Warning: Full spoilers follow for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 7.
Ever since we met Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and her brother Viserys (Harry Lloyd) on Game of Thrones, there was one thing that the show established: Long ago, Targaryens were Dragon Lords and it was their royal, often incestuous, bloodline that allowed them — and ultimately Daenerys — to bond with dragons and rule Westeros. House of the Dragon has given us a deeper insight into the period when the Targaryens ruled with their dragons alongside them, but in Episode 7, the penultimate hour of Season 2, we learned a shocking secret that will likely play a part in their downfall: normal people – small folk – and bastards can ride dragons too.
The episode begins as Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) faces down with the newly crowned dragon rider Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty) against the dramatic backdrop of a barren beach. It’s a huge moment for both characters, as for Rhaenyra it means her plan to find dragonriders for Vermithor and Silverwing is working, and for Addam it’s a ticket out of the shipwright business and right into the royal fray – not to mention its fateful and sure-to-be violent outcome. We know that Addam is Corlys’ (Steve Toussaint) bastard son meaning he would have dragon’s blood in his veins. Rhaenyra doesn’t know that, which inspires her to call for the small folk who believe they have dragon blood. Here’s where our two other dragon riders or dragon seeds — as bastard rides are called in the series — come in.
We’ve been following the journeys of both Ulf the White (Tom Bennett) and Hugh the Hammer (Kieran Bew) throughout Season 2 and it’s all led to this. Both end up bonding with dragons, Silverwing and Vermithor, respectively, which along with Adam on Seasmoke means the Targaryens now have seven dragons on their side. That means the season finale next week will likely center on Rhaenyra and her new army of dragonriders taking on Aemond and Vhagar — while Heleana did bond with Dreamfire we’ve never seen her actually ride her as an adult — to try to grasp power in King’s Landing. But while that’s a positive for now, as Jace (Harry Collett) pointed out, in the long term this could be a massive problem for the family and their right to rule.
“Like their dragons, the Targaryens answer to neither gods nor men.”
Targaryen right to rule is basically based on the notion that they can control and tame dragons. As a result, the fear they instill in other high families as well as the small folk is immense, but this season of House of the Dragon has slowly seen that chipped away. Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) made the mistake of parading a dead dragon’ head through the streets outside the Red Keep, which took away some of the mystique and power of the beasts, reminding the small folk that they could actually kill them. Then there’s the fact that Rhaenyra’s bastard children — that everyone knows she sired with Harwin Strong — have already claimed dragons. Now that she’s opened the door to the dragonseeds, the Targaryen right to rule looks extremely diluted and, as Jace points out, could easily lead to him losing his claim to the throne. If other people have dragons, what’s to stop them from attempting to take the throne from him?
Interestingly, the character that usually represents this aspect of the lore is nowhere to be seen. Nettles is a George R.R. Martin fan-fave creation who in the books is a young orphan woman who manages to tame a dragon named Sheepstealer, and while there is a reading of Fire & Blood that she might have been the bastard child of Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), it’s generally accepted that Nettles was a unique rider because she didn’t have Targaryen blood.
We got another tease in Episode 7 that Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) will be the one to tame Sheepstealer, as she’s been following the burnt corpses of sheep across the Vale where we know that rumblings of a wild dragon have been happening for a while. That seems to confirm that Needles as we know her likely won’t appear on the show, but seeing as this series is rewriting history, it could be that those who “wrote it” in Fire & Blood didn’t know Rhaena was Nettles. Perhaps it will be an alter ego she takes on, seeing as claiming the dragon without Rhaenyra’s consent could seem like she’s disobeying her. That would take away some of the impact of the Nettles character, as her appeal was that she didn’t have royal blood, but they could always explore that through Hugh or Ulf if it’s revealed one of them doesn’t have dragon blood but was still able to bond with the massive creatures.
Almost all of this is part of the lore of Fire & Blood, so book readers may not be too surprised, but to those of us who have only watched the show, it’s a massive change from the general idea that only true Targaryens can ride dragons. And it’ll likely play a large part in Season 3 as more of the world and small folk realize that they too might be able to bond with the magical creatures, and when they do they might start thinking they don’t have to live under the Targaryen boot anymore. But we’ll have to wait for the finale and Season 3 to see how that goes.
Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.
