Girls Gone Canon Cast - House of the Dragon S2E3: The Burning Mill

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

SPOILERS: ASOIAF, F&B, KOT7K, TWOIAF, ETC   Sin begets sin begets sin - and war makes monsters of us all. We chat cyclical violence within and outside of the family, parentified children, and of course, the behemoth that is Harrenhal. Check out our patreon where all members get early access to House of the Dragon episodes during the season @ patreon.com/girlsgonecanon Sound Effects from Pixabay "Night Vigil" "Big Drumming" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ THANKS KEVIN!! https://x.com/poisonessart/status/1806571184466563216

The The The The The Hello, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Watch's House of the Dragon, Season 2, Episode 3, The Burning Mill. I'm one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. Episode 3, which, I mean, so much, some stuff's getting moving. Yeah, I felt like this was a packed episode.

We'll talk a little bit more about our feelings on the episode as a whole, I think, here in a few. bit more about our feelings on the episode as a whole, I think, here in a few. First up, before we get too far, Eliana, can you tell the folks at home what they win with our spoiler policy? You win everything, all right? That's what you get with our spoiler policy. Literally everything, okay? So we will discuss anything and everything from the entirety of Fire and Blood, which means we will be spoiling some of the very big beats and deaths in this show. And also, I mean, like, who quote unquote wins. We will also be spoiling anything from the five main books of A Song of Ice and Fire, the other side stories, the World of Ice and Fire book And, I mean, I guess the show that I assume that you all watched, I guess. But not necessarily. If you didn't, good for you.

Now that we have that out of the way, patrons in any tier at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon. Get early access to the episodes during Hot D season. Usually we are a podcast that is covering A Song of Ice and Fire, POV character by POV character, chapter by chapter. We just finished up John Connington and after Hot D season we'll return to that once we finish Unleash the D. We had a mid-series finale to start this so we'll come back for two episodes of Unleash the D and then we will unleash the books and get back to it with the epilogues. Very excited about those. More to come. Again head to patreon.com slash girls gone canon for everything girls gone canon including last month's special patreon episode for patrons in the stranger

tier and above you can get tons of bonus content like the dance of the dragons which we've covered in full over there on that website but last month this is crazy for june 2024 we went team green everyone we were team green on patreon yeah and by that we mean we covered shrek the movie shrek it's not easy being green but that's actually kermit my bad but kermit is kermit is team black in this, y'all. Yeah, he's coming too. He's coming. But to summarize our Shrek episode, as patron Thunderclap said and commented, this isn't a PG-13 episode. And it's not, but also, hot take, are any of our episodes about anything a PG-13 episode?

I believe he said it because we talked about the ratings for so long. Oh, that. And what constitutes a rating being PG-13, that you only get one fuck. Yeah. And we unfortunately just used ours, so I guess this is not a PG-13 podcast. No, it's not. That's why we have an explicit tag. Thank you, everyone, for being here. We are very explicit. We are explicit. Dropping F-bombs like no other, as another review has said of Girls Gone Canon, one of the girls. Unsure which. It's probably Chloe, but it could be me. I like to think it's me, but I don't know. Also, other things that have been on our Patreon.

Okay, Alison Tytower. Other things that have been on our Patreon that we will touch on a little bit today are, as we discussed last week, Kingsguard episode. And we have an episode about Harrenhal, which... So excited to see Harrenhal this week. Yeah, I'm just batty for that episode. Batty. Not Roy Batty. Oh, fuck. We out here here harren hall rocked harren hall rocked lots over at patreon lots of bonus episodes not just about a song of ice and fire we have

begun covering the hunger games uh we've covered sailor moon happy birthday sailor moon her birthday was just the other day um Yesterday. Lots of stuff. Yeah. All my trouble seems so far away. So we will probably be continuing our Hunger Games coverage soon, but not, I don't know. Part of me wants to do it again, like immediately, but also I'm like, we only have so much energy. In the autumn. Yeah, probably. But I'm excited for it, especially because there's new stuff coming out.

And yeah, so we also, if you get your emails in on time, but also, I mean, we can follow it up with the next week as we did for this one. We got an email of note. Every now and then some of you get it in so fast, but this comes from our friend Dania. They said, I find it interesting folks read the brothel scene with Eamon as him being genuinely regretful about Luke. It seemed more than anything to me as a kind of narcissistic reflection. He then immediately pivots to, They used to bully me, except Luke was like five years old max when Rhaenyra and company moved back to Dragonstone.

Except Luke was like five years old Max when Rhaenyra and company moved back to Dragonstone. He has to say they because Luke was never more than a baby, an accessory to Aegon's plans. Aemond is trying to justify after the fact the way bullies themselves do. Sure, he feels a little bad, and the show definitely outlined his genuine horror when Vhagar did her big chomp. Chomp! Chomp chomp. Also, he refers to it so cold coldly even while in the vulnerable safe space of this scene that business with luke it's almost like he's trying to perform grief in private to convince himself he's regretful in a similar way alicent and helena are forced to perform grief in

public also side note from them autocorrect keeps changing Amen to Anemone, so there's that. I'm going to start using that all the time. Anemone Targaryen. I mean, I really like this insight, right? Especially bringing Aegon into it, because Aegon was his bully, and we're going to talk about that today, that he's still his bully. He's still being traumatized by Aegon. yeah uh he's still being traumatized by agan so it's interesting when you grow up that second fiddle you cannot say it was agan who's now the king who was bullying you there's really no retaliation he can give right so he just displaces those feelings fully onto others very interesting

yeah that is an interesting observation and something I didn't catch in regards to that bullying. I agree that like, so I think these actors are doing, as I say, every episode, such an amazing job with delivering the lines and delivering this kind of emotion behind them. like that business with luke but i think i think there is like a complexity right he does feel he does feel bad about it but not as bad as he could feel but it's also been a few days since it happened and he's probably been fucking reamed by everyone in his family and the green council for being like why did you do this and that there's um you know our brains do this sort of cognitive dissonance thing where they'll choose a side and you'll defend and maybe even dig your heels in to preserve your like self-view how you perceive yourself and people perceive themselves as good right or you want to perceive yourself as good so i i kind of wonder if this is also something that is delivered in

that way because it's been processed already a few days later you look at it with the Damon of it all right you have that context of Damon um who also had a big brother who was a king and maybe didn't necessarily take bullying from him but was disrespected in front of a lot of public at court. Not that he didn't have it coming. Okay, I'm not saying he didn't have it coming. But you know, Viserys wasn't, Viserys put him in his place with the right support.

So him looking at Daemon like, aha, my one true final quest will be defeating my uncle, the only man who is like a stronger version of me, who also losing his mind right now so it's going good it's going good going good yeah poor old anemone well uh thank you so much for the email. Like Eliana said, girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. We record Monday evening with one another. So if you can get it in by Monday evening, a quick email of note on the episode, we'll try to include it. Yeah. We also accept tweets at girlsgonecanon, C-A-N-O-N, over on Twitter.

Yes. For now. For now. Well, there's a couple things that we want to discuss before we get into the episode. Yeah, these are, you know, miscellaneous overarching thoughts. As we get into the episode, we jump in around the world of Westeros. We'll go a bit location-balanced and character-balanced. But first, to Chloe's philosophical thought corner last week we talked about Darren Wright as a do we like this because we like it or do we like it because we're fucking nerds this week I want to talk a little bit about first of all the intro

was updated I like the intro I still miss the old intro. You know, I'll outsource it to my therapist. We'll figure it out. But intro's updated, has Jaehaerys' death and the rat catchers? Very interesting, though. Very fast work. I'm guessing we'll continue to get updates throughout the season, especially because Rhaenys is dying next week. I'm sure that's gonna be in the fucking tapestry so bummer bummer for all especially for me however HBO I'm noticing and maybe caveat this is coming after the discovery merger and allocation of resources but last year after each episode within one to two days, HBO on their House of the Dragon little website with their little character charts and their family trees and their dragons and their this and that, updated things almost within like 24 hours

after the episode. No updates have happened for season two to that HBO site, to the characters, or the dragons. And we're sitting after the third episode, and I'm talking no promotional stills of the characters have been updated for the headshots. There's no deceased crossout on Jaehaerys, where last season they were very quick to cross out Luke. Is digital web marketing dead uh they aren't revealing the episode title pretty much until House the Dragon Built goes up and that's when the reveal's coming so like maybe that's supposed to be a cute fun reveal but digital web promos are just dead question mark I don't know. I thought that was really interesting,

and I'm not sure if it is more indicative of the death of HBO Max as it was reborn as Max or what. I think it's a combination of a couple of things. I think it's what you said, the merger between that it's become Max, right? that it's become max right and but i think that along with that a lot of positions were slashed right like you think of the shows that were taken off such as westworld etc and i think positions of whoever was maintaining content and set to update those on the site were probably slashed or they just don't have the capacity everyone's stretched too thin but i don't know if it's just them i think we're seeing this industry-wide like i think yeah we're seeing a lot less of a push in the marketing like they probably didn't feel that they had to do

it as much for this season as they did for the first season they needed the first season to succeed if they were gonna ever make this franchise sustainable right if they were going to get everything else greenlit this had to succeed and so i think there's less of a push on that but also across all the industry like in other publications i think a lot of other shows are just getting less press if it's not organic because if you'll remember a lot of culture writers were also laid off across publications and a lot of them are decreasing staff so i i think i don't know the digital web marketing is dead but it's really a floundering yeah and not to be depressing but like economically speaking it turns out it's every industry, not just marketing.

Yes, agreed. I feel it at my job in a completely different industry than marketing, and I see it everywhere, and all the skimping and the cutting corners. I just find it really fascinating. I mean, Max's numbers as a whole are down. Yes. So I know that the premiere and these episodes aren't doing as well as they did for season one. And that's based on Max as a whole, though. Like, that's more of a reflection of Max.

Yeah. I've heard it's like across everything, right? Numbers are down. But I kind of wonder, there's a part of me that wonders, I know why they wanted the summer season, but if it would have actually gotten better for them to do it in the fall right not when everyone's going like on their vacations or whatever and making summer plans so that's another thing that i wonder but everywhere across the board numbers down thrones like premiering in april thrones premiering in

april always felt like perfect yeah and i mean house of the dragon season one premiered in April, Thrones premiering in April always felt like perfect. Yeah. And I mean, House of the Dragon season one premiered in August. Yeah. So anyway, these are there's a lot going on there. I will say Geeta Patel can really get it. Shit rocked. There was a lot in this episode I really liked. In fact, I would say that 75% of this episode was super strong. Yeah. Maybe not all of it worked as a whole, in my opinion. And I think a lot of these beats will contribute maybe more overall in the long run. Like there was a little bit of good old, not filler, but a little Thrones-y filler going on in some aspects of like,

okay, this episode will mean more to the entire show as a whole. But the set didn't do it for me. I'm just going to come out and say it. We'll come to that. We'll talk a little more about it. I don't want to linger on why it didn't do it for me. It was a fine scene, maybe a good scene. I didn't think it for me. It was a fine scene, maybe a good scene. I didn't think it was

a great scene. I love the chemistry between Emma DeArcy and Olivia Cooke. And I think that it was very fun for them to act together, but it did feel just a little too much for me, a little too contrived. I think that's ultimately it for me, right? It felt contrived in the lead up to it, as it, in the lead up to it did as it and the lead up to it did as well but we'll come back to that i i did like the scene i liked what it meant and yeah established but yeah we'll get back to it i will say about gita patel this is not related to the episode necessarily at all but admiral curd pointed out this is the second episode directed by Geeta Patel who also did Admiral Curd's favorite episode of season one

episode eight Lord of the Tides and he feels give her more if she can do it I think she does have more this season too so I look forward to it she gets the finale this season which yes was also pointed out in

that discussion so fun facts about other people and their opinions loved as like an overarching line slash theme of the episode sin begets sin begets sin wow it all goes back it really does does. It really does. And I think the burning mill is a great way to exemplify that. Yeah, I feel like guilt as a through line and then generational warring, generational traumas as a through line is a great theme. more clever smarter and just like more like gut-wrenching than the battle of the burning mill transition when we come up from that fight from those boys fighting and then all of a sudden you have the dead bracken in the water yeah dead bodies everywhere terrible and amazing and just really a smart use of resources. I love that they skipped the actual battle and that we just see the aftermath. Yeah, at first I was like, wow, it's just like season one Game of Thrones when the budget ran out and they didn't show that battle.

They knocked Tyrion out for it, but it wasn't right and I think um I have more thoughts on that later we'll talk about when we get to some of the rainy stuff in regards to the meta if you watch the house that dragons built it's kind of fun watching them make the little prosthetic body and then it was really jarring to watch as they put the the sword prop through the bracken kid's neck for that scene I was like whoa they're just sounds like it's fake it's fake it's fake and I will say in regards to things that are fake and movie magic I made a tweet about Eric and Arik last week and I will say a lot of people are very convinced I just want to point this out I did not know how many people truly believe that Lindsay Lohan actually has a twin who died on set, and they're convinced Lindsay Lohan has a twin. So that's a conspiracy theory that's out there. Wow, I didn't know that. Is

that like Avril Lavigne Ben-Raphael's conspiracy theory? Like, what is going on there? I think it's like that level. I did not know. I don't know that conspiracy theory. I mean, I didn't know this one either. Oh, it's wild. So like, just so you know, there are some Lindsay Lohan twin truthers out there. And literally both of these conspiracy theories, I'm pretty sure, are just based off of like mass misinformation, intentional misinformation. So I'm living for it. It's fascinating. Almost as fascinating, maybe even more fascinating,

I'm sure, as yeah, like as you were saying, something that they brought up in that behind the scenes is that the scene is meant to show the endless cycle of violence, like that really cyclical violence through generations, and I think that fits in well, of course, with the Targaryens, and to show it with the Battle of the Burning burning mill and to have the focus on the mill you can really visually see that happening with the turning around of the spokes of it great job i mean i guess the blackwood kid we don't know that he died unless is that supposed to be ben no that was davos oh so his name is davos he does die okay so the sword is through the bracken child's neck i'm gonna just keep calling

them children because they're clearly much younger than me though though presumably the blackwood died as well and i like that showing only one of them implies that both of them died again great visual storytelling and we'll go later on from you know here they call rainiera kinslayer and then rainies discusses the difficulties of war between kin and honestly honestly all this talk about fighting wars between kin like R.I.P. Fagon from the books aka uh the Aegon that's being propped up by Illyrio and Varys like you would have fucking rocked as a storyline probably hey we still have time for that in this. And Lady Stoneheart. We have a fake Agen coming. It's

fake Gaiman. Kind of. FaGaiman. We'll discuss him in a second. Aw, Gaiman. So sad. Oh, whoa. Poor little guy. For real. He's an innocent... I had the lovely opportunity of hanging out with the game of owns crew a little

bit before the premiere and we recorded me them and my roommate pork went in and they were very convinced that we will see reneara triumphant at the end of the season i was very not convinced now i am on episode three and i can tell you that I am boo-boo the fool because now I am very convinced that episode eight, which we know practically nothing about. Let me just make sure that's out there. All we know about King's Landing in the second half of the season is like, I think there's a bread riot because of the blockade. So I'm a believer. I think it's true. I think that Rhaenyra triumphant is happening at the end of season two, which remix wise,

I think that's smart because then you can kill off. Chakaris in season three, and there's a great emotional beat to deal with. And the downfall, I, I see it like a little switcheroo, but yeah, mean i just don't imagine that she won't go back to king's landing again this season now after seeing her there once especially because

as you and i mentioned little red riding hood alinda massey in that one that's true yeah i i wasn't sure i really don't know how they're doing all the timelines and stuff, but I think you're right. We could see Rhaenyra triumphant at the end of the season. And the reason why we keep calling it Rhaenyra triumphant, I assume a lot of you hear Redfire and Blood because you don't seem to mind us discussing it, but that is the name of that chapter opening.

We're not just using the word triumphant. That's just what it's named. Yeah, this is the canonical name of the chapter where reneara is triumphant we're not i'm not like usually that fancy but yeah i i agree and i think as you said it makes it for a good opening with jace next season and he also even like it pairs well with damon saying and then I'm gonna go fucking take King's Landing right like he said that this episode and I was like okay I feel it's coming

I really feel it's coming well speaking of King's Landing I'm gonna take King's Landing let's pop into this bitch and start with the brothel scene with Ulf outside of the uh the, the leisure rooms. I love this scene.

I felt like it's giving Game of Thrones classic bar scene, you know, the classic pub scene or in scene you get in Game of Thrones. I'm liking what they're picking from the book to adapt somewhat 1-1, right? Like when they're putting little lines in about Mushroom or things that Mushroom's account said or like Ulf the White setting him up and some of the lower-born king's landing dragon seeds, especially when you're considering Ulf's death later

and how he becomes such an important character in the book. Like getting poisoned, you know, a pretender king getting poisoned is a great thing to happen in this story. It happens quite a bit. I love that Ulf gets a little too big for his britches in the books, and you can already kind of see that behavior from him here. You know, toasting to Queen Rhaenyra while chit-chatting with everybody a little too loudly when Aegon came in and he's like shitting his breeches. I was like, yeah, whoa, you're getting a little, little mouthy today, Ulf. I don't know also that I believe

he's Balon's son. I don't know what to believe. Probably because, you know, Targaryen men do be fucking though. Um, I def think that Ulf is a dragon seed but really great setup for potential small folk stuff especially with the shepherd eventually and the dying of the dragons and the moon of the three kings stuff

we've met Madam Sylvie and Diana so maybe we have our Gaiman pale hair quotequote parents propping him up diana and sylvie you think they would have changed her name to diana or change it to diana i mean i just think it's kind of convenient that we have someone who's already you know in knowledge of agan agan's bastards and that's true and we've seen a bastard child of his already so we're getting this kind of inner look and also that this is where diana got sent to work

which is so fucked up that she can't escape her abuser yeah or abuse in general like she's getting her ass slapped yeah it was i'm like it was really sad so, I mean, I love the oof, the white scene. And, yeah, I agree he's a dragon seed. And I'm not sure if he's Balon's or not. I just kind of assumed in the books they were like, yeah, there's, like, a lot of dragon seed, right? Especially on Dragonstone. I'm like, I don't know. They could be anyone's kid or, like, descendant from a long-ass time ago, right?

Because the Targaryens had been on Dragonstone for a long time so anyway he could be Balan's he might not be I don't really know much about him and also I love that they have him with a lot of friends right and that he wasn't participating in that necessarily also Samson Kaio's sighting there at the table. There's a couple of, I mean, you know, actors go between shows, obviously, but he's also in Our Flag Means Death, which also has Hizdar Zalorak and Hodor. Oh, interesting. I'm curious if he'll be back or if he's just going to be kind of a guy in the pub kind of character or what. But I did like him being there.

I love that he was just like watching them go back and forth and getting the tea. Yeah, I think he might be back in some extent, maybe not like a big role, just because when I was double checking, it seems as though he had been announced as being in season two of House of Dragons, not like a huge amount of fanfare, right? But the fact that it had been shared as being in season two of House of the Dragon. Not like a huge amount of fanfare, right? But the fact that it had been shared prior to the season implies that maybe like a slightly bigger role, not a huge one, but slightly.

I mean, they also announced the handmaiden, Alicent's handmaiden that looks like Lorde slash Emma Stone. They announced her as well. And we ain't seen that bitch since Blood and Cheese, so don't get your hopes up. They announced her and everyone was like, Black Alley? Sabbath of Frey? No. Yeah. Nar. Just like me

thinking we'd see Black Alley this week. Yeah. Boo Boo the Fool. Same. Lower my expectations. I need to lower my expectations. I know. Slow burn. Slow burn. I want to see more Blackwoods. I want to see more of the Tully's. Just give me the Sesame Street Tully's. That's all I want.

I'm trying to like explain to everyone like there's a Kermit and there's an Elmo and there's an Oscar. We're going to get the Freys still. We are going to get them. They were in the trailer a couple weeks ago in the Weeks Ahead trailer. There was the twins were in the trailer. You could see them. So which week ahead? It's coming. There could see them. Yeah, but which week ahead?

It's coming. There's like five other weeks ahead. Which week ahead shall I anticipate them? One of the five. One-fifth. Wow. Well, let's talk about a second. Aegon the Second.

There's a 20% chance that it could happen. Next week? And then chances only increase with every single week, if you really think about it. Exactly. Wow. So if you just keep showing up every Monday, I'll come through for you one of these Mondays. Wow, okay. All right, Aegon and his Aegons, as coined by our friend Manuclear Bomb.

Clap, clap, clap. Very cute, fun name. This was very interesting to me. I caught it immediately as soon as agan turned around and there were new kingsguard because of course there are some kingsguard slots to fill uh very young griff of him right adding his friends and buddies to the kingsguard but also he like cursed them like this is a curse what he gave them this is an honor, as we are learning from Kristen Cole, right? Kristen Cole, like, thought it was for honor and glory, but here he is now, and he's like, oh my god, what am I doing?

And here, King Aegon's new buddies, the Rhaen and all, Redned and whatever the third one is, Eastermont, whatever their names are, the Aegons. It's interesting, too, because it's showing how unserious the role of the Kingsguard has become. You can just slap that armor on any man named Kettleblack. I mean, any man named Redned. And also how inexperienced of a King Aegon is without Otto there, right? Otto would not have allowed for this. Otto would have been like, you can't make those boys your Kingsguard. And we see throughout the episode, if you watch them very carefully, they're never standing up straight. They're not standing at attention. They don't take their role seriously. They don't announce people or stop them from entering rooms

like the small council chamber. When they're out at the pub having some drinks, they're off duty and they're in normal clothing, not their armor. And Agen has no Kingsguard with him in armor. This is how, and I mean, truth be told, obviously he doesn't want to be like, I'm the king and I'm going to the brothel. But accidents happen pretty easy in King's Landing these days. And it could be a little nod for us to think Agen's not serious about his protection. You know, considering that he's empowered people around him this entire episode alone to have very close access to him as a king. Like, oh, you know, getting poisoned by someone.

Yeah, it would be very good if he had a little more protection around him. I would be a little bit more worried for my life if I were him. But I mean, he is very vulnerable. He's gonna be even more vulnerable after a rook's rest, I guess. And yeah, I agree. Him promoting his friends to Kingsguard is very much like to crown him is to kill him, but not crown, you know what I mean? is very much like to crown him is to kill him but not crown you know what i mean and it's funny because he tells his friends he's like wait no like you took a vow of chastity now and it almost seems as though he took it seriously it's like whoa can't believe he told your friends like y'all can't have sex anymore and also means perhaps he would be really unhappy if he ever learned about kristen cole and you know his mom considering he might actually take it seriously and i know

they go to the brothel later right but we don't actually see any of the king's guard partake in sex uh just they're just trying to get the squire laid and the squire hasn't said any vows so that is actually i would say that's acceptable but you know i just am like no one thought this through well and bringing those couple of scenes together when he tells them like you took a vow of chastity there is a little bit of playfulness at the end of it around his lips not in a playful way like it's okay you can fuck but a playful way like where it's like yeah bitch i control you now like there was very much an element of power and control if you go and re-watch that over the king's guard which is like an anti-voyeurism

kind of thing right like he's getting off on withholding that from them withholding that pleasure from them like you can't do that anymore and i get to watch you not do it it was very interesting it was like a power play you could see where he's starting to get a little bit off on power i i wouldn't i'm not sure if i saw like the power play but definitely I think him like having not thought it through at all either. Like he's only thinking about the veneer of everything and not like, you know, he's told like Kingsguard don't have sex, right? And he's told like Kings do this, Kings do that, but not actually really thinking through like, what does that mean? You know? Like, what does that mean? You know? But I think there is, the power thing, I think what you're saying does absolutely show in the brothel scene, the way he's controlling everyone.

Yeah, I really recommend next time you're, if you rewatch it, I might be good on rewatches for a little bit on this one, you know us. But if you're there, if you're rewatching it it take a look when he tells them off about having sex like watch his face because there's almost a glimmer of like yeah i'm the boss motherfucker very interesting i'll see if i can find the screenshot sometime but yeah i mean he's got great subtle acting oh yeah absolutely oh the I do want to quickly admire the armor. The armor, a lot of detail was put into that. If you watch how they made it, such great little, I don't know, patterns within the chainmail. But also, apparently it looks like he could not really move when he was wearing it,

and they had to like seat him for hours in that yeah it didn't look very comfortable it's kind of crazy because it looked really good in the house the dragon built like it looked very good in the house the dragon built um that was kind of a bummer for me i was like man i wish it looked better but i hope it looked i think it'll look a lot better like in full light on Sunfire. Hopefully next episode is my guess. Oh, good point. Yeah, it'll, oh, because he'll probably glimmer like Sunfire.

There you go. And not to be, not to be a book fan. It's a cute nod. And I'm just like, I'm excited that we have valyrian armor but it feels unlikely given what we know about the forsaken and the winds of winter which eliana was there when it was red at baldecon i don't know if you guys knew also i keep forgetting sometimes not only was i there i was one of the first like in-depth views everyone got on the forsaken people just fucking examining my serial killer hand.

I don't have a serial killer. I have great handwriting. It's illegible, but looks fun. I would have liked to see some glyphs and runes in that armor, personally. I love the description we get of Valyrian armor in the winds of winter, the Forsaken. And it's got red gold on the edges and swirling and runes. And of course, some of that might be because of shade of the evening. Who knows?

But that's okay. It's still fun. And it looks so good. Like in the House the Dragons Built, I was marveling over every layer. dragons built i was marveling over every layer and i guess according to his profile on the hbo website damon's helm is valyrian steel dang everyone's gonna fucking i mean maybe these were all lost it's entirely possible these were all lost since that time and you're on and so forth but maybe renero sells it when she flees to bravos yeah i also with the crown i also i'm like i still don't understand you know how steel works and how armor works like is valyrian steel armor

like that much better because like don't you want the heaviness but maybe it's like just stronger i don't know i don't know how fucking metal metal works. I think it's stronger but thinner. It's actually very light. So it's good for dragon riding. That makes sense. Is what's kind of described. It's actually very light. Very light, and then, like, when you pay attention to, I guess, the fitting, not the greatest just because they had to, like,

fit him into it. So, again, we'll see it on Sunfire, I guess. But the swirls, right? You have the Damascus swirl in it that's and honestly i wondered if it was valerian steel from the preview when we saw it up close originally because of the swirls because you see that and it's kind of similar to like what dawn is supposed to be made of but different like dawn glows and it's light in comparison and this is supposed to be dark and smoky and mixed yeah swirly yes swirly yeah and you were discussing this earlier but we do in the

brothel scene likely get that sylvanas sand reference because agan keeps saying that one of the sex workers is named sylvie or he says celci but the subtitles say salise so i mean like i i mix up my consonants as well my letters when i'm drunk and yeah she was named last week in the subtitles as well or as sylvan uh sylvie her name is sylvie madam sylvie give your uh give the full name you know but yeah in the books paramour of essie who bears gaiman pale hair but perhaps we do not have essie like i said i think it's gonna be diana i think that's gonna be the easiest way for them to actually take it out and she is um sylvanas and if that's who this is or sylvie she is she was also in the green council episode as well this is the same one that that's

where they were looking for aegon and she answered the door and was like oh i know your friend here because he's crying in my lap every day is she named as that also i guess so yeah because i thought it was um i recognize her i thought like he was referring to whoever he had like just opened the curtain on in that moment i might have mis that. Love that the small council is falling apart here as well as kind of the black council, almost guaranteeing that you're telling the king, don't take your dragon out. You shouldn't. Gee, do you think that that's going to sit well with him? Yeah, it's very like Robert Baratheon, right? Being like, don't do it. Yeah.

I'm going to do it. Especially because you told me I couldn't. I understand this feeling. All you have to do is say, bet you won't, and see what happens. Yeah, pretty much. I will say, get him, Jess, for a while. Those were some fun scenes.

I love that he's a sarcastic little asshole. Also, I think, i thought it was kind of funny that agan's like yeah first blood in our name nice right he doesn't say nice but he he feels that way yeah basically and i'm like bro no no that's bad that's bad you don't want that right like and it makes it clear that he doesn't actually care about the small folk he's like yeah the small folk are gonna win this for us and it's like you know that means like the blood part and i'm dying do you care about that no yeah because it turns out a lot of them died we saw it i saw it at the beginning of the episode you should have been there you should

have watched this see viewership viewer numbers are down agan's not watching oh my god agan's coronation had just thousands and thousands of people you wouldn't understand um i okay so back to like obviously generational war vengeance etc so like it ends up blurring together and the lines of who started it don't really matter that's you know we're gonna get to that but also i found it interesting because as a as a blackwoods fan house blackwood fan uh they were very aggressive in that battle and of course like obviously the brackens have been aggressive and taken their shit so like they're not gonna stand for that shit and points to be made as we'll get to with rainies but in my eyes it kind of actually seemed like the blackwoods started it

slash escalated this fight again no line because generational so i thought it was really interesting that like the very first one we see dead is the bracken character aaron bracken and that aegon is like aha we killed him when it's like but your side also lost to your point but your dude your guy the lord the sir of bracken died like no one won first of all everyone lost the usual but also just like to me i was like interesting the blackwoods actually were kind of the aggressors i agree i was i remember thinking oh that's kind of a nice touch in this scene that they made the brackens the more sympathetic ones because yeah i'm sorry but george does not portray them well i'm like they can't they can't like all just suck right like they can't just suck and so i like that they

did that and that it shows well i mean no one's truly good, right? You think that the Blackwoods, you know, the little kid Blackwood back then, that was bad too. He killed that man also. He killed that bracket also. Yeah. I mean, like the Blackwoods are not, they. I'm like, are they trying to tell us something about the Blackwoods? What do you mean?

What do you mean? Yeah. No, I agree that it does a good job of showing like, hey, no good guys, which I know is like kind of simplistic way of putting it, but that's essentially what they're doing, right? Mm-hmm. All must choose. The purple ketchup or the green ketchup. Also. Back to council also back to council back well no uh well kind of darren we got another darren mention he's alive more importantly um his dragon is mentioned in passing we don't get to sarian by name but more importantly like what he dies he

has a cool dragon i don't care uh yeah that connection with to sarian gets mentioned the dragon is almost a fighting age so setting up to sarian the blue queen yeah i will say that towards the end of the scene where where aeggen is getting his fitting I did like that there was this connection between him and Lares. I like that Agen acknowledged that he saw Lares and his talents and I think there's sort of a reflection there in that this is what Agen wanted to hear his whole life. Like I see you and your talents you have promise and I think Matthew Needham does a great job of delivering the way that Lares receives his compliment, right? It's a very earnest reception and a gratefulness

that he's been acknowledged and thanked and not like just being met with revulsion. Yeah, it's so easy to manipulate Aegon very lightly here for Lares because it's everything that he wanted to hear probably growing up. Yeah but at the same time like I think Larry's did what the rest of his small council couldn't which was which was do not do not go out there right do not verbal ketamine do not go get yourself killed and make yourself self-vulnerable like play a game of chess for once in your fucking life yeah subas but it's chess all right amand and agan i thought this was an exceptionally done scene i found it very fascinating there's some clear tension between aggen and Amon, reminiscent of Agen bullying him as a child and that generational, intergenerational trauma playing out. I mean, sexual trauma, too.

He was bullied by Agen already for pretty much everything in his life. already for pretty much everything in his life and now we get the bullying based on sex as well which he obviously has a normal relationship with sexual intercourse amand does very normal not at all related to his mother the look in his eyeball uh it's kin slaying time buddy oh he he gonna get your ass again what the fuck the barking in his ear and his face the entire time amon's face was just like anemone's face was just like stoic i also loved in the small council amon had kind of an obsession with the coin he was clicking it in between his fingers and you kind of pointed out that aegon has been ripping at his fingers like Alicent used to and like twiddling them and nipping at them out of guilt, out of anxiety, out of vengeance. And here Aemond is flipping the coin that he found in his chamber, signifying a few things, right?

Signifying Daemon coming close to kill him, to killing him. And of course, guilt at Jaehaerys' death, vengeance. He's flipping that coin back and forth, back and forth. So I thought that was interesting. Of course, you have the Targaryen coin flip as well. Yeah, and someone else pointed out the foreshadowing of his death, right, and the way that it was filmed. Last episode, covering his eye, which is what they do for the funeral rites

amongst amongst those who don't cremate bodies with dragon fire usually yeah yeah absolutely i loved even though amon didn't have a huge amount of lines this episode there were a lot of lines about him and a lot of scenes that were about him, like Alicent telling Rhaenyra, you know what Aemond is. And of course, Aegon's treatment here of him definitely seems to be setting up his protector of the realm plot. Yeah, yeah, I really like there's this very complex relationship going on between Aegon and Aemond in regards to they're connected, right, obviously, and they're on the same side of things they they were pretty okay with one another last episode Agen's even like my brother is welcome anywhere and then that tension with as as Dania pointed out earlier right like the the bullying

and I don't know how siblings work uh I did like that we saw this last episode as well but when he's in the brothel Eamon does not have his eye patch on and he was wearing it as you'll all remember in the small council meetings when Aegon discovers him the acting has Eamon like turning away in shame initially, right? And the side of his missing eye, it almost, it's like he, the action is concealing it, perhaps even subconsciously. And I like that detail because it's not necessarily the lack of clothing that is what is making him naked.

It is seeing his wounds, his eye, and bearing his wounds is what he does here at the brothel as we saw last episode, that's where he's truly feels vulnerable, not necessarily around being unclothed. Ah, his smiling. Yeah. He,

he's not smiling this episode. He, he wrote, I love you hot D's you're on. Uh, if they bake Agen in his armor, interesting. Do you think you can separate the armor and would it fit Amen?

Probably not. He's too lanky. Okay. I'm. How tall are either of them? I just assume that Ewan Mitchell is just replica of my roommate. Interesting. You know?

No, I think he's taller though. I think he's like 6'3 or some shit. He has, um, Ewan Mitchell is a very beautiful man. no i think he's taller though i think he's like six three or some shit he has um even mitchell is a very beautiful man is what i will say on the topic hold on i have a type i have a type hold on i'm checking something okay like a naked greek statue you know that's what i'm into there's such a range in the heights within their family so so I do wonder, like, where was... How tall was Aegon the Conqueror, right? Like, do we...

I don't know how adjusting armor that gets passed down works. Girl, he was probably 5'8 wearing platforms, and everybody just thought that he was, like, 6'7 or some shit, but it's all poppy. I don't know. Tom Clucarni's 5'8, so that actually checks out. I looked it up. wow well speaking of other members of the family helena and allison devastating stop saying you forgive your mother in front of the window you jump out of i'm in pain i'm in fucking pain at the same window that she once held you in front of the window you jump out of. I'm in pain. I'm in fucking pain. It's the same window that she once held you in front of on TV. On TV's Hot D season one.

Traumatized, you know my affinity for Helena. So I'm very sad because someday it will happen and things aren't going to get better for her. Something I was workshopping. I don't know if there's anything in this, so stay with me. But interesting, the comparison that she's making. I mean, I love everything she's saying about children and small folks, children probably dying more than royally born children, and that she doesn't have any right to grieve more than they do. And then also, um, comparing

it all to bugs, like, uh, again, stay with me. Workshopping. Bugs that are in cages, just like her, right? Caged in her tower. A bug's lifespan compared to a human's is fleeting. Yeah, that's true. The circle of life, et cetera, compared to everyone just dying in her life. you look at Helena and look at her relationship with bugs and her relationship with things around her and people around her um I can see a why she likes bugs more people suck and then be like the tapestry that she has to understand as a dreamer and accepting prophetic visions or

cryptic things that come to her and not necessarily always knowing what they mean, but knowing that it's like threads on a great tapestry that she's building in her mind. She has to like be able to just accept it. And sometimes in life, you have to be able to accept that kind of stuff. Like there's no reason why, I don't know, the gods decide to kill children or the gods decide to, well, there are some reasons, but you know, health and stuff like there just aren't like specific reasons. Sometimes you have to take the prophecy and move on. So I don't know, something about bugs with her feels real.

And I mean, she's got all those bugs decoration around her room. What you were saying about comparing her as a bug in a cage, I'm thinking of like you know the the bugs of specimens to be examined right in the way that she was examined last episode when put on display and in regards to grief i love allison telling her like yes you are privileged but that doesn't when you're grieving like that doesn't make your pain any less valid when you experience loss and i think that's an important thing for any of us to remember when it comes to whatever challenges or pain like it doesn't invalidate someone else's pain does not necessarily invalidate yours unless you are hurting them right like obviously that's fucked um and that helena is the one who actually cares about the small folk here

and i will say you know we're talking about bugs so I'm just like, we did Shrek last month. Should we do a Bugs' life as a Patreon episode this month? I mean, we've said it before, haven't we? This is just continuity. This is part of our threefold reveal for the Bugs' life episode. Oh my god. Workshopping that as well. Workshopping that as well. Yeah. I don't know you also think about bugs

with targaryens and you have like dragonflies are bugs those are insects right or maybe not insects whatever they are uh lizards baby lizards yeah insect lizards i'm not googling it so someone else can correct me i'm sure i'm sure you're frothing to do so. Birds? Yeah, miniature birds, like hummingbirds as weird cousins. I don't know, but I'm just thinking the Prince of Dragonflies later, and insects in the Targaryen line. Yeah, I like that. We've already discussed dragonflies having sex on this podcast, so.

It's been a while, though. But god, do they move those wings. It's so interesting. it's been a while though but god do they move those wings all right let's talk about alison rainiera alison and rainiera aka an episode of arrested development in which we have joe being like i've made a huge mistake alison bluth who's her mono Alicent Bluth. Who's Hermano? Hermano. The one thing I really took from this is how powerless they are sitting in this middle of a power vacuum, right, at the eye of the storm.

The machine is turning around them. Alicent has relied and established her power with the bloodthirsty men right and now she has no pull no leverage and each of her children are pretty much slipping from her grasp yeah yeah and not in a way like that rainier's children are kind of going away right because she kind of controlled that yeah alicent's children are right there but they're all pulling away from her emotionally kids actually liked her and she's the one ruining that renera's greatest internal struggle is kind of brought back up here too right of whether or not her father really wanted her to rule out of guilt or out of love right why

he made her the heir and kept her the heir and i thought that was interesting the tears in midrc's eyes they were killing it amazing um even if i didn't love the scene i had to like it on that alone yeah i think like what it established in regards to these character beats with Rhaenyra wondering about her father and also even out like you know Alicent and stuff right like

wondering and saying to like Rhaenyra like I swear to you on the memory of my mother and like which is interestingly what rainier said by the weirwood tree um in regards to saying like i did i did not sleep with that man with damon or whatever it was to allison it does pose an interesting question for allison's character as well of like is she going to double down on her mistake which it was a mistake not only to give herself power, right? Because she needs, the only way she has power now is through her son

who doesn't really want to give her any power at all. But also it gives meaning to her life for Agen to have been the heir, right? And beyond that, also this illusion of power, this illusion of agency in propping him up. Because even if she hadn't thought that Viserys wanted him to be heir like let's be real the greens were gonna put him up as heir anyway yeah because that's the default it's what everyone's expecting because the high towers want power yeah I want to read this interview from Geeta Patel it's something that I just when I read it I was glad because it's kind

of how I took the scene. Like, abstractly, for the whole of the plot, this is kind of what I thought, too. So I nailed it. I'm nailing it, is what I'm telling you. A plus in hot D. Every week, I'm so smart. It's great. It's so great having a big brain, you guys.

Gita said, The scene is all about the relationship between Rhaenyra and Alicent. It's Rhaenyra saying, You promised me you wouldn't turn on me, and Alicent wanting to tell her friend, I didn't mean to do that. This isn't my fault. I had every intention of making you queen. Later on in this interview, the question comes up of, Now that Alicent has learned of her grave error, how will she proceed? Alicent getting this new information

is an important moment that she will process in episodes to come. In the moment she stands by her argument and holds fast to it. I think it's quite human in that way. Sometimes someone tells us we're wrong and in the moment you think, no I'm not, then a day later you realize I was wrong. This is one of those human moments where the writers did a great job of allowing it to have the nuance we all understand. As for Rhaenyra, the knowledge that Alicent won't budge galvanizes her in the war effort going forward. When Rhaenyra came to King's Landing, she wanted Alicent to make a deal with her. The problem is she didn't offer Alicent anything. There was no collaboration, nothing that they did to work together.

So coming out of that scene, Rhaenyra's thinking's thinking I have no choice I must go to war with you I think that's where I would have loved to actually see that like some sort of negotiation taking place you know Rhaenyra and maybe that's what she wanted to do initially she wanted to come on business and say what can we do and Alicent negotiating maybe half and half and saying, you take from here to here and we take from here to here and I'll see if they'll go for it. And Alicent bringing it back to the council and Agen going, no, we're going to war, bitches.

Like real war. I would love to see something like that. I like the internal kind of like softer conversation and I definitely love that it came to the prophecy. I feel like we're gonna get that jayce scene soon it's coming i feel it i really feel it in my heart of hearts so lots to set up and i think overall it does still move the plot forward that there is no turning back there is no breaking down this and there's no like there's no way forward with that war yeah i i think it's

interesting what you said in the interview because i agree like i don't really see what they're saying of and it falls through because reyniera didn't really offer anything back like there was none of that i think in any of the dialogue that implies that, oh, that should have been offered. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't think like that that was written into the scene. So, but I agree with like all everything else. It makes me wonder if what we discussed with Hannah on Unleash the D might come to fruition with Eamon figuring it out, The prophecy. Or a version of it. Or his interpretation of it.

That would be interesting. He who has studied the sword and philosophy. I have studied the blade. My mans. I love that guy. I don't know what it is with me, but I'm a freak for Aemond. I want that on a t-shirt. Comic Sans font.

I'm a freak for Anemone Anemone Targaryen You know this scene did have some great nods to some big Aeswaf moments like sneaking Catelyn into King's Landing Oh that's interesting Yeah it is kind of like that

I was thinking like Cersei disguising herself to go meet with Jaime her lover and I was like oh Cersei disguising herself to go meet with Jaime, her lover. Right? And I was like, oh, that's what they're doing here. But also, of course, you know, Rhaenyra sneaking out last season as a child. Oh, even Cersei and Ned too, meeting in the Godswood in a way. That's true. For their negotiation, everything did not go according to Keikaku. Very lucky to get out alive, that's for you mean rei nera yeah too yeah too lucky not mad that bitch dead i mean he's in a pigeon

somewhere so not even born right now so no worries uh i do like that the episode ends the music has i'm not really great at analyzing the music of things, but I like that it had some vocals, which I feel like they tend to include these vocal elements for music that's about Rhaenyra. Yeah, her theme has the vocalization in it. The ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, they have a new one.

Yeah, and the drumming as well. So I think that was great that it was kind of put into it. I would have loved just a little more tension there too you know like a little more finality maybe is what i was missing in the scene i like that she seems a little content though she's like my dad did love me congrats only child reyniera just like us for. I do feel like at the very end of the season, if we do get Rhaenyra triumphant, I think

that I will feel differently about this scene. Kind of like the Green Council, like how I didn't like it as much when we watched it the first time, and now I'm like, actually, I love that episode. What the fuck? So, I think on a whole, especially if we get Rhaenyra triumphant, I can see, especially if we have Alicent yielding to Rhaenyra, etc.

I can see. I could see. So Rhaenyra is still going to be on Dragonstone, though, for quite a bit. I don't know, at least a couple episodes. Getting Dragonstoned. Yeah. getting dragon stoned but i i had a random thought about last episode because we're still seeing like the aftermath of damon leaving and the fight of let rainier and damon had so that rift that's between them and you know the dead kid come with me robert baratheon and ned stark fighting over

the deaths of the targaryen children and then having a falling out and then Ned Stark also being like this isn't what we were supposed to do this isn't what we were fighting for why did you condone this Robert and how the Lannisters for this act get elevated not like the individual people but like the Lannisters get elevated for Gregor Clegane gets you know a bunch of glories still and Amory Lorch and then people aren't punished for this crime yeah that's great i love it damon is just like robert baratheon and raniera is ned stark that's what eliana's saying wow is that what i said i didn't know that that was what i said but very interesting wait it works because allison de cercercy, like we just did there.

We did that little exercise. There you go. There you go. We've done it. No, I do think that's it because I think that's like the whole theme over the whole story. Like dead kids, dead people. Is that what your kingdom should be just to win? Question mark.

Yeah. And Rhaenyra's like, I don't know. No, I think. think of alaria sand right yeah when does it end from the show in the books in a feast for crows by the way everyone very different people which is what this episode was adapted off of a feast for crows based purely on the rain. That's all I had. Kind of. We'll come to that too

in just a quick minute here when we get down there. We're getting closer to drift mark. We're drifting closer, but first Rhaenyra and Rhaenys. The discussion they have right after the Battle of the Burning Mill. All this over the dead bodies of Aeric and Aric.

Very sad. There's even a comment from jace young jace i gotta talk about that boy he's starting to get a little attitude getting a little vengeance hungry i don't know like a little fed up and wanting to go to action he made a comment about how aric you know was fucking up that he shouldn't have been betraying Rhaenyra. And she's like, well, yeah, but it's a complicated situation, Jace. Very interesting. I love that we have the whole conversation about public perception, right? Rhaenys is saying no one cares who cast the first stone. Eventually no one remembers why they're all fighting.

All this over the dead bodies of brothers. Two brothers that loved each other passionately, yet they murdered each other. Yeah, it is. Seems impossible. It is really sad. And as Rainier said, it's true. It is a little more complicated than that. She had to watch them fucking like skewer each other and, you know, themselves.

She was pretty horrified when all that happened. Understandably so. There's a nod to the back and forth between the different source material and when people like to the back and forth between the different source material and when people like to the source material of Fire and Blood people being like well some people say that the first act of war is this or some people say this happened some people say this happened and Rainey's being like people will disagree on when the war actually happened and I like that. It feels very you know thing that George would enjoy and there's also the like I don't know they've described this

season prior to it airing as like the drumbeat up to war but you know with the exception of the first season of Game of Thrones where they didn't have the budget to like show that war they were discussing with Tyrion I think that they are doing something good here by not showing the battle of the burning mill because like Rhaenys again being like well they'll disagree on when the war truly started but i'm like i don't know y'all there was like a full-on battle i feel like the war started like it's happening it's fucking happening that's proper now and i like that the show is examining those other aspects of war not just the glory of it which i think game of thrones ended up kind of leaning into especially in later seasons like i know that the battle of the bastards theoretically shows that it's gritty and

bloody and terrible and not glamorous but I'm like is that what they showed based on I don't know its reception later on and how you know you were talking about this earlier right like that the burning mill is about destruction kids not just like the royal babies dying but you know look at all these other these other kids dying because they're much younger than me so they're kids it's the broken man you know i mean it's sandor clegane it's you're raised and you have nothing else you can do except become a soldier become this like servant to bloodshed like that's what this is that's what all of it is it's a war story it's a horror story it's the horror of war and what it does to the people yeah what it does

to the people what it does to yourself right like as we'll see with damon yes losing his marbles amon still got a marble it's in his eye It's in his eye. Thanks for listening to Girl's Guide, Kenneth. Chloe died because that was just so funny. Love the Mazaria and Rhaenyra conversation and can absolutely see the subtle ways that they're working to understand each other, as well as the subtle ways that Laeries's and misaria are learning to manipulate their rulers i can absolutely see the path ahead for misaria she kind of plays it a little bit as you mentioned offline we kind of chatted she starts to play with it and starts to kind of push her

boundaries of what kind of queen is rener? What way is she going to move forward? Where Rhaenys has been carefully watching her politically in council, in private, Mysaria now is going to be watching her and see what ways she can softly push the buttons and what sets Rhaenyra off, as well as how we see Laerys and Aegon juxtaposed, right? That Laerys very softly, gently is suggesting things that Aegon is able to kind of take and

consider and use. That is interesting. They're appealing to the kind of ruler each wants to be. Larry's being like, you want to be strong ruler, right? Strong man. And Nazari's like, you want to be a good person, right? Like that seems to be like what you want to be. So don't want to murder these people and even the way that she comes to her and says when reneara says what would you do and she says well i would make the high towers suffer yeah for what they've done to me and my people as in the small folk uh which we know she's team small folk so i'm sure that can change on a dime yeah and miseria also being like you want to reward me right like i would assume that you would want to do that i will say in their exchange later on i

mean like miseria obviously you know she's not like anti-killing people as we know right she's not like she's not like on the straight and narrow path to goodness she's she's got a little edge to her and i do like her saying about alice it'd be like killing her would be easier as opposed to like sneaking all the way in there just to fucking talk to her she's like i would have just killed her instead of trying to make peace yeah yeah i i also like this line where she goes well if you want to disguise yourself um you know she goes most folk pay no mind to a woman who is not dressed as a queen or a lord herself to the eyes of men i like the addition of the part afterwards right in discussing the male gaze right and how women women who aren't performing within the bounds of patriarchal society get to go about unnoticed

and that that in and of itself is a form of power but then you also have the this other aspect of like the trappings of power right a woman who has not dressed herself as queen won't be noticed and that makes sense in an episode that is discussing like remember the crown that that rainier is wearing which is the crown of jaharis right what does that mean in regards to power and then the armor and crown of agon the conqueror being on agon the second and you know we also have like these public displays of power versus the privacy of the discussion of prophecy and inheritance with Alicent. I would argue, as I want to do. You know I love to argue.

Sometimes I just can't help it. Yeah, I mean, I do too. Sometimes I just have a big mouth. That's what's good about us. We're different. Like, Bela and Reina, we're different people. Oh, which one is which? We'll come back to that.

But, yeah, I would i would say though interesting that that line is written and said and then in the same episode you have diana who is not really dressed for the male gaze she's just in her serving outfit getting her ass hit by men yeah i mean i think mizaria went about like her business which is the same industry um differently so yeah lots of approaches i'm just saying interesting i guess it's different for queens is all i mean that sucks right like i think there's an aspect of it in terms of queenship where do people like you less as queen people will like you less as queen inherently because you are queen right within the bounds of that patriarchal society and so you have to perform you have to

perform power and violence and action you have to look powerful by wearing the things that are associated with it in terms of riches but also at the same time you have to be fuckable right because if you're not fuckable no one wants the unfuckable leader for some reason when you're a woman so i know that's why i make sure i'm so good looking you are good looking too good looking too good looking thank you that's why we don't show our faces on this podcast you know that's why we're a podcast faces made for radio. I'm just kidding. Very sexy woman. Wow.

Exactly how I feel about this. That should be our new tagline. We could say that before, but yeah. Merchandise. Yeah. I love also that kind of feeling that, you know,

you can solve something diplomatically, but also knowing it's not possible, right? Because here she is fighting her small council, similar to this conversation, right? Outside of this, she has the intimate aside with Mazaria, but then when she's with her small council, it's obvious they don't respect her as a woman, as a ruler. She thinks that there's a diplomatic way to solve the overall situation by seeing alicent but everyone at the council is like there's no diplomacy we need to fucking burn shit and she has to kind of have a balance and you see that even though she believes that there's a diplomatic way forward she still sends her children to the veil and then to essos right because she knows that they're not safe even if she thinks there could be a smidgen of a diplomatic way forward.

It's very sad that she has to compromise immediately. She'll never see Viserys again. Wow. Well, at least Viserys didn't have to watch his mom get chomped. Oh my god. But also like- Am I wrong? Her father's namesake.

And now she has all these doubts about her dad. And is like, oh no, I think my dad still loved me, but what? What? Wow. Yeah. Just really emotional shit right there. A gut punch. And also wanted to call out the dead laner potentiality.

I think they're going to have to give us a bigger reveal. I think Rhaenyra has to admit to herself that he's gone. dead laner potentiality i think they're gonna have to give us a bigger reveal i think raniera has to admit to herself that he's gone and that's why sea smoke is lonely and crying in the sky and i think that's part of it too that raniera feels so much guilt and so sad and so stressed from all of this that she can't really admit it yet and that would be sad too right like she did it so that laner could live and he could live a life that he wanted but for her to find out i mean like they they were good friends they really were they were great roommates actual roommates basically

and even lmao and even like that your best laid plans slash eggs go to shit you know like i do not mind if they have the laner dying thing come up here because a he does in the book anyways at least he got to live life is always like living like actually living and being yourself and following your dreams and goals is always worth it in comparison to dying i think i don't know there's just something in it that's very sad like of her having to actually admit he's gone and it's her fault. And that's going to keep happening to her. And it might not. I mean, is it her fault?

Is it not? But she might take on that blame. That's how she'll feel. Yeah, that's how she's going to feel about it. She's lost so many people already, too. Like her daughter, her dad, her son. Can't do one more right now, dude. Her Kingsguard, two of them in a way as well right in front of her

and then laner like and then her husband's wilding out a lot of stuff going on yeah that's for sure uh i will say i mean yeah and then also she's losing in a way her two her two youngest sons because she sent them away for their safety three actually but you know right when you're reminiscing about her sons as she holds their toys like i think it's a great follow-up to last episode where she was handing it to them and i don't know maybe a little bit of a juxtaposition because one of those is toys right is a dragon and uh something you called out to me about the trailer for next episode yeah alicent it looks like is running her finger over a dragon figure and it looks like maybe the dragon figure that she fixed for viserys

cry interesting also this episode helena was wearing a necklace that alicent wore in season one which i thought was cool it's a much better way to go a mom hand it down much better mom hand me down than when your dad's like go wear your mom's dress and try to seduce the king like oh god fuck jesus fuck all right speaking of sad farewell sisters i was very moved i was very emotional by the twins and their farewell especially for poor reina uh so let's start with some positives here with bayla before i get sad about reina moon dancer oh my god girl you know i was going off did you like feel my happiness across the country were you like somewhere chloe's happy yes i did i did and also i mean the music went so great with it too oh yeah she got that danny song that danny so good it was just yeah i was absolutely content with moon dancer and i loved the look uh ryan condell said that they wanted Moondancer to be kind of

punk rock kind of like David Bowie with the tiger stripes and the green and the the mohawk and I think that is so rock and roll that is so cool and it's perfect for Moondancer and for Bela Bela the brave Bela the daring on her very nimble dragon um I always saw Moondancer as like kind of more cellulose and a little more saturated in color, which is one thing I just think is overall for the dragons they haven't really imbibed in the color as much. They aren't

quite as vibrant. Xerax is pretty vibrant. Looks like Sunfire's going to be gorgeous, but we just haven't seen a lot of the vibrancy otherwise. So that's fine. I still really love the way they went with Moondancer. Very cool. My beloved. Oh, I'm so happy about that. wise so that's fine i still really love the way they went with moon dancer very cool my beloved oh i'm so happy about that that was exciting to see on the tv like could you have imagined telling me in 2014 15 you're gonna see this dragon that's been named in one text and you were like what

the dragon i'm upset that My emotional support, one sentence dragon? What? Ace Woff Gurley is in the 20 teens, man. Had it bad. Had it bad. The Vale kind of seems like a pit stop. Yeah. Like, they're still going to go to Essos, and that sounds like, you know, maybe that trip will be bad. I could imagine that she's going to return to Dragonstone perhaps at some point.

I'm curious because in the actual story, you know, she has a really expansive story in Fire and Blood. You have kind of the sudden parentification of Reyna. There's sadness in her getting sent away to take care of these three children and also that she's being pushed to the table as a child herself to do this because she can't do other things or be useful in the war effort like the pain that she once already felt as a child being dragonless and feeling useless and used and interesting to kind of juxtapose this against Amon, right? Who had, has a dragon finally, but also had that similar pain before that. If you can't be a dragon rider, you should be bearing children. If you can't bear children,

you should be watching the children. Uh, that that's kind of the rule for Raina. And she is the hope for their future. Rhaenyra calls her, you is the hope for their future reneara calls her you're the hope for the future with these eggs taking our future with you but also she is the hope for the future like she marries she marries a lot of people and she actually is kind of the reason the line like she marries oh sorry it's corwin corbre she marries corwin corbre later on in life she ends up marrying into the Hightower line. Wild. And ends up having children. That's wild. So that's how

I mean, you know, people look at Jahira and Agen as a natural stopping point to say, oh, we did it. We fixed the blacks and the greens and all of the drama between them. But no, obviously, Jahira passes away. Rip. Unwin peak when I get my hands on you motherfucker and

i swear to god biggest loser in westeros history but reina's the one that goes on to kind of peacefully seal the deal so kind of devastating that she's getting all this put on her plate so young and so fast before she can even really get full characterization poor fucker yeah it is really unfair to reina and i think that the they're doing a good job of slowly showing that reynera isn't all good like for her to put the responsibilities that she has on her stepdaughters right she's asking bella hey go do this thing because I'm unwilling to put my son's life at risk. So why don't you go do this really life risky thing in his place? And then Reina, why don't you go take care of my kids and secure their safety at your expense? Like both of these are pretty shitty things to do to your stepdaughters. And, you know, I think Belalla they're doing a great job of showing that yeah

they're twins but they're very separate characters because bella i think is taken aback by this but at the same time feels a little bit of pride in that and that has to do with being a dragon rider whereas reina as we see is has a much more, I think, fraught relationship with her stepmother and feels at odds. And, you know, as opposed to like, I don't know what Reina's relationship is like with Damon, but clearly Bela has a complex one with her father. So. Yeah, I'd be really curious to see if we get some good scenes in season two of Her in the

Veil with Ladyane speaking about damon right at all uh speaking about raniera yeah that'd be interesting hope so well let's head to drift mark where i'm gonna get mad all over again first of all no don't die you're so sexy haha rainies actually it's just obviously the ramp up to rainies's death is real it's here and it's totally crazy because in our discord we were all chatting about what might happen between them before the death and i had said that i'm wondering if they're going to bring up bella as the heir and And instead they actually brought up Raina. And the argument that was going on was, is Rhaeny's going to die knowing about Alan and Adam?

And I don't think she will. And I think this showed us that too, which makes it that much sadder. In book, I mean, Corlys is one of the biggest reasons that Rhaenyra kind of abandons her actual cause and what it stands for, right. His sexism and holding onto that institutionalized sexism,

uh, will be the end of Rhaenyra and the disrespect. Like these are Lena's daughters, like Lena's daughters, and they are dragon riders and they are. Yeah. I was like, one of them is. One is a dragon rider. One will be.

One will be. Sorry. One will be. But Bela is a dragon rider. Reyna is exceptional. You know, Rhaeny says, I bid her farewell, and he's like, oh, good luck to her. I wouldn't do that shit. Well, he calls it going into exile.

Like, not a care in his goddamn old ass man heart. He makes me so mad. Yeah. And he's all like, she doesn't know anything about ships. I'm like, well, I feel like you had a lot of time to have her learn how to do that. She's been on ships before. How else do you think she got to and from the free cities? First of all.

And neither did Luke. Yeah. How did, how is anyone going gonna learn if you don't teach him and luke straight up at the funeral was reluctant because he was like i don't know anything about ships and here corliss is saying reina doesn't know anything about ships she's blood she she's your blood he's clearly reluctant to to put i mean even Joffrey, right. As the air. And cause Joffrey doesn't either. So he clearly wants it to be Alan or Adam. And I,

part of me now that I'm talking through this and realizing this has to do with the main series as well. This has to do with the, the main like five books and the discussion of how a bastard son might have a stronger claim than a true born daughter and see that both in winterfell and in uh king's landing when it comes to the way that john could be weaponized against Daenerys or like Aegon and, you know, Jon and Sansa, etc. Yeah, absolutely. The precedent setting for when we get Daenerys coming to Westeros and Sansa coming home.

And Catelyn's anxieties about all that. And I see it now. I guess, I think, I don't know. I mean, this is what birthed the Blackfires. The Blackfires wouldn't have happened had the dance not happened first. Yeah, I mean, like, right. That's another question as well around all of that and even what flows through the female line, right? Like with Dana the Defiant.

And I don't know. Also, George loves his little stories over and over again his little microcosms he really does because like i mean even the way that corley's was approaching this and being cagey about the inheritance like reminds me a little bit of actually jaharis and allison discussing and allison's like so denarius is the heir right because they had a first child their eldest child was a daughter named Daenerys who died of the shivers. And Alicent was like, so she's the heir. And Daenerys is like, yeah, she and Aemon, their eldest son, the second child, will inherit together.

And she's like, yeah, but like, why do you keep saying it like that? Well, and to the point that I don't think she was given a dragon egg either at birth. Rhaena or Daenerys? No, Daenerys. She wasn't because of the practice. Well, no. She might have been because the practice starts with Rhaena. That's true.

The other Rhaena. Jaehaerys' older sister. Yeah, no. I'm not explaining to you. I'm explaining to the listeners. To the general listening to us. There's more than one Rhaena that we're discussing right now. We're talking about Rhaena Targaryen, the older sister of Jaehaerys,

and therefore one of the great, great, great aunts of current Rhaena. I might have thrown in too many greats in there, but it's a wreath. It's interesting because Corlys straight up, he's always hesitant when it comes to Rhaenyra. And Rhaenys has been Rhaenyra's number one cheerleader, especially to him. So with her gone, it's, I mean, him becoming Hand of the King is probably soon. And that's kind of the only way to keep him. Yeah, it is.

And it's, I mean, as you said earlier, right? Like, the way that he's going about this sets the precedent for him later being like, I don't know, Rhaenyra, you can't change the succession for all of the houses, even though, like, it could win her several houses. But he's like, you can't do that because you can't let daughters inherit before, like, sons, just because even if they're older because that'll like fuck it all off but i don't know it's literally just like the student debt student loan debt conversation states yeah and he's like you're a one-off exception but they've been waiting their whole lives anyway um i will say i liked the blocking of how they directed the Corlys and Rhaenys scene. As they're speaking to one another, there's like a beam that they're reaching around, and it symbolizes that there is something between them.

And there are a lot of things between them. There's the question of succession. There's that question around power and the throne, right? That's been there all these years. There's the one about Marilda that R that rainies doesn't know is between them but is and i don't know i i like that i like that they had it underneath the rain it does a great job of creating this sense of intimacy for for them and despite how they're disagreeing they it creates a place for just this couple right in their own little world in this one place of

shelter that they create with one another despite those disagreements and then it transforms from that into a scene of loneliness as corley's leaves and then you got you got rainies just out there staying in the rain by herself and it's also raining in the riverlands because and that's why i said they didn't just give us a feast for crows, but a storm of swords. Yeah, he's giving all of Aeswaf to us all the time. And something that was even more devastating about the scene is that it was so intimate. The brushing of a hand over the face as he fed her some of the lunch that she brought him. She brought him lunch down to his ship where he works

right like like this is something they do all the time that she'll she brought him some hot broth and some food and they have a laugh and um it's very normal it's very much like a married couple interaction they've been married for so long this is so normal to them and that makes it even sadder that it's ruined that the moment is just shattered between them and just lonely and sad and isolated and maybe that'll be the last time we see them speak together like this before she goes that is really sad that it might be the the last thing the last emotional moments they have together maybe it'll be like them fighting over whether or not she should go to rook's rest because i think that they've had a lot of conflict in their marriage but clearly they're able to

reconcile it with one another and that's that's real you're married to someone long enough you're gonna have conflict and it's whether or not you can resolve it or not it's not always perfect absolutely but if you're gonna live together and be together and live in the same world together you have to find a way that works which i guess is like the bigger story of westeros right and not die on we should be in love with our kingdom that too step one don't die i love in the house the dragon built they talked about how it was not supposed to be a rainy scene yeah it's just it was raining that day so theneta Patel was like, put the rain on full blast. And they're like, what?

Okay. So they turned the rain machines on and she's like, I want Bollywood 10. I love that. I was dying. And they even describe it, right? Rainy, Eve Best even is like, yeah, it felt like a monsoon. I was like, well. I love that because then as we move over here to Heron Hall and the Riverlands and the Crownlands,

Matt Smith said that he much prefers getting wet to being hot. So interesting. Implying like he's always hot, which that makes sense. He's always in like crazy outfits. But he was like, he was like, I loved it. I love getting wet. Oh, Matt Smith. Very funny. Yeah. They had hilarious footage of him being like, oof, o I loved it. I love getting wet. Oh, Matt Smith. Very funny.

They had hilarious footage of him being like, with like the water. Yeah. He was having a blast. He must just be a blast to shoot. It's giving Tom Holland doing umbrella. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Yes.

Yes. Very bold, but I liked it it you're nothing if not bold so obviously i knew this was heron hall but i was like with some people and i love to second guess myself i'm never like completely sure about myself but then when those bats flew i was like it's heron hall i know it's heron hall because oh that's yeah in that moment, I was like... You were home. You were absolutely home. That's House Lost In and House Went reference with those bats. And we talk about it more in our Heron Hall episode. Our Heron Hall Patreon episode.

Yes, the house that went away. Yes. It was our House Went episode, really, I guess. But whatever, you know, it was also a Harrenhal episode. It's a blast. And to be fair, it's all the houses that went away because they don't last long here. The Strongs are not there forever. Amazing, haunting.

I loved this so much it was uh just the audio design and the visual design impeccable like a horror movie intense the whole time i mean all the weird woods the like roots running through the entire place and it just felt dark and chilling i mean hell i thought when he got to the council room, you'd open up the door and it'd just be skeletons sitting there. Like, what? There are people here? It was very vacant. I thought that the people in the room were going to be like a hallucination.

I thought it was going to be some fucking, like, The Shining thing, right? But they're actually there. They're really there. And Damon- That moment came later. Damon walking through here and all though, it was strangely the relatable moment for me as I do my Elden Ring playthrough.

Everyone, I'm Elden Ring killed right now. And yeah, let's talk about that shining scene. Yes, I love walking in on young Rhaenyra, sewing up Jaehaerys' head to his body. Millie Alcock, the person that you are to me it was amazing and if you it's really easy to miss but you can hear her call his name in the halls at one point that was very wild and creepy saying damon uh and i knew i knew it was her in that moment i was like no way it was very cool they got her back for this she's wearing the dress and the necklace that he gave her really illustrating

the age that she is stuck in in his memory and of course then the guilt we see tears in his eyes even his sword clatters to the floor when he sees what she's doing and she tells him cleaning up your mess again um it very all of his guilt compounding it's very interesting very well done uh matt smith could act anything you give him like toilet paper with a few lines written on it and he he'd knock it out of the park so never never expect less from him but he he exceeded expectations. Yeah, I love what you said there about what it was instilling in this guilt in Damon, because it shows that he does care. You know, the characters, they're complex. He's not a good guy.

He's clearly a bad guy, but it's complex. And also that this is Viserys's room, I believe, right? Where this scene is taking place. So it's interesting in that it's complex. And also that this is Viserys' room, I believe, right? Where this scene is taking place. So it's interesting in that it's young Millie, but the implications around, you know, would they have been sharing this room in his fantasy as them as king and queen? Because that's where Viserys used to do his little fireside chats with Alicent. It could have been us. Yeah. it could have been us yeah and just that it is based in the grooming that he did of her and of her like exactly what she was just telling him when they fought like you didn't care like

when i was a girl like you were reckless with me you were reckless with her is really what it was he was he was reckless with her and that he does feel was. He was. He was reckless with her. And that he does feel that guilt and that he knows what he did was wrong. I think that against Kristen this episode and in the last couple episodes, he and Kristen have had some really great parallels going on just in their guilt and what they're doing and their toxicity and their self-destruction that they both participate in. They do like to do that. I thought it was a really great scene. Yeah, they do. They love that shit. Yeah, it was a good scene.

Plus with the other creepy stuff afterwards. Yes. And going backwards, you know, when he first gets there and he goes to the lords, he makes the river lords call him king because he likes the way it sounds. I love that. Taking that power where he can get it, feeling powerless. And the fact that, I mean, what does he say? Simon Strong goes, I would have thought, after he calls him the prince,

because, you know, Rhaenyra is the queen and Daemon cuts him off with a look. Another classic case of Da Damon not saying anything, but because of who he is, his stature, his looks or cuts away, you know what he said. Yeah. Simon Strong is saying,

I would have thought that his consort, because you know, feminist King Simon Strong. Exactly. It was Simon, though. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Feminist King Simon Strong. He's out here being like, I don't know. I think you're just the prince, right? That's's how it works she's the one who has the power i'm not gonna assume it's just you because uh just because you have a dick so anyway i will say uh that scene though because he like falters and calls him my prince which to be fair to simon he has had years of calling someone my prince right i? I would get stuck in that.

And I just don't think I could survive talking to nobles. I would use the wrong honorific constantly. I would not remember, like, oh, it's changed now. Like, your grace. You would have been Carax's food. You would have been fed to that noodle boy immediately. I'd be free from this podcast. Yield podcast. You would. I would be free from this podcast yield podcast you would i would be free from this

podcast i'd be dead till death do us part bitch yeah i do feel that way about us sometimes we're gonna be the skeletons in this room wonderful Wonderful. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm all up in this, in this bitch. I liked the way that it was lined up that the camera focused on Alice Rivers when Simon Strong is pledging to Rhaenyra first of her name. I'm sorry. Alice Rivers. Yeah. Feminist King.

Castellan. Feminist Lord. Castellan. Dead. Chop her right off. Off with her head. And she is the only one that doesn't kneel. Oh.

I thought that was kind of interesting, that everyone else is kneeling, and even though she's walking in late, she just stands there and stares. She's team green ketchup. I love her dress, too. Oh my gosh. She's team green ketchup. Get Shrek'd, episode 70. Alice's dress is great.

There's this really great, deep, heavy brocade. It's this dreamy navy color. And it has kind of some similarities to Catelyn's dresses in the draping in some aspects. Like the neck is heavy and it's kind of like an outer dress that closes similar to Catalan's, but it has a collar. So it's just slightly different and not quite as rich as you'd imagine because Alice Rivers, not, you know, not Catalan, totally of the Riverlands.

But really like that. I like getting to see some, some Riverlands fashion looking slightly different from what we're seeing yeah and i also like that kind of visual parallel with damon at the round table and then alicent and raniera in the round candlelit sect area yeah good call yeah absolutely they've got the that going on And those negotiations, I guess, to an extent. Both doing negotiating. In regards to some of that visual design around Harrenhal,

they really built it out. Love to see it come to life. And it does feel very haunted. Could believe haunted. And in fact, it seems a little bit like that. And there was something that they said in the house the dragons built that intrigued me because I didn't notice it and it's not something that I necessarily got from the text of any of the books they were talking about the idea of Harrenhal

being reclaimed by the old god so they have like roots and stuff winding through the castle. I love that though. I think it's so well adapted visually with that in mind, right? Because you think about Heron had just finished chopping down all the Weirwoods to build his castle and build the beams in the castle. And then Agen came and literally like the next day and huffed and puffed and blew that motherfucker down. So when you think about it that way, yeah, the old gods are not happy with all of their trees being chopped down in the region.

You're right. I have never thought of hair in the black as the three little pigs, but it is that story. Holy shit. Aegon's conquest is literally the wolf from Three little pigs well i'm gonna have to think about that a little um oh no oh no the dragon must have three pigs so it's a little dumb don't say that around amand jesus there's this moment where damon is like i don't understand why the blackwoods and the brackens were fighting and the like the strongs have to explain it to him and i'm like that's kind of dumb obviously damon would have known that but they did it for the story exposition for the viewers

i just chalk it up to him being full of himself i guess but i just feel like it's something everyone knows he's too busy with his internal familial conflict to care about their familial conflict is the whole thing. He's like, I have Targaryens to kill, so. Yeah. Well, that brings us, we saved the worst for last. You know what? I liked him a little bit this week. Not him himself necessarily or who he is as a character.

Sir Christian Cope. Yeah. Sir Christian Cope this week was interesting. Yeah. Yeah. week not him himself necessarily or who he is as a character story sir christian cope yeah sir christian cope this week was uh interesting yeah yeah i mean he they're doing some interesting stuff with him i did really love that they added that sort of like i don't know molding whatever onto his armor of the hands and that it looks like a chain of hands which is what tyrian wore when he was a hand in a clash of kings not in the show they they kept the whole pin thing right but i thought it was a good costume problem solving as well because obviously even though the pin gets tossed to kristin's feet you can't fucking pin a pin on metal that's not how it works you know his sexy little hand of the king choker

yeah it's a choker yeah very sexy very sexy christian pope uh not with that haircut though wait why didn't they show us him getting a haircut that's such bad writing the haircut does look better on him than it did on jace, though. The way that they, the length that they gave it. At least there's that. Yeah, it's like the Cersei wig. The Cersei wig and the Rhaegar wig. They got tossed around to every single person. Now we have the Jace wig.

It is kind of a fuckboy haircut, though. I will say. I mean. Oh, it's a total fuckboy haircut. His previous haircut was also a fuckboy haircut. It reminds me of this guy in like the perfect match on netflix which some of our listeners are also watching and do not like that guy either so wow not sir christian cope on your new show oh my god i liked that we had earlier the dornish man in the tavern

drinking with oaf the white and then honestly the way that Gwaine Hightower which love Gwaine love him so much loved him in the great if you haven't all watched the great you need to watch the great he's the Swedish king he's amazing and he brings similar energy here he's such a fucking blast so the Dornish man in the brothel and then almost what feels kind of kind of xenophobic maybe since dorn's not really technically a part of westeros right they're very separate but the behavior and gwen kind of looking down upon kristin i almost called him christian called looking down on kristin and kind of being like, I don't understand how you got this far all of a sudden. What do you mean how you got this far?

Oh, from small means, you know, feels a little targeted. I don't know. And it is a part of his character that they aren't being, they aren't talking about it a lot right like we we learned he's Dornish in the first season and then Rhaenyra makes him part of the Kingsguard and that's pretty much all we hear about so applying what we know about him that's been part of his climb to power right like showing up as technically foreign to this country and them looking at him as an outsider and him being able to be capable of that. And of course the enmity between the reach and Dorne that has stretched for many, many, many, many years. This is not new. It's interesting to finally see some of that play up when we have the Black

Woods and Brackens as a backdrop and now Hightowers against Dornish. Yeah. I think it's a combination of that. And and where he came from class-wise as well, right? Because the Hightowers are such a lofty family. But both Rhaenyra's and Aegon II's DEI initiatives really helped advance Kirsten Cole. I'm joking. I'm joking. But what you're saying about the xenophobia that he's facing as a Dornishman, especially in this position as both the Lord Commander and as a Hand, reminds me, like, we do have a precedent for that with Rigo Droz, right?

Who is the Master of Coin for Jaehaerys. And he was from the Free Cities. He was from Pentos. And he faced a lot of xenophobia from that right like people were real fucking mean to him and then we also actually see this again during the reign of agan the third and the way that people treat lysine spring yeah the lysine spring so i think it's interesting establishment yeah and it's good that they're actually giving a little bit of thought to that. Then I love how they flip it, right? That the Hightowers are the literal green

men in this situation. Their generation hasn't had to fight dragons. They haven't had to really go to war. These are all young men, just like Corlys and Rhaenys set up, talking in Season 1, Episode 1, talking now, this season, about young men going to war.

And we actually get to see what Kristen is good at. His battle prowess, right? He might not be good at queen mothers. He might not be good at understanding teenage kings, queens, princes, princesses. But he does somewhat get warfare. And he does somehow understand dragons a little bit after being around them the past 20 years that's a great point i love what you said i like how the the play on them being green green knights and great job thank you i'm very clever sometimes yeah not often but sometimes many times

she's beautiful and she's clever just that if you take anything away from this podcast um Clever. Just that if you take anything away from this podcast. Are you flirting with me? We're bound for life already. So yeah, he's not good at a lot of things. I don't know. He might be good at going down. I'm sure. And yeah, that's a great point that he is really skilled at these things, which makes him good as a military commander. He also has that experience, which is why Rainier hired him. And like, I don't know, we were discussing last episode, Kristen Cole's many job titles, which again, we've covered in like our Kingsguard episodes over on Patreon. And I'm only really now internalizing how conflicting his roles are because it isn't

uncommon for a Lord Commander to act as a general right like that fucking makes sense we see that happen a lot throughout the history of Westeros and it is uncommon but not unprecedented for a lord commander to be a hand of the king like Jaehaerys has done this he made uh Ser Ryan Redwyne a hand of his after Sep and Barth. And, you know, that was one of the worst rebound in the history of rebounds. As they described him, they were like, some problems cannot be solved by hitting them with a stick. And soon after they were like, yeah, his grace had no choice but to remove Sarai after only a year in office. And then that's when Balin becomes Hand and I just think there's a conflict of interest when your Lord Commander is Hand and is acting as a general because like yeah sometimes the Hand goes on business trips on behalf of the King as

we see with Otto going to Dragonstone last season but if Kristen Cole is gone for an extended amount of time fighting the war, then who is who's doing the ruling in King's Landing, right? Like or supporting the ruling, advising the king, not that Kristen's necessarily good at any of these, right? Just like the absence, someone's not in the role as Hand, someone's not acting as Hand, who does most of the day to day stuff or supports the king and being able to do that right like they distribute responsibilities so not not the best idea during wartime especially spreading yourself very thin they don't have they don't have remote work they don't have the internet

to just communicate be like i don't know agan i think you should do this and i love that contrast between you have newly green men on the field with kristen cole leading them and then you have newly green kingsguard members right in the castle and they're not being led whatsoever they're blindly just following the king around and watching him as he drinks and fucks and does whatever he wants to do. Yeah, and then I think that'll have implications, right, for the main books, right, where Barristan is the hand. He doesn't have the same hot-bloodedness, likely,

as Ryan Redwine or Kristen Cole. Might be spread thin. Okay, last thing. I've been thinking about it for like an hour since we got on together, and it came too late after we had already finished. But I wanted to bring something up. You know when Helena's talking about like poor babes are just so small, like they can get easily taken? Okay.

Is she seeing Mailer's death? Interesting. Ripped apart limb by limb. She could be seeing mailer's death and is she justifying like it to herself that like it's okay that this one's dead because they all die ha they all die she could be seeing mailer's death she could also be seeing the deaths of i mean joffrey jay oh taken so easily aegon and viserys getting taken i mean them Oh, taken so easily. Jace. Aegon and Viserys getting taken. I mean. Them getting kidnapped, taken so easily. All of them.

Yeah, pretty much. Taken. The SS gay abandoned. Doot doot. Someone send Liam Neeson in there. You have my sons. Rhaenyra Neeson's. Uh, okay.

Good. Glad you came with me for that last one. Yeah. She's like, I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. She's like, why should I feel bad? Rainier's going to lose all her fucking kids.

La la la. Back to my bugs. I mean, except for one of them. I'm stressed. Who just gets to watch her die. Yeah. And he's not traumatized by it at all. He grows up.

He... I really want the egg in the third adaptation give me more on the egg in the third's reign that's all I would like to close my thoughts with a tweet from Poison S Art and it's titled Renaissance Season 4

and it's got a graphic with a photo of Rhaenyra superimposed over the tweet from another tweet that says not now kitten daddy is well daddy has been sentenced to death what i i'm sorry i don't think i understand nor can i like visualize this did you can you please send it not now kitten daddy is well daddy has been sentenced to death. Okay. I will be putting the link to this in the episode for everyone to see. But right now, for Eliana's live action... All right.

Here it is, Eliana. Please select the tweet, open it. Oh my gosh. So I implore you all to open it. You deserve to laugh after a tense episode full of stuff happening. There's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot happening.

I'm looking forward to the next few episodes. And, you know, the chances of, I don't even remember who we were talking about earlier. One in five for. One in five. Same. I just know. We do math every episode. Do you notice this i we have to stop what did i say at the beginning of this eliana where where can they find all right social media

where can they find it you maybe y'all should remember this you can find us on twitter.com slash girls gone canon c-a-n-o-n and, if you get us emails fast enough, or I mean, we might double back to them later on in next week's episode, you can email us at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. You can also check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon. If you check that out, you'll get some early access. Sign up to be a member in any of the tiers and you'll get early access to all these episodes. We'd love to have you and love to have you in the Stranger tier

where you can learn about getting Shrek'd or even the Thunder tier where you can attend brunch and happy hour and hang out in the Discord. The world's your oyster. Get on there. You might even get a bug's life. Who knows?

If you're not getting it enough in the episodes yeah as always yeah i have been one of your hosts chloe and i have been another one of your hosts eliana goodbye killing her would be easier kissing her would be easier goodbye bye