House Of The Dragon “The Rogue Prince” Review
House Of The Dragon “The Rogue Prince” is the second episode from the first season of the HBO series. Following Aemma and Viserys’ son’s deaths and Rhaenyra being named heir at the end of episode 1, this episode starts 6 months after those events. Viserys is under stress to re-marry and soon in order to produce a male heir, someone with a stronger claim to the Throne than Rhaenyra. Meanwhile Rhaenyra is barely talking to her father as it slowly but surely dawns on her that the council will never take her seriously as heir. Tensions rise even more as the King has to deal with Daemon who has stolen a dragon egg, the one meant for Viserys’ son’s crib and claims it for his apparent son from another apparent second marriage. Rhaenyra proves her worth by de-escalating the situation by flying her dragon Syrax to meet her uncle and talk him down. The whole episode ends when Viserys announces that he has chosen Rhaenyra’s best friend, Alicent Hightower to marry.
Review
This was once again a brilliant episode, whilst also clearly laying out the pieces in play here. At the moment I don’t believe Alicent to be playing a game, just doing as her father wishes but who knows, that very well could change. Rhaenyra’s face says it all when she hears the news, especially when she probably assumed, as did most that Viserys would do the dutiful thing and marry Laena Velaryon, the youngest daughter of Lord Corlys Velaryon and Viserys’ half sister Rhaenys Targaryen. There’s betrayal there and she’s now starting to slowly understand her heavy handed way of dealing with things until now just isn’t going to cut it. This is another situation of Viserys’ actions betraying his words, he consistently puts Rhaenyra back in her place “as is her duty” but then chooses instant gratification and what he thinks is love over duty. I love him but he’s really showing himself to be a bad King.
Brilliant episode, proven once again that this show has got that magic that GoT had and more dare I say. Keeping up with quality like this the show could end up being better than Game Of Thrones.
