The week we have to say goodbye to Dragon HouseMilly Alcock and Emily Carey and welcome to Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke as Rhaenyra and Alicent respectively.
Thanks to The Seven, D’Arcy and Cooke slide seamlessly into the characters we already know, though the princess and queen have slightly harder edges now that a decade has passed between episodes 5 and 6.
But the cast change is really the smallest deal in this FULL HOUR OF AFFAIRS, including Rhaenyra’s post-natal trek through the Red Keep and that hour-ending reveal about just how sneaky Larys really is. .
Read on for highlights from Episode 6.
IT’S A BOY! | We hear D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra moan before we see her, and when we see her, she’s exactly where she’s been dreading for a long time: childbirth. She is assisted by septas and everything goes as planned; she works for a while or two, then her son is born, and all is well. Rhaenyra looks happy, tired, and sweaty as she cradles him, but the postnatal hum is rough as a servant arrives and announces that the queen wants the baby brought to her. So Rhaenyra gets up to get dressed, and doesn’t even stop when she gives birth standing up, because there’s no way she’s not accompanying her few minutes old son.
Laenor (now played by Chewing gum‘s John Macmillan) meets her in the hallway, gleeful about their child, puzzled by the queen’s request and unable to stop himself from asking a silly question. “Was it terribly painful?” he wonders, and the look Rhaenyra gives him is GOLD. We feel like they are still great friends with each other; when she periodically has to stop and breathe while her uterus panics in her abdomen, he begs her to roll over. But she continues, even as everyone she passes stops to look at her. “That’s nonsense,” Laenor said. And yet they walk, encountering Ser Criston (still Fabien Frankel) at his post outside the queen’s quarters.
Inside, the queen immediately notes that Rhaenyra should rest. “I have no doubt you would prefer that, Your Grace,” retorts the princess. A surprisingly old Viserys walks in and begins cooing about his grandson, whom Laenor announces will be called Joffrey, though it doesn’t seem to have been a common decision. “I believe he has his father’s nose,” the king notes, and the glances passing between Alicent, Rhaeynra, and Laenor are something. “Keep trying, Ser Laenor,” Alicent whispers to the new dad before he leaves. “Sooner or later, you might have one that looks just like you.”
Dragging blood all over the hallway on the way home, Rhaenyra blames Laenor for naming the baby without consulting her. Then they visit their two other sons, who hang out with Ser Harwin and who have chosen a dragon egg for their baby brother’s cradle. Speaking of LOOKS, there are some very important ones between the princess and Ser Harwin “Breakbones” Strong, who is the commander of the City Watch. And older boys certainly don’t have Laenor’s coloring. Hmmm.
AN OPEN SECRET | Rhaenyra and Laenor’s eldest sons undergo training in the dragon pit with Viserys and Alicent’s sons Aegon and Aemond. Aemond is the only one without a dragon, and the other boys laugh at him. So, after they leave, he slips into the burrow where the dragons live and almost gets flamed for his troubles. When Alicent finds out, she wants Viserys to do something for Rhaeynra’s children (even though Aegon was equally complicit in the taunts). Then she brings up the not-so-hidden secret that Rhaenyra’s three sons look nothing like their father. “Nature is a thing of mysterious works,” he says, but it will not be influenced. So he emphatically says “Don’t talk about that again”, and she’s left to Ser Criston. “Princess Rhaenyra is cheeky and relentless, a spider that stings and sucks her prey dry,” calling it a spoiled Tuesday to the next before remembering he’s talking to the Queen – who, for the record, doesn’t seem bothered and definitely think the same. Also, Criston, honey? MOVE ON.
Ugh, Aegon is masturbating as he stands, naked, at his bedroom window when Alicent bursts in, causing him to stop and grope for cover as he falls across the room. (Good people from the lower levels of the Red Keep, may you never know what you barely escaped.) She warns him to be nicer to his brother, vehemently reminds him that everyone but Rhaenyra thinks that he is the successor to the throne, then orders him to dress.
Elsewhere in Pentos, Daemon and Laena (now played by Nanna Blondell) – who is pregnant – show off their dragons by riding them for a crowd. Later, at a dinner party, the Prince of Pentos makes them an offer: they will move to Pentos and be handsomely paid in exchange for loaning their dragons to the cause when and if the need for war arises (which seems be the case might, because the Triarchy has allied itself with Dorne). Later that night, Laena is angry that Daemon is even considering the deal.
Laena ends up giving birth. But things go wrong and very soon it is clear that neither she nor the baby will make it. So because she’s an absolute badass, she hobbles over to where the dragons are kept and, in her bloodied nightgown, commands her mount to “Dracarys!” her in the sweet beyond. Daemon finds her just as the dragon does as ordered; the look on the prince’s face is hard to read.
COLE V. BREAKBONES! | Back at King’s Landing, Viserys and Lyonel Strong watch the King’s four eldest grandsons train in the yard with Ser Criston. The Knight treats Aegon and Aemond better than the other two, and when Harwin notices and mentions it, Criston asks Aegon and Rhaenyra’s eldest son, Jace, to fight. Jace is younger and much shorter than Aegon, although he clings to it. It gets heated, with Harwin and Criston yelling at each other and Criston tricking Aegon into playing dirty. Eventually, Strong steps in to stop Aegon from beating Jace in the mud, and Cole taunts him about it.
“Most men would only have that kind of devotion for a cousin or a brother,” Ser Criston casually notes, “or a son.” And that’s when Harwin jumps on him and kicks him over and over, to the point that others have to take him out. When Lyonel yells at her son for putting them all in danger, Rhaenyra overhears everything, including her reminder of the very real threat that Harwin, the princess, and their children could be exiled and/or killed if people find out the truth.
Rhaenyra mulls over all of this, in addition to dealing with a very sore chest from breastfeeding issues, when Laenor and a friend burst in, drunk and singing loudly. The friend leaves when Rhaenyra asks, and Laenor keeps saying how excited he is about a war and being able to go back to sea. She’s like DUDE. STOP. PEOPLE SAY NOT GENERAL THINGS ABOUT US. And she adds that he is gravely mistaken if he thinks their son’s ‘real dad’ is going to abandon them ‘to party across the straits, waving his sword and winking at his sailors’ . He retorts that he played his role “faithfully, for 10 years” and thinks he owes him something. “You don’t desert your post when the storm hits,” she says, and when he disagrees she orders him to stay at King’s Landing “and by my side.”
WHERE THERE IS SMOKE | At the end of a subsequent Small Council meeting, Rhaenyra rises to speak. “I have felt the strife between our families lately, my queen, and for any offense by mine, I apologize. But we are one house, and long before that we were friends,” says- her. Then offers to give her son Jace to Helaena, the daughter of Alicent and Viserys. But then the princess’s breasts begin to visibly leak through her dress, derailing the whole business. Alicent says they go ponder the question and everyone leaves, looking away from Rhaenyra’s chest.
“As the fox speaks softly when cornered by the dog,” Alicent tells her husband afterwards, but he is enthusiastic about the proposal. “You can do whatever you want, hubby, when I’m cold in my grave,” she replies. Their conversation is cut short when King Lyonel Strong’s hand appears to resign from his post, given what happened in court with his son Harwin. The king says that Harwin was ousted from City Watch, and isn’t that enough? “Forgive me, Your Grace, but I don’t,” Strong said. “There is a shadow over my house, and it is getting darker and darker. I can no longer serve you with integrity. Viserys urges him to name said shadow, and Alicent almost drools having Rhaenyra’s case on file. But Strong won’t put an end to it all, much to his dismay, and as a result Viserys won’t accept his hand’s resignation.
A LAST DAGGER | Alicent takes an emotional tour around the castle before returning to his quarters to dine with Lord Larys, Lyonel’s other talkative son. They discuss the attempted resignation from the Hand of the King and the “willful blindness” of Viserys. The queen wonders how her father, the elder Hand, would not hesitate to tell the truth to Viserys, if he was still around. Larys points out that even Otto would be biased. “No, but he would be partial to me!” ” she’s crying.
Then we went to a dungeon full of men on death row. Larys offers them “mercy” if they go along with his plan, but we don’t hear the details. And the next thing we see, one of the prisoners purposely has his tongue cut out.
A morning soon after, Harwin bids farewell to Rhaenyra and the children; the princess barely holds him together as her lover kisses the child’s head. When he leaves, she tells the boys, “We’ll exchange letters by crow!” It’ll be fun!” But all Jace wants to know is if Breakbones is his father. A scruffy Rhaenyra says he and his brothers are Targaryens, and that’s it. But soon after, she finds Laenor sparring in the yard with her new object of affection and announces they’re off to Dragonstone Oh, and she’s cool with her plus-one.
“Bring him on,” she said, pointing to Laenor’s sparring partner. “We’ll need all the swords we can muster.” When the family finally decamps, they are watched by three of the prisoners Larys addressed earlier, all wearing capes and a bee brooch that matches that of Larys’ cane.
The Bee Bros are also present in the wake of when Harwin and Lyonel – and many others – are killed in a fire in Harrenhal. When she hears the news, Alicent is horrified to find out what Larys has caused to happen. But he seems rather indifferent after murdering his father and brother. After all, “I’m sure you’ll reward me when the time comes,” he says.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!
