A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 1, Episode 3, “The Squire,” is a game-changing one for House Targaryen. The installment ends with Egg revealing his true identity as Aegon Targaryen, which he’s forced to do in order to save Ser Duncan the Tall. But that itself stemmed from the actions of Prince Aerion Targaryen, who attacked Tanselle because of a puppet show in which she depicted a knight slaying a dragon, which he took great offence to.
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Aerion’s issue stemmed from the fact that the beast was defeated – as he tells Dunk, “the dragon ought never lose.” That itself could be motivation enough, especially given Aerion is so mad and evil that he’s known as “Aerion the Monstrous,” a name he happily lives up to, but there is a deeper meaning to it all. As actor Finn Bennett explained to ComicBook in an interview, Aerion is embarrassed by the state of House Targaryen and how far they’ve fallen (in a sense, they’ve already lost). In particular, the Targaryens have no dragons at this point, which makes the puppet show all the more damning.
What Tanselle’s Puppet Show Means In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Targaryens have historically seen themselves as closer to gods than humans, and their dragons are a massive part of that. They are the ultimate power, the one that was used by Aegon the Conqueror to invade and take control of Westeros in the first place, and now that’s gone. The family is in a weakened state – the smallfolk at the tourney dare to rise up in protest and throw things at a Targaryen prince after he kills the horse, after all.
The dragon being killed only symbolizes that in Aerion’s mind. It’s even worse for him than others, because he is someone who actually thinks of himself as a dragon, so he’s watching himself be killed. Many years after George R.R. Martin’s Dunk and Egg books, he dies from drinking wildfire, believing it would transform him into a dragon (but all it did was transform him into a corpse).
That’s not the end of the puppet show’s meaning, though. The story Tanselle depicts is that of Serwyn of the Mirror-Shield, a legendary knight who used the reflection of the dragon Urrax against it. It’s basically like Westeros’ version of the Greek myth of how Perseus defeated Medusa, but it also symbolizes the downfall of House Targaryen and the loss of the dragons.
Ultimately, the Targaryens destroy themselves: the Dance of the Dragons is the main reason that the creatures die out (only four survive), and so a dragon being killed by its own reflection follows the thinking that Targaryens see themselves as dragons, and their infighting was their ruin. That may not have been Tanselle’s intent, of course, but it adds another fascinating layer to the puppet show and Aerion’s response to it.
New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms release Sundays at 10 pm ET on HBO. Due to the Super Bowl, Episode 4 will release early on HBO Max, dropping on Friday, February 6th at 12:01 am PT / 3:01 am ET.
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