Community for fans of the HBO show and Game of Thrones prequel: House of the Dragon.
The show follows George R Martin's "Dance of the Dragons" story, which has been outlined in various books including The World of Ice and Fire, and Fire and Blood. The main plot focuses on a brutal Targaryen civil war, and is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones.
Season 1 of the show started airing in August 2022, and consisted of 10 episodes released weekly.
Season 2 will begin in Summer of 2024, and will consist of 8 episodes. Showrunner Ryan Condal returns for Season 2, after the departing of Miguel Sapochnik.
Put yourself in Rhaenyra’s shoes: All she knows is Daemon has fucked off to god knows where and she cannot win the war without more dragons. You make good points, though. It’s a hail mary for sure.
She doesn't actually need them to fight, it's about who had the most nukes (dragons).
At the end of the last episode Ulf lured Aemond out of King's Landing and to Dragonstone where Aemond immediately noticed new dragons and smartly retreated. That's a potential 6 v 1 battle (Syrax, Vermax, Moondancer, Seasmoke, Silverwing, & Vermithor), plus Daemon is a wildcard.
Vhagar is strong, but 6 v 1? That's a risk. Even if the riders are inexperienced (and die), those dragons are fighters.
And what backup does he have? Sunfire is nearly dead. His old town brother/dragon are far away. That leaves Dreamfyre, and something tells me Helaena isn't much of a fighter.
Arguably this puts them in a stalemate position. More accurately however it means no one gets to use a dragon. This is great for Rhaneyra who is winning the war of propaganda and smallfolk. She can afford to wait it out.
I agree that this is also a risky move. However at the moment all these new dragonriders need to do is stay at Dragonstone. That's a pretty safe prospect at the moment, so staying loyal is easy at the moment. I expect that might change before/during/after next episode since war changes things.
At least with Seasmoke and Adam she checked his intentions and he swore fealty. For the small folk from kings landing she gave a pretty good inspirational speech which dropped a "some of your may die" before yoloing to the dragon mount. I hope on the retrospective they discuss wether some sort of triage system might of led to better outcomes.
if she doesn't have a plan in place to have them all killed or separated from their dragons when she's done using them, she's a fool.
The whole strategy seems deeply flawed.
Because it is. Jace said it best if any lowborn bastard(s) can claim a dragon, how can he (and by what right) sit the Iron Throne after Rhaneyra is dead. This is desperate hour for Rhaneyra.