Daemon Targaryen is a hard man. He has left a trail of dead enemies across the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and done it with a smirk on his face. His preferred tactic of negotiation is “take it or leave it.” It is exceedingly rare for him to display any negative emotion at all that doesn’t end in violence or its implied threat.

It’s with this Daemon in mind that we watch him encounter his daughter Rhaena in the wilds of the Vale. Daemon’s dragon, Caraxes, leads him right to the cave where Rhaena’s own dragon, Sheepstealer, has made its lair. Sheepstealer’s disastrous rampage through the Battle of the Gullet helped drive Queen Rhaenyra’s son Jace to his death, and she wants its rider brought to justice. Now Daemon knows the horrible truth: To avenge Rhaenyra’s child, he would have to sacrifice his own.

“No,” he gasps, doubling over. The reaction staggered me nearly as much as the revelation staggers the Rogue Prince. He has displayed a devil-may-care attitude all season long, but it turns out the devil does care after all. 

I reviewed this week’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

The oldest continuously running A Song of Ice and Fire podcast on the seven internets is back with another weekly installment on House of the Dragon. We disagree more than usual this week! It’s behind our Patreon paywall, so subscribe to listen!

The composer Ramin Djawadi has been working in Westeros since 2011. First on “Game of Thrones” and now on “House of the Dragon” — which now uses a souped-up version of its predecessor’s famously rousing opening theme — Djawadi has crafted hours of music tailored to the setting’s many disparate cultures, characters, environments and emotions. His work so far this season bears special attention: He has given each of the three episodes its own sonic signature.

In the season premiere, a low, threatening synth line conveyed the horror-movie horror of the Battle of the Gullet. In the second episode, insistent strings built in a swirling crescendo that never seemed to resolve, adding tension and dread to the fall of King’s Landing to Rhaenyra’s invading dragons.

Now Rhaenyra sits on the Iron Throne, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms … and her sonic signature is a repeated, percussive, distracting sound, an ominous bong halfway between a bell being struck and someone punching the strings of a piano. In this episode it can be heard again and again, when Rhaenyra is faced with an insurmountable challenge, an unexpected obstacle or a reminder of the fragility of her rule.

As if to reinforce that this “music” represents the tumult in her head, at several points we see that Rhaenyra is straight-up hearing things. Murmurs, whispers, the roar of a distant crowd or the low voices of a nearby one — these, too, provide an auditory window into the mind of the Black Queen. She even has a full-blown hallucination of her dead son Jacaerys, bong included.

… Is that good?

I reviewed last night’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

Stefan and I are back with another look at HotD — subscriber-only this season, so you know what to do!

“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!)

House of the Dragon is back and you’d best believe the Boiled Leather Audio Hour is back too! This season we’re recording subscriber-exclusive reviews of the show every week. Join our Patreon and listen to our take on the season premiere!

Was her death a difficult place for you to get to as an actor?
That was one of the scenes I was most proud of. In the script, it’s really only two lines — it says something like “They fight and she’s killed” — and I got to decide how I wanted to play that. The obvious way to play it would have been that she fights to the bitter end and goes down with a sneer of hatred. I decided that in those final moments, she is afraid. I wanted the audience to sympathize with her and to see what this journey of revenge has cost her. The theme of this season is the cost of war, and I wanted to set us up for that.

Something that all the female reporters I’ve spoken to have picked up on is how that scene where she dies is a hard watch, because it’s a much larger man strangling a woman to death. I was never scared of being in physical danger during the battle, but there are moments that are emotionally difficult. I mean, being strangled underwater by a much bigger man is a scary thing. I have been attacked by men, as almost every woman has, and it is a scary thing to go through, even if it is just pretend. The emotions sink into your soul a little bit.

Even though we’ve seen her do all this stuff, there’s something about that which is hard to watch, and I deliberately chose to make that hard for you to watch. Fortunately, Abu is a very professional and kind guy. I remember when we watched it back, Abu said, “They’re gonna think I’m a monster. They’re gonna hate me.” I was like, “I know!”

I interviewed Abigail Thorn about playing Sharako Lohar on House of the Dragon for Vulture.

The battle that results from all this is staggering in scope. What was it like to film it?
I filmed separate to everybody! Steve and Abu Salim, who plays Alyn of Hull — you know, all of the ship lot — they had their thing going on, where everybody was being set on fire. Apparently we broke the world record for most people set on fire in a television show. They did three, four months of stunt preparation. Honestly, it sounds bad. I was having the most fun while shooting this, and it doesn’t come across in the episode whatsoever, which I’m happy about.

I interviewed Harry Collett about playing Jacaerys Velaryon on House of the Dragon for Vulture.

From its opening moments, something is different about this episode of “House of the Dragon.” The composer Ramin Djawadi adds several extra measures of nothing but pounding drums to the start of his main title theme. When the story opens and the score kicks in, the dominant sound is not stirring strings but a recurring, sinister synth hook, so low in the bass register that it’s practically chthonic. The sonic symbolism is not subtle. This is the sound of all-out war.

I reviewed last night’s premiere of House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

Season 2 of HBO’s epic “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon” ended with massive battles brewing on land, sea and sky between the warring factions of House Targaryen, the royal family of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. The Dance of the Dragons has begun.

But with a cast of characters this sprawling, their many schemes, betrayals and furtive alliances can be hard to keep track of — let alone remember after nearly two years since the show last aired. Ahead of the Season 3 premiere on Sunday, here is a refresher on the battle lines and secret pacts that have been drawn for the conflagration to come.

I wrote a primer on House of the Dragon Season 3 for the New York Times, one of several places I’ll be covering the show this season. (Gift link!)

It’s another installment of The Best of ASOIAF on the Boiled Leather Audio Hour, the oldest continuously-running ASOIAF/GOT podcast on the internet, and this time it’s Theory Time! This episode, we’re taking a look at The World of Ice and Fire‘s account of the Long Night in the faraway empire of Yi-Ti. What questions does this confirmation of a worldwide conflagration in the distant past answer, and what questions does it raise? Find out here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Stefan and I take one last look at the Tourney at Ashford Meadow in our review of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ Season 1 finale! Come say goodbye to my close personal friends Dunk and Egg right here or wherever you get your podcasts!

The genius of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is that it in this bitter victory, it gives Ser Duncan everything he wanted from the start. Consider what has happened: Dunk took the field at the great tourney at Ashford. He did battle with some of the most famous knights and lords in the realm. He emerged victorious, proving both his mettle and his character in the process. Even the squire he reluctantly took under his wing served him well.

But triumph of Ser Duncan the Tall in his trial of seven is not the stuff of song. There’s no glamour to be found rolling around in the mud, getting stabbed full of holes while pounding another man’s face in. There’s no glory in a victory that comes at a cost steeper than Dunk wanted anyone to pay.

I reviewed tonight’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

Cue the Game of Thrones strings and take one last look at last weekend’s episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms with Stefan and me before tonight’s big battle in the latest weekly BLAH podcast!

Due to technical difficulties it took its sweet time posting, but our episode on last weekend’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is available here or anywhere you get your podcasts! To me this is the one where real-world analogues become unmistakable.

Two half-hour episodes remain in the show’s short first season. (It was renewed before it even debuted.) With the combatants already on the field, it feels as if we’re headed for a penultimate episode in the grand “Game of Thrones” tradition, a wall-to-wall battle, followed by an final episode of wrap-up with an eye toward the future. It’s an exciting feeling: I have never quite forgiven “Shogun” or “House of the Dragon” Season 2 for teasing battles that never arrived. (Or won’t until the next season, anyway.) That won’t be an issue here.

But it’s more than the prospect of combat that moves me. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is a decency fantasy, a term coined by the comics critic Tom Spurgeon to refer heroic narratives that privilege kindness, cooperation, competence and the fundamental humanity of their heroes over individualistic derring-do or edgy anti-heroism.

Ser Duncan may or may not survive his trial of seven (though the show’s renewal feels like a tip-off). But in the same way that he most likely saved Tanselle’s life by putting himself between her and her attacker, his allies Prince Baelor, the newly minted Ser Raymun, the jocular glory hound Ser Lyonel and the others are all volunteering to try to do the same for him. It’s as if justice were contagious, spread whenever even an ordinary person like Dunk proves willing to defend the defenseless.

I reviewed this weekend’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is already out on HBO Max, for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

At any rate, with none of his squire’s privileges and protections of rank and title, Dunk straight-up decks a man he knows to be a Targaryen. Having seen his own father hanged as a boy, he is under no illusions about the nature of Westerosi justice. He knows standing up for Tanselle will cost him his life. Then he does it anyway.

Ser Duncan sees armed and armored agents of the state assaulting a woman of color — racism against the darker-skinned Dornish is pervasive at court during this time period in George R.R. Martin’s stories — and places her life above his own. He does this instinctively, without thinking, without letting the almost certainly fatal consequences deter him. He has seen the powerful doing evil, and he has chosen to fight it. For him, there’s really no choice to make at all.

When Aerion petulantly asks Dunk why he has chosen to throw his life away, it’s a rhetorical question. But it sheds more light on the prince than he realizes. Men like him really can’t understand that kind of selflessness, that sense of kinship with one’s fellow human beings. That inability is the tyrant’s biggest weakness. And it’s what gives free people hope for a fighting chance — a hope which belongs to all who invoke it.

I reviewed tonight’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for the New York Times. (Gift link! And yes, I’m aware the byline is wrong as of press time.)

The longest-running A Song of Ice and Fire podcast on the blessed internet is back with a look at this week’s episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — available here or wherever you get your podcasts! Come hang out with us as we hang out with what is, so far, a hangout show!

Although we’re only two short episodes into the season’s brief six-episode run, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is already a significant shift from the somber grandeur and Grand Guignol horror of “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon.” Its tone is light. Its threats are decidedly less than world-shaking. Its protagonist is a commoner, not a noble. Its editing is positively zippy in places.

Moreover, while the show relies on the interplay of Peter Claffey’s decent but dense Dunk and Dexter Sol Ansell’s precocious problem child, Egg, the result is less a “Lone Wolf and Cub”/“The Last of Us” survival story than a mismatched buddy comedy. Ser Duncan may be the only contestant in the tourney dopey enough not to realize that there is more to his suspiciously knowledgeable and headstrong squire than meets the eye.

I reviewed this week’s episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

The longest-running A Song of Ice and Fire podcast on god’s internet is going weekly for the duration of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, baby! Listen to the all-new Boiled Leather Audio Hour on the series premiere — the debut of Dunk and Egg — right here or wherever you get your podcasts!