‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, Episode 7 Recap: Soothing the Savage Beasts

Season 2, Episode 7: ‘The Red Sowing’

Sometimes, in politics, a bold gamble in unprecedented times pays off. This is as true for the world of Westeros as it is for our own. The woman who wants to rule the realm staked it all on a long-odds play, and her odds came in.

For several episodes, Queen Rhaenyra has been down one dragon. The formidable beast Meleys and her equally impressive rider, Princess Rhaenys, are dead. Prince Daemon’s war-hardened “Blood Wyrm,” Caraxes, is mired in his master’s endless quest to subdue the Riverlands. None of the mounts available to Team Black can possibly match Prince-Regent Aemond and his colossal creature, Vhagar, in battle, even when combined.

On the advice of her counselor (with benefits?) Mysaria, Rhaenyra expands her search for potential dragon riders to the unrecognized descendants of her sprawling royal family — those born as commoners, outside of marriage. In a face-to-face meeting with the young shipwright Addam of Hull, revealed to be the new rider of the dragon Seasmoke, Rhaenyra has already learned that even those not of fully noble birth can ride a dragon. She doesn’t know that Addam is the son of Lord Corlys Velaryon, whose house has frequently intermarried with the Targaryens — and neither Addam nor Corlys tells her so — but since the young man’s mother was a commoner regardless, the point stands.

When word of the search gets to King’s Landing through the usual back channels, Ulf and Hugh, two of the commoners we’ve been following all season, take the fateful trip to Dragonstone to test their mettle against monsters widely considered more god than animal. There, they learn the hard way that gambling is easier when you’re betting with someone else’s money.

True, Rhaenyra talks about needing dragon riders to avoid bloodshed, not cause it. And she pushes back against her son Prince Jacaerys’s furious tirade against elevating lowborn part-Targaryen “mongrels” to the level of dragon rider. (In fairness to Jace, his shame about his own parentage, and his fear of becoming just another Targaryen-blooded bastard with a dragon and thus no more a claim to the throne than any other, play as much of a role as snobbery does here.)

What Rhaenyra does not do is ask her potential dragon riders to proceed onto the barbecue grill — I’m sorry, the viewing platform — beneath Dragonstone to approach the mighty dragon Vermithor one at time. So what if the dragon keepers have gone on strike in protest of this “blasphemous” move? Surely the Black Queen is aware of best practices when it comes to large groups and hungry fire-breathing dinosaurs by this point in her life. I would call this a flaw in the writing, but the reckless disregard of even “good” Targaryens like Rhaenyra and Rhaenys for civilians caught in the crossfire of their boldness has been a through line of the series.