Season 2, Episode 5, ‘Regent’

Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen in the second season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon.” (Ollie Upton/HBO)

The worst part of throwing a big party — particularly one with spectacular dragon fights — is cleaning up the mess the next morning. Ugh, so many charred warriors and empty red Solo cups.

That’s how we find Westeros in this episode: Everyone’s dealing with the aftermath of the three-way sky lizard fight. That battle killed Rhaenys, severely wounded King Aegon and left Aegon’s brother, the eye-patched Aemond, with another win for his dragon, Vhagar.

In King’s Landing, comatose Aegon is now a very crispy boy indeed. The one who air-fried him, Aemond, claims leadership over the objections of a guilt-ridden Alicent, and no one on the council is willing to stand in his way — or Vhagar’s.

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At Dragonstone, Rhaenyra and her family are devastated by the loss of Rhaenys. But the biggest threat may be Rhaenyra’s husband. In his weakened mental state at the Overlook Hotel, er, I mean Harrenhal castle, Daemon is raising an army of his own instead of one for his queen.

Let’s recap how it came to this:

Team Alicent

The big dragon party should have tipped the scales (so to speak) in one direction or the other. It instead left a bigger mess for the leaders and citizens of the Seven Kingdoms. Anger and blame spreads. It’s one heck of a dragon hangover.

Instead of rallying the people of King’s Landing over their victory at Rook’s Rest, Ser Criston Cole makes another dunderheaded move as Hand of the King. Even as a wounded Aegon is wheeled back home in a covered wooden cage, the war brigade returns with the severed head of the dragon Meleys on a wagon, carted through town for everyone to see. The citizens are horrified. There’s nothing sadder than a dragon with no body. Public sentiment is more like “What a cursed omen!” than “Huzzah, the dragon be slewed!”

Alicent notices that Aemond is carrying the sword of his sizzled brother. She watches as Aegon is brought to bed and treated by Grand Maester Orwyle and others — it’s not pretty at all. Aegon’s Valyrian armor may have saved him, but now it must be removed from his burned skin. Broken bones are reset, graphically. Alicent wants to know whether her son will die, but Orwyle can say only that he’s in a critical state. Confronted by Alicent, Cole won’t confirm her suspicions that Aemond had something to do with Aegon’s wounds.

At their next council meeting, Lords Jasper Wylde and Jason Lannister advocate for Aemond as regent king. Alicent vehemently objects and offers to take the role herself, something she did when Viserys was unable to lead. Those arguments don’t amount to much with the all-male council. Larys doesn’t support Alicent, nor does her secret lover Cole, who only says, “It must be him.” Aemond takes Aegon’s egg off the table, sits himself down and gets to work. He wants to do something about the sea blockade, make some headway with the Tully family in the Riverlands, and stop merchants from passing in and out of the city.

Meanwhile, things are getting bad in King’s Landing. Hugh, the blacksmith with the sick daughter, still hasn’t been paid by the king for war efforts, and his family is starving. When they try to leave King’s Landing, the gates are locked. The desperate citizens call for meat, but all the meat there is to spare is probably going to Vhagar.

Flush with victory, Aemond takes a deliciously long look at the iron throne; all Aegon has to do is die and it’s his for the taking. Helaena — his sister and Aegon’s wife — asks Aemond, “Was it worth the price?”

Team Daemon

Daemon is trying to unify the two houses he needs for an army, House Bracken and House Blackwood, but they are Westeros’s answer to the Hatfields and McCoys. Daemon has gotten Willem Blackwood on his side, but Lord Amos Bracken and his men won’t submit. Instead of flash-frying them, Daemon lets them go because he still needs troops. He asks Willem Blackwood to find some other means of persuasion. “Do your worst,” Daemon tells him, forgetting that the last time he gave vague instructions, it led to a headless child and the start of a war.

But Daemon is not in a great state of mind. When he’s not having disturbing visions, he’s project-managing the renovation of Harrenhal, where the roof needs work and the wailing tower stinks of bat guano. There’s also not much gold, since Larys has been funneling money from his family estate. Daemon offers to guarantee payment for all this work himself, but he’s not even in communication with Rhaenyra, so … Venmo?

Daemon keeps finding himself in awkward conversations with Alys Rivers, who judges him for the crimes he’s set in motion. She says that she hears cries of anguish in the wind (she’s a wood owl, after all) and that the Blackwoods are doing terrible things to the Brackens. Daemon points out that he’s less evil than Aemond, but that’s not a high bar. He tells Alys that when he takes King’s Landing, Rhaenyra is welcome to come rule by his side, not the other way around. If that ploy fails, “I’ll be dead and none of this will be my problem.” Strategy!

Then Daemon gets good news: Ser Simon announces that the Brackens have come around. But the victory is short-lived: The Riverlords show up and tell Daemon that the Blackwoods have committed so many atrocities with the Targaryen banner in clear view that there’s no way they’ll follow such a tyrant. Also, they don’t want to be aligned with the “interloper” who killed little prince Jaehaerys.

We get a very brief scene of Rhaena, Baela’s sister, at the Eyrie with Lady Jeyne Arryn, who is put out because she asked for two dragons and the ones she received are just tiny babies, “wet from the egg.” For that, she promised 15,000 troops. While she’s sympathetic about the death of Rhaenys, Lady Arryn thinks the dragons won’t grow fast enough and she’s feeling powerless.

Team Rhaenyra

Corlys, devastated by the death of Rhaenys, sits alone in his castle. Rhaenyra is sad, too, but she can’t mourn for long because she’s dealing with a council rattled by Cole’s victory at Rook’s Rest. Ser Alfred Broome takes Rhaenyra to task for being … well, you know … a woman. Rhaenyra points out that given that they grew up in a time of peace, she has just as much war experience as he does.

The war council wants to attack while Vhagar is weak, but that’s a task Rhaenyra says she’d have to do herself. The council says that’s out of the question. Frustrated, she confers with Mysaria, expressing exasperation with the council and with Daemon. “I do not know my part,” she says.

Mysaria reveals that Cole’s parading of the head of Meleys through King’s Landing was bad PR and the people may be turning back to Rhaenyra. Things, Mysaria says, were better when Viserys ruled and that people are discontented. To them, she says, “rumors are feed.” She offers to help Rhaenyra fight the war on a new front: infowars! Soon after, Rhaenyra sends her lady-in-waiting, Elinda, to King’s Landing in secret.

Rhaenyra gives Baela a box for Corlys. “I do not wish to stand alone,” the queen says. Later, when Baela visits Corlys, he’s feeling sorry for himself. Rhaenys, she tells him, died the fierce death she would have wanted. That’s what Baela wants, too. She gives Corlys the box, which contains a pin. It’s Rhaenyra asking Corlys to be her right-Hand man. He resists but later in the episode holds it tightly in his palm.

Rhaenyra’s son Jace wants to go to Harrenhal and confront Daemon, but Baela doesn’t think it’s a good idea. Restless, Jace instead opts to meet with House Frey, another Riverlands family, at the Twins castle. Jace’s meeting with the Freys is successful: He persuades them to support Rhaenyra and offer passage over their big bridge in exchange for protection and, eventually, possession of Harrenhal.

By the time Jace returns, Rhaenyra has sent Ser Alfred to Harrenhal to go find out what’s up with Daemon. She suspects he’s seeking his own claim to the throne, but she wants to know for sure. As for Jace, Rhaenyra’s not mad at him for going to the Twins in secret; in fact, she’s envious of Jace for being able to take action. She can’t fight Aemond and Vhagar even though her dragon, Syrax, is quicker.

“I need dragons,” Rhaenyra says. There actually are more dragons, right beneath them in the Dragonpit, they just don’t have riders. Then they hatch an audacious scheme: What if members of their bloodline who weren’t born into royalty could also ride those dragons? “It’s a mad thought,” Rhaenyra says, but she’s already making plans to go through the records and research candidates. We pull back on the room and see thousands of paper scrolls just waiting to reveal who’s going to win the game of Westeros’s Next Top Dragonrider.