‘House Of The Dragon’ Episode 4 Recap: “The King of the Narrow Sea”

In House of the Dragon, we’ve already seen a king offered the hand of a twelve-year-old child in marriage, and heard the suggestion that Princess Rhaenyra wed her half-brother Aegon II as a political failsafe against any claimants to the Iron Throne. We also have a sense of future history regarding the actions of those in proximity to power. In Game of Thrones, set 200 years after the events of HOTD, Jaime Lannister tosses Bran Stark from a tower window when the boy walks in on Jaime having sex with his sister Cersei. And so there’s precedent when Daemon Targaryen, “The King of the Narrow Sea” himself, seduces his niece Rhaenyra Targaryen in the bowels of a King’s Landing pleasure house. “You Targaryens do have queer customs,” Queen Alicent notes to her stepdaughter after learning of Daemon and Rhaenyra’s drunken canoodle in the hour of the owl. “You defiled her!” bellows King Viserys when his brother is dragged before him in the Great Hall. But Daemon’s answer, basically, is who cares? His power-securing endgame is revealed. “Wed her to me,” he says to the king. “I’ll take her as she is and wed her in the tradition of our house.” But Viserys isn’t going for it. He kicks his brother in the kidney, calls him a plague.

“There is surely more to your return than simply taunting my father,” Rhaenyra observed to Daemon in High Valyrian after he first arrived on the Red Keep’s doorstep early in episode four of HOTD. And boy howdy was she right. Sure, the prince brought the king the vanquished Crabfeeder’s hammer – “Add it to the chair,” he said, tossing the weapon with a clatter – and he pledged fealty on bended knee. But his supposed humility was a Trojan Horse. (Remember Daemon’s false flag of truce in the Stepstones?) The prince’s play was for the restless and chaotic blood of the dragon that he and Rhaenyra share. And while that didn’t work out for Daemon, his actions awakened a fire within the princess. At the beginning of the episode, she was abruptly pulling the plug on her stilted “marriage tour,” disgusted with the endless lines of suitors for her hand. By its end, she’d explored carnal pleasure with her uncle, taken Ser Criston Cole into her bed – their foreplay included the randy removal of his gorget and a competition to unlace their poulaines – and agreed to her father’s demand that she marry Ser Laenor Velaryon on the condition that he sack Hand of the King Otto Hightower.

The last time we saw Ser Laenor was in the Stepstones, where he argued tactics with his father Lord Corlys before helping secure victory over the Crabfeeder with bursts of dragonbreath from his mount Seasmoke. And a Targaryen-Velaryon marriage will unite dragon power with naval power and secure the Seven Kingdoms against attack. But it will also secure the knowledge Viserys has entrusted to Rhaenyra, in the inscription given up by his ancient Valyrian steel dagger. “From my blood come the prince that was promised, and his will be the song of ice and fire.” The dreams and prophecies of Aegon the Conqueror, the first Targaryen king, will be Rhaenyra’s to watch over, whatever the immediate political gains of marrying a Velaryon.

Power and politics. That’s what it’s all about. But Rhaenyra won’t resign herself to her mother’s fate, dying in the birthing bed. She acknowledged this to Daemon. “For men, marriage might be a political arrangement. For women, it is like to be a death sentence.” She understands her father’s angle, giving her hand to Laenor Velaryon. But she also knows that in these halls of power, the tradition is for women to be imprisoned in castles and made to squeeze out heirs. And she ain’t going out like that. Her blood is too chaotic. As Princess Rhaenyra escapes the Red Keep with the aid of Daemon’s map of secret passageways, and samples with her uncle the many vices of the King’s Landing red light district, grapples in lust with him, and then hornily pulls Ser Criston into her boudoir, Queen Alicent is forced to submit to the desires of her husband’s sore-ravaged body. She stares upward, imprisoned beneath him. She’s already given the king two children; there will be two more. For Alicent, her royal womb is held in power. What form will Rhaenyra’s take?

For now, the king and his small council aren’t taking any chances. As Rhaenyra is relaxing in her bedroom – alone this time – Grand Maester Mellos rolls up with a special delivery. “A tea, princess. From the king. It will rid you of any…unwanted consequences.” Viserys assented to her demand that Otto needed to go – “I can no longer trust your judgment,” he told him, slipping the mark of the Hand from Otto’s tunic – but he isn’t taking any chances with the roaring manifestation of his teenage daughter’s desires. If the princess consumes this bauble full of moon tea, it will eradicate whatever she did with Daemon. (It’s her actions with Daemon specifically the king is worried about; he doesn’t even know about her getting down with Criston!) Viserys understands there’s too much at stake. There’s too much to ruin. There’s too much power to keep. What Rhaenyra keeps and what she gives up is still up to her.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges