Civil War in Westeros Is Hell

I expected to emerge from “The Red Dragon and the Gold,” the fourth episode of House of the Dragon’s second season, feeling exhilarated. Based on the episode’s title, last week’s preview, and book-reader knowledge of what transpires at Rook’s Rest, I anticipated thrills, adrenaline, and Loot Train Attack–level spectacle from the first mass dragon battle of this show.

But an hour later, after the credits had rolled, the battle had ended, and at least one main character had died, I instead felt despondent. Not because the episode failed, to be clear—but because it succeeded in its effort to depict a different kind of warfare: chaotic, uncontrollable, and, above all, tragic for everyone involved. It’s as if Dragon were trying its best to prove Francois Truffaut’s “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film” sentiment wrong.

For numerous episodes, characters have promised that war was coming; now, in the wake of Rhaenyra’s failed peace talks with Alicent in Episode 3, it’s finally, irrevocably here. Even the usurped queen knows it, stating, “Only one choice remains to me: Either I win my claim or die.”

As was the case with many of Game of Thrones’ most spectacular battle episodes, “The Red Dragon and the Gold” devotes time to characters talking in rooms before climaxing with fire and blood. This episode’s early scenes flesh out sundry plot points and character arcs: Daemon has a delightfully strange conversation with Alys Rivers in Harrenhal; Jace learns the secret “Song of Ice and Fire” prophecy; Alicent drinks moon tea to stave off a potential pregnancy with Criston Cole. But in the end, the shortest episode of Season 2 thus far is all about the battle.

Last week, Dragon didn’t show the actual Battle of the Burning Mill, just the corpse-filled aftermath. That effective choice left Rook’s Rest as the site of Dragon’s first large-scale depiction of war—and a battle between dragons, at that, which hadn’t dueled in Westeros in more than 80 years. (Vhagar versus little Arrax in the Season 1 finale was less a pitched battle than a quick snack for the former.)

A set of seemingly curious decisions by Criston Cole sets the stage for this clash. The lord commander of the Kingsguard and hand of the king chooses to march his army to Rook’s Rest—a “pathetic prize,” scoffs Aegon—instead of the more obvious target of Harrenhal, then attacks in broad daylight rather than waiting to lay siege at night. “Fucking madness!” Gwayne Hightower exclaims.

But the hand hasn’t lost his wits; it’s a trap! By attacking Rook’s Rest, the mainland’s closest castle to Dragonstone, Cole can draw out one of the blacks’ dragons—and then Aemond and Vhagar, lying in wait in a nearby forest, can rise to meet the challenge.

The first part of this design goes according to plan, as Rhaenys straps on her armor, hops aboard Meleys, and flies into the fray. But to Aemond and Criston’s surprise, so too does Aegon, still sulking after a dressing-down from his mother, who sneers at the king to “do simply what is needed of you: nothing.”

Before flying off to war, both Rhaenys and Aegon partake in incredibly sweet reunions—or bittersweet ones, in retrospect, after seeing what becomes of the dragons and riders. Rhaenys greets Meleys and Aegon greets Sunfyre with affection, and both take a second to nuzzle their mounts, emphasizing the bond between dragon and rider. Aegon even grins as he sees his gorgeous golden steed, the only creature able to draw a smile from the king since the death of his son.

But by doing something instead of nothing, Aegon disrupts the greens’ trap. Instead of a one-on-one battle between Meleys and Vhagar, it’s a three-way aerial brawl. Aemond first hangs back instead of going to his brother’s aid, and then, after joining the fray, orders a dracarys blast without compunction or fear for Aegon’s health. Hit full-on by the fire blast, Sunfyre drops like a stone to crash in the forest below.

This betrayal—which notably does not occur in Fire & Blood, where Aegon and Aemond appear to intentionally team up against Rhaenys—receives the proper setup to slot into the story. Aegon rushes to battle because he resents his brother for “plotting without my authority,” while Aemond smarts from the king’s mockery at the brothel, and from the broader belief that he would serve as a superior leader. (When Aemond taunts Aegon with an impressive High Valyrian vocabulary, the king can only splutter “I can have to … make a … war” in response. Later, Aegon speaks to his dragon in the common tongue, while every other rider uses High Valyrian to give commands.)

With Sunfyre out of commission, Rhaenys and Meleys pivot to take on Aemond and Vhagar. As the two dragons approach one another, the camera captures Vhagar and Meleys in silhouette from below, hauntingly beautiful as they dance.

(The one major quibble I have with this episode is the inscrutability of Rhaenys’s decision to turn around to fight Vhagar, rather than fleeing on Meleys, whom Fire & Blood calls “as swift a dragon as Westeros had ever seen.” Did she go back to fight because of her roiling personal life, after she confronts Corlys over his indiscretions and bastard children? Did she believe her dragon had a chance against Vhagar? Did she want to salvage the battle, even facing long odds? This choice is especially confounding because Rhaenys did not take the opportunity to attack with Meleys during Aegon’s crowning in Season 1, when she could have ended the war before it began. “You should’ve burned them when you had the chance,” one of team black’s advisors tells Baela in this episode, referring to her chase of Criston and Gwayne. But that sentiment applies even more to Rhaenys at the dragonpit.)

The resulting dragon duel is depicted like a tragedy for everyone on the battlefield. Earlier in the episode, Aemond notes, “This war will not be won with dragons alone, but with dragons flying behind armies of men.” That’s true in the context of a long war, but in the (literal) heat of battle, it’s difficult to imagine the men mattering all that much. The soldiers look like helpless little playthings the size of dolls, compared to the behemoths breathing fire above them. Vhagar is so massive that when she goes to the ground, the shockwave knocks Criston from his horse. Then the episode uses slow motion to emphasize the immense damage she casually wreaks, as she crushes two men with the single stomp of a claw.

The soundscape contributes to this sense of overwhelming violence, from the panicked cries of anonymous foot soldiers to the dragons’ shrieks and squeals of pain. At various points in the battle, music and background sounds fade out to emphasize the central characters’ beleaguered breaths.

Smoke fills the screen. Screams fill the air. And Meleys’s blood ultimately fills Vhagar’s belly, as Aemond’s mighty mount, the oldest living dragon in the known world, claims another scalp for her collection.

This climactic death looks shocking in the moment, but how could a clash this intense not result in the death of at least one prominent character? Face clouded by soot, eyes rimmed red, Rhaenys looks out at the field of blood and fire she so wished to avoid—and that’s nearly the last thing she ever sees, because Vhagar rises up to capture Meleys’s neck in her jaws. The smaller dragon is unable to break free, and as the light leaves her eyes, she looks back at her rider—who’d ridden the Red Queen for half a century; who’d arrived at her wedding to Corlys on Meleys’s back—one final time. Then the head breaks free, and the headless dragon and her human plummet to the earth below.

After Meleys and Rhaenys die, the camera finds Criston, who for a while is the only living person on screen; everyone else is a corpse or a pile of ash. At one point, he attempts to recruit a comrade to help him find Aegon, only for the armor he touches to fall to the ground as the body inside crumples to dust. Eventually, Criston staggers into view of the crater formed when Sunfyre smashed into the forest, but as the episode ends, it remains to be seen whether Aegon is still alive.

From a plot perspective, it’s unclear—as was the case with the Battle of the Burning Mill—whether either side can claim victory at Rook’s Rest, given the untold carnage on both sides. The dragon is both the symbol of and reason for Targaryen rule in Westeros, so every dragon death serves as a strike against unified Targaryen hegemony. As Rhaenyra said in the show’s pilot episode, without the dragons, the royal family would be “just like everyone else.”

Fire & Blood describes Viserys’s reign as “the apex of Targaryen power in Westeros,” with “more dragons than ever before.” But in the short span since Viserys’s death, that number has now dwindled by at least two (Arrax and Meleys), maybe three (Sunfyre). Vhagar and Aemond are the culprits in every death—proving their own dominance, surely, but simultaneously weakening the broader power that Aemond’s family wields. It’s no coincidence that, earlier in the episode, Alicent drops and breaks the dragon figurine she’d once repaired for Viserys.

And from a storytelling perspective, that Dragon would stage its first full-scale (pun intended) battle like such a hopeless disaster story sets the tone for the rest of the series to come. This portrayal is unlike any previous dragon battle in the Thrones universe. During most dragon attacks in the original series, Daenerys and her children were the heroes, so audiences cheered on their rampages against the slave masters in Astapor, the Lannister troops on the Goldroad, and the wights beyond the Wall. Even as people burned alive, those scenes weren’t depicted as horrors; they were triumphs.

But the Battle of Rook’s Rest brings only devastation, destruction, and death—the fulfillment of Rhaenys’s prediction that there is “no war so bloody as a war between dragons.” Other than Aemond and perhaps Vhagar, nobody escapes unscathed. Even Criston, an architect of the successful battle plan, is knocked out, injured, and witness to the potential demise of his king.

“Now I’ve barely had the hours to grieve one tragedy before suffering the next,” Alicent laments in this episode, before one of her sons potentially kills another. That challenge might translate to viewers as well—because Dragon is positioning itself as a cinematic commentary on the horrors of war, and the war in question is just getting started.

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