Jaehaerys Tyrell

If Jon was a trueborn Stark and Tyrion a handsome Lannister, it’d be a fabulous match. Otherwise, I think some may take it amiss if their Queen marries a bastard and a dwarf.

Well, they do have quite a bit in common now.

Is it of any particular relevance that Lady Samantha Tarly’s mother was a Rowan? It stood out to me as unusual in F&B that we get the name and house of Lady Sam’s mother, when we don’t know who Queen Alicent’s mother was, or what houses Queen Sharra Arryn and Lady Sharis Footly were originally from (or whether they were Arryn and Footly by birth). It seems likely that if there were any plot relevance to Lady Sam’s mother it would have come up when her… uncle? Lord Thaddeus was serving as Hand or being tortured by Lord Peake. Am I missing something? Or is this just a detail George had in mind and decided to include?

I think there are a lot of reasons Erik Ironmaker would be proud of having Asha as his wife. She’s King Balon’s only daughter, popular, beautiful, and a Greyjoy is surely a great match for the head of a house which is presumably not among the Iron Islands’ most prominent. If she dies, he can’t boast about who his wife is anymore. He’d probably also be upset he didn’t get to consumate the match and potentially sire Ironmakers with a claim to the Seastone Chair.

I think the fact that Laena and Laenor were in the royal box in episode 1, and that Laena was featured quite prominently in episode 2, made me think that we’d be getting a lot more of Laena and Laenor than I’d initially expected. I mean, we still have 3 consecutive episodes where at least one of Rhaenys’s children has appeared, but clearly my expectations overshot. The idea of 2 seasons of set-up isn’t a strong conviction of mine, just something I’m starting to see the advantages of. I wasn’t quite sure whether there would be room in only 2-3 seasons of the Dance itself to expand on the Starks, depending on where the TV show ends and how many of the Dance’s battles are adapted. I was always surprised by how many people believe the Jacaerys-Sara story in F&B, it always struck me as one of the false rumours. The maesters don’t even seem sure on whether she existed, which I wouldn’t expect from even a bastard sister to the Lord of Winterfell. Having Jacaerys bring Sara back to Dragonstone, much less having them produce Daenaera, would be extraordinary changes to the source material. It’s unnecessary and wouldn’t fit with the pattern of loyalty to the source material we’ve seen thus far. Would Rhaenyra have passed her over to name Joffrey heir? Would none of the Blacks have supported her own claim against Aegons II and III? And from the diversity perspective, Daenaera Velaryon gives future shows the opportunity to depict some non-white Targaryen kings and princesses, which is not something I think they’ll want to miss out on.

In fairness, both forms are used in Fire and Blood. I’m not sure if this is a mistake on GRRM’s part or if it’s used interchangeably in-universe.

Ah, I’m glad to see the discussion hasn’t grown too long. HotD airs at 2am here in the UK and by the time I’ve watched it on Monday there isn’t much else worth saying. I might blame my reception of this episode on RedTeamReview, who opined that it would be people’s favourite episode of the season. I was so perplexed by this take I had to check a couple times to make sure I wasn’t watching the wrong episode. Perhaps on a rewatch I’ll appreciate it more. That said, I found it supremely disappointing, and it made the first two episodes worse in hindsight. They’d built up the Crabfeeder just to watch him stare out of a cave and die off-screen. Corlys’s ominous alliance with Daemon resulted in… nothing of interest. We raced through plot points in the first two episodes and then got an episode where nothing really happened. I’d hoped for some more development of Rhaenyra’s relationship with Criston, and that we’d get to know Laenor better. We saw some interesting development in Rhaenyra’s character in the first two episodes just to see her regress into a bratty teen. Now I’m worried about how the rest of the season will manage to cram everything in. The first two episodes were unusual in that we’d sometimes follow the same character through multiple consecutive scenes. I understood that as a limit on the scope of the narrative, but here they followed the same pattern without purpose. Harwin’s suggestion of Laenor as a consort for Rhaenyra was a perfect opportunity to cut to Laenor. By the time he does show up, I expect many show-only watchers will have forgotten who he is. The preview trailer for the episode suggested that the Battle of the Stepstones would be a significant part. I didn’t expect that I’d already seen 90% of the too-brief battle from various promo videos. Seasmoke’s scenes had already been shown, I believe, in their entirety, through three separate promotional videos. Not to mention Matt Smith’s tiresome arrow-proof plot armour. I’ve generally found the reception of the first two episodes to lean towards the overly negative on this forum, but this was just so disappointing. I’m perplexed, and somewhat envious, at the people who think it was great. Hopefully the show will pick up. I love the story of the Dance, but it’s just falling short for me right now. I’ve sometimes taken comfort in the idea that the show has to make some narrative and pacing sacrifices to get through the pre-Dance years, but at the end of the day there really is no excuse for mediocrity. I’d disagreed with the opinion that the show should’ve taken two seasons to get to the Dance, but I’m beginning to think it could really benefit from taking longer to develop characters and their relationships. Alicent’s changing relationship with Viserys and Rhaenyra has moved too quickly for me so far. Interspersing the development of the Targaryens with some introduction to Cregan Stark, Jeyne Arryn and other players in the Dance would’ve been to the shows credit, I think.

The brief scene where Laena clutches Laenor’s sleeve for comfort seems to give more of a younger sister vibe, but there’s little to go on.

The Westeros segment looks bizarre though. Is that meant to be King’s Landing in the Stormlands? And the Gods Eye in the Reach?

From promo clips I’ve seen of the tourney when everyone is young, Laena and Laenor look younger than Rhaenyra, like they’re kids and she’s a teen

This sounded like Rhaenyra to me, if I’m thinking of the right part of the Not A Review. I’m really curious as to who the subject of the “unnecessary change” is. I was trying to think of which male HotD character had a similar fate/experience to one from GoT that was controversial/would be if repeated. I’m stumped, but I’m sure someone might have a clue.

I speculate that in Old Valyria, where dragon riding families competed for influence, there was pressure for people to mount larger dragons that could increase their family’s power, with the added risk that the person may be killed or injured if the attempt failed. This tradition may have continued on Dragonstone (possibly explaining (some of) the brother-to-brother successions). With no rival dragon-riding families and a small number of Targaryens, it may have pushed them to go with the safer option of giving hatchlings to the children. Mayhaps the Rhaena legend is a half-truth, and she started the tradition of eggs *or* hatchlings? Arguably that started at least with Aenys and Quicksilver, but there were quite possibly no older dragons around at the time. It could also just be something that George found didn’t work as well in the writing. We’re also told that stunted growth in the Dragonpit contributed to the extinction of the dragons, and that Meraxes’ skull is larger than Vhagar’s. Both of these have come to seem quite unlikely.

If we look at the dragons who have multiple riders… Balerion - Aegon the Conqueror, Maegor the Cruel, Princess Aerea, King Viserys I Vhagar - Queen Visenya, Baelon the Brave, Laena Velaryon, Aemond One-Eye Dreamfyre - Queen Rhaena, Queen Helaena Vermithor - Jaehaerys the Wise, Hugh Hammer Silverwing - Good Queen Alysanne, Ulf the White Caraxes - Prince Aemon, Daemon the Rogue Prince Meleys - Princess Alyssa, Rhaenys the Queen Who Never Was Seasmoke - Ser Laenor Velaryon, Ser Addam Velaryon … we don’t see much of a pattern behind the dragons and their riders. Many, particularly Balerion, Vhagar, Dreamfyre, Vermithor and Silverwing, seem like they couldn’t have chosen riders with less in common. Yet Vermithor and Silverwing remain close after bonding with new riders, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they influenced how close Hugh and Ulf seemed to grow. And yet, Vhagar seems to have no qualms attacking Caraxes, when once (under Laena) she may have been very close to Caraxes. Daeron’s body is possibly still burning in his tent and Tessarion has already buggered off to seduce Seasmoke, while Vermithor seems to remain somewhat loyal to the dead Hugh’s allegiances. Would Vermithor have attacked Silverwing if Hugh willed it? Is Vhagar just a nasty dragon, who didn’t care to influence Aemond’s affections for Daemon and Caraxes? Was Syrax avenging the fallen dragons when she attacked the mob, or was she just hungry? I’m very interested to see how much depth we get to the dragons’ personalities. The final events of the Dance make me fascinated with their psychology.

It does strike me as looking a little strange in the visual medium that Rhaenyra and Harwin’s children uniformly take after their dark-haired parent, while Viserys and Alicent’s all take after their silver-haired parent. I always found it interesting that Fire and Blood doesn’t give us much detail when it comes to the hair and eye colours of Viserys and Alicent’s descendants. Aegon II is said to resemble his father and Daeron to have the colouring of the blood of the dragon. Aemond replacing his eye with a sapphire may hint that they were blue. For Helaena, Jaehaerys, Jaehaera and Maelor we have no hint at all for their colouring. When so many Targaryens are described, and when the Valyrian looks of Alicent’s descendants could be used to further delegitimise Rhaenyra’s, the omission seems rather curious. I quite like the idea that (some of) Aemond, Helaena, and Helaena’s children looked more Hightower than Targaryen. The omission of these details could be another piece of anti-Rhaenyra manipulation of history, and might explain why the “Strong boys” theory didn’t actually seem very widely believed (or at least cared about) by contemporaries. Aegon and Aemond projecting insecurities about their appearance onto Rhaenyra’s kids, as you say, would be an interesting avenue to explore. Alas, it looks like all our Hightower-Targaryens appear Valyrian. I guess they could give Daeron the Daring a Hightower look, even though he’s the most explicitly Valyrian-looking in the text. I always accidentally picture the Daerons as dark-haired for some reason, anyway. Maybe because of their later association with Dorne.

In the latest promo video, GRRM refers to Corlys’s grandfather as being the previous Master of Ships and as having a similar name. Of course, Corlys’s grandfather was Daemon, so I assume GRRM is getting mixed up here and the “similar name” refers to Corwyn Velaryon. Fire and Blood only states that Daemon’s sons were Corwyn, Jorgen and Victor, and separately that Corlys’s father was the eldest, which left us to assume Corwyn was Corlys’s father, but there was always the off chance that Daemon’s sons were not listed by order of age. Last I checked, the Wiki didn’t list Corwyn as Corlys’s father, but to me this video confirms that he was.