The dragons dance to their own music
Spoilers ahead, read at your own risk
Once more, we’re reminded of King Viserys’ warning: “The idea that we control dragons is an illusion.” This line, uttered by the late ruler to his daughter Rhaenyra in the show’s pilot episode, would prove true as the succession crisis over the Iron Throne escalates into a full-blown civil war—but perhaps nowhere more spectacularly tragic than in the third season’s premiere.
Desperate and emboldened
Born into a family of dragonriders but unable to hatch an egg, Rhaena, daughter of Daemon, spent much of her life feeling inadequate. So, when she successfully claimed Sheepstealer—the wild mutton-loving dragon she had so courageously, if recklessly, pursued in The Vale—she must have felt that she had finally become who she was meant to be.
Her instinct is to return home to Dragonstone. But in the air, she spots the skirmish on the waters of Driftmark—between the Velaryon fleet, captained by her grandfather Corlys, and the ambushing Triarchy warships. The Battle of the Gullet, as it’s now called, would go down as one of the bloodiest naval encounters in Westeros history.
Desperate to prove herself and emboldened by newfound power, Rhaena—who can barely steer the dragon in the right path—forces a detour into the bloodshed. But soon, she realizes that mounting a dragon isn’t the same as commanding it.
Rhaena loses control as Sheepstealer goes rogue and endangers allies. Jacaerys and Baela—fighting above on Vermax and Moondancer—are eventually caught in the ensuing confusion. And with Jacaerys’ attention diverted, he’s left exposed, ultimately leading to his death.
Closer to gods than men
This is more or less the same scenario that surrounded the death of Lucerys at Storm’s End earlier in the series—when Aemond, atop Vhagar, pursued his nephew escaping on the much smaller Arrax, whom he wanted only to scare as payback for slashing his eye when they were kids.
However, Aemond grossly underestimated the autonomy of these beasts. Before long, Aemond was reduced to a mere spectator, as Arrax was ripped to pieces and Lucerys plummeted into the breaking sea below.
While we can chalk this up to the naivete and eagerness of youth, this misplaced confidence is also perhaps driven by the fact that in “House of the Dragon,” dragons aren’t treated as the divine, miraculous creatures reborn from extinction that we see more than a century later during Daenerys’ time. They’re status symbols and, basically, weapons of mass destruction that helped facilitate Targaryen dominance and propagated the family’s myth.
Eggs are placed in the beds of cradles for newborns as if they were an inheritance. Indeed, when a young Rhaenyra stared at the colossal skull of Balerion the Black Dread—the beast whose flames helped forge the throne they’re now fighting over—she “sees us.”
“They say Targaryens are closer to gods than men, but they say that because of our dragons. Without them, we’re just like everyone else,” Rhaenyra says.
The music has begun
So, it’s no wonder that when Rhaena’s eggs failed to hatch, she went to extreme lengths to prove her legitimacy. She abandoned her sacred charge—guarding Rhaenyra’s youngest sons, Aegon III and Viserys II, on their voyage to safety across the Narrow Sea—for a shot at taming a wild beast and showing she could be more than a glorified chaperone in a time of crisis.
The same goes for Aemond, who, after enduring years of mockery and belittlement for not having a dragon, internalized all the humiliation and turned it into ambition. He dared to claim the largest living dragon in the world, fueling his quest for personal justice and a lifelong obsession with proving he’s more worthy than the rest of his family.
Perhaps Viserys’ warning wasn’t only that they can’t control dragons, but that the prospect of having one is enough to consume them and influence the choices they make—like Rhaena’s desperate proof of worth or Aemond’s hunger for validation.
The power meant to secure their future has become the family’s undoing. As Viserys further cautioned, dragons are a power men should never have trifled with, adding that, “if we don’t mind our histories, it will do the same to us.”
But with the way things are going, the music has already begun—and the dragons will continue to dance.
“House of the Dragon” season 3 is now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes every Monday
