{"id":1277,"date":"2026-08-10T04:17:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T04:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2026-08-10T04:17:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T04:17:26","slug":"the-pyrrhic-victories-of-house-of-the-dragon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1277","title":{"rendered":"The Pyrrhic Victories of \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Since its d\u00e9but, in 2022, \u201cHouse of the Dragon,\u201d the first and more epic of two current \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d spinoffs, has brought viewers back to Westeros with many of the familiar features of its beloved forebear: Ramin Djawadi\u2019s jolly-sombre cello theme, schemers named Targaryen, the chopping off of body parts, incestuous power couples, dragons incinerating the hapless. As adapted from George R. R. Martin\u2019s \u201cFire & Blood\u201d by Martin and the series\u2019 showrunner, Ryan Condal, what the show lacks, too often, is fun\u2014nary a clever Tyrion or plucky Arya (Oysters, clams, and cockles!) to be found. But there\u2019s plenty of fire and blood. \u201cDragon\u201d \u2019s opening-theme sequence evokes \u201cThrones,\u201d but more aunciently, camera panning over a kings-and-dragons-bedecked tapestry that seems to bloom with blood. Fifteen years on, our happy \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d days themselves seem like a distant prequel. In 2011, we expected life, and \u201cThrones,\u201d to be pretty great; in 2026, we expect little, and shruggingly make the best of whatever weird shit is lying around. Like \u201cThrones,\u201d \u201cDragon\u201d requires careful attention, but instead of joy and sorrow about the fates of our onscreen friends, we\u2019re rewarded with watching dozens of characters we\u2019ve painstakingly kept track of\u2014many with platinum hair, most with interchangeable fantasy names like Aegon, Aemond, Daeron, and Daemon\u2014suffer or die in disgusting, tedious ways. Characters sometimes talk in inadvertent meta-commentary. \u201cNo, no, no!\u201d Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) cries, while trying to humiliate an enemy. \u201cI was supposed to enjoy<\/em> this! What\u2019s wrong<\/em> with you?\u201d A question for the ages.<\/p>\n

Read more Works from the Los Angeles Museum of Photographic Self-Portraiture<\/a><\/p>\n

In the just-concluded third season, set about a century and a half before \u201cThrones\u201d and a century before the friendlier \u201cA Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,\u201d the fighting between the Greens and the Blacks (or, if you like, the Blonds and the Yellows) rages on, in the seemingly endless Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. (The Targaryens have dragons; in their House, apparently, dancing is a drag.) This season, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D\u2019Arcy), the show\u2019s closest approximation of a hero, finally claims the Iron Throne, many years after having been named heir to it, controversially, by her father, King Viserys I (Paddy Considine), in Season 1. Her faction is the Black Council; her rivals include her half brothers Aegon II Targaryen, supported by the Green Council, and Aemond (One-Eye) Targaryen, whose other eye was a casualty of a childhood family squabble. Children are often casualties, in fact, including, at the beginning of Season 3, Rhaenyra\u2019s teen-age son Jace. He dies like a true Targaryen: during a huge power battle, amid friendly dragonfire, at the hands of a relative and<\/em> an army.<\/p>\n

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Rhaenyra is an essential character to care about, and the series has succeeded in making her fairly sympathetic. At the beginning of the first season, she\u2019s a young teen, played with sensitivity and intelligence by Milly Alcock. In those more innocent times, she bonded with her best friend, Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey), zippily piloted a dragon, coped with the loss of her mother, endured her father remarrying, to Alicent\u2014what the hell!<\/em>\u2014and was named heir to the throne, in a land that doesn\u2019t want a female ruler. The births of Aegon and Aemond further confused succession plans. By this season, she has long been married to her second husband, her creepy, calculating, and sporadically decent uncle, Daemon (Matt Smith). Rhaenyra has always shown signs that she could be a good ruler, and the series skillfully portrays the legitimate difficulties she faces, from empty coffers to a local rat problem to dealing with everybody\u2019s issues while having menstrual cramps. In one inspired moment, she invites wealthy noblemen to dinner, serves them cooked rats, and cheerfully announces that teams of royal enforcers are right this minute visiting their houses and confiscating their hoarded food. This is the kind of stabbing-free content that I wish \u201cDragon\u201d would further explore, especially if leavened with the humor it\u2019s capable of.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Westeros, everyone always fights about the Iron Throne\u2014a chair like an iron cowlick, constructed with actual swords seized from vanquished enemies, jutting every which way. One female visitor describes the Iron Throne as \u201ca hundred sharp little cocks all vying for attention.\u201d (To be fair, they\u2019re not that little.) While his half sister does her best at King\u2019s Landing, Aegon, agitated, dragonless, presumed dead, and on the loose, roams the countryside in venerable \u201cThrones\u201d style, disguised as a peasant and dealing with peasant problems, which he resents. This season, Aegon often has the sort of characterization you\u2019d expect of a lovable underdog poised for eventual triumph\u2014physical challenges (burn scars, perma-scowl); soulful-looking travelling companion (Matthew Needham); time spent in a shabby, charming caravan\u2014but he\u2019s horrible, and eventually everybody starts telling him so. He\u2019s got \u201conce and future mad king\u201d written all over him.<\/p>\n

Read more Recommendations<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Other major players include good old Alicent Hightower (in adulthood, Olivia Cooke); the legendary seaman and royal adviser Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), a.k.a. the Sea Snake, and his family; Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), a classic \u201cG.o.T.\u201d-style spooky lady in a desolate castle, who helps Aemond and sees the future; and my personal favorite, the awful Ormund Hightower (James Norton), Alicent\u2019s cousin, who has a Littlefinger-like handsome, meddling eccentricity, and who, despite the fact that he lives in Westeros, helplessly swoons at strong odors. Ormund is trying to maneuver his ward, Daeron Targaryen, Alicent\u2019s son, onto the Iron Throne, not completely<\/em> out of altruism, and can\u2019t always get to his smelling salts, so he does things like yell, \u201cI will cleave<\/em> the bitch from crown to cunt!\u201d and then double over barfing, because something smells bad.<\/p>\n

Where does it all go? Aegon, strikingly, does manage an underdog\u2019s comeback, atop his resurrected dragon, Sunfyre. He triumphantly begins a vengeful spree and starts Dracarysing his enemies (\u201cScreaming continues,\u201d the subtitles read), and, blasting into Harrenhal, makes a big entrance in front of Aemond, who thought he\u2019d killed Aegon last season. \u201cI\u2019m alive!\u201d Aegon shrieks. Aemond responds with humble contrition, which enrages Aegon\u2014and which, I admit, is quite funny. Escalating Green-on-Black fighting dominates the finale. \u201cI don\u2019t want the best of you\u2014I want the worst<\/em>!\u201d Daemon happily hollers to his troops. In a series distinguished by copious disgusting battle scenes, Ormund co-stars in one of its very grossest\u2014a gross-on-gross-on-gross flamb\u00e9<\/em>\u2014and almost gets in one last barf. The series shows us one Pyrrhic victory after another, and this whoop-de-doo battle is no exception. The Targaryens have an unfair advantage in the realm, but with great dragons come great responsibility\u2014and great opportunity to self-destruct.<\/p>\n

The ever-expanding HBO George R. R. Martin-verse, which gets baggy on the fringes, reminds me of an idea in Michael Chabon\u2019s \u201cWonder Boys.\u201d The book\u2019s professor hero is writing a two-thousand-page novel that he can\u2019t finish, because he doesn\u2019t want to leave his lovingly created world: he\u2019s got too many \u201cbuildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming.\u201d For HBO and viewers, Westeros can feel like that, elaborately constructed, endless with possibility, and hard to escape\u2014but, instead of chiming clock towers, in \u201cDragon\u201d we get heads on a spike. There\u2019s little lightness, little love, and sex seems like a device to create more characters to kill, with blood and fire galore. \u2666<\/p>\n

Read more A Few of My Greatest Fears, in No Particular Order<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Larson reviews the third season of the \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d spinoff prequel, \u201cHouse of the Dragon,\u201d starring Emma D\u2019Arcy, Matt Smith, and Olivia Cooke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-television"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pyrrhic Victories of \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1277\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pyrrhic Victories of \u201cHouse of the Dragon\u201d - 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