House of the Dragon, Season 2, episode 3 Breakdown

House of the Dragon, Season 2, episode 3 Breakdown

what happened in episode three of season 2 of House of the Dragon how does it compare to the book and what does it mean for later in the season let’s take a look hi everyone this is Robert welcome to in deep geek we’re covering House of the Dragon in full on this channel as well as George AR ra Martin’s wider World Of Ice And Fire and the Lord of the Rings welcome let’s start in the riverlands and a boundary dispute between houses Bracken and Blackwood this is a rivalry well known to book readers that has been going on for centuries Millennia even and they need little excuse to come to blows you may remember back in season 1 a couple of them even managed to get themselves into a fight over the hand of the then princess reira even though it was pretty obvious to everyone she wasn’t interested in either as I said any excuse here the starting point may have been whether or not the brackens moved some boundary stones but they quickly turn it into a matter of which claimant to the Iron Throne they are supporting the blackwoods are team black and the brackens are Team Green this is called the battle of the burning Mill in the books you see the windmill in the background here and it’s the first proper Land Battle of the dance it’s over quite quickly here but it tells us a lot about what the war will be like the riverlands will be at the heart of it it’s pretty horrific and brutal and it’s not just going to be a civil war of region versus region neighboring houses will turn on each other too and it’s not the last we we’ve heard of the blackwoods in particular most importantly this battle has turned the Civil War into a proper War so far we’ve had assassination attempts plotting and the occasional Dragon Skirmish but no real battles this will force people’s hands so how do the green Council respond they consider trying to get the tulies to control the blackwoods and the brackens but old Lord Grover tell is rather doy and ineffective so that wouldn’t work they could wait for the Lannister Army to fully mobilize and head east or the high tower one in Oldtown here we get another mention of young prince Daren who is down there with his young dragon Tarion he’s definitely going to be making an appearance though probably not in the next few episodes but both of those armies are weeks away at least so we get to Kristen Cole’s plan head out from King’s Landing Gathering forces as he goes and take Haren Hall it’s basically the same plan he was working on with aan a couple of episodes ago but they weren’t able to go through with it because Otto was hand of the king now they are in charge Aon wants to support this attack on Sunfire his Dragon he’s itching for a fight but is persuaded not to partly by Christen Cole saying that if they bring a dragon team black will have to bring one if they want to oppose them both sides here are still in their different ways Trying to minimize the possibility of this turning into a fullscale field of fire dragon war let’s see how long that lasts anyway aegon is only really dissuaded from flying out by Lis whispering to him that the rumas are that his mother will take the Reigns of power in his absence he really is sewing the seeds of distrust everywhere in Team Green but Aon clearly believes him and rewards him with a place on the small Council Christen Cole’s Army heads out without Aon but with the newly arrived G heow Allison’s brother he’s clearly angry that his father has been ousted as hand of the king and blames Cole for it his contempt is clear as is his arrogance and stupidity in getting them spotted by Baylor flying overhead though to be fair team black clearly learned about that Army from other reports too expect that to be a focus for the next episode meanwhile Damon has flown to Haron Hall as we expected after his falling out with Rea I’m doing a whole video on Haron Hall tomorrow so look out for that but in summary it is a huge castle in a strategically important central location it belongs to house strong at the moment and Laris is technically Lord but in his absence his great uncle Sir Simon strong is in charge as castellan I’m interested to see more from him this season Simon Russell Beal is a very good actor and this was an intriguing start as in the books he here gives up the castle to Damon without a fight but two really intriguing things happen here first Damon insists on being called Your Grace rather than my Lord this catches s Simon by surprise because although this is definitely a term of address that can be used for Royals other than the King Joffrey was called it before he was King and Sansa says she will be called it when she marries the king it is most associated with being the ruling king or queen and Damon insists on being called it he then goes on to talk about the presence of the crown in the riverlands implying himself presumably and marching on King’s Landing to claim the Iron Throne this might just be misdirection to keep up the mystery of Damon’s motivations but on the face of it Damon is here staking his own claim to be king independent of rira hence the confusion of Simon strong let’s keep an eye on that it might be nothing or it might be everything the second really interesting thing is obviously his vision or dream or well we don’t really know what it was yet he sees Young stitching Young Prince jer’s head back on whilst accusing Damon of always running off and leaving her to tidy up the mess the meaning there is pretty clear as perhaps Damon’s conscience but then suddenly he is outside in front of the weirwood tree which and I love this detail appears to be right out at the water’s edge of the godai lake in the middle of which is the aisle of faces magical mystical and probably the heart of the weirwood network the branches of Haren Hall weirwood tree seemed to be All in One Direction straining away from the castle and towards the aisle are we seeing some weirwood magic going on here Alice Rivers then looks at Damon and simply tells him that he will die in this place spooky and foreshadow to be sure who is Alice Rivers well we’ll do a video on that soon as well but in the book she is the most obviously magical person in the whole dance if we’re going to get non drag magic in this story it will be with her Damon is right to look concerned and discombobulated by the whole experience and I’m sure I’ll be talking about it a lot on my live stream on Thursday over on idg live over on Dragonstone we get confirmation that this is a solo Mission by Damon he hasn’t reported back at all and the black Council seems to be nearly as ineffective as the green Council fluctuating between advising allout dragon attack and trying to get rira to lead to a place of safety she interprets that as basically a coup attempt by people unhappy with her leadership she along with rise is the person doing most to stop the war from escalating Rea however does send some of her family to a more safe place Raina accompanying Joffrey Aon and viseris to the veil with a view to perhaps taking Aon and viseris onto pentos later this is a team black Plan B as they are going with four hatched dragon eggs if the rest of the family gets wiped out they can start again we weren’t in on the conversation between Jace and Lady Jane Ain wherein she pledged rera an Army in return for a dragon to protect the veil but one suspects she had envisaged a proper full-grown dragon that could go into battle if needed rather than what rira is actually sending her children with hatchlings and a teenager without a dragon to ride it will be for Raina to convince Lady Jane that this is okay let’s see what she says next time but let’s go back to early on in the episode where standing over the grave of Eric and Eric Carill rise puts into rira’s head the idea to get in contact with Allison probably the only person left on Team Green they might persuade not to let the war escalate any further while rise may not be right about Otto being incapable of sending assassins to Dragonstone he was plotting to do just that at the end of season 1 remember she is right that younger hotter heads have now prevailed and whatever original motivations everyone may have had things are about to escalate quickly blood lust will soon take over so having rewarded miseria for her role in Saving raina’s life yes it was her who alerted the guards to Sir aric’s arrival by effectively employing her as her new mistress of Whisperers rera immediately uses my seria’s knowledge to set up a meeting with Allison a last last ch chance at peace perhaps I’m sure this will generate quite a bit of debate in the fandom as this most definitely didn’t happen in the books Reise was quite the warmonger there rather than a conciliator and although rira was definitely less warlike than Damon say she didn’t go to these lengths to avoid war but the changes on the show have gone far to establish the strong bond between Allison and rira as the core one in this struggle and in the book Allison later offers a direct peace offer to rira to try to end the war so I can see what they are doing here and perhaps this will be the setup for that later approach by Allison in truth though this didn’t feel much like peace talks they didn’t get into any practicalities of how they might actually stop the war instead it was more like two old friends airing grievances with each other accusing each other of things and sharing details of their personal struggles in any event the key thing here is as well as the obvious fact that the attempted peace talks ended unsuccessfully after just a few minutes so the war is definitely still happening is that now Allison knows that she was wrong about viseris changing his mind on who should inherit does this matter to the Civil War not really to be honest Otto and others have made clear that they have been planning aegon’s accession for some time byer’s supposed second thoughts about rira were convenient but not necessary and the war itself is now too far gone for most people to worry about the details of what actually caused it but for Allison personally this will mean a lot she now knows that her part in starting the war was based on a misunderstanding perhaps she will wonder whether she could have stopped it perhaps she could have talked to rira First expect her to go even deeper into this pit of sadness and self-recrimination that she has been descending into this season Helena forgave Allison during this episode which was clearly exactly what Allison needed to hear even if it shocked her to hear it but this will just send her back to that dark place I’m sure so what else did we have in this episode there are some new members of The King’s Guard and yes those are indeed aegon’s friends from the first couple of episodes aegon obviously didn’t talk to his new hand of the king and commander of the King’s Guard Christen Cole Before appointing them which is just more evidence of how Aon doesn’t really care about history or good governance or any of the niceties of ruling aegon also appears to have some Valyrian steel armor inherited from Aon the Conqueror which is massive news we didn’t know either aegon had such a thing and bar a brief reference in a pre-release chapter for the Winds of Winter we didn’t know that anyone had such a thing not even part of a suit Valyrian steel is next level in the world of Ice and Fire we see aund again end in the arms of his lowborn lover something Aon promptly mocks him for and Praises her obvious prowess to keep him interested for so long though from what we’ve seen aan stps there are for comfort and confession rather than what Aon assumes we meet Al White in flea bottom he’s clearly the life and soul of the party every party everyone knows who he is welcomes him in jokes with him he doesn’t seem particularly discreet though telling complete strangers that he’s the son of Balon the brave that’s viseris and Damon’s father making him Damon’s half brother and rira’s half Uncle if he’s telling the truth quite the family to claim and he only just escapes being caught proclaiming Raina the rightful Queen in front of Aon he quickly leads the call of Hail to the King but that was close and yes we did see him last episode though we weren’t told his name then he was the guy staring up at the hanged rat catchers from what we seen so far he seems charismatic but out for himself not as sympathetic as Hugh Hammer so far anyway and that’s now three dragon seeds we’ve seen one to go keep an eye on sea smoke the dragon as well who has grown Restless of late we’re told maybe he’s grown lonely suggests myera I talked a bit last week about the big nerdy lore issue the show has with this dragon how can sea smoke take another Rider if its current Rider l is alive on the show this seems to be a hint towards how they might answer it might Lor be dead now or the bond broken somehow we’ll see finally we should just note that as suspected the new title sequence has changed to show what has happened so far in the dance this time showing little prince jeris and the hanged rat catchers there will be a lot more death and destruction on that tapestry before the story is finished if you like to see more videos like this breaking down the story of House of the dragon and the dance of the Dragons there’s a playlist appearing now on the left of your screen or to support this channel thank you there’s a link to my patreon page on the right of your screen that’s all for this time thanks for watching I’ll see you again soon

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