We’re finally getting to see dragon logistics on ‘House of the Dragon.’ The results are as bizarre as we’d hoped.
Just last week, we were pondering one of the lingering questions from House of the Dragon’s first season: How exactly do Targaryens get on and off their enormous dragons? There are saddles, yes, and at least a few big, scaly friends have condescended to wear ropes and climbing nets to help their bloodthirsty riders mount and dismount. But Season 1 tragically deprived us of the opportunity to watch bejeweled nobles unceremoniously trip all over their robes as they scurried up and down their dragons. Instead, we were treated to the far more dignified—if wholly unrealistic, a word I realize I am using about a show that stars vitamin D–deprived fraternophiles (dare I say, lowercase philadelphians?) atop fire-breathing reptiles—sight of dragonriders swiftly landing at their destinations of choice without any humiliating scrambling to get the story or two from seat to ground.
How times have changed. On Sunday, Season 2 debuted on Max, featuring not one but two dragon dismounts. Friends: We are blessed.
If you, like me, have thought far too much about this, allow me to offer Rhaenys Velaryon’s entry first:
All images courtesy of HBO
Befitting the underappreciated shrewdness of the Queen Who Never Was, here we have Meleys fresh from a patrol of Team Black’s trade blockade. Meleys drops off her rider at what looks like an ancestral hub for mounting and dismounting at Dragonstone: a tunnel leading to enormous carved stone stairs that a dragon can sidle up to so as to let their respective blonds on and off with ease, no scrambling necessary. It is, in essence, a supersized version of the kind of pedestal you might see at organized elephant rides. (Again: Don’t do that!) Rhaenys is nothing if not practical.
The same cannot be said for Rhaenyra, alas.
The once and perhaps current heir to the Iron Throne spent much of the episode on a one-woman mission to recover the remains of Prince Lucerys. When she finally spotted Luke’s cape and the wing of the prince’s similarly doomed mount, Arrax, I’ll grant that she had to make an unexpected landing; naturally, there was no carved stepping stone for the queen to stride gracefully away on. But there’s not much to explain away what followed:
Behold, Rhaenyra of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm, going whee! down a slide. Sure, she was grieving and in a hurry, and Syrax didn’t seem to mind this, er, unconventional use of her wing. But good lord, lady—there’s got to be a more queenly way to handle this.
Is there a royal buckle butler in the house? Let us speak once again about buckles. Fire & Blood, the Targaryen family history written by George R.R. Martin that serves as the series’ source text, notes that dragonriders strap themselves onto their mounts with “four short chains between belt and saddle.” While the Season 2 premiere has finally shown us a pair of dismounts in all their goofy glory, neither featured the rider unbuckling before hopping and/or clumsily sliding off. Without spoiling any specifics, I will say that dragon saddle buckles improbably become a major plot point later in the Dance of the Dragons. Either we’re facing some fairly significant plot changes to what is likely the source text’s single most thrilling action set piece in the entire civil war—or we have many saddle chains still to come in the future. Notably, we have yet to see anyone mount a full-grown dragon in House of the Dragon, which may have at least a little to do with the extreme cosplay vibes that would come with watching the series’ stars fastidiously hook themselves onto their charges, lest they take a tumble and end up on the dragonrider IL for something so prosaic as a concussion.
As dragons loom ever larger in House of the Dragon’s plot, we’re finally seeing some other practicalities pop up for both factions of the feuding royal family. The big one is fuel: Namely, how to feed both a prospective army on a likely soon-to-come march and, still more critically, the airborne dinosaurs anchoring either side’s offense and defense. This is already causing headaches at King’s Landing, where a shepherd swung by court to gripe to King Aegon—that’s Aegon the Dragoncock to you—about the mandatory 10 percent tithe on flocks that is newly in place across the Crownlands. Despite Aegon’s initial empathy, increasingly embattled hand of the king Otto Hightower’s logic won out, at least for now: The shepherd might be hungry in the coming winter, but it’s likelier that Team Green’s mounts—Vhagar, Sunfyre, et al.—will be hungrier still.
Not everyone needed a reminder to keep their dragon’s stomach full, however:
As always, Rhaenys has a point.