In the Flesh: House of the Dragon S1E06: The Princess and the Queen

‘The Princess and the Queen’ takes us over a decade into the future, straight into the teeth of a storm of recast roles and character deaths that can at times feel overwhelming. By the time the dust settles and Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell) and father and son Lyonel (Gavin Spokes) and Harwin Strong (Ryan Corr) have been consigned to the flames, it feels like we’ve been through a second major shakeup without time to adjust to the first. Still, for all that it might have benefited from slowing down a touch, the episode is riveting stuff. The aged-up cast, anchored by Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra and Olivia Cooke as Queen Alicent, proves more than able to pick up the jobs their younger counterparts left off. The girlhood sexual tension and emotional bond between Rhaenyra and Alicent has curdled into embittered, slightly hysterical loathing and fear on Alicent’s part and a wary dislike on Rhaenyra’s, the failures of their respective fathers still dogging the two women’s steps at every turn. Otto’s megalomania and penchant for splitting have reduced his daughter to a paranoid, compulsively destructive husk of her kind-hearted younger self, while Rhaenyra’s appetites — left unchecked by the still willfully ignorant King Viserys — have left her vulnerable to allegations of scandal.

The show’s costuming hits a high point here as well, from the Mediterranean influences behind the young princes’ dressing gowns to the Arabic-derived silks Daemon wears on his wanderings in Pentos, where he entertains abandoning court life in exchange for that of a merchant prince and rogue dragonrider. It’s interesting to see Matt Smith relax into this comparatively calm stretch of Daemon’s life, directionless and subdued as he broods over old books and neglects his young daughters by Laena. All the malicious glee and pained vulnerability that have characterized him to this point seem to have evaporated, leaving him adrift. It’s as though, subconsciously, the entire realm is waiting to see which side the coin comes down on, whether Rhaenyra inherits her ailing father’s throne or the Westerosi tradition of male primogeniture prevails and Aegon (Ty Tennant) takes her seat. In the shadow of these uncertainties, a new generation of royal children is subjected to the same combination of bullying, maneuvering, and abuse that so irreparably warped their own parents.

It’s the personal nature of these conflicts that make the show so compelling even as it speeds past undoubtedly rich veins of sex and character development like Rhaenyra’s dangerous affair with ser Harwin Strong. The characters feel real and fallible, an impression aided by naturalistic humor like Lord Beesbury’s (Bill Paterson) inability to follow a conversation and Aegon’s weaselly, contorted face as he masturbates out his window to the sight of King’s Landing. House of the Dragon is funny the way Mad Men and The Sopranos were funny, because the people who populate it are as ridiculous and unable to understand themselves as all human beings are to greater or lesser degrees. A kingdom of millions sits teetering on the edge of ruinous civil war, and the reason behind it all is a frustrated girlhood crush, bad parenting, and bitter, prissily hypocritical Criston Cole not getting what he wanted.