House of the Dragon Recap: Just Meat

To more dragons! The cause of, and solution to, all Targaryen problems.

There is no term I know of for the exact sensation produced by episode five’s electrifying coda — the scene in which it dawns on Rhaenyra and Jacaerys that there is no actual shortage of dragons on Dragonstone.

Instead, the Blacks suffer only a shortage of dragonriders, but even that may prove surmountable. A dragon needs to be ridden by a person of dragon blood, but apparently, in a time before the Targaryens went all incest all the time, members of the line occasionally married into various noble houses. This means there are men and women out there in Westeros with dragon blood running through their veins, albeit thinly, hiding in plain sight behind the wrong last names. It’s not a cliffhanger or even a surprise twist — not really. I can only describe the feeling as Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit, shit is about to go down.

What’s more, episode five achieves this height twice in the space of an hour. The first time, Mysaria reveals herself to be more than just a mistress of whisperers but the only deep-thinking tactician at Rhaenyra’s side. The fruit for sale in King’s Landing is rotting. Ser Criston parades Meleys’s decapitated head through the cobbled streets, but his spectacle doesn’t have the desired effect. The smallfolk aren’t awed by the sight; they’re spooked. They’d believed the dragons to be gods when really, as the guy whose role seems to be “King’s Landing No. 1 Blacksmith that will definitely be important later” puts it, they’re “just meat.” God is dead, and power loves a vacuum. Rhaenyra’s small council talks endlessly of ground troops and dragon counts, but she isn’t a queen. She’s a queen in exile. She can’t fight a traditional war because she doesn’t have traditional resources. So let Mysaria start dropping propaganda leaflets on the smallfolk or, you know, the Westerosi equivalent. King’s Landing is the crown jewel of the kingdom, but holding it leaves you vulnerable to losing it.

Meanwhile, in Harrenhal, Daemon hasn’t publicly declared against Rhaenyra, but rather lets the possibility slowly ooze out of him so that the answer to the question “Do you take this queen to have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in peacetime and in war, for as long as you both shall live?” has gone from “I do!” to “Kinda …” to “Not. One. Jot” over the course of several episodes. Rhaenyra anticipated that he’d raise an army for her, but instead, he’s been assembling one in his own name. This would be terrible news indeed if Daemon weren’t proving so crap at raising an army in the first place. His dainty dragon-taming hands are in blisters after a few days chopping wood on the big Harrenhal castle reno, and even Caraxes can’t get results. Faced with joining their mortal foes, the Blackwoods, under the Targaryen banner, the Brackens opt to be burned alive. Never let it be said that Matt Smith can’t deliver a joke under that monstrosity of a flaxen mop. “I did not think they would be so eager to die,” Daemon says quietly, almost delighted to find that there are people in this old world who can still surprise him.

Alas, Daemon declines to burn them alive because dead men can’t fight. In lieu, he gives the Blackwoods permission to unleash a campaign of sexual violence and kidnapping on the Brackens, not as a means of psychological warfare but as a means of persuasion. That Daemon believes this is an effective military-recruitment strategy is one of the most disturbing things we know about him, and that’s saying something, considering we also now know he dreams about going down on his own mother, his hands mysteriously bloody. (Side note: If I were Daemon, I would strongly consider laying off any food or drink prepared by Alys Rivers.) Though the king consort behaves as if they’re in the early stages of some enemies-to-lovers seduction story line, I do believe that the witchy woman hates Daemon with every inch of her. How could a person who hears the anguish of the Bracken innocents on the wind feel any different?

And she’s not the only Daemon-skeptic roaming the halls of Harrenhal. When he informs Ser Simon Strong that he will personally pay for the castle repairs rather than ask Rhaenyra, the castellan looks at him with “Really? And who are you stealing from?” doubts in his eyes. The ghost of Daemon’s dead wife, Laena, visits to admonish him for failing their daughters, Rhaena and Baela. Eventually, all the riverlords come knocking in the small hours of the wolf to rebuke Daemon’s savagery because, apparently, the Blackwoods forgot to leave their Targaryen banners at home while carrying out their war crimes. At times, Daemon feels like he’s part of a different TV series with its own sense of magic and style of humor, but here they intersect meaningfully. Daemon may be raising an army for his own purposes, but as far as the larger kingdom is concerned, the sexual violence he’s sanctioned is happening in the name of Queen Rhaenyra.

That said, it’s not like things are going well for Team Green. Nine hundred men died in the effort to take useless little Rook’s Rest, and Meleys’s severed head was only the second-most important thing Criston was conveying to the Red Keep on a sled. The body of King Aegon II, scalded and pulverized, has been carted home from battle in a produce crate. I cannot tell you much about whatever gruesome medicine the Grand Maester performs to save him because I mostly shut my eyes; when I did peek, I couldn’t even tell what body part I was looking at.

Yes, you can shrink-wrap a drunk idiot in Valyrian steel, but that won’t make him flame-retardant. The sound of the maesters peeling armor from Aegon’s scorched body can only be described as … squelchy. Alicent looks alarmed, as she should be; the most learned men in Westeros appear to be treating her son’s extensive burns with bandages of Swiss chard. Even Helaena looks upset, and she hates Aegon. Aemond, on the other hand, has no squeamishness about taking in his own handiwork.

Or about taking on his brother’s crown as prince regent and making determinations about the course of the war until further notice. Aegon’s small council briefly discusses the possibility of Alicent presiding, as she did for Viserys, but wartime is no time for the steady hand of experience to retake the helm. It’s also, as Larys indelicately puts it, not the moment to cede Green’s advantage: They’re led by a big, strong man, whereas the Blacks only have a little lady queen.

Other than the Grand Maester, everyone agrees that Aemond, the natural heir and the realm’s most lethal dragonrider, should take the throne. Even Alicent’s boyfriend backs his old drinking buddy, though it’s unclear if Criston does this despite witnessing Aemond nearly murdering his own brother or because of it. The direction in this scene is impeccable. Aemond lifts up his little marble ball and casually kerplunks it into his brother’s conical little doodad like he’s clocking in for king duty, and there’s not much to it. We hear the garbled scene as though we’re underwater or listening through Alicent’s dumbfounded ears. Like the ship had already gone down or like none of it matters. Aemond’s first order of business is to close up the gates of King’s Landing to keep the smallfolk from fleeing in fear of Rhaenyra’s counterattack, a move that’ll surely do wonders for morale.

At the small-council meeting on Dragonstone, a defiant Ser Alfred runs his mouth about fallen castles, dead dragons, and estranged husbands as if anyone in the building is confused about how bad things are going for the Blacks. It’s not that he doubts Rhaenyra’s cleverness or even that his loyalty is flagging, he tells her. It’s just a sexism thing! Make babies, not war. And though Rhaenyra accurately argues that the men of her council have also seen a life of peace, she looks bemused as they trade possible next moves to avenge the deaths of Rhaenys and Meleys. Maybe they should ask Daemon for help? Maybe they should launch a surprise attack on King’s Landing with no ground army and zero wins under their belt? Vhagar is likely feeling Mondayish.

Rhaenyra’s beginning to doubt herself as the others do. She didn’t get a boy child’s soldiering education but that of a geographer. And while I doubt this thing will be won by wielding a sword, feeling disempowered has left Rhaenyra peevish. Without Rhaenys by her side, she looks to Mysaria for guidance and her stepdaughter for consolation. Baela has become increasingly important to the war effort, and this week, Bethany Antonia, who plays her, is given a handful of scenes that allow her to finally bring the character out of the shadows. Baela Targaryen emerges with her grandmother’s confidence and an easy sense of self. She tells Rhaenyra of the time Rhaenys snuck down to the dragon pit as a girl to snake Meleys, her grandmother’s dragon, from her own father. They both know the story already, but this is the only eulogy they’ll have time to make for the Queen Who Never Was, a wild and wilful woman born before her time and died far too soon.

At Rhaenyra’s request, Baela goes to Corlys, who is down bad on Driftmark, grieving his wife. The queen requests him to be her hand, but hasn’t he already given her enough, he asks his granddaughter, a measure of anger slipping into his tearful mourning. He means, of course, that he’s given his wife to the Blacks, but he could easily be thinking of his own children, too. Rhaenyra may not have caused their deaths, but their deaths made the life she has now possible. But with Rhaenys and Laena gone, Rhaenyra is also the only mother Baela has left. Baela boldly encourages Corlys to take up the post, and I believe he likely will, if only to better look after his granddaughters. But when he wishes aloud for Baela to be the heir of Driftmark, her refusal is assured. She’s not one for salty shores. She wants to die as her mother and grandmother have died before her, in a blaze of dragonfire.

It’s worth noting that Corlys, who balks at being presented with the badge of the Hand of the Queen, is still one of Rhaenyra’s more reliable allies. She stoops to having Ser Alfred, who chastised her before the council, chase Daemon to Harrenhal to get a progress report. Lady Jeyne of the Eyrie rightfully feels a bit duped that her request for dragon protection landed her with two hatchlings.

New to the warring party are the Freys, whom Jacaerys meets for wine on the Trident’s green fork, halfway between the Twins. They agree to bend the knee despite the fact that their Lord Liege Grover Tully has failed to pledge fealty for Green or Black; when the time comes, the Freys hope to be awarded Harrenhal for their troubles. And the Tullys can’t expect to sit this one out for much longer. After Daemon’s disastrous attempt to court them, they’ll likely flip for team Aegon/Aemond. “All must choose,” or so the HBO marketing goes.

Rhaenyra doesn’t scold Jace for treating with the Freys without her say-so, at least not much. She understands too well what it’s like to languish in the castle while others lose their lives for your inheritance. What it’s like to spend every day with the same four old men having the same conversation around the same flaming table. What it feels like to do nothing at all while Baela soars the skies, watching for the fight that will come for them all. There’s little more that anyone can accomplish from a tiny speck of land on Blackwater Bay. Soon, it’s dragonback or bust.

With Meleys dead and her ground army loyal to an increasingly disloyal Daemon, it’s looking increasingly like “bust” for Rhaenyra. Until Jace reminds his mother of the wild dragons that wander Dragonstone with no one to ride them, at least not yet. But there are strangers out there, hearts thumping with the blood of Old Valyria. Rhaenyra wonders if the dragon blood of these distant relatives will be too weak this far down the family tree.

But, as the series has reminded us a few times already this season, there are others in King’s Landing and on Driftmark with a more direct lineage, hiding in plain sight behind the wrong last names, too — names that tie them to no father at all. It sounds audacious to make a dragonlord of a nobody, but would it really be any more “mad”— to borrow the Black Queen’s word — than putting a Mallister on the back of Vermithor? After all, dragons aren’t gods, nor are their riders, as King Aegon’s barbecued body reflects.

It’s all just meat.