Princes, Proposals, and Pastries

Young Alicent (Emily Carey), Young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), HOTD 1x01 Red Keep Godswood

Rhaenyra Targaryen: I hope for my father that he gets a son. As long as I can recall, it’s all he’s wanted.
Alicent Hightower: You want him to have a son?
Rhaenyra: I want to fly with you on dragonback, see the great wonders across the Narrow Sea, and eat only cake.
Alicent: I’m being serious.
Rhaenyra: I never jest about cake.

In the House of the Dragon premiere, Rhaenyra Targaryen, the only child of King Viserys Targaryen, had less-than-royal ambitions. Ones that could be summed up as flying off with a companion, away from Westeros and her responsibilities, and living it up. She had a dragon for the flight but didn’t have buy-in from her close friend Alicent, who was not inclined to ride in the sky alongside the princess.

Much changed in the span of four years and as many episodes. Her mother died in childbirth, her father named her heir, her best friend (and preferred cake-eating companion) was married off to her father and began producing children. Her uncle Daemon initiated her into the more carnal side of King’s Landing and she followed up on those lessons by starting a workplace romantic relationship with her sworn shield, the Kingsguard Ser Criston Cole. And her father insisted on her getting married to her cousin and fellow dragonrider, Ser Laenor Velaryon. In exchange for her father removing Uncle Daemon’s antagonist Otto Hightower as Hand of the King, Rhaenyra agreed to follow her father’s political matchmaking directives.

And then, things got complicated.

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We Tweet the Way: A House of the Dragon Twitter Recap

1x05 King's Landing Red Keep Throne Room Wedding, Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod), Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel)

Weddings are an event, anywhere in the world. In the world of Westeros, they’re something else entirely. A wild, bloody, sometimes incestuous, sometimes confusing but always entertaining hot mess. So here we are, with a fresh twitter recap for the newest episode of House of the Dragon, featuring “We Light the Way” and the shenanigans of the Green- or is the White- Wedding. We’re still deciding. Or did it even earn a Capital-Letter Color Name?? Time will tell.

This week on Twitter, fans were obsessed with Harwin Strong turning into a Harlequin beefcake with his punch-em-up and firefighter carry combo. All Criston Cole’s actions drew strong reactions, from his misguided proposal, to his artful facial reconstruction of Joffrey Lonmouth, to his confession and shifting alliance. What drew (perhaps) surprisingly little reaction was the carnage- I guess Thrones fans are used to seeing people’s faces get caved in from time to time.

As always, please be patient with the loading time on the app thingy. Thank you and enjoy!
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House of the Dragon ratings soar again with a 3% rise for episode 5

1x05 King's Landing Red Keep Throne Room Wedding Young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate), Rhaenys (Eve Best), Corlys (Steve Toussaint) (1)

The latest ratings are in, courtesy of Variety, and it looks like House of the Dragon is holding on strong (pardon the house pun) in its fifth week out.

According to Variety, episode 5 brought in 3% more viewers than Episode 4, using a combination of Nielsen figures and streaming numbers from Sunday night from HBO/HBOMax platforms. We’re still waiting to hear the total numbers of viewers from all platforms.

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Unsullied Recap House of the Dragon Season 1 Episode 5 “We Light the Way”

1x05 King's Landing Red Keep Throne Room Wedding Viserys (Paddy Considine), Young Alicent (Milly Alcock) (2)

Knowing good and damn well that a wedding is going to be featured in the next episode from the world of GoT/HotD likely either gets you horribly turned off or completely hot and bothered. Doesn’t matter… you’re going to watch it anyway.

You know why? Because it’s like watching a video with a vehicle stuck on the train track. You already know exactly what’s going to happen, yet you wait to see the carnage and exactly how it unfolds.

That’s exactly what is wrong with this world too. Disaster is imminent. Watch, forward and share!!

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House of the Dragon Review/Recap Roundup Season 1 Episode 5 – We Light the Way

1x05 King's Landing Red Keep Throne Room Wedding Laena Velaryon (Savannah Steyn), Daemon (Matt Smith) (1)Happy House of the Dragon Week episode 5 week, everyone! Remember me? It’s me from just last week! Guys, come on, this is getting old. I do this every week. Next you’re gonna tell me that you don’t refresh the WOTW page every hour on the hour….You WHAT?! Well, anyway. I’ll continue to remind you what I’m doing here. Every week, for each new episode of HOTD, I’ll be deconstructing the multitude of reviews out there, boiling them down to one short summary sentence that will perfectly encapsulate what the original author was saying, no questions asked…and by that I mean that I will deconstruct whole essays down to one sentence apiece, often quoting them verbatim.

What I will do is attempt to summarize the original review as best I can, and if my tease whets your appetite for their style of review, you are encouraged to head over to their site and let them know…after of course letting us know your thoughts in the comments below. At the bottom, I will summarize my review of the reviewers’ reviews.

All squared? Jolly good, let’s dive in.

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