House of the Dragon - GoT Prequel Series (non book reader)

The foot thing must be her reward to him for his updates.

Didn't know they kings guard lads were twins, thought there was just one of them!

What's next week's episode called? I'll guess "The Black <something>" given Ep09 was "The Green Council"

The ending felt a bit contrived, seemed like the obvious cause of action was not taken for no obvious reason. Episode 8 and most of 9 felt so grounded, so realistic, like the best episodes of GOT.

What makes you think something happened to the Worm ?

Well at least we know he isn't just another Varys 😁

Good episode I'm looking forward to next week's. Now I understand the uptick in feet memes in the last 24 hours.

Re: Rhaenys nor toasting everyone, regicide is a pretty serious crime and it would create succession issues if she was the one to do it and not the rightful heir.

I think she is trying to do the "exotic" accents that the Essos people have.

Damn good series tbf and I really didn't expect it given the state of GoT Season 8 (gave the whole thing a miss until 2 days ago when I was out sick from wok and binged it). The writing reminds me of the earlier seasons of GoT in a good way - I imagine George RR Martin had a decent amount of involvement as opposed to the later seasons of GoT. Also the cast are excellent - Paddy Considine in particular fully deserves an Emmy for his performance as Viserys.

Overall I'm far happier with this series than I thought I'd be, and I'm looking forward to the next episode and the next season. I'm glad something has the chance to redeem Westeros as a big budget setting!

Yeah, and at this stage Rhaenys knows that for Rhaenyra to take the crown, they're going to need support. If Rhaenys had killed Aegon (and even all who were on the stage), Aegon was already proclaimed King which would mean succession would fall to his eldest child. The better course of action would be to call into question Aegon's coronation itself, and that they're going against Viserys' naming of Rhaenyra as his heir in order to steal the crown.

Rhaenys appears to be very well regarded throughout the Seven Kingdoms, and is essentially the head of Driftmark etc. She's as much of a danger to Team Green using her political position. By backing Rhaenyra's claim, she can have a huge influence in the battle for the throne. If she'd just torched them with her dragon, I think it would have turned huge swathes of the Kingdoms against Rhaenyra's claim, which is already tenuous with a lot of the Houses of Westeros.

Weren't there children in the room with Heleana and a maid took them out of the room before Alicent broke the news of Visery's death to her? I presumed they were her and Aegon's children.

I think Aemond the brother was remarking about he was next in line as Aegon's younger brother but would have made for a better King and always took more interest in their lessons and stuff than Aegon.

Yeah I don't think we should need spoilers for anything that has aired... if someone has found something out online OR bringing content in from the book that's different... and the latter shouldn't really be here.

You just need to pay closer attention I think. Them being betrothed was brought up in the funeral scene at Driftmark.

I'm convinced some people watch this show with their head in their phones.

It really does require close attention, and more than one viewing, imo.

Rhaenys was still in King's Landing as she wasn't travelling with Rhaenyra. She arrived in KL before Rhaenyra and was likely going to be leaving in the next day or so. However, it wasn't her son who was killed, it was her brother-in-law (her husband's brother). He (Vaemond) was attempting to take control of Driftmark which would essentially cast Rhaenys and her grandchildren (the legitimate ones her daughter had with Daemon) out. There was little to no love lost there with his death, even though she may not have wanted him dead/killed.

Cole killing the guy was definitely out of nowhere, but I'm not sure the intention was to kill (he slammed the guys head down on the table, but it was the ball thing they place in the tables which would have caused the slam to be fatal). Regardless, he's protected because the guy was going to act against the Hightowers, and to back Rhaenyra's claim and make her Queen before Otto and Alicent could have Aegon crowned.

Rhaenyra was due back on dragonback, however they had only just left and she was sailing back to Dragonstone with her kids. The events of this episode all took place during the course of a few hours. She doesn't even know of Viserys' death yet, and they had only left that night after the meal.

Varys locked up the staff because some of them knew Viserys had died, so they were trying to prevent any of the staff from revealing that before Otto & Alicent could plan for Aegon to be King. Though Talia (one of Alicent's maids who was a spy for the White Worm woman who had Aegon) had already signalled to her about Viserys' death by lighting the candles in the window (this isn't stated, but is the likely reason we were shown her putting those candles in the window and lighting them, and we saw her talking with the White Worm towards the end of the last episode).