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House of The Dragon Episode 4: Summary and review of House of the Dragon 1×04 “King of the Narrow Sea”, written by Ira Parker and directed by Clare Kilner. Premiere on HBO Max on September 12.
The house of the dragon continues its course! HBO Max premieres the fourth episode of the Game of Thrones prequel in which the main premise continues to be developed: the complicated situation facing the inheritance of the throne after the reign of Viserys.
From this point on, you will find spoilers for House of the Dragon 1×04 “King of the Narrow Sea” (“King of the Narrow Sea”), written by Ira Parker and directed by Clare Kilner.
Summary The house of the dragon 1×04
Rhanerya continues to search for a worthy suitor: an old man and a boy heir to the Blackwoods arrive for her. They make fun of her claims to protect her since she has dragons and even kill her for defending her honor.
She escapes from there and sets sail for Dragonstone, when her ship is pushed by Daemon’s dragon. Caraxes gives him a low pass before reaching the castle.
The entire court, including King Viserys, his hand, and Rhaenyra, prepare to greet Daemon, who appears defiant and wearing the crown of King of the Narrow Sea. However, she bows to him and offers it to him. Viserys asks Daemon to get up, takes the crown and they hug.
Rhaenyra congratulates Daemon on his victory. Alicent tells Rhaenyra that he is glad he is with her, that he has few friends because all they see of her is a queen. They seem to resume their friendship in a certain way, although she will soon be put to the test again.
Daemon and Rhaenyra discuss her marriage policy: he sees it as a compromise and encourages her to marry her by telling her that once she is married she can do whatever she wants. She tells him that for a woman it’s like a death sentence
The heiress to the throne tells him that his wife has been lucky because she has not conceived a child; he believes that she could not have thrived in such a hostile environment. Rhaenyra tells him that her mother dedicated her life to producing an heir until it ended up killing her.
Daemon reminds her that this was a fatality and that she cannot live in fear, or she will miss out on the best of life. But she refutes that she does not want to live in fear, but in loneliness.
The Hand of the King, Otto Hightower, warns Viserys that leadership of the Stepstones has passed from the Benefactor of Crabs to the Sea Serpent, Lord Corlys Velaryon, in retaliation for Lady Alicent being chosen over Lady Lena and that he would be in negotiations with the lord of the sea of Bravos, who plans to marry his daughter Lena to his son.
If House Velaryon entered into such an alliance with the Free Cities, they would have to rethink his strategy, as Otto warns Viserys.
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Rhaenyra finds a blueprint of her room with a secret passageway and follows it in tattered clothing into the catacombs. There she meets Daemon and they both sneak out of the castle to walk the crowded streets.
They go to a theater where court life is enacted, making fun of the Targaryen family drama and Rhaenyra’s choice as heir.
Meanwhile, Viserys continues to be treated for the wounds that the throne causes him. Already at dawn he requires the presence of his wife to have sex, something that obviously she doesn’t enjoy one bit.
Daemon leads Rhaenyra to a brothel and seduces her by telling her of her desire and that relationships should be pleasurable, but after kissing passionately and initiating intimate contact, he stops and leaves.
Criston Cole, who stands guard at Rhaenyra’s door, sees her arrive disguised as her and worries about her, who removes her helmet and flirts with him. He kisses her, removes her armor and they lie on her.
A boy informs Otto Hightower of the princess’s escape and her troubling extramural activities.
Daemon, after a night out, is in the care of his second wife, who takes care of him and summons him to pay for the room before leaving.
Otto goes to see Viserys to tell him that Rhaenyra was spied on and found in a “pleasure house” with her uncle, with whom he behaved inappropriately for a lady of her lineage. Otto tells him that they were seen copulating together. Viserys takes this for a lie and questions the source of the rumour, but Otto is adamant in defending the source of it and that he has never failed him.
Viserys is very offended and considers it to be a ploy by him to discredit his family. Alicent listens to everything behind a screen, but she doesn’t say anything.
In the morning, Criston brings a message from the queen to Rhaenyra, who meets her to ask about what happened to her uncle. She asks him directly if she had sex with him. Rhaenyra considers that, as a princess, questioning her virtue is an act of treason.
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Alicent wants to help her and she tells her her version: that they drank a lot and he took her to a show where she was only a spectator. That she later left her to go off with a harlot and that she never got to touch her… she comes to swear to the memory of her mother. Alicent tells her that she has been insane to put herself in a position where her virtue could be questioned.
Daemon shows up at the castle still drunk and is led before Viserys. Lying on the ground, the king kicks him, beside himself. He considers it a pest. Daemon proposes to him to marry Rhaenyra following the customs of her house to achieve her glory but he tells him to return to his loyal wife and leave forever, that he doesn’t care about her fate.
Alicent asks her husband if he has spoken to Rhaenyra and tells her that he believes her, that Daemon often doesn’t tell the whole truth about her. When the two meet they have a tense scuffle over the responsibilities of reigning.
Rhaenyra sees a dagger warming in the fire and Viserys tells her that it was Aegon the Conqueror’s and before that it is hard to tell, but that the last of the Valyrian pyromancers carved his song on it: “From my blood comes the prince that was promised. And his will be the song of ice and fire.”
Viserys explains to Rhaenyra that his responsibility goes beyond the throne, that she and her desires. She tells him that she has exposed herself and that she was born a woman and must fulfill her duty without batting an eyelid. She charges at Otto, whom she considers a vulture who only thinks of his interests.
Viserys goes to question him and throws in his face how he rose: that it didn’t take long for him to have a lucky break and perpetuate himself once Jaehaerys lay dead. Viserys tells her that he will never recover from the death of his first wife and that it is now clear to him that although Alicent has been with him through the hardest part of her mourning, it was a calculated distraction.
The king is clear that his interests are no longer aligned with those of the crown and that his judgment is compromised. Otto defends himself by telling him that a loyal king’s hand has to tell him the truth, unpleasant as it is or he will have failed in his task. Viserys removes her position and tells her that she can no longer trust him.
Rhaenyra receives a potion from the Grand Master: she is understood to prevent unintended consequences of her escape, ergo to prevent her from becoming pregnant.
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When timing is a problem (fat)
The dragon house stops for a long time in certain passages and passes over others at breakneck speed. It also takes a lot of information for granted. Those who haven’t read “Fire and Blood” may find the chronological jumps a bit confusing.
As an explanatory note, the war that is dispatched with a couple of action sequences in the third episode lasts for years and it is not easy to defeat the Triarchy and Craghas Drahar, a leader nicknamed the Benefactor of crabs for his habit of feeding them with the bodies of his enemies.
After this deed, Daemon Targaryen proclaimed himself King of the Stone Steps and the Narrow Sea, being crowned by Lord Corlys Velaryon and exercising his mandate in Stoneblood for two years before returning to court to ingratiate himself with his brother.
Of the famous incestuous encounter between uncle and niece, there is no confirmation by the chronicle, so that the series treats it with the same ambiguity: there is a spark between them, there is an occasion for the encounter to take place and the images are not nothing clear, they leave it to the viewer’s imagination.
Be that as it may, this fourth episode is quite unbalanced and also draws on some resources that we had already seen in the mother series with better fortune, such as the theatrical representation of the problems of the court.
The action is missing, a further development of the relationship between Rhaenyra and Daemon and a little more claw… The series is only tempered when the prophecy of the “promised prince” is named and it hides some passages that would have been fantastic to contemplate like the dragon rides that Daemon as a rider of Caraxes and Rhaenyra on Syrax used to enjoy.
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The dragon house seems to be very constrained and not put all the meat on the spit. It manifests more editing and script problems than production design problems, given that the presentation of information is far from ideal and there is a certain reluctance to develop complex sequences. We will keep reporting!
ASSESSMENT: In line with the previous episode, the plot of The House of the Dragon continues to progress very slowly. Daemon steals the show with each new appearance and is the big engine of the series, with Matt Smith eating the rest of the cast with potatoes.
THE BEST: The hooks with the mythology of the saga, like the famous dagger of the inscription.
THE WORST: It is a completely monothematic episode, some action is missing.