Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 5 of House of the Dragon Season 2.
While the rest of Team Black was reeling from the deaths of Rhaenys (Eve Best) and her dragon, Meleys, in the fifth episode of House of the Dragon Season 2, Daemon (Matt Smith) was busy starting a DIY renovation on Harrenhal and turning all the Riverlords against him by once again encouraging violence against women and children.
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But for all his bluster and talk about deserving to be king, it’s clear Daemon is going through it. After chopping off young Rhaenyra’s head during one of his Harrenhal-induced visions in Episode 4, Sunday’s installment saw him fantasizing about sleeping with his, er…own mother. Obviously incest among the Targaryens is nothing new in this show, but we’ve never seen them cross that taboo parent-child line before. Plus the late reveal of the mysterious blonde woman’s identity seemed purposefully designed to generate maximum ick factor.
“You were always the strong one. The finest swordsman. The fearless dragonrider,” he imagines his mom telling him during this twisted encounter. “Your brother had great love in his heart, but he lacked your constitution. Viserys was unsuited for the crown, but you, Daemon, you were made to wear it. If only you’d be born first. My favorite son.”
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Whether it’s due to the curse of Harrenhal, the witchy powers of Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), or a combination of both, all the important women in Daemon’s life seem to be taking turns popping up to haunt him. And suffice it to say that Daemon doesn’t seem to be handling these frequent reminders of his greatest transgressions very well.
Thanks to George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, the A Song of Ice and Fire companion novel on which House of the Dragon is based, we know that Daemon’s mom was Alyssa Targaryen, the sister-wife of Baelon Targaryen and a former rider of Meleys—a fact that feels significant given the timing of her appearance in the show. When Viserys was six and Daemon was two, Alyssa gave birth to a third son, Aegon, following a long and difficult labor. However, she and the baby both died within the year from complications resulting from the birth. Baelon never remarried after her death, but we learned in Episode 3 that he may have gone on to father some illegitimate children with the peasants of King’s Landing.
It’s clear that Daemon has some pretty significant mommy issues, which seem to only be exasperated by Alys taunting him about never knowing Alyssa. This conversation, held in Harrenhal’s courtyard, ties into the episode’s insistence on the idea that, as TIME TV critic Judy Berman put it, “You wouldn’t want to be a woman in Westeros.”
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Daemon maintains that, “[Rhaenyra] cannot succeed…The people who support her will not be led by her. They look to a man for strength.”
However, later that night, he’s awoken by Ser Simon (Simon Russell Beale) for a surprise audience with the Riverlords, who inform him in no uncertain terms that the barbaric tactics he used to bring House Bracken to heel—the exact types of things that Rhaenyra would surely forbid—have only served to ensure their houses will never ally with him.
If Daemon wants to avoid the fate Alys predicted for him from the start—”You will die in this place”—it seems he may have some important lessons to learn from the women he’s spent his life looking down on.
Episode 5 of House of the Dragon Season 2 saw Daemon’s Harrenhal-induced dreams get exponentially weirder.