[Spoilers] Episode 106 Discussion

[Zorral]

56 minutes ago, EggBlue said:

you should be an Aegon III fan , my friend. that guy's policy was full bellies and dancing bears

As I'm not a book lore master I have no idea who this is. 

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

2 minutes ago, frenin said:

All that happens in Westeros is civil war.

Pretty much. The Faith Militant Uprising could be a nice change of pace given the focus on religion and most of the characters being smallfolk.

[Zorral]

47 minutes ago, RumHam said:

It's funny because magic supposedly died out with the dragons. So magic should be more of a thing during this period. 

That's what I'd thought too. 

[RumHam]

Just now, Zorral said:

As I'm not a book lore master I have no idea who this is. 

It's actually kinda a spoiler to say who he is in relation to House of the Dragon. He's the one after Aegon II and before Aegon IV.

[frenin]

3 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

The succession does concern Alicent seeing as she's the queen. Bastards have no rights of succession unless acknowledged and legitimized. The king can be in denial as much as he wants but as Lord Strong so aptly puts it "people have eyes".

It is funny that no one but the Greens at Court and Vaemond Velaryon ever called them bastards.

Like Jace goes to Winterfell, the Eyrie and White Harbor, no one calls him bastard or suspects him because he's a bastard, Luke goes to Storm's End and Borros tells him that if he wants his allegiance he gotta marry his daughter.

Those who rose for Aegon did either because they believed in salic law or because they had connections to him.

For all the doom and gloom Rhaenyra had twice the support her brother had. So either people really didn't believe in the bastardry or they didn't give a single fuck about it.

 

[RumHam]

6 minutes ago, frenin said:

All that happens in Westeros is civil war.

You're not wrong. Certainly this was true before Fire and Blood at least. Though I think they inflate the numbers a little. The dance, war of the five kings and first blackfyre rebellions were for sure civil wars. The second Blackfyre rebellion turned out to be a party. The other blackfyre rebellions were essentially foreign invasions, no? Or were houses in Westeros still rising up for the Black Dragon? I guess I don't actually know what qualifies as a civil war. I don't think you can call the Ninepenny Kings a civil war. 

[Zorral]

11 minutes ago, RumHam said:

It's actually kinda a spoiler to say who he is in relation to House of the Dragon. He's the one after Aegon II and before Aegon IV

I don't know who they are either!    And don't care   Since they aren't in the 'story' I'm seeing in this show they are meaningless.

If one is expected to have spent the greater part of 20 years poring over thousands of pages of pseudo/fiction-history to enjoy or understand tv entertainment -- that just doesn't work for everybody else, ya know?  

Edited September 27, 2022 by Zorral

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

@frenin

The thing is we NEVER see what the realm actually thinks. Heirs of the Dragon focuses almost entirely on KL and even then only on a superficial level (we don't even know if Viserys made any improvements to the capital's infrastructure the way his grandfather did!). Furthermore, F & B doesn't go into great detail about Jace's trip. Hell, it offers three different versions of how negotiations with Cregan and Jeyne went down!

On top of that, the Greens' side of the narrative gets far less focus and detail in general. Why a lot of houses in the Reach (such as the Roxtons) backed the Greens but not their own bannermen or kin (looking at you Redwyne!) isn't explained. Nor why the Lannisters or Brackens sided with the Greens (other than the fact GRRM wanted the Blackwoods to be Black). On top of that you have houses taking down Aegon II's banner when he's murdered but who these houses are and where the hell they were during all the fighting goes unanswered. A final example would be the fact that House Vance of Atranta also declares for the Greens...but then gets taken out off-page without so much as a sentence explaining how. The storming of Stone Hedge "ends" Aegon II's support in the Riverlands BUT WHERE WAS THIS SUPPORT? GRRM didn't show OR imply it!

Hell, the Silent Five get mentioned after the fact, with their actions having been nothing noteworthy!

This omission of detail shows in the fact that even though the Greens are almost always characterized as having more men the list of Blacks on the wiki is way, way, way longer than the list of Greens.

Edited September 27, 2022 by The Grey Wolf Strikes Back

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

6 minutes ago, RumHam said:

You're not wrong. Certainly this was true before Fire and Blood at least. Though I think they inflate the numbers a little. The dance, war of the five kings and first blackfyre rebellions were for sure civil wars. The second Blackfyre rebellion turned out to be a party. The other blackfyre rebellions were essentially foreign invasions, no? Or were houses in Westeros still rising up for the Black Dragon? I guess I don't actually know what qualifies as a civil war. I don't think you can call the Ninepenny Kings a civil war. 

The Blackfyres definitely had support in the Third and Fourth.

[Caligula_K3]

I'm late to the discussion party this week - and I think part of that is because I am now feeling kind of "blah" about this season as a whole.

I had enjoyed episodes 4-5 more than the previous two, and my hope was that, despite my problems with the show, the big time jump would invigorate things and get us into the meat of the story and characters.

But it still feels like we're stuck in a prologue with too many characters who behave too inconsistently - if the writers bother to characterize them at all. The Daemon of this episode seems like a completely different character from the Daemon of episode 5, who seems like a completely different character from the Daemon of episode 4. Even his impotency is gone!  With someone like Cole, sure, I can sketch a basic impression of his character development and how he's become this Rhaenyra hating incel, but he's been zoomed from Point A to B to C to D in three episodes, and none of it feels natural.

Meanwhile, the big moments (Laena's death, the deaths of the Strongs) continue to feel unearned. Laena is a character we've met as a 10 year old girl and then briefly as a 13 year old girl; she finally gets some characterization in this episode, and then she's dead. Harwin Strong is the secret lover of our main character for ten years and father of her bastard children; yet we're really only introduced to him this episode, and then he's dead. Why am I supposed to care about any of these people or this plot if the writers themselves seem to think they're too unimportant to merit real focus and character development?

This episode also makes the choices of what to focus on for the previous five episodes even more baffling. Why did we spend so much time on Rhaenyra waffling about who she wants to marry, when we could have gotten some real time with Laenor and Laena to develop them? Why so much time on the Crabfeeder and the Stepstones when so little has come of it? Why did Harwin and Rhaenyra not get scenes together, and why didn't we learn more about the Strong family dynamics? The show right now feels like it has no progression, as it zooms from plot point to plot point.

Sorry if this comes off as too negative. It's not like it was a terrible episode in itself - I'd probably give it a 6 or a 6.5 - and there were good parts to it, like the introduction of some of the children. The sets and CGI are of course wonderful. The new Rhaenyra actress seems strong. A character was even allowed to have fun for a little while and crack some jokes (Laenor). Larys seems like he has potential to be a good villain, something this show needs. But I don't think as a whole that this will work as a season of TV; as an adaptation, it is essentially the bulletpoints of a history account rather than a story about living, breathing characters in itself. Let's hope we finally get to that story soon, and that we're at the end of these never-ending time jumps.

 

[SeanF]

Rhaenyra *might* have executed Alicent and her children on ascending the throne (but, I see no evidence that it was her intention).

But, that could be used as a justification for rebelling against any ruler.  Every ruler has subjects they don’t like/ potentially have rival claims, but that’s no reason to pre-emptively strike against that ruler.

[RumHam]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I don't know who they are either!    And don't care   Since they aren't in the 'story' I'm seeing in this show they are meaningless.

If one is expected to have spent the greater part of 20 years poring over thousands of pages of pseudo/fiction-history to enjoy or understand tv entertainment -- that just doesn't work for everybody else, ya know?  

If you don't want things spoiled I'd back out of this thread. Granted these are things that are also spoiled in the main novels, but yes it's understandable that you don't remember. 

I don't think you need to know all the fake history to enjoy the show. Though I am curious how that last time jump went over with non-readers. 

It is embarrassing that I could rattle of all the Targaryen kings in order but not like, the English ones. or hell even american presidents. 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Rhaenyra *might* have executed Alicent and her children on ascending the throne (but, I see no evidence that it was her intention).

But, that could be used as a justification for rebelling against any ruler.  Every ruler has subjects they don’t like/ potentially have rival claims, but that’s no reason to pre-emptively strike against that ruler.

Yeah it's like the Bush doctrine on steroids.

[EggBlue]

28 minutes ago, Zorral said:

As I'm not a book lore master I have no idea who this is. 

don't worry about it . he's just a Targaryen king

[Winterfell is Burning]

2 hours ago, MisbornHeir said:

The patriarchal culture that has existed thanks to andal culture isn't enough on its own to make war inevitable.

 

The targaryens under Aegon were established as absolute monarchs over the continent. Any involvement from vassals in the affairs of the crown was a granted privilege, not a formalized/owed position. Besides Valyrian culture was much more egalitarian which showed itself with the roles Visenya and Rhaenys played during and after the conquest. The Targaryens faced uprisings over their marriage customs yet the dragon won and the realm submitted. That didn't mean it applied to the rest of the kingdom, rather just the Iron Throne. It could easily be repeated with implementing an absolute-cognatic succession.

 

Jahaery's attempt at conciliating the realm was inherently faulty for this reason. It set a dangerous precedent for the Targaryen's position in the realm and would come to cripple them not just during the dance but especially when the dragons died out. Jahaerys should of conciliated with Alysanne in the beginning over Rhaenys as heir.

Viserys had the misfortune of inheriting the fruits his grandsire's errors bore. His own scruples didn't bring upon the Dance alone.

 

 

It's not an inherently bad decision to ask your consent to the people that you rule to make big decisions. It's essentially the basis of any functioning society. Jaehaerys was called wise, among other things, exactly because he knew that, and was not a tyrant.  Your position of "if I don't like the decision the voters brought on, I won't let them vote anymore" is despotic.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, RumHam said:

It is embarrassing that I could rattle of all the Targaryen kings in order but not like, the English ones. or hell even american presidents. 

Well, it helps that there's only 17 Targaryen kings and 5 of them are named Aegon.

[Zorral]

From what I understand, the book(s?) are modeled on chronicles of events during these reigns.   So, like historic chronicles generally, these books don't provide characterization,  or go deeply into their motivations, or details in the description-declaration of events, and do time jumps too.

So there is immense room for the writers of this fictional entertainment to give us all these things.  But they aren't.  They are doing a sort of History channel kind of thing, of having people in costumes, swinging swords against a background of fires and battlefields with a voice over -- and often those same scenes repeatedly.

This is what I really don't understand. Why didn't didn't they craft and actual story and characters out those hundreds of thousands of words about places and figures who never existed (not to mention dragons didn't exist either!).  It's not as though the show runners and production didn't have the financial resources to do this. 

5 minutes ago, EggBlue said:

don't worry about it . he's just a Targaryen king

 Of which there are thousands and they all have the same name, making it worse than the French and English and Spanish dynasties!  At least I have real events to anchors their Roman numerals to, to figure out where and when we are.  As with the multitudes of Westrosi guys -- nothing good seems to have taken place in reigns of any of them, not even a good poem written or a great picture painted or an tech breakthrough like collars for draft horses or windmills or anything -- not even improvements in whatever the dragon riders use to sit on the beasts.  Nothing happens except These Privileged jerkwaddies fighting each other and burning down their houses.  That's certainly what we've got -- but we could have had something really great.  I think of the kinds of stories that novelists have been making out of historical, primary chronicles all along.  Why couldn't they do that with House of the Dragon?

Edited September 27, 2022 by Zorral

[Winterfell is Burning]

2 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

D&D took Jaehaerys II out of the show canon when they made GoT, making the Mad King the son of Aegon V. One of GRRM's requests for HotD was that Jahaerys II would be put back into the show canon, but as far as I know that hasn't actually happened.

Not that I like siding with D&D over GRRM, but in the show that makes zero sense, because the characters are all much older. Tywin is specifically mentioned to be 67 in season 4- assuming Aerys is the same age, that can't possibly fit.

  

2 hours ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

Alicent's beef with the bastardy of Rhaenyra's sons may not be sympathetic to everyone but it is certainly understandable from an in-setting perspective.

It's also worth keep in mind that, even if she accepted Rhaenyra's ascension to the throne without objection, Aegon would be the next in line after Rhaenyra, and by passing bastards as legitimate, she would stealing Aegon's legitimate inheritance (of course, she will have later Aegon III with Daemon, but at this point they don't know that)

[MisbornHeir]

13 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

It's not an inherently bad decision to ask your consent to the people that you rule to make big decisions. It's essentially the basis of any functioning society. Jaehaerys was called wise, among other things, exactly because he knew that, and was not a tyrant.  Your position of "if I don't like the decision the voters brought on, I won't let them vote anymore" is despotic.

It's inherently bad in regard to the power structure put in place by Aegon. How can a Targaryen be a conqueror if they can't control their own succession/vassals? The social contract you refer to is an invention of our 18th century, not something that existed in medieval times and certainly not Westeros.

He shouldn't of let them vote to begin with. He should of made Rhaenys his heir. And 'despotic' is a pretty typical trait for absolute monarchies. Weak kings led to the realm destabilizing and presuming far too much (e.g. Aerys)

Edited September 27, 2022 by MisbornHeir
spelling

[C.T. Phipps]

15 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

It's also worth keep in mind that, even if she accepted Rhaenyra's ascension to the throne without objection, Aegon would be the next in line after Rhaenyra, and by passing bastards as legitimate, she would stealing Aegon's legitimate inheritance (of course, she will have later Aegon III with Daemon, but at this point they don't know that)

Unless Aegon gave up his claim, which he said he would do.

Also, Viserys disinherited Daemon.

Which Rhaenyra could do.

Edited September 27, 2022 by C.T. Phipps