S1·E6 — The Princess and the Queen
The hour retold
The show jumps a decade and recasts its leads, and the gap does exactly what it should: the friends are now entrenched enemies, and no one can quite remember a time before the war of whispers. Rhaenyra births her third son and carries him, still bloody, the length of the castle because the queen commanded a look — and the look is the point, because every one of the princess's Velaryon sons has brown hair and a common face, and the court has a name ready for the father. Alicent stops whispering it and starts saying it, and the cold war becomes a campaign of small, deniable cuts.
Grief and calculation braid together across the hour. In Pentos, Laena Velaryon's second labor fails the way Aemma's did, and she refuses the ending on offer — walking to Vhagar and commanding her own pyre rather than dying in a bed. In King's Landing, Larys Strong solves his queen's problems and his own ambitions in one fire, burning his father the Hand and his brother Harwin alive at Harrenhal so that a debt is created that only he can be paid for. Rhaenyra, finally seeing the court for the machine it has become, gathers her family and removes them to Dragonstone — a retreat that reads, correctly, as a mustering.
What happens
- Ten years pass. Rhaenyra births her third son, Joffrey — and carries him, still bloody, across the castle because the queen commanded a look at him.
- Every Velaryon prince has brown hair and a plain face; the court whispers Harwin Strong, and Alicent says it out loud.
- Ser Harwin breaks his fist on Ser Criston's face defending his... the princess's sons, and is dismissed from the Watch to Harrenhal.
- In Pentos, Laena Velaryon's second labor goes the way of Aemma's — she walks to Vhagar instead and commands her own pyre: 'Dracarys.'
- Larys Strong arranges a fire at Harrenhal: his father the Hand and his brother Harwin burn, and no one owes him anything he can't collect.
- Rhaenyra sees the court for what it is and removes her family to Dragonstone.
The people of the episode
Rhaenyra Targaryen — Offers the queen a marriage pact for peace; gets a decade of cold war instead.
Alicent Hightower — Done being patient. The green council starts here, in a decade of small cuts.
Daemon Targaryen — A husband and father in Pentos, almost at peace — until the pyre.
Laena Velaryon — Chooses a dragonrider's death over a mother's.
Harwin Strong — Breaker of Bones, breaker of secrets — his sons will never bear his name.
Larys Strong — Burns his own house to buy a queen's debt.The fallen — spoilers
- Laena Velaryon — Rider of Vhagar. Dying of childbed, she walked to her dragon and gave the command herself: Dracarys.
- Lord Lyonel Strong — Hand of the King, burned in his bed at Harrenhal by his younger son's design.
- Ser Harwin Strong — Breakbones — the strongest knight in the realm, and true father of Rhaenyra's boys, dead in the same fire.