There’s a shot in this week’s House Of The Dragon that encapsulates Rhaenyra Targaryen’s entire season-three deal. It happens fast: She snatches the tapestry her half-sister Helaena has spent episodes clinging to, just to cast it aside. But this is no mere piece of needlework! While it documents their house’s triumphs and horrors—including a woven lament for Helaena’s murdered son—it also charts the events of the Dance Of The Dragons before they happen, the crystal ball Rhaenyra has spent an entire war looking for. As we eventually learn, it also records Helaena’s last meaningful act of agency that life as a Targaryen woman so often denied her. Rhaenyra sets it all aside, not realizing what she has.
Instead, the queen browbeats Helaena once again for intel from her dragon dreams, as though the poor girl were crunching data rather than sharing the ominous symbols that drift into her head. Her riddles are best left to interpretation, but as Rhaenyra makes abundantly clear this week, she has no patience for ambiguity, only certainty. That certainty eventually leads her to the Great Sept, where, as the High Septon’s blood dries on Alyn of Hull’s blade, she proclaims before gods and men that she is Rhaenyra The Chosen, “The Prince That Was Promised.” Regardless of whether the smallfolk understand the words, the conviction with which she says them is clear enough—and delivered in High Valyrian’s sinuous tongue, they sound terrifying.
Rhaenyra can’t, or won’t, see what fate has set before her. The tapestry contains all the information she needs, if she had the patience to decipher it: a story of ambition and calamity, of fire and blood, and of a future that can’t be escaped through sheer force of will. Yet once Helaena has stitched her final thread and Rhaenyra deigns to study her work, she glosses over what Helaena intended for herself—death by her own hand—and lingers instead on the images that flatter her delusions: herself seated upon the Iron Throne, as the gods surely intended. Satisfied, Rhaenyra shuts the window that gave Helaena her final flight and, with it, draws this last ferocious episode in an imperfect but undeniably engaging season to a close.
Helaena’s tapestry represents an idea threaded throughout this finale and House Of The Dragon as a whole: poisoned gifts that promise deliverance, absolution, or victory, yet only create misery. The pattern presents itself in the episode’s frantic opening scene: Rhaenyra feels the walls closing in and curses her beloved father, Viserys, whom she says put her in the impossible situation of ruling in the first place. “His prophecy has tested me again and again!,” she cries. That’s the Song Of Ice And Fire, the secret he entrusted to her, meant to prepare the world for the coming darkness from the North. Instead, it’s a burden that’s kept Rhaenyra planted on the Iron Throne, even after it has all but rejected her. So, in a scramble to prove her legitimacy for good and all, ambiguity be damned, she decides to share this gift with her son Joffrey and the people of King’s Landing, all of whom receive it with the gladness of a terminal diagnosis.
Such offerings proliferate in Westeros this week. In Tumbleton, Ormund Hightower gives Daeron, his would-be king, an army that marches against his family and a knighthood to go with it. “Light the way,” he bids the boy, a line that subtly undercuts Rhaenyra’s claim to destiny, while putting Daeron in the awkward position of accepting this honor amid a war waged in his name. Speaking of cursed knighthoods, Ser Ulf the White’s boon from Rhaenyra proves even more disastrous; Ulf drunkenly curses her name before passing out on Ormund, just as Ormund planned to spring his besotted ace in the hole on Daemon Targaryen, the Tully host, and their Winter Wolves. Later, after taking his last beating from a haughty lord, Ulf takes to the sky on his dragon Silverwing and burns everyone before him, just as he promised last week. “Fuck you,” he says, hungover and indifferent to the atrocities he’s committing. The gift Rhaenyra gave Ulf out of desperation to preserve her claim is now just the latest fire to burn beyond her control.
Baela, perhaps the only Targaryen who sees these gifts for what they are, confronts the queen as the winds of war rise with the beat of dragon wings. She blames Rhaenyra for Corlys Velaryon’s self-imposed absence from court, which left him vulnerable to capture. While her queen calls her out for her “insolence,” Baela is not wrong: Rhaenyra only values those she deems useful, as Mysaria discovers to her woe this week, being cast off to Pentos as payment for her failures as the Mistress of Whisperers. Prince Joffrey discovers it, too, trussed up in Targaryen blacks and reds and trotted out before the smallfolk as a political tool. Rhaenyra’s failure to order Corlys back to the fold—or having his head off for that “bastard” spiel earlier this season and replacing him for good—ultimately reaped Team Green an expensive hostage, however briefly.
The gifts keep coming. Before the worst comes to pass in the Red Keep, Helaena’s foresight brings the pale mare she’s been dreaming of into view, a sign from who knows where, just as jilted Mysaria gives her the straight dope on the queen’s plans for her and her baby’s future as hostages. Meanwhile, Alyn, Rhaenyra’s obedient soldier, carries out her insane edicts in hopes of being elevated to his father’s seat on the Driftwood Throne. “I have no ambition but to discharge my duty,” he tells his brother, Addam, who rightly warns him to beware their unhinged regent. In the final moments before all seven hells descend on Tumbleton, Gwayne Hightower, fed up with Ormund’s schemes, offers Corlys to Daemon in a bargain poorly struck; Team Black retrieves its Hand, minus a finger, Team Green loses its second-most valuable hostage, and Gwayne runs off to an uncertain future without the peace he desires. As for Ormund, he also receives a gift from Ser Roderick in the episode’s gnarliest twist, though he sure wishes he hadn’t.
With an hour left on the clock, HOTD rushes toward the Tumbleton affair, throwing up as much spectacle and carnage on screen as possible. Ever since season two was cleaved to eight episodes, the series’ structure has sometimes felt like patchwork: last season’s climax unfolded at the beginning of season three, while season three’s turning point arrives only to end on an abrupt, depressing note. This latest battle in The Dance Of The Dragons, with all its madness and desolation, leaves a hollow feeling of irresolution and a battlefield strewn with questions that promise no easy answers.
Maybe that’s the point. Like Helaena’s tapestry, the finale offers glimpses of what’s yet to come while denying the clarity to grasp its grand design. Readers will know the future’s broad strokes, but Ryan Condal’s deviations from—and periodic improvements on—George R.R. Martin’s schematic Fire & Blood have put viewers on the same backfoot as the characters. Most only see the pieces that already confirm their choices: Rhaenyra sees her throne, while Ulf, through ale-goggles, spots freedom; Daeron sees escape, as Alyn blindly does his duty. What do we see? Annihilation. It’s Helaena’s final gift. By the time Rhaenyra finally understands it for what it is, she’ll likely have already woven her own destruction.
Stray observations
- • The opening credits sequence has been showing us Helaena’s tapestry (or a more comprehensive version of it), and I’ve appreciated how much damage it’s taken as the season has progressed. Those growing embers finally took hold of its fabric this week. Previously, Helaena’s tapestry tore; now, it burns.
- • I was not over the moon for any one particular character arc this season—save for Roddy the Ruin, who showed up to die for his queen and did just that. He drank some wine, sassed some lords, stormed Tumbleton, and gave Ormund his “Northern Goodbye” before rejoicing in dragonfire as the glorious death he sought all along took him. But just for funsies, here’s my ranking of the arcs that rankled me least in season three: Ser Criston > Lord Ormund > King Aegon > Alys Rivers (not Prince Aemond) > Alyn of Hull. Worst character arc this season? Alicent’s!
- • To clarify, my five favorite characters this season, despite everything: Gwayne > Daemon > Ormund > Helaena > Daeron.
- • I like how “Tumbleton” in High Valyrian sounds like “Tumbly-Town.”
- • Alyn seems to relish flexing his future position as Lord of the Tides. Keep slaying popes at Rhaenyra’s bidding, and you’ll sit that Driftwood Throne yet!
- • Just once, I’d love to be the guy who hollers “Open the gates!” on one of these castle programs. What a cool job that must be.
- • Fun fact: the Mermaid’s Kiss, the ship Rhaenyra intends to sail Misery to Pentos, belongs to Merilda of Hull, the mother of Addam and Alyn, in Fire & Blood.
- • “That was a hundred years past.” “It’s a long time to be alone.” Phenomenal monologue from Gayle Rankin this week as the true nature of her character stands revealed—and well before the publication of Fire & Blood‘s second volume, it’s worth noting.
- • In the books, people speak of “Harren’s ghost” or the ghosts of “Harren and his sons” walking Harrenhal every night, afire and vengeful. It seems Alys is the ghost people speak of in hushed tones, a figure of regret and shame, cursed to haunt the great hall for all time. What gives her her long life and strange abilities? A covenant with the Green Men, it seems, made to help her save her son—Harren Hoare’s last living heir—with the dark, unknowable magicks of the Old Gods.
- • Alys’ story echoes Helaena’s: two women who discover their curse too late and resign themselves to their fates. Alys is condemned to perpetual life, while Helaena’s comes to an end, twin tragedies intertwined by fear of loss and a railing against forces beyond their control.
- • Daemon: “Tumbleton, my lords! At long last!” No kidding!
- • Ser Daemon vs. Ser Jon Roxton: HOTD’s version of Cleganebowl? (It sure looked like the episode was spoiling for a face-off between Sers Jon and Roderick, but the moment passed, sadly.)
- • The High Septon declares that Aegon’s resurrection makes him the true ruler under the Seven. Rhaenyra, wearing the crown of Viserys The Peaceful and Jaehaerys The Conciliator, lets her inner dragon respond: “You name yourself a traitor!” Oh, the irony!
- • Sorry about those toxic butterflies, Alicent.
- • Clearly, Helaena’s death mirrors that of Tommen Baratheon in Game Of Thrones, throwing away their lives in despair for what’s been lost and, perhaps, in defiance of an ascendant, poisonous queen.
- • Left in limbo as of the end of this season: Larys, who’s presumably returning to court to get his old job back (Rhae may hang him for a traitor, but she is in need of a competent Master Of Whisperers at the moment); Alicent, who will either return to her plush cell in King’s Landing or bump into her reunited sons; Daeron and Tessarion, who are now MIA; Vhagar and Sheepstealer, who are presumably hanging out with the other two no-show dragons, Grey Ghost and the Cannibal; Ulf, who’s sleeping it off somewhere; and Hugh the Hammer, who grieves his beloved wife Kat and may turn against his queen for the chaos she’s wrought.
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