House of the Dragon - Episode 1x06 - The Princess and the Queen - Review

In House of the Dragon's best outing yet, its most significant time skip helps reframe its core characters and their relationships - except when it doesn't.

In my review of Episode 3, I reflected on House of the Dragon's biggest problem: How to pace the time skips. I worried that the periods lost between episodes would be forgotten in unchanging character dynamics and narrative tensions, or else be emphasized with little context and development onscreen. 

This episode, in jumping ahead so many years, the writers could not rely on freezing the characters in amber, meaning a lot of work went toward convincing us to buy that a decade had past (work that I wish the show had invested in its smaller time jumps too). As many of the core characters changed actors - Rhaenyra and Alicent, though Laena and Laenor too - the writing and performances imbued the weight of ten years (and an octet of children) into the ways these old friends related to each other. Alicent's anger and Rhaenyra's frustration; Rhaenyra and Laenor's partnership (and compromises); the balance of power shifting between Viserys and Alicent - these were not new ways of engaging, but felt like old and lived in patterns.

In retrospect, the first five episodes served as more of a prologue than anything.* In particular, I was struck by how much this episode, my favourite so far, felt like a season premiere or even a series pilot. Despite the cast literally doubling, the episode gave most characters more room to breathe than usual. Not all were well served by the skip (see below), but for the most part, I was extremely pleased with how distinct each character felt - including the children, who were kind of weirdly compelling: Bug Princess, New Joffrey, The Dragon(less) Prince, Twins With One Dragon (and One Dead Mom T_T), and Three Probably Bastards (one of whom is actually named Joffrey).

That's Prince Little Shit to you, my lord

However, despite how much I enjoyed this episode, some character writing suffered significantly - especially for Laena Valeryon and Harwin Strong. 

Hi, I'm the third actress to play Laena Valeryon, a fully fleshed ou-
Oh, I am dead

We barely spent any time with Laena Valeryon before The Princess and the Queen. Sure, we saw a plucky little girl who would rather talk about dragons than marry an older man (her discussion with Viserys about Vhagar was the only real setup / foreshadowing we get here). And I guess she flirted a tiny bit with Daemon at Laenor and Rhaenyra's wedding. But is that enough to justify marrying the Bad Man and taming the oldest and mightiest dragon offscreen?

Instead, we returned to the theme of childbirth as a woman's battlefield; ironic here, given that Laena is a dragonrider and fully capable of fighting any kind of battle. Frustratingly, we have spent almost no time with Laena or really any of the Valeryons. Laena got a lot more focus this episode than she ever has before, and it was excellent, and yet it felt in some ways like it was all about Daemon.

Aemma's death (and Viserys' death sentence) is explicitly contrasted with what appears to be Daemon's (offscreen) decision to do the exact opposite (maybe). The supposedly good man did the bad thing and the bad man did the good thing! Complex! Morally Gray! Except it all comes down to the show yet again using women's bodies to make a broader political point. If we had spent more time with Laena, maybe we would have felt this death and its weight more meaningfully; Nanna Blondell certainly gave a fantastic performance in the little space she was give. Instead, the show's narrative pacing challenges caught up to its Big Themes in the worst possible way. Sure, she got her dragonrider's fridging death (and Sad Old Dragon was also pretty affecting), but at what cost? Narrative propulsion? Daemon's development?

And I made a different decision than Viserys (Re: medieval C-Sections), so even though I murdered my first wife, please remember that actually I am very nice!

Some of this was out of the hands of the showrunners. They are following GRRM's text extremely faithfully (any significant deviation could have problematic ripple effects on any future spinoff set between HotD and GoT) and Laena was always going to die. To their credit, they changed how Laena died by giving her more agency (demanding death by fire rather than collapsing after a stillbirth). But the decision to move the timeline ahead this quickly, propelling us toward some plot point that the showrunner's felt absolutely had to end the season, meant losing out on character development. Why not give us a full season of the younger versions before this time jump?** Rhaenyra and Laena became close friends before her death in the book. Maybe we will see some of that in future episodes, at a funeral (if the show has time for a funeral), but it won't land without the setup. The incessant churning toward key plot points - in an episode named after Alicent and Rhaenyra alone - means that Laena never really got to become someone more fully sketched out. 

I for one wanted way more Laena Valeryon.

TFW you are a TikTok thirst trap but now also you are dead

Finally, like Laena, we were given a few very specific scenes of Harwin "Breakbones" Strong in relation to Rhaenyra. He liked how she hunted boar and came back bloodied. He caught her sneaking off with Daemon and seemed game to play along. And, most importantly (according to HotD TikTok), he threw her across his shoulders as he saved her from a wedding riot. He seemed fun! But then his brother (who at least also seems interesting) had to go and murder his whole family. And so, Harwin Strong was also, in a way, fridged (there's a very bad 'song of ice and fire' pun in there somewhere).

I'm looking forward to more of this show, and this was the best time jump, but there are some decisions being made that are not my favourite.

*A part of me wonders if HotD could have eschewed the narrative trappings of its predecessor by leaning into more complex storytelling across time. Game of Thrones' structure was complex given its constantly shifting locations and a gigantic, disconnected ensemble. House of the Dragon has instead focused narrowly on just a few places. Ultimately, I wonder if the narrative would have been better served by seeding the shifting motivations and childhood traumas as flashbacks throughout - to help us connect more with different versions of each character. Give us expansiveness across time, if not space!

**The answer probably has something to do with HBO's corporate expectations and ratings.

I missed last week's review (Episode 1x05, We Light The Way) as my television writing time went toward a bit of a dream of mine - a professional TV writing opportunity! I contributed to a dialogue-style review of the new Quantum Leap over on Myles McNutt's Episodic Medium. Please check it out; I'm enormously proud: Episodic Dialogue: Fall Pilots 2022 - NBC's Quantum Leap. I'm considering reviewing Quantum Leap weekly, on this blog, so watch this space!