Full spoilers follow for House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 4.
Poor Rhaenyra. Emma D’Arcy’s queen has barely been on the throne for five minutes, and already she’s been bamboozled by a supposedly defeated enemy, abandoned by her oldest ally and lied to by her husband. Armies are moving, and they are not her own. After congratulating herself – briefly – on a war well-won, the Iron Throne has once again proved that it is more of a poisoned chalice, resistant to those who want it most fervently. This episode spent much of its (considerable!) energy examining the forces still aligned against her.
One major problem is the new guy, Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton). After supposedly surrendering, he marched to Tumbleton – a town loyal to Rhaenyra – and billeted his soldiers with the locals. Rhaenyra therefore can’t just fly over and flame the town without charring her supporters, creating a neat catch-22 that Ormund hopes to worsen when Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) arrives on Vhagar to provide extra firepower.
After nakedly – in more than one sense – threatening the town’s ruling lord and lady, who he has displaced from their quarters (don’t they get that he needs his sleep?), he helpfully explains this plan to the flunkies we’ve seen with him before, “Bold” Ser Jon Roxton (Joplin Sibtain, aka Brassos from Andor) and the page who turns out to be the real Prince Daeron (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, also Link in the upcoming Legend Of Zelda film). The latter shows his good nature by subtly warning a serving boy to clear the blast zone when Ormund loses his temper.
Alas, Aemond and his dragon are completely MIA after his stabbing – as Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) also learns when he arrives at Harrenhal this episode to find only Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) haunting the place. To say Ormund is displeased to receive the same news would be a delicious understatement; he unleashes a cacophony of C-bombs and does his level best to, well, level the furniture. The combination of such unpredictable violence with his prissy aversion to dirt and fastidious dress sense suggests two things to the seasoned Westeros watcher. One, this guy is going to be fun. Two, he’s probably going to endure the smelliest smells that ever stank during his campaign.
More importantly, Ormund establishes that he’s not just an opponent but a villain by making a big show of forgiving Kat’s (Ellora Torchia) brother Leo (Ahbin Galeya) for defending her virtue against a rapist among his troops, only to later abduct the brother and insist that Daeron – who Ormund thinks should be the next king – execute him. Daeron is traumatised, but the habit of obedience to his mercurial uncle is ingrained; there’s a twisted echo here of the very first episode of Thrones, where Ned Stark taught his children the duty of execution. Like High Septon Eustace last episode, Ormund considers dragons an abomination and a blasphemy (Tessarion leans into this by flaming and presumably eating the corpse), but he’s clearly hypocritical enough to use their power.
Back in King’s Landing, Rhaenyra is trying to fill out her council. She still leans heavily on Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) but has a new Master of Coin in Ser Torrhen Manderly (Dan Fogler) and, after Corlys (Steve Toussaint) flounces off pirate-hunting, has a nice scene with Alyn (Abubakar Salim) that suggests he can fill his father’s big shoes. He makes the radical suggestion that cats might be useful against the rat plague; not saying that Rhaenyra sometimes overlooks the obvious but, c’mon.
She also learns interesting facts about the Hightowers – notably that there is not one record of any message from Ormund in all the years Otto lived in King’s Landing, suggesting that they have been carefully pruned – and faces requests of money and favours from Ulf (Tom Bennett) that she thoughtlessly answers by attempting to lock him up in the Keep, because he’s far too valuable to go out carousing. Almost in revenge he tells her about the “Queen of Bastards” graffiti in the streets, and she orders the Gold Cloaks to find the culprits but does not, crucially, set limits on their response. They go brutally overboard. That’s going to win over the masses; another own goal, Rhaenyra.
Meanwhile the scarred Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and his right-hand schemer Larys (Matthew Needham) have reached Rook’s Rest and established a humiliating but safe place there, particularly for Aegon. The former king is convinced, incidentally, that his dragon Sunfyre is only mostly dead, and therefore slightly alive, despite appearances. He may have lost his mind as well as his face – or perhaps the two have a resurrection still in them.
Daemon (Matt Smith) goes to the Vale to demand money from the very spiky Lady Jeyne (Amanda Collin). While there his dragon Caraxes acts all weird, and ignores his commands and flies to a small, rocky ledge. There, he learns that the despairing, half-demented Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) was the mystery dragonrider on Sheepstealer when Jace died. He’s awed, and horrified, that she bonded with a wild dragon, but she rejects any help or hope of redemption and flies off. He looks thoughtfully at a shepherd down below and – yup – brings the poor man’s head to Rhaenyra, claiming that this was Sheepstealer’s rider. No way that could backfire.
So in the end, it’s mostly about people protecting the ones they love, or the ones they need. Kat’s brother paid for his protective efforts with his life, while her husband has requested Tumbleton duty to try to save her. Larys is keeping Aegon alive, despite the dethroned king having the survival instincts of a particularly daredevil lemming. Alicent has just figured out that her daughter Helaena is pregnant again, and needs to escape the Red Keep with her, and fast. Daemon is lying to his wife.
Practically the only person who’s cheery this episode is Criston Cole, who seems positively elated to learn that Rhaenyra has taken the throne. He finally stops moping and decides to launch a desperate guerilla war because there’s nothing left to lose. He too is going to head to Tumbleton, to harass the River Lords as they march south. “Let us become wraiths…Our fight will not be clean, but it will be pure,” he claims. “And it will be free from dragons.” Well, you have to admire his optimism.
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