarchy forces, he draws the Crabfeeder and his men out into the open, kneeling before them with his sword held open-palmed. After reading Viserys’s letter promising aid to the Stepstones, Daemon is royally pissed-off, so he pulls a classic Daemon and does exactly what he wants. He did so out of guilt over Aemma’s death, but also out of love for his daughter, and now he fears he’s endangering the vision he saw so clearly as a younger man: of placing a son upon the Iron Throne. His stabs are imprecise, prolonging the stag’s suffering as well as the scene’s longevity, forcing the audience to watch and listen as the innocent creature writhes in agony. In the Kingswood, the Targaryen family members gather with the lords and ladies of Westeros, the wine and the gossip flowing. But Rhaenyra is not such a fan of peacocking, and is so insulted that she initiates a public shouting match with her father. And she’s hesitant to test out that authority on Rhaenyra, who’s resentful that a towheaded toddler seems likely to steal her claim to the throne. Taking place three years after the events of “The Rogue Prince,” two key settings are smartly juxtaposed in “Second of His Name”: the war in the Stepstones and a hunt in the Kingswood. One features Daemon, fighting the Triarchy and glowing in the light cast by his dragon’s gasps of fire, while the other features Viserys, honoring his son’s name day in a genteel forest celebration. Targaryens might come from a long line of warriors, but not all of them seem so comfortable with the nastiness of bloodshed.

As evidenced by King Viserys's (Paddy Considine) nearly three-year long refusal to get the crown involved with it, the Stepstones war is far from an existential ...

The fact that it still feels like classic Game of Thrones anyway is as auspicious a sign as a white hart in the kingswood on your Name Day. “Second of His Name” does well to spend plenty of time with Rhaenyra as well as she nurses her wounds over her father’s marriage and the creation of an heir that might leapfrog her over the throne. More and more the Iron Throne looks like a prison of contradicting responsibilities on House of the Dragon. Neither Rhaenyra nor her father are one to indulge in superstition but how can Rhaenyra deny the mighty symbolism of being the one to see the white hart when it was intended for somebody else? Befitting of the great hunt’s scale, “Second of His Name” provides House of the Dragon with another influx of new characters. Here, however, the scale of the occasion is truly immense and impressive. House of the Dragon answers this question and more in “Second of His Name.” While our time in the Stepstones is certainly worthwhile and glorious, “Second of His Name” could not be considered a successful episode of television if it contained only that. It would be one thing for Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and the rest of the realm to hear about Laenor Velaryon’s (Theo Nate) ascension as a dragonrider, it’s another thing entirely for us to actually see it. In Game of Thrones, King Robert’s hunting party consisted of the drunken king himself, his brother Renly, and a handful of other dudes roaming around the woods until a boar goared the Usurper King to death (offscreen of course, in keeping with Thrones’ early monetary modesty). Though House of the Dragon does imbue the Crabfeeder saga with a little more importance than its worth, the show does get one crucial character (re)introduction out of it. In fact, for much of its early run Game of Thrones went out of its way to avoid major battles even when the situation called for it.

King Viserys has had enough with politics in 'House of the Dragon.' Here's our recap on Sunday night's episode on HBO.

The stag is screaming bloody murder the whole time, which is a little bit of a buzzkill. Laenor also arrives on the back of a white dragon, burning a whole host of the enemy’s army alive. Faking a surrender, the prince marches out to the middle of the battlefield and slays nearly 20 of the Crabfeeder's men on his own, before he's clipped by flying arrows. Ser Vaemond doesn't believe in Daemon and his dragon to get the job done, but Laenor plots to use Daemon as bait to draw the Crabfeeder's men out. "Was I named heir to the Iron Throne so that I might only further raise the standing of a lord of Casterly Rock?" Trying to console the king, Lord Strong reminds him that the previous King Jaehaerys was driven to the edge of madness by his daughters as well. The king is in a drunken-no-more-fake-friends tantrum. Outside of Craghas the Crabfeeder—the man who has crabs eat people alive on the beaches of the Stepstones!?—the realm is now a relatively safe place. Tyland is a political strategist in the king's court, while Jason is the lord of a castle in the west, called Casterly Rock. If a raven hasn't delivered the message to you yet, [House of the](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36342276/house-of-the-dragon-hbo-game-of-thrones-prequel/) [ Dragon](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36342276/house-of-the-dragon-hbo-game-of-thrones-prequel/) doubled its massive viewership numbers last Sunday from roughly 10 million viewers—to over 25 million. House of the Dragon may not have all the dragons it promised us just yet, but it certainly has drama. Like it or not, House of the Dragon Episode Three begins with a time jump.

Viserys may swear to Rhaenyra, “On your mother's memory, you will not be supplanted,” but Daemon is still out there, waiting in the wings.

Viserys may swear to Rhaenyra, “On your mother’s memory, you will not be supplanted,” but Daemon is still out there, making mincemeat of other tough guys, waiting in the wings for his moment to toss aside the proverbial white flag and make a move for the Iron Throne. His father served at Blackhaven, in the Stormlands, but he wasn’t highborn, and he isn’t as Dornish as Rhaenyra first assumed. I hate to hope for a show that is just a bunch of men riding around on horses and slitting each other’s throats, but when blood is in the air and Matt Smith is onscreen, my pulse picks up its pace. (In a moment of perfect character development, he mercilessly beats about the head a messenger from Viserys who promises aid in the form of ships and soldiers.) But Smith really sells it that Daemon may be surrendering, that his men cannot defeat a band of marauders who retreat to caves every time a dragon wing flaps overhead. If Rhaenyra proved her moxie with that dagger to a hog’s belly, Daemon did the same by singlehandedly dicing up dozens of men, taking three arrows to the body, and still hauling half of the Crabfeeder’s torso through a tide pool, barely breaking a sweat. In her place, this chit of a girl who flounces around the Red Keep ordering musicians to strum the same old tunes over and over again: “She fled with her ships and her people!” House of the Dragon struggles to make disagreement interesting, mostly because it goes light on the scheming and heavy on the exposition. It’s bizarre to see any king so loved in Westeros, especially with the foreknowledge that so many of the rulers in the continent’s future are winos, tyrants, and blond terrors hell-bent on cruelties of the We Need to Talk About Kevin variety. As an emissary to the ladies’ chat circle in the banquet tent, she wittily dispatches with Lady Redwyne, an avatar of Pocahontas’ Governor Ratcliffe and his smug little pug. The existence of a male heir has reignited the same ol’ succession woes we went through in the [first episode](https://www.vulture.com/article/house-of-the-dragon-series-premiere-recap-episode-1.html). [two](https://www.vulture.com/article/house-of-the-dragon-season-1-episode-2-recap-the-rogue-prince.html) and three of House of the Dragon. Martin that its character list was sliced in half, with some appearing in those chapters and the rest in the fifth book, A Dance With Dragons.

Two intertwined stories unpack the value (and pitfalls) of Targaryens trying to go it alone.

Even Lord Lyonel Strong (Gavin Spokes) once again steps forward as a voice of reason, reintroducing the idea of a marriage pact with House Velaryon, except this time, proposing a marriage between Rhaenyra and the Sea Snake’s son, Laenor (Theo Nate). Many in the realm view young Aegon as the heir apparent to the Iron Throne, despite public pledges of fealty to the current reigning heir, Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock). Despite her father’s position, Rhaenyra doesn’t expect her claim to the throne to last much longer. The Game of Thrones franchise’s megahit spinoff finally delivers its first explosive war scene in “Second of His Name,” an episode that follows two separate stories: Daemon and Lord Corlys Velaryon’s (Steve Toussaint) war against the Crabfeeder Craghas Drahar (Daniel Scott-Smith) in the Stepstones, while the Targaryen royal family throw a birthday party in mainland Westeros. [“The Rogue Prince”](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/08/house-of-the-dragon-season-1-episode-2-recap)—but it’s here in week three that Prince Daemon truly lives up to his rogue reputation. But Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) certainly shares the sentiment.

“Even I do not exist above tradition and duty, Rhaenyra!” - King Viserys I Targaryen, to his daughter. Sunday night's episode of House Of The Dragon gave us ...

He lands on his dragon, walks over to the warlords discussing their next move, reads the letter, hands it to Corlys, picks up his helmet and smashes the messenger’s face in before being dragged off, and then rows over to the other side and the forces of the Triarchy and never once during all of this does he utter even a single word. Then Daemon sees the Crabfeeder retreating into his tunnels and follows him, emerging at last with just one half of his enemy’s body, covered in blood. The B-plot takes place at the beginning and ending of the episode. The Crabfeeder and his men retreat to the caves. That takes place at the end of the episode. Alicent urges Viserys to send help to Daemon—for the realm if not for his brother, who Viserys calls a malcontent. The symbol of the white hart was once a sign of nobility prior to the Targaryen conquest of the land. Indeed, as his daughter is fending off the boar, Viserys is downing cup after cup of wine, sinking further and further into a wretched mood. Viserys botches the slaughter and is forced to stab the poor beast several times with a spear gifted to him by Jason Lannister, before he strikes the killing blow. He seems almost as much in denial over his daughter as he is the war in the Stepstones. Hightower tells Viserys that he is king and his daughter would obey him if he ordered her to wed the Lion. Boars and wine were, of course, the downfall of the Baratheon king, whose sigil was a stag.