*Spoilers for episode 6.*
This reminds me a little of episode 3, even though it takes the plot to very different places. Everyone is brought together outside of their usual spot, and while there’s an overarching impetus that draws them there, they bring their existing baggage along with them and stir up conflicts. It’s a good episode, and it’s helped to cement the adult versions of the recently aged-up characters for me.
At the end of the last episode, Laena Velaryon ended her life. She knew she was dying anyway, due to a baby that refused to be born, and she decided to go out on her own terms. Now, everyone has come to the Velaryon seat of Driftmark for the funeral. Alicent is laser-focused on Rhaenyra and the legitimacy of her children, while Rhaenyra and Daemon are both too distracted by personal matters to be there for the people they should be supporting. An issue with the kids brings larger matters to a head.
Oh man, you want to talk about uncomfortable funerals? We’ve got subtweets about Rhaenyra’s kids during the eulogy. We’ve got Corlys losing his mind when he sees his son standing out in the surf, overwhelmed with grief for his sister. We’ve got Otto Hightower back as the Hand (due to another recent untimely death,) throttling his grandson for not showing the appropriate decorum. We’ve got sand sex and dragon-stealing and arguments over inheritance, oh my!
Because all their parents elsewhere being messy, that leaves the kids to “handle” a conflict on their own, and things get bad fast. An act of foolhardy desperation is expressed selfishly, and grieving children react with heated emotions. Things go too far, and it could end up having ramifications on the future of the kingdom.
Some great Viserys content today. Paddy Considine was alternately breaking my heart and captivating me. Exhibit A: expressing his sympathy to Daemon at the funeral, speaking as a fellow widower. Just this line, “Your girls are the very image of their mother. A comfort and an anguish, as I well remember.” Love. And then Viserys, who very clearly just wants to enjoy the remainder of his life with his family, has to lay down the law in the middle of the night. After the situation with the kids boils over, everyone has very loud opinions about it, and everyone is appealing to Viserys to take their side. I don’t know where he finds these wells of strength when he really needs them, even as he somehow simultaneously continues to brush things under the rug and avoid conflict, but he digs them up somewhere. I love Considine’s commanding delivery of, “Your father, your grandsire, your king demands it!”
Daemon is in an interesting place in this episode. Although he’s just lost his wife and the mother of his children—and he did seem to care about Laena—he doesn’t act all that bereaved. I don’t mean that he’s really being deliberately provocative or throwing other people’s grief in their faces, like after the death of his first wife. I mean he just seems to have other things going on, and that’s where he’s putting his focus. He largely shrugs off Viserys’s attempts at kind words and an olive branch, giving his brother some sly ribbing in exchange for Viserys’s empathy. During the big showdown over the kids, he doesn’t get involved at all. He just stands back and observes everything that’s going on.
One of my questions about Emma D’Arcy taking over as Rhaenyra was whether they would bring the same charged energy to their scenes with Matt Smith. And it’s definitely different, but that’s mainly because both Rhaenyra and Daemon are at different points in their lives right now. Rhaenyra’s circumstances have caused some of the fight to get kicked out of her, while Daemon’s time away from King’s Landing has cooled some of his fire. She’s no longer the teenager itching to prove she can go toe-to-toe with her provocative uncle, and he’s not trying to scandalize her into action. When they meet again after a long time apart, it’s more as equals. They discuss Rhaenyra’s woes plainly, they’re vulnerable with each other in a way that they often haven’t been, and together, they try and figure out the next move in the current game of thrones.
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