Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 4 below.
After watching the first three episodes of the second installment of House of the Dragon, Ryan Condal’s staggeringly epic Game of Thrones prequel, I was halfway through writing a rave review. Following a Season 1 conclusion that left my jaw on the floor (surely nothing could beat the sight of Elliot Grihault’s Prince Lucerys being mauled by Vhagar, as ridden by his uncle, Ewan Mitchell’s silver-haired, one-eyed Prince Aemond), the early episodes were promising, providing moments which echoed, if never quite matched, that heart-stopping sequence: there were brutal shocks, much visual spectacle, and a thrilling sense of ambiguity. After all, when Vhagar swallows Lucerys in a single gulp, what we see on Aemond’s face isn’t triumph, but shock.
Yes, the fearsome second son sometimes has the quality of a moustache-twirling pantomime villain, but he’s also the bullied, beleaguered young boy we met in the second half of Season 1, someone who was written off long ago and consequently feels he has nothing to lose. He’s also the fragile young man who sits, naked and in the fetal position, in the lap of a brothel worker in the second season’s second episode, “Rhaenyra the Cruel,” seeking comfort and telling her: “I do regret that business with Luke. I lost my temper that day. I am sorry for it. They used to tease me, you know. Because I was different.”
In that moment, and largely thanks to Mitchell’s transfixing performance, you understand exactly who Aemond is—the prickly exterior he needs to display to the world in order to inspire terror, at least, if he can’t gain respect, and the wounded child who cowers beneath it all. It’s a side of him we glimpse once again in Episode 3, “The Burning Mill,” when his brother Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) discovers him in the same pleasure house and drunkenly mocks him. Aemond, in turn, storms off defiantly. It’s obvious that he knows his brother doesn’t possess the qualities of a successful ruler, particularly in wartime, and understands that he himself would make a far more prudent choice. You can practically see the gears shifting in his brain.
Photo: HBO