Why That <em>House of the Dragon </em>Death Matters

This story includes spoilers through Season 2, Episode 4, of HBO’s House of the Dragon.

If only Princess Rhaenys had unleashed her dragon, Meleys, in the Season 1 finale of House of the Dragon. Back then, the Targaryen royal (played with a quiet gravitas by Eve Best) had the perfect opportunity to end a war before it began. But she left the throne’s usurpers unharmed, later explaining that such a conflict was not hers to start.

As it turns out, it was hers to lose. In tonight’s episode of HBO’s prequel to Game of Thrones, Rhaenys finally attacked on behalf of her chosen ruler, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), burning through many of the opposing troops until two more dragons appeared: Sunfyre, steered by King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), and the imposing Vhagar, with Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) astride her back. As the first airborne combat in the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, it’s the kind of visual-effects-laden spectacle that many of the show’s fans have been waiting for, and it ended with Rhaenys deliberately commanding Meleys to reenter the fray despite their evident exhaustion. When Vhagar overpowers them, both dragon and rider plummet from the sky, Meleys crushing Rhaenys when they fall.

With apologies to little Prince Jaehaerys and the twin Sers Erryk and Arryk, Rhaenys’s death is the first significant character exit of the season. Her departure, along with her dragon’s, delivers a blow to Rhaenyra’s campaign to win the Iron Throne: Meleys had been their biggest dragon, and Rhaenys a top lieutenant, married to the commander of the formidable House Velaryon navy. Yet Rhaenys was more than a useful ally; she was one of the show’s most rational figures, studying her enemies before she acted and advising Rhaenyra to seek alternatives to war. House of the Dragon has tended to sacrifice nuance in favor of shocking plot machinations, but through Rhaenys, the series explored a potent theme in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books: that there exists a fine line between performing a sense of duty and truly embodying it.

Rhaenys had long known the difference, of course. As the so-called Queen Who Never Was, she was the first Targaryen to be rejected for the throne even though she was next in line, solely because she was female. In the years since, she watched her kin struggle to clarify how succession works and continued to argue for her claim during formal councils, but she never resorted to violence. Instead, she strengthened the Targaryens’ alliance with the Velaryons and seems to have found pride in her position. Earlier in Episode 4, before she commanded Meleys to attack, she sternly reminded one of her husband’s men that she was a princess, not a queen.

Yet being honorable, as the series has demonstrated again and again, is a destructive endeavor in a world that has forgotten the value of keeping an oath. Consider where Season 2 opens: The first shot showed the Wall, the Northern outpost where the men of the Night’s Watch dedicate their lives to guarding against an enemy they can’t be sure actually exists. To most of them, this duty is a life sentence. Or revisit the brawl between Erryk and Arryk (Elliott and Luke Tittensor, respectively) in Episode 2: Neither brother yields despite knowing one or both will die, because they’ve sworn their lives to their respective royals. And Rhaenys’s death is, in a way, the culmination of Rhaenyra’s attempts to fulfill what she sees as her purpose: to carry out her father’s wishes for her to succeed him, and to unite the Seven Kingdoms against what’s beyond the Wall. The story of Aegon the Conqueror’s prophetic dream resurfaces in Episode 4—Rhaenyra recounts it to her son Jacaerys, and Aemond later picks up the dagger that will eventually be used against the White Walkers in Game of Thrones—but Rhaenys’s death doesn’t seem to unite anyone. The battle in the sky leaves only devastation behind.

Instead, Westeros often rewards those who see duty as a malleable concept. Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) bullies Arryk into carrying out the poorly planned scheme to infiltrate Dragonstone in Episode 2, lecturing him about honor when it’s Criston who breaks his oath the most, given his nights in bed with Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and his failure to protect the royal family’s youngest members. For this incompetence, however, he manages to win several battles. Daemon (Matt Smith) misinterprets Rhaenyra’s grief-stricken statement in the season premiere—that she wants Aemond to pay for murdering her son—and sends assassins who are more than happy to murder a little boy as an alternative. Rhaenyra chides Daemon, but he flies off and takes Harrenhal, the biggest castle in Westeros, for himself. Such characters are not honorable, but they understand that pretending to be is essential to their survival. This is, after all, a realm in which loyalty is a costume, where sigils adorn practically every accessory, and the color of a gown can sow the seeds of war.

In the moments before Rhaenys rejoins the action after contending with both Aegon and Aemond, she makes eye contact with Meleys. Best’s expression conveys a mixture of determination and resignation, with a dash of fear. Perhaps Rhaenys decides not to flee the losing battle because she’s committed herself to delivering as harsh a blow to Aegon’s forces as possible. Or perhaps she realizes that returning to Dragonstone would mar her legacy, one already suffering from her participation in the Dance of the Dragons. “There is no war so hateful to the gods as a war between kin,” she’d told Rhaenyra in Episode 3, yet here she was, engaging in it. In life, Rhaenys tried to do her duty; she was the rare Targaryen who was aware of the limits of power and who tried to keep those around her in check. In death, she signals the end of the reason and restraint that she showed, setting up a conflict that has no room for honor, not even for those who understand its true meaning.