S2·E3 — The Burning Mill
The hour retold
The war stops being a matter of dragons and courts and becomes, for an hour, a matter of old grudges wearing new crowns. In the riverlands the Blackwoods and Brackens turn a quarrel of stones into the Battle of the Burning Mill, and the show is careful to note that the first real bloodshed of the Dance is fought over dragons by boys who have none — nine hundred years of neighborly hatred finally given a banner to march under. Daemon flies Caraxes to Harrenhal and takes the greatest castle in Westeros without a blow, Ser Simon Strong yielding it with supper, but the castle will prove a harder thing to hold than to enter.
The hour's heart is a conversation almost no one else knows happened. Rhaenyra slips into King's Landing in a septa's robes and asks Alicent, face to face in the sept, whether the war is truly past stopping. It is — and the tragedy the scene reveals is that Alicent now knows the truth: the dying Viserys was murmuring of a prophecy, the prince that was promised, and never named her Aegon at all. She hears the misunderstanding for what it was, far too late to unmake it, and lets the war continue anyway, because too many people have died already for the truth to be worth anything but more grief.
What happens
- The riverlands catch first: Blackwood boys and Bracken boys turn a quarrel of stones into the Battle of the Burning Mill — fields of dead over old grudges wearing new crowns.
- Daemon flies Caraxes to Harrenhal and takes the greatest castle in Westeros without a blow; Ser Simon Strong yields it with supper.
- Criston Cole marches out with the green host, bending black-sworn Rosby and Stokeworth into line — and Baela hunts him from dragonback.
- Rhaenyra slips into King's Landing in a septa's robes to ask Alicent, face to face, if war is truly past stopping. It is.
- Alicent knows the truth now — 'the prince that was promised' was never her Aegon — and lets the war continue anyway.
The people of the episode
Daemon Targaryen — Wins Harrenhal with a landing, then starts losing to the castle itself.
Rhaenyra Targaryen — Risks everything on one last conversation in the sept. It buys nothing.
Criston Cole — The Hand marches — a kingmaker learning what kings cost.
Alicent Hightower — Hears the dead king's words rightly at last, and swallows them.
Baela Targaryen — Moondancer's rider shadows the green host from the clouds.
Willem Blackwood — Kneels to Daemon for leave to settle nine hundred years of Bracken scores.The fallen — spoilers
- The sons of Raventree and Stone Hedge — Blackwood and Bracken dead heaped around a burned mill on the Red Fork — the first battle of the Dance, fought over dragons by boys without any.