House of the Dragon S1E09 Explained

Who’s hotter, Erryk or Arryk?
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Everyone says Alicant’s reaction over Visarys’ corpse is grief. However, I would like to add that she has been his wife, nurse and also had to be in his bed without really enjoying that part. From my own experience as someone who has cared for a parent for 15 years I know that their passing can evoke very intense and really difficult emotions. I am sure that she liked Viserys, he was a kind man after all. But I am also very sure that all those years of being trapped in that unhappy marriage, all the burden of care fell from her in that moment, which is an immense emotional moment – and I also imagine that now, as she looks to the immediate future, fear or dread comes into play as she must know that Rhaenyra and Daemon will not accept the new king, she must sense that there will be conflict, even war. It is grief, but it is also a difficult mix of relief, emotional exhaustion, and fear of the future. And I think that Olivia Cooke did an incredible job at delivering exactly that in just that one short moment.

While I had some issues with how drawn out the hunt for Aegon seemed to be, I have to say that I really did appreciate what it accomplished in a narrative sense as it showed his character and his relationships to everyone around him without showing us Aegon himself. First of all, no one knows where he is, so we can immediately see that until this point he was something of a secondary thought as people aren’t exactly keeping a close enough eye on the future king. But even after that, few people know where to even begin looking and it’s only because Erryk is his sworn shield that he knows Aegon’s personality and Aemond is forced to know him as his brother but neither of them enjoy this, as they resent Aegon as a person. Likewise, his perverted activities show not only a vain narcissist but also a brutal sadist who enjoys watching pain in the fighting pit, with a doubly dark dimension that Aegon might be watching his own bastard children fight to the death for his amusement.

And even after all of that, all Aegon wants to do is literally run away from his responsibilities, to forsake the crown and run away to do literally anything else. We saw from the last episode that he’s clearly a monster but is he irredeemable? We can see that he doesn’t lust for power like Joffrey, he doesn’t crave the ability to make people hurt and he doesn’t get reinforcement from his family in his urges, just the opposite in fact which might be the cause of his urges in the first place that all he wants is love and respect but no one gives it to him which just makes his tendencies even worse.

So that all leads up to the moment of his coronation where he unsheathes Blackfyre, to the cheers and adulation of the crowd and for the first time in his life, he finally found a purpose and place where people would accept him and love him. This was the first time Aegon felt like he had support and whereas Rhaenyra gets her validation from her family and doesn’t need the crown, Aegon gets validation from the crown and doesn’t need his family.

I felt this added so many layers and dimensions to his character that could be explored, even though I know he’ll just end up being a diet, store brand version of Joffrey. I would love it if Aegon wanted to be a kind of populist ruler who did what he thought the people would want him to do as they’re the ones who gave him love and respect, not his family.

It would be an interesting contrast to Rhaenyra who is kind and gentle to people in her immediate circle but is regarded as Maegor with teats by the people while Aegon is a POS to people in his life but is loved by the smallfolk.

Myseria laid out some of the heaviest foreshadowing in the series “there is no power but what the people allow you to take”. Abusing the smallfok, particularly in KL, is going to end VERY BADLY for them but in pursuit of power, they have put them on a course of self destruction.