Cersei Lannister: When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die, there is no middle ground.
Otto Hightower: We play an ugly game. And now for the first time, I see that you have the determination to win it.
In House of the Dragon‘s seventh episode – “Driftmark” – Otto Hightower referenced the common conceit that the contest for power and influence was a kind of high-stakes game. Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones had asserted to Ned Stark that the game often had two outcomes: victory or death, with little else in-between.
Cersei was probably speaking a bit too hyperbolically, since most everyone seems to be in that middle ground, with their fortunes rising and falling – sometimes both at the same time. Just like the cat in Schrodinger’s thought experiment that was neither alive nor dead, but a secret third thing – the players in House of the Dragon are often not true winners or losers, but in a third state.
Cersei Lannister: Except for the dead ones. They’re not coming back.
Jon Snow: I don’t know about that.
Catelyn Stark: No, she’s right. At least according to me and the showrunners.
The latest episode had dramatic events that warped the previous weavings of power, and it’s always a good thing to examine the various players’ standings as we approach the end-of-the-season’s endgame.
BLOOD AND NAMES
When last the show spent a significant amount of time on the island of Driftmark – the region controlled by the ancient Velaryon family – King Viserys had come to Lord Corlys’ seat at High Tide castle to suggest a betrothal between the princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Corlys’ son Laenor Velaryon.
In those negotiations, Corlys wanted to know if Princess Rhaenyra’s children would have Velaryon as their last name. Viserys agreed, although he stipulated that when Laenor and Rhaenyra’s eldest child ascended to the Iron Throne, they would have the name Targaryen.
Corlys Velaryon: This is an equitable compromise.
Corlys and Viserys both have legitimate concerns about legacy. Laenor is Corlys’ heir and is set to inherit Driftmark, and his children would have an inheritance interest in the family’s lands and titles. Corlys wants to make sure that they’re named Velaryon, so that his holdings would continue to be held by someone carrying on the family name. With Laenor as consort to the Queen, there was a danger that the children – all of them probably – would be named Targaryen. If this wasn’t a possibility, Corlys wouldn’t have brought it up.
Viserys was also protective of his family’s legacy. He wanted to seat a Targaryen on the throne, and not have the named dynasty vanish in favor of the Velaryons.
The compromise explicitly set the rule for the children to be named Velaryon with a named Targaryen taking the throne, eventually.
The compromise seems to be a win-win. Corlys and Viserys’ respective family names survive and would be in control of their nominal interests. But the reality of Laenor and Rhaenyra’s marriage twisted Corlys’ intentions around.
Corlys Velaryon: Both my seat and High Tide will be yours one day, Lucerys. Your brother will be king, of course. He’ll sit on endless councils and ceremonies, but Lord of the Tides rules the sea.
Should Jacaerys, Rhaenyra’s eldest, ascend to the throne and its endless councils and ceremones, Viserys’ dream would come true. Jacaerys would be named Targaryen and be of his bloodline. But Corlys knew that Lucerys, in line to become the Lord of the Tides should Corlys and Laenor pass, was a Velaryon in name only.
Rhaenys Velaryon: Rhaenyra’s children are not of your blood.
His wife Rhaenys wanted to disinherit the technically-childless Laenor to honor Laenor’s niece Baela Targaryen as next in line of succession, preserving Corlys’ bloodline but not his name. (Unless Baela changed her name from Targaryen to Velaryon – and kept it should she married.)
The discussion between Rhaenys and her ambitious husband laid bare the truth – Corlys was playing politics, hoping that one of his descendants would attain the throne (while pretending he was doing it for Rhaenys.) But now, the agreement he’d struck with Viserys could only ensure that he’d be a footnote in the history book – that he briefly contributed his name to a future Targaryen king.
It turned out not to be quite a win-win after all.
ONCE FRIENDS, NOW FOES
The difference between power dynamics established in the first episode of House of the Dragon and the most recent one, in regards to Alicent Hightower and princess Rhaenyra were striking. Once they were friends by virtue of Alicent being in court and a suitable companion for the princess. At the time of the initial episode, the succession crisis that had been looming seemed to be more of a possibility between the king’s younger brother Daemon Targaryen and the princess, who’d been named heir at the suggestion of the king’s Hand and Alicent’s father, Otto Hightower.
Otto had then maneuvered his daughter Alicent into her current role as queen to the grieving widower king, and had lain the groundwork for the Alicent/Rhaenyra rift – convincing her that should Rhaenyra claim the throne, her relatively weak claim (weak because she was a woman – a flaw by the patriarchal thinking of Westerosi lords) would force her to eliminate any competitors that the lords of Westeros might rally behind instead of Rhaenyra.
Rhaenyra’s bastard offspring did nothing to ease those fears. Alicent’s children were trueborn children from the Targaryen line. They looked Targaryen. Rhaenyra did not even have a Targaryen-looking child to appease the lords, so Alicent’s fears for her children must have grown with the birth of every Velaryon-named bastard. That conflict would be inevitable.
Alicent was technically winning points in the succession game with Rhaenyra’s additional dark-haired sons – but it increased (at least in regards to her fears) the odds that her children will be put to death.
Cersei: When you play the Game of Thrones –
On the plus side for Alicent’s faction, as Otto observed they’d accumulated a tremendous advantage in Aemond – that rogue prince – claiming one of the dragons of the Conquerors. Losing an eye might be a small price to pay for the largest and oldest flying weapon of mass destruction currently available.
Rhaenyra had gained a new husband in her uncle Daemon – after the pair of them successfully pitched to Rhaenyra’s husband Laenor that faking his death and running off with Qarl Correy to Essos would be a good idea.
Criston Cole: Rhaenyra is the worst! She STOLE MY IDEA!
It was a relief to some viewers that Rhaenyra and Daemon just didn’t murder Laenor outright as an inconvenient spouse.
Rhea Royce: I am legitimately surprised.
Rhaenyra and Daemon mused that Laenor’s “death” might be attributed to them in rumors, and that they could capitalize on that, having their enemies fear what dangerous depths they might sink to if pressed.
Of course, the downside of that would be in convincing Alicent that her fear of extreme action from Rhaenyra was now a justifiable fear. It’s no longer just Otto’s fearmongering.
THE FAILURE OF OTTO AND THE RISE OF DAEMON
Speaking of Otto, Daemon marrying Rhaenyra is a failure of Otto’s roughly fifteen years in the making.
In the very first episode, Otto was insistent that Daemon be pushed away as the next heir to King Viserys. Otto predicted that a Daemon-led regime would be a catastrophe for the realm. So dire in fact, that Otto championed the idea that Viserys’ child Rhaenyra should be his declared heir, despite her being one of those lady-like types.
Otto: I’ve said it before, I’m a feminist.
As soon as he engineered a matrimonial arrangement with his boss Viserys, Otto began to work (with a few alternate suggestions first) on proposing Viserys’ infant son Aegon be named heir, displacing the heir-apparent Rhaenyra.
Otto: I’ve said it before, I’m not that much of a feminist.
His actions eventually led to him being dismissed for a decade. He’d returned to power thanks to the timely assassination of the interim Hand, Lyonel Strong, and no doubt the influence that Queen Alicent had in Viserys’ political affairs.
But, in a surprising upset, Daemon Targaryen, the man Otto Hightower feared might become king, was now married Viserys’ heir, Rhaenyra.
Daemon: I won’t be King, fine. But I’ll be King-Consort, which still sounds very kingly to me. I bet I could mount a few heads on pikes as a treat.
Rhaenyra: When I’m queen, I might just give you a list. It might be thematic to mount a particular head from a very tall tower.
Daemon: So, a high tower?
Rhaenyra: That works two ways!
Otto, by getting his way early on by bringing down his political enemy, had more or less engineered a dread future for himself at the hands of those enemies.
Daemon: Imagine, if he had just not sponsored my niece to be heir.
AND THE WINNER IS …
Is there anyone winning? Well, maybe everyone who isn’t dead yet is still technically winning, according to Cersei logic. But it can be argued that there was someone definitely winning at the end of the last episode, particularly in regards to his commonly understood fate in Fire and Blood.
Laenor Velaryon agreed to a political but romantically loveless marriage because his father and Rhaenyra’s father thought it was a good idea. (Rhaenys Velaryon voiced her concerns, because she knew in her bones that Rhaenyra’s claims would be challenged, and knives would come out, endangering her son as Rhaenyra’s consort.)
Early on, even before he had had a chance to take his wedding vows, the queen’s future champion pummeled Laenor’s lover to death.
A decade later, Rhaenyra gave him a chance to escape into anonymity with his latest paramour, and he was wise enough to take it. When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.
But maybe … Don’t Play the Game of Thrones.
