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Does Rhaenyra Targaryen know that Laenor Velaryon faked her death and is still alive?
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Does Rhaenyra Targaryen know that Laenor Velaryon faked her death and is still alive?

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The following story contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 7 of Dragon House, “Drift mark.”

Dragon House, so far in its first season, has been fraught with intrigue, alliances and politics, and – apart from a dialogue-free triumph scene of about 10 minutes for Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) – light on real war, fighter and violences.

For some (myself included), that’s fine; you can get those other things in other fantasy series. What is the game of thrones the world brings the human dynamic of something like Succession in a fantasy world. We know what Kendall Roy and Connor Roy look like when they’re in modern New York City, but let’s see how these two-step thinkers’ schemes play out when dragons, blood covenants and murder are involved. .

Episode 7, titled “Driftmark”, featured key roles for both Dragon HouseThe main puppeteers of: Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) and Larys Strong (Matthew Needham). And yet, by the end of the episode, neither was involved in what has become the show’s biggest, most involved, and most important power play: faking the death of a key player. of Westeros – Laenor Velaryan (John MacMillan) – to bring about a major shift in power in favor of Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy).

Wait, did you say fake death? Yes, it’s true – and in case you missed it while watching “Driftmark”, don’t worry. We have the breakdown here.

Is Laenor Velaryon still alive?

HBO

As the end of “Driftmark” made abundantly clear, Laenor Velaryon made not die. Instead, he was instead seen in a boat with his fellow knight and lover Ser Qarl, rowing, presumably to the places across the Narrow Sea where Daemon earlier told Qarl that “no matter what that a man’s name possesses – only how much gold he possesses.”

You see, there was a bit of trickery going on at that point between Daemon and Qarl – at first it seems like the “gold” of this idea was what caught his eye. But it was really the idea that the name was nothing. Daemon sold Qarl on the idea of ​​a life of wealth and anonymity – something Laenor probably wasn’t too hard to convince either.

Rhaenyra and Daemon both know that Laenor is alive and have faked her death.

demon raenyra

HBO

The end of the episode is cut in a very, very, very intriguing and clever way; we see a conversation between Daemon and Rhaenyra where they both clearly understand that a war with “the Greens” – meaning the Hightowers and those aligned with them – is brewing with the inevitable death of King Viserys (Paddy Considine). And their best way to tackle this growing house, which has now gained the power of a dragon after that little brat Aemond basically swapped his eye for Laena’s old dragon Vhagar, is to combine the power Targaryen.

And that power can be cemented if Daemon (now wifeless) and Rhaenyra join forces and marry. Yes, they are uncle and niece. Yes, that’s rude. We recognize it, and yet we have to move on.

But Daemon and Rhaenyra can’t get married while Laenor is still in the picture. And so despite his recent promise not to get back to the Stepstones, and to hang out and be a good husband and father – or, at least, as good as he can be – our Targaryen couple hatch a plan to remove him from that picture. And while the belief is that they’ll get him killed, the real plan is revealed at the end: they need Rhaenyra to be feared. They need whispers that she did kill her husband. And so they need people to honestly and truly believe that it happened, but also in a way that it can never be proven that she was involved.

And that’s how their plan – to burn a body so badly and pretend it was Laenor, with an unbiased witness who can say Qarl was speaking vitriolic to his friend – came into action. Lord Corlys (Steve Toussaint) and Rhaenys (Eve Best) have no Actually lose their last child, but they really believe they did. And Demon and Rhaenyra can now marry, greatly strengthening their house.

That much, Dragon House portrayed Rhaenyra as benevolent despite her position of power; he’s not someone who would kill a nice person like Laenor just for his own political gain. She is someone who is cunning and resourceful and would find a way to make things better for both of them.

It’s also a good character-building moment for Daemon, who a few episodes ago literally did to see an honest person (his first wife) killed for his own political gain. We’re not about to let him off the hook, but he’s clearly becoming a real player in this power struggle, rather than the brash troll he’s been for most of the season. 1.

The events of Laenor’s death unfold differently in George R. R. Martin’sFire & Blood.

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In Fire & Blood—which is George RR Martin’s book telling the story of Westeros on which Dragon House is based – Laenor doesn’t get such a happy ending. In this story, Ser Qarl Is killing Laenor at a fair in Spicetown, claiming the two men had a falling out, with some believing that Qarl had become jealous of Laenor falling in love with a new, younger soldier in their ranks. Mushroom, an unreliable storyteller and historian within Westeros, claimed that Qarl killed Laenor in Daemon’s name.

It should also be considered, however, that since Fire & Blood is basically a history textbook on Westeros, that’s how the events we’ve seen unfold in the series would have be registered. If Qarl and Laenor were involved in a scheme where the latter faked his death, only those in the know would know. So in a way, that’s exactly how the events of Dragon House would be recorded.

Well done, Mr. Martin.

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