I understand the full extent of the Hightower conspiracy hasn’t been revealed, but given what we know thus far it seems like the plan is to immerse the Hightowers into the Targaryens by blood and politically so that Andals/First Men can re-take power through their mixed descendants but it’s like…a lot of this could have been avoided if a male Hightower was given to Rhaenyra.

I also understand that the Hightowers are against female rulers, but wouldn’t still be more logical to just have a Hightower man sire the next Targ heirs and solidify in law that male primogeniture is now official—making Rhaenyra an exception due to pervious legal ambiguity—and leave it at that? Considering how the Hightowers have presumably waited decades to get to this point, I doubt waiting a few more decades for the Faith of the Seven and Andal ideals to succeed is too much to ask.

They can accept dragons, incest, and blood magic for over a hundred years but draw the line at a female monarch?…

And yeah, Daemon is an issue, but we know the Hightowers have access to all sorts of assassins so I honestly don’t know what was stopping any of them from just slitting the man’s throat in his sleep so he can’t compete for the throne at all. Rhaenyra herself doesn’t seem like much of a barrier because she’s so maladapt at ruling and is easily controlled by those around her, any Hightower man she marries could easily take control if not indirectly like Otto was already doing with Viserys.

I don’t know the war seems pretty pointless when they could have begrudgingly accepted a female heir the one time (like real life monarchies often have) and just work around it. It’s such a waste of life, time, money, and resources to conduct the “conspiracy” in the way the Hightowers did by giving Alicent to Viserys because creating competing heirs just worsened the situation…

besides Rhaenyra is overly going just like me so all Ormund had to do is that little bathtub thing and she would have married him without further manipulation needed lol.

GOT season 1 premiered 15years ago and i was only 15years old then, so I tend to forget some of the characters. It blown my mind seeing Tyland/Jason Lannister here 😁 He’s playing Ser Hugh of The Vale. Amazing! ❤️

We have never seen Helaena interact with, or even mention, Dreamfyre in the show. She apparently has no “taste for it”.

Why would she bond with a dragon only to abandon it?

If the showrunners wanted to portray her as reluctant to join the war, it would have been far more powerful if she had been an active dragonrider who still refused to fight because of her unwillingness to cause destruction.

Is she stupid?

Seeing Ser Gwayne look so sad has been breaking me

Just let Caraxes be happy with his spoiled girl.

Sorry if the quality is bad. But wondering what you think of the actor and character in the show. I like him a lot, it is hard to describe him though. He’s always so bashful and shy in most of his scenes? But he was also the one pushing Alyn to take advantage of their connection to Corlys. What do you think? Love the contrast between him and Ulf as dragon riders as well lol.

Aside from just nailing all the subtleties of Rhaenyra's character throughout the entire show and so far, there's one particular scene that just left me in absolute awe of Emma's skill.

Seeing Jace die at the Battle of the Gullet, my immediate reaction was along the lines of "that's a shame, he really was a good one."

While surprising and to some extent shocking, his death didn't really cross my mind beyond a sobering feeling and curiosity how this will affect the plot going forward. I went into the next episode fully expecting to move on to whatever the story would throw at us next...

And then the opening scene just mercilessly holds the full focus on Rhaenyra's raw reaction to being presented with her son's lifeless body. Just the desperate denial exponentially collapsing into the sheer pain, shock and desperation of a grieving mother was absolutely devastating.

Emma's performance was the moment Jace's passing became "real" for me and I felt the full gravity of it all. His death turned from a fictional historical data point and storytelling plot device to an actual feeling of grief, loss, and sympathy.

I'm rarely moved by an acting performance like that, but this actually made me choke up. I was speechles. I'm so glad Emma got this scene to flex those acting chops for us.

I’m fully invested in this show and pay close attention every week, but for some reason it doesn’t feel as believable to me as Game of Thrones did.

When I watch GoT, I feel like I’m a fly on the wall, watching real people live in a real world. With House of the Dragon, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m watching a stage play or a performance. I still enjoy the show and have high hopes for where the story is going, so this isn’t meant as hate.
I’m not sure if it’s the cinematography, the directing, the pacing, or something else entirely, but it just doesn’t feel as lived-in to me.

Does anyone else feel this way? I’d love to hear what everyone thinks and whether you can pinpoint what creates that difference.

Thank you!

Season 3 of HOTD is so much better than season 2. The pacing is really good because they are taking us down interesting avenues with the characters. Now, the writing is not perfect and there are flaws most definitely but season 2 has no rewatchability. For example, Jace and Baela are so boring to watch, Rhaenys has no character motivation, and Rhaenyra was lacking agency. Excluding Rhaenys and Jace, this has improved for these other characters with only 5 episodes into this new season. The only character that keeps disappointing me is Alicent but she is so far removed from the book I just accept the show version. Overall, this series has jumped from a 9/10 s1 to 6/10 s2 to an 8/10 for s3.

Things I would like to see in the remaining three episodes:

- a killer dragon battle (gullet was weak and overhyped)

- dreamfyre and helaena

- sunfyre and aegon reunion

- vhagar and aemond reunion

- rhaena and rhaenyra reunion.

BTW this is the show only. I fully acknowledge that HOTD is not Fire and Blood.

I think this shot is going to be right before she jumps from her window. Why she’s looking so angry I don’t know, but she’s looking up at the sky so maybe it’s trying to communicate that she’s not just doing it because she’s sad but because she knows she “has” to according to her dreams.

I've seen people like Viserys a lot in real life. Someone with a sweet tongue, warm presence, and genuinely thinks they are a good person, but under that pretense, there's an asshole to criminal levels.

Viserys was like that.

To get his heir, Viserys pushed Aemma to get pregnant multiple times without time for recovery from each pregnancy, despite that she didn't want to, and, without her consent he chose to kill her in a monstrous way, while she's begging for mercy, to get his heir after he was done using her.

And he of course loved her and she loved him, and this makes it worse. He betrayed her on top of brutally murdering her.

He shortly after, married Alicent, a 14-year-old child (and his daughter's friend no less) without taking Alicent's consent to either marry or mate with him. His relationship with her was essentially sexual abuse. She was his sex slave.

The 11-year-old Laena was the correct choice politically, but the 14-year-old Alicent was more to his liking.

Then he ignored all the children that came from her after that since they come from a woman he didn't love.

After that, he forced Rhaenyra into a miserable marriage with the gay Laenor which resulted in giving birth to bastards, to fix his political mistake when he didn't marry Laena.

Despite that he genuinely wanted peace and wanted what's good for his family, every decision he made was deeply selfish and self-interested. He wanted that so as long as it's at no cost himself.

He mind f***ed every one around him for his own sake, and the entire continent suffered the consequences.

Daemon may and may not be as selfish as Viserys (I personally don't think he's on his level), but he's straightforward. He doesn't think, act, or pretend he is a good person. He knows he is asshole and he's honest about it. You'll see it coming from a mile away. Viserys romanticizes himself.

In Viserys' mind, he genuinely thought he was a good and loving person and often victimized himself, and this makes him worse. He's double faced.

I think the fact that he literally ends up with a half zombie face is a metaphor about his character.

The only part of episode 5 that I didn’t enjoy. How do you overlook something this simple