Home of the Dragon’s fourth episode dives headlong into the quagmire of sexual politics that to date have haunted the sequence however remained largely offscreen and subtextual. “King of the Slim Sea” yanks Rhaenyra out into the gritty metropolis, and yanks all of us right into a confrontation with age and consent points, energy dynamics, and, after all, incest.
Briefly, a complete lot of intercourse will get had, but it surely’s troublesome to name a lot of it totally consensual. If the present to date has been Succession with dragons, we would say this episode was a contact Euphoria and a contact, er, Recreation of Thrones.
Word: This text comprises spoilers for Home of the Dragon, “King of the Slim Sea.”
“King of the Slim Sea” serves up little plot, however that doesn’t diminish the significance of what occurs onscreen. The episode title references the moniker given to Daemon (Matt Smith) following his profitable shut of the battle for the Stepstones. Restored to the king’s court docket with honors for his efforts, he wastes no time resuming his oddball courtship of his niece. Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) has simply returned from a woefully unsuccessful “tour” organized by her father wherein she listens to and rejects an more and more absurd roster of makes an attempt by the lords of the realm to vie for her hand in marriage. We see two suitors at both excessive finish of this scale, one a drunken, rambling septuagenarian and the opposite a nervous younger boy delivering his rehearsed proposal in a voice barely previous puberty.
Disgusted, she returns house to King’s Touchdown, the place quickly Daemon lures her out of the fort like two youngsters enjoying hooky. However after all they aren’t two youngsters, and for all Rhaenyra delights in dressing as a boy and stealing from road distributors, that is no Aladdin-esque palace escape. Daemon has a number of functions in introducing her to the dusty peasants of King’s Touchdown.
One goal entails acquainting her with the citizenry and their true emotions about her potential reign as queen, which come through coarse play. That age-old keeper of knowledge, the panto, makes it clear the rabble view Rhaenyra as a “feeble” would-be ruler in comparison with her robust, manly youthful brother, despite the fact that Aegon is barely out of his crib. Rhaenyra, simply as she has carried out from the beginning, dismisses their opinions, however Daemon has one other lesson to show her about the way in which the world works.
This time, he takes her to a brothel. There, he reveals to her scads of writhing permutations of lovers; this, he explains, is the place individuals come to “take what they need.” Taken at face worth, he needs to reassure her that she will fulfill her obligation to marry however nonetheless sleep with whoever she needs — however we all know higher than that by now, don’t we? They make out for the primary time, with Daemon pushing her towards a wall and partially stripping her. Issues proceed till Daemon, apparently having a momentary spasm of conscience about desirous to have intercourse with a) a youngster b) his underage niece c) who he’s been grooming since childhood and d) shamelessly utilizing as an influence seize, stops himself and, with an enigmatic smile, vanishes to get fully wasted.
On the floor, this scene seems to be like a kind of sexual freedom; within the annals of storytelling, a teen’s first journey to a brothel, usually involving their first encounter with an skilled older accomplice, usually will get framed as a magical coming-of-age second. Right here it’s intense however hardly revelatory: The scene’s course is claustrophobic, practically too darkish to see at some factors, filmed towards a backdrop of primal drums and crazed strings. And crucially, it’s juxtaposed towards a grotesque counterpart intercourse scene wherein King Viserys (Paddy Considine) reveals us what marital rape seems to be like, as his spouse Alicent (Emily Carey) lies passively beneath him, attempting to disassociate from the expertise.
It may appear as if these two scenes are supposed to current contrasting concepts of enjoyment, putting Rhaenyra’s newfound sexual awakening alongside Alice’s coerced marriage to a person thrice her age, to whom she feels no sexual attraction and with whom intercourse is a dreaded pressured act.
However this framework additionally drives house that neither of those encounters is really consensual — and that’s the working theme of this episode. From the opening moments, the place our poor shrimp of a lad has to ask Rhaenyra for her hand regardless of being far too younger for marriage and having by no means laid eyes on her earlier than, we see intercourse as a recreation of politics over want. Even when Daemon is presenting intercourse to Rhaenyra as an act of enjoyment, he’s doing it for political causes. She’s far too younger to totally perceive how Daemon has manipulated her emotionally, to know that he’s spent years grooming her as a pawn for precisely this goal.
Each Alicent and Rhaenyra have been manipulated by the lads round them their whole lives; Alicent understands her personal state of affairs all too nicely, however up to now has had no alternative to withstand or act outdoors of her predetermined position as queen. The king, when he’s not utilizing her for intercourse and childbearing, overtly undermines Alicent — an informal slight that turns into a lot larger while you’re primarily a sexual prisoner who has to behave as if you aren’t. Neither state of affairs permits for actual consent, and whereas Alicent’s depressing marital rape is way clearer, Daemon’s near-seduction of Rhaenyra is equally about energy and management.
Attractive and annoyed, Rhaenyra returns to the fort and instantly seduces Ser Criston Cole, her private guard and the man she’s been crushing on since episode one. Ser Criston (Fabien Frankel) clearly sees her because the annoying brat he has to babysit, and he’s at first extraordinarily reluctant to take what she’s providing. First, he asks her to cease, however Rhaenyra, by no means one for stopping, presses him a bit extra. After an extended second of hesitation, Criston provides in and kisses her, however there’s rather a lot happening in that pregnant pause signaling to us that this, too, is sexual coercion, not actual seduction.
Rhaenyra, self-interested above all else, has a troublesome time seeing outdoors of herself to acknowledge the way in which different persons are compromised by the political and sexual video games they must play. She actually doesn’t see her personal try to seduce Criston as a blatant abuse of energy, nor does his reluctance register along with her or give her pause. The following intercourse scene, whereas emphasizing her pleasure, reinforces the sense that Criston is working routinely relatively than enthusiastically. The subsequent day, he reveals up wanting to resume his position as her servant, pretending the night time earlier than by no means occurred and immediately dashing any fleeting romantic fantasies she might have had.
In the meantime, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), who is aware of a factor or two about sexual coercion, reveals that she’s turned spymaster, buying and selling secrets and techniques to the best bidder. The previous intercourse employee, now Daemon’s on-again, off-again lover, has gained the nickname of “the white worm” due to her tendency to decorate in white and burrow her manner into possession of secrets and techniques. She is aware of all of Daemon’s, and now that features certainly one of Rhaenyra’s. When Daemon refers to her as “an unusual whore,” she laughs it off, maybe as a result of she’s already bought him out to Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans). Otto will get the information and pauses to (one imagines) breathe within the heady cologne of gossip and victory earlier than going straight to the king.
The king, nonetheless, isn’t having it; for as soon as, Viserys places Otto in his place with a relatively satisfying, “Are you so sick with ambition?” as he chides him for his blatant opportunism and for spying on the princess. The revelation that Viserys isn’t as simply manipulated as he’s gave the impression to be loses its heft, nonetheless, provided that on this case, Otto is telling the reality: The princess has been dallying along with her uncle and has risked tarnishing her status. The following fallout sees Daemon asking Viserys to let him graciously salvage Rhaenyra’s good identify via marriage — an influence play that Viserys rejects fully, banishing Daemon and ending his short-lived good favor at court docket.
Whereas he’s confronting Daemon, Alicent confronts Rhaenyra, who tells her (considerably) in truth that nothing occurred with Daemon whereas omitting that the whole lot occurred with Ser Criston. (It’s actually troublesome to learn Alicent’s anger and damage on this scene as something however wounded jealousy, although ostensibly Alicent’s motive is pure concern for Rhaenyra’s status; Rhaenicent shippers, chances are you’ll be onto one thing.) They each later repeat this misinform Viserys, although Viserys is as fed up with Rhaenyra as he’s with Daemon and Otto. When she snarks that he’s utilizing her as a prize to assuage his political complications, he snaps, “You are my political headache!”
Viserys orders her to marry Laenor Velaryon, who we discovered final episode is each an excellent political match, because the son of the Sea Snake Corlys, and a extremely scorching dragon-rider. This dialog takes place in Viserys’s mancave, his personal sanctum the place he homes his big mannequin of Previous Valyria. This chamber, wall to wall, sports activities big weird tapestries of garish orgies in a confluence of intercourse and energy; when Rhaenyra protests that if she have been a person her sexual exploits would have been seen as a value-add, it’s arduous not to consider her rising up surrounded by photos of Targaryen conquests as explicitly sexual in addition to martial. Certainly, the present abruptly presenting us with the necessity to defend Rhaenyra’s womanly advantage feels nearly misplaced in a society so sexually brazen as that of King’s Touchdown; but when it feels jarring and superimposed to us, it should really feel much more ham-fisted as some extent of competition to Rhaenyra herself.
Nonetheless, her 18 hours or so of sexual freedom have hammered the purpose house: Intercourse is transactional, above all else. So, for the primary time, she does what everybody else has been doing: She makes use of herself as leverage. She agrees to marry Laenor if Viserys fires Otto Hightower. The king, near doing that on his personal, accepts and removes an astonished Otto from his place as hand, which supplies me an excuse to reward Rhys Ifans as soon as extra for therefore vividly conveying Otto’s fixed inside calculations, at all times passive, silent, and carried out solely in microexpressions. (On this home, we love a superb microexpression.) Viserys, discussing his late father’s dying with Otto on this scene, opens up the door for the likelihood that Otto might have killed Viserys’s dad, Baelon, to be able to change him because the king’s hand and take away him as contender for the throne. However whereas that’s solely believable politically, it will be a real recreation of 5-D chess, and a shocker provided that Baelon formally died of appendicitis.
Nonetheless, it’s hardly past the lengthy technique Otto is enjoying, and now that each he and Daemon are faraway from energy, with Corlys Velaryon ready within the wings, the sport for Rhaenyra is afoot. Whether or not she realizes it or not, she’ll quickly have an excellent greater goal on her again as inheritor — and the offense she’s simply discovered to play, utilizing intercourse as a pathway to actual energy, is about to get rather more critical.
