Full spoilers follow for House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 7.
There’s a great fundamental issue at the heart of House Targaryen that has too often gone unexamined and underexplained in House of the Dragon, despite its name, and that’s how the dragons work. This show has followed its predecessor’s example in leaning into the human drama of Westeros and away from its more fantastical aspects, but there’s a limit to how well that works, and in this engaging and generally fun episode (unless you’re Emma D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra), they finally get their teeth, and claws, into it.
The question is what, exactly, is the relationship between rider and dragon for House Targaryen and their allies? What are the obligations between rider and beast, if any? How (or how much) do they communicate? Do their feelings affect one another? There have been suggestions, occasionally, that having a dragon may affect one’s temperament (or that one’s temperament may affect one’s chance of bonding with a dragon); there’s a clear implication that losing your dragon is a form of emasculation for Tom Glynn-Carney’s Aegon II and the late Viserys (Paddy Considine). But it’s never been clear if it matters, and how much, beyond prestige in the internal Targaryen pecking order.
This time, however, we get some key hints that there’s more of a link than perhaps we were shown before. The scenes of dragon conflict, as when Rhaenyra finally discovers that her husband Daemon (Matt Smith) has been lying to her to protect his daughter Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) and flies to confront both along with Addam (Clinton Liberty), suggest an emotional closeness. As the humans shout at one another, their dragons roar and bellow and, occasionally, threaten to flame, and it’s absolutely clear that they’re reflecting something human and vice versa. Later in the episode we see Aegon screaming in sync with his steed Sunfyre, both disfigured and defiant and apparently on the verge of madness, and the impression is confirmed.
The episode also begins with a dream of Helaena (Phia Saban) and in fact heavily features her dreams – or perhaps Dreams, of the prophetic kind. So what does it mean that she sees herself on her dragon, Dreamfyre, shouting “Dracarys!” as an angry mob rushes at them in the Dragonpit? What does it mean that she imagines a quiet life on the farm with her children (it looks like both Jaehaera and a younger boy, presumably the one she’s currently expecting) when an eclipse occurs? Rhaenyra is putting her younger half-sister under pressure to share her Dreams, desperate for reassurance that she is on the right path, but it’s not clear that Helaena has any such comfort to offer.
Of course, that’s far from the most screwed-up dream this episode. That prize goes to Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), who sees his mother Alicent (Olivia Cooke) arriving at Harrenhal and the two of them tumbling into bed together before realising it was all a dream. And then he wakes up and she has indeed arrived. Awkward! This may not be the dictionary definition of “headfuck” but it should be. Alicent babbles, Aemond is more taciturn, Alys (Gayle Rankin) is rightly suspicious of the newcomer. Aemond shares her wariness to a degree, enough to murder Alicent’s travelling companion (who, to be fair, is there to help assassinate him), but not enough to refuse the poisoned nightcap she offers after the world’s most awkward meet-the-mother-in-law dinner. Alicent creeps out of the castle and into the wind, figuring that the job is done and stricken by it, but Aemond stumbles to Alys at the first stomach pangs so he’ll probably recover.
Meanwhile Rhaenyra is still pulled in every direction and failing to deal with any of her problems, and it creates a vacuum at the seat of her power. Torrhen Manderly (Dan Fogler) is furious that he’s been left to hold the bag for everyone’s money woes – something that is literally his job — and Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) is trying to make herself a conduit to the people and being rejected on all sides. She manages to, ahem, reconnect with Rhaenyra herself by the end of the episode (is that what the kids are calling it these days?), but she’s still caught in-between a regal rock and a common hard place, and that’s a tough situation to be in.
Daemon, too, is looking more woebegone than we have seen him before. He has belatedly realised that his daughter may desperately need him, which by Westeros standards makes him father of the year against almost zero competition, but in trying to protect her he has broken his wife’s heart. And also, he’s almost entirely failed to protect her; he’s just separated her from her dragon and gone home. He’s also increasingly floundering in council, suffering the same myopia as Rhaenyra and failing to look past his personal passions to the big picture.
It’s a mess. The only person laughing – and laughing a lot this time — is Ormund (James Norton), who’s riding high despite the imminent arrival of the Rivermen outside his hastily built walls and the fact that he’s probably in last place in that aforementioned father of the year competition. He holds Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) captive, and cuts off his finger as proof of life to attempt to keep the Velaryon men from plugging the policing gap in King’s Landing (an efficient and speedy postal system still appears to be operating between Tumbleton and King’s Landing). He’s also keeping his ward Daeron (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and cousin Gwayne (Freddie Fox) in the dark about his plans, to their increasing frustration. And, in the episode’s final big reveal, he’s courting the dragon rider Ulf (Tom Bennett), trying to turn him from Rhaenyra’s service with the promise that he’ll become Lord of (Corlys’) Driftmark fortress, and also that he’ll be free to drink whenever he wants. It’s not clear which is the bigger inducement to the big ol’ lush but it could spell big trouble for Rhaenyra if he turns.
So the tally was six dragons for Rhaenyra (Syrax, Caraxes, Vermithor, Silverwing, Moondancer, Seasmoke) plus one unreliable wannabe ally (Sheepstealer). Then there was one MIA for the Greens (Vhagar) and one out of combat (Dreamfyre). Now there are five for Rhaenyra, two of them perhaps injured; two for the Greens (it looks like Ulf’s Silverwing and the resurgent Sunfyre) and potentially two MIA dragons (Sheepstealer and Vhagar, still) to potentially change that calculus further. It’s all at play going into the Season 3 finale, and it’s still not clear how far these flames could spread.
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