House Of The Dragon “The Black Queen” Review
House Of The Dragon “The Black Queen” is the tenth and final episode of the House Of The Dragon HBO series. Following just days after the end of episode 9, this episode starts with Rhaenys telling Rhaenyra that her father is dead and all that the Greens have done, this causes her to go into labour early. Daemon is furious at the Greens, assuming they murdered his brother too, so furious he isn’t there even when Rhaenyra calls for him during her horrific birth, he throws himself into battle and defence plans for Dragonstone, knowing the Greens will come for them. Rhaenyra gives birth to a stillborn deformed baby and they hold a funeral for her. During that funeral she is crowned Queen using her fathers crown. Otto Hightower shows up with conditions for the Blacks apparently from the King and Daemon basically tells Otto what everyone wants to, to fuck off. Whilst planning who they can rally as allies and who may pose a threat, Lord Corlys wakes from his rest he needed for his injury and shows up at the table to tell Queen Rhaenyra herself that the Blacks have the full support of the Lord Of The Tides plus they now have the stepstones, all they need to do is take Storm’s End held by the Baratheons and the shipping lanes to Kings Landing will be cut off entirely, leaving the Greens vulnerable. Jace and Luke are sent on their Dragons, Jace to the North and Luke to Storm’s End to consult with Lord Baratheon. The whole thing falls through though as Lord Baratheon takes offence to Rhaenyra’s note telling him to remember his promise and Luke goes there with nothing to give him whereas Aemond beat him there and has already promised to marry one of the Baratheon daughters in exchange for their support. Aemond can’t help himself and starts to wind Luke up, to the point that he basically runs out terrified, flying Arrax back to Dragonstone they’re caught in a bad storm and Aemond goes out of his way to scare and upset Luke but both riders lose control of their dragons, Arrax attacking Vhagar and Vhagar eventually treating herself to a Arrax and Luke snack. The episode ends with Daemon breaking the news of Luke’s death to Rhaenyra and her looking like she’s about to burn the planet to the ground, her previous peaceful ways long forgotten.
Review
This was likely the big change everyone was talking about, as in the books Aemond means to murder Luke cos he’s a nutter, in this it’s a total accident and just goes to show how dangerous a war with Dragons will be seeing as their riders can’t control them. I liked this change but it definitely will annoy some, with the entire civil war being up to Alicent misunderstanding Viserys not her own greed, it can very quickly look as if the writers are choosing not to give any of the characters any agency. If this was the only time they plugged something as an accident that just made already strained tensions worse then it would have been perfect but put in the context of the entire season, it makes everyone involved look stupid as all hell.
The episode as a whole was brilliant, a much needed success after the mess of the previous episode and it does make me anxious to see what kind of repercussions there’ll be for Aemond by the Greens, will that be changed? Who knows, all I know is I can’t wait to find out and despite the show’s bumpy and sometimes outright ridiculous writing, it’s still a much better success than I thought it would be and I liked it way more than I thought I would.
Please keep the same level of writing for Season 2 or even better if possible because I don’t want to get invested and then let down, though I do think that’s what’s gonna happen.
