“What have you done? Jace. Jace! What have you done? How could you? How could you do this to me? Answer me!”
Like the bereaved King David crying “O Absalom, my son!” repeatedly in his despair, Queen Rhaenyra is facing a grief so total that her brain short-circuits and runs on a loop. As she looks at the corpse of her son and heir, Jacaerys, all she can do is upbraid him over and over, like the disappointed parent she is. But disappointment doesn’t come near to what she’s feeling. Devastation is more like it.
Rhaenyra is bedridden with sorrow when her husband, Prince Daemon, returns from the Riverlands after hearing the news. To him, she spells out the grim absurdity of her situation: “The boys who clung to me, who hid their little faces in my skirts, dead, so that I may sit upon a throne of swords?” She has lost two sons, Luke and Jace, to her cause. To fight on seems pointless.
“Will you let them die in vain?” Daemon responds.
I reviewed tonight’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)
Tags: fantasy, George R.R. Martin, house of the dragon, new york times, TV, TV reviews