Warning: This article contains SPOILERS. House of the Dragon just delivered one of the series’ best episodes to date, and it both captures the A Song of Ice and Fire books and shows how Daenerys Targaryen’s Game of Thrones arc could’ve been improved. Titled “Rhaenyra Triumphant,” Season 3, Episode 3 largely focuses on the queen’s efforts to rule now that she has finally taken the Iron Throne. She has what she’s always wanted, but what does that really mean?
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The episode does begin with a cold open, wherein Ormund Hightower pretends to surrender and hands over a fake Daeron Targaryen to Daemon Targaryen, but otherwise the narrative is very much contained to King’s Landing. Rhaenyra has to deal with one battle after another, learning the hard way words spoken by Robert Baratheon to Ned Stark in A Game of Thrones: “I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning on.” That makes it tough for Rhaenyra, but great for us viewers.
House Of The Dragon Season 3, Episode 3 Is The Closest To ASOIAF’s POV Chapters
The A Song of Ice and Fire books are written with a third person point-of-view narration, with chapters set entirely from the perspective of a specific character, like Ned Stark, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and so on. Naturally, that wouldn’t have really translated to TV on Game of Thrones. It simply doesn’t fit the medium in the same way, and it’d be harder to do with juggling a cast of actors compared to characters on a page. Of course, the show still did a good job of showing us their mindsets, views, and feelings, but not quite like the books’ POV chapters.
Fire & Blood is not written in the same style, as it’s instead presented as an in-universe history book that draws on multiple sources. And yet, it is House of the Dragon that comes closest to putting the experience of reading one of A Song of Ice and Fire’s POV chapters onto the screen in “Rhaenyra Triumphant.” We are not literally seeing through her eyes – the show hasn’t suddenly morphed into Peep Show! – but, outside of the cold open, everything that happens is funnelled through the lens of how Rhaenyra experiences it and her emotional response to it.
It’s an intimate hour of TV that really takes us inside the head of Rhaenyra and the realities she has to deal with now that she’s the ruler. Thanks to Clare Kilner’s direction, and Ramin Djawadi’s incredible score (some of his best work on the show yet), there’s a claustrophobic feel to events as we follow the queen from one meeting to the next, dealing with various requests and having to make instant decisions, to the point it becomes almost disorientating, like we’re seeing exactly how confused, paranoid, annoyed, and overwhelmed she’s feeling.
It reminded me a lot of things like Cersei Lannister’s chapters in A Feast for Crows where she rules as regent, has to deal with all kinds of incompetent advisors (while, admittedly, making one dumb decision after another herself) and becoming paranoid while plotting her own schemes, and Daenerys in A Dance with Dragons as she struggles to rule in Meereen. It’s the most fascinating insight into what ruling is like that we’ve had in any Game of Thrones show, and the most a full episode has so completely devoted itself to one person’s experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
An Episode Like This Would’ve Massively Helped Daenerys’ Game Of Thrones Ending
There are key differences between this episode for Rhaenyra and the problems with Daenerys’ arc in Game of Thrones Season 8, not least the timing: Dany took the Iron Throne after her darker turn, whereas it’s coming partway through Rhaenyra’s, and right at the very end of the show, whereas we’re still in the early stages of the penultimate season of House of the Dragon. So there is different context and it’s not entirely a 1:1 comparison, but man, I really wish we’d had an episode (or two) that could’ve done this for Daenerys.
The issues with Daenerys’ story in Game of Thrones Season 8 (which I mostly liked, but can also see clear faults with) are not in her becoming the show’s final villain, but in how quickly it happened. There are things over the years you can look at that point to the fact she would end up taking what is hers with fire and blood, but it needed more connectivity to land better and for audiences to fully understand what she was going through, so that her shocking actions in King’s Landing didn’t feel so out of the blue as they did to many.
If Game of Thrones Season 8 had more episodes, or even better, a ninth season, then it could’ve properly explored her psyche. We saw her arrive in Westeros, and then quickly lost so many close to her: Viserion and Rhaegal, two of her children, were both killed, Jorah Mormont died defending her at the Battle of Winterfell, Missandei was beheaded right in front of her eyes and she could do nothing to prevent it. And then, after all that, she learns the man she loves is secretly a Targaryen, and has the stronger claim to the Iron Throne.
It isn’t surprising that she snapped, but the issue is that while we saw these things, we never truly got to see how Daenerys experienced them. We weren’t taken inside of her mind and allowed to experience all of those emotions, and an approach like we get with Rhaenyra here, which allows us to feel it with her, would’ve worked wonders for that story. It might not fix everything, but it would’ve been a lot stronger, and is also why any similar turn will be much better in the books as well.
New episodes of House of the Dragon Season 3 release at 9 pm ET on Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
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