House of the Dragon is back, and the Dance of the Dragons is underway. The Targaryen war of succession will come down to control—who can control their impulses, their sycophants, and, yes, their dragons. With each passing episode, The Ringer will examine how Westeros’s key players are aligning their pieces on the board. As the saying goes, chaos can be a ladder. Welcome to the House of the Dragon power rankings.
1. Aemond Targaryen and Vhagar
Who’s a good, sneaky girl with excellent command of “stay” and “lie down”? It seems like Aemond (or, let’s be real, the Dragonpit minders) has been putting in some quality training hours since Vhagar broke bad and had herself a little Arrax (and Luke) snack at the end of Season 1. Vhagar was not only willing to lie in wait beneath forest camouflage for who knows how long for Ser Criston Cole’s sneak counterattack at the battle of Rook’s Rest, she consented to continue chilling when no-one-has-ever-breathalyzed-a-dragonrider Aegon and Sunfyre made an ill-advised surprise appearance to take on Rhaenys and Meleys. In the midst of Aegon getting his ass handed to him—because obviously—Aemond and Vhagar finally entered the fray, prompting Aegon to thank the gods for his brother’s clutch appearance. But Meleys wasn’t his target—Aegon was. Aemond directed Vhagar to let loose dragonfire directly at the king, sending him and Sunfyre tumbling out of the sky. Then, when the battle continued, Vhagar again played sneaky after Rhaenys’s seeming victory to surprise Meleys, sending both dragon and her stalwart rider to their deaths.
The action at Rook’s Rest alone would have been enough to place Aemond at the top of this week’s power rankings, having in one fell swoop taken both Rhaenyra’s biggest and most strategically useful dragon and her rider—Rhaenyra’s greatest ally and a team black powerhouse—off the board. But it’s far from all Aemond did in “The Red Dragon and the Gold.” Whether from sheer ambition or lingering anger about Aegon’s public mockery of Aemond’s relationship with his professional lady love at the royal brothel of choice in last week’s episode, Aemond did just about everything in his power to undermine his big brother this week. That includes everything from small pettinesses, like openly mocking Aegon’s battle plan—and the king’s seemingly wobbly control of the Valyrian language—at a meeting of the Small Council, to, well, conspiring with Cole, Aegon’s Hand and de facto general, to engineer the team green victory at Rook’s Rest.
There’s also the small matter of Aemond’s holding Vhagar back during Sunfyre and Meleys’s battle and then outright attacking Aegon—and, when that failed, attempting to finish the deed himself. In the episode’s closing moments, Cole comes to and makes his way to where Aegon and Sunfyre fell in a fiery heap. Both dragon and rider are grievously wounded and burnt—and there was Aemond, blade drawn as he attempted to double down on his kinslayer laurels by adding kingslayer, too. Cole’s appearance halted Aemond in his tracks, but it’s clear that Alicent’s shrewd and vicious second-born has little interest in letting the Aegon II era continue. And—with the murder of Jaehaerys, Aegon’s only male heir, and a family claim to power staked on re-enshrining primogeniture—Aemond is presumably next in line for the Iron Throne.
2. Helaena Targaryen and Dreamfyre
With Rhaenys and Meleys killed and Aegon and Sunfyre seriously injured, the Targaryens are now most definitively at war. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Dreamfyre, the moony sitting queen’s dragon, but she’s a formidable weapon. Dreamfyre’s first rider was Rhaena Targaryen, who was born 86 years before Helaena, according to Fire & Blood. This means that Dreamfyre is old—and, because dragons are said to grow continuously as they age, big.
Which makes it that much funnier that Helaena has yet to express the slightest interest in the Dance of the Dragons or her husband-brother’s claim to the Iron Throne. Undoubtedly, she’s still mourning Jaehaerys—but now that the cold dragon war has turned very, very hot, it’s pretty wild that no one has tried to sell her on mounting up and joining the fight. The greens’ dragon forces already paled in comparison to the blacks’. Now Sunfyre is on the IL, possibly for good, leaving the greens with just two dragons—Vhagar and Dreamfyre—big enough to play a role in combat.
Maybe Helaena’s apparent ability to divine the future has inspired her to stay out of the chaos to come. Or maybe she just wants to look at bugs at King’s Landing in peace. I’m partial to the latter theory, and you’ve got to give the girl credit for living her truth.
3. Alyn of Hull
We knew Corlys Velaryon had a soft spot for faithful dockhand Alyn, who saved his life at sea. Now we know why: It seems that he is Corlys’s bastard from some long-ago tryst with an unknown woman. The Sea Snake is a good friend to have—and his parentage means that Alyn has Valyrian blood. With Seasmoke, last ridden by Laenor Velaryon and currently unattached, acting oddly by Rhaenyra’s own admission, could we see Alyn attempt to claim a dragon of his own? Alyn also mentioned earlier this season that he has a brother. If they share a dad—for shame, Corlys!—then he might also have dragonrider potential.
In any case, while having an absentee dad is no fun, having an absentee dad who reenters the picture and turns out to be fabulously wealthy, powerful, and capable of gifting a priceless flying death machine is the stuff of fairy tales. With the death of Rhaenys at Rook’s Rest and Rhaena Targaryen (the daughter of Daemon and Laena Velaryon, not the Rhaena T. who rode Dreamfyre) seconded with Rhaenyra’s youngest children in Pentos, the only family Corlys has left at Dragonstone is his granddaughter Baela. We’ve heard the Lord of the Tides agonizing over the future of Driftmark. Sounds like a man in need of an heir or two!
4. Alys Rivers
What, and I say this with love, is Alys Rivers’s freaking deal? A Riverlands bastard—hence the Rivers name, though you may join me in thinking of her exclusively as Alice Waters—she seems to be committed mostly to hanging around dark corridors at Harrenhal and making witchy brews. Daemon, who does not have a romantic track record that one could call “good,” seems to be a little too interested in her. And he is way too interested in trying the dubious concoction that she offers him, after which he proceeds to—this is a medical term—trip balls. Daemon, who is freshly dedicated to doing—this, on the other hand, is a political term—fuck all for the team black cause, has been having some nasty hallucinations and vivid dreams. Are they, as Alys implies, the result of a curse on Harrenhal that took hold after the castle’s destruction during the Targaryen conquest of Westeros? Or has Alys been slipping him the good stuff all along?
Either way, she seems to be having a very goth sort of fun.
5. Baela Targaryen and Moondancer
Baela is ice cold during a meeting with the Small Council on Dragonstone. Moondancer and her rider are now playing an ever more significant role in the blacks’ defense. With the demise of Rhaenys and Meleys, might we see her on offense, too?
6. Ser Criston Cole
Things seemed to be going Westeros’s preeminent horndog knight’s way. Cole’s army’s bloody march across the continent has continued apace, having now tripled the greens’ forces, if Ser Simon Strong is to be believed. He’s picked up a snazzy new nickname: Kingmaker. And he secretly formulated a crack plan for taking Rook’s Rest with Aemond.
Then Aegon got drunk and decided to play hero, riding straight into battle with Rhaenys and Meleys without consulting a soul. In theory, the plan might have been salvageable: Had Vhagar popped up as planned, she and Sunfyre could easily have vanquished Meleys. Unfortunately for Cole, however, Aemond is not the ally the hand of the king wishes he were. Aemond went rogue, horrifically burning Aegon before attempting to finish him off until Cole arrived and scuppered his plans. This was a military victory, sure: The greens now control Rook’s Rest, and the loss of Rhaenys and Meleys is a massive blow to Rhaenyra’s forces. But Cole is now inadvertently responsible for the maiming of the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and his dragon, who are now both at death’s door—an incalculable loss when so much of the Dance of the Dragons rests on the smallfolk’s perception of Aegon’s worthiness of the throne.
That’s to say nothing of the fact that Aegon is the son of Alicent, for whom Cole seems to have legitimate feelings. Add to this that Alicent was left in this week’s episode to, ahem, clean up Cole’s mess. Maybe Cole didn’t know about her pregnancy, but he surely knew that they weren’t using protection—no small matter when, whatever else it might mean for the dowager queen, a pregnancy would have dire political consequences.
7. Jacaerys Velaryon and Vermax
When Rhaenyra is away, Jace will play. With the queen still making her way back from her clandestine meeting with Alicent at King’s Landing, Jace takes a leading role in a meeting with the Small Council and makes clear that he views his mother’s efforts to avoid civil war as foolish. Still, when Rhaenyra does return, she once again forbids her plucky teen heir from flying the fearsome Vermax into the fray. She also belatedly shares with him the Song of Ice and Fire, the prophecy that Viserys revealed to her years ago about the looming dangers on the other side of the Wall and the necessity that their family support the Prince That Was Promised (although Game of Thrones viewers know that the wintry crisis mentioned in the prophecy is still some 100 years off). No pressure!
8. Alicent Hightower
The dowager queen is shooketh. It seems Rhaenyra’s revelation in last week’s episode that Viserys’s dying mumblings referred not to Aegon, their son, but to Aegon the Conquerer and the Prince That Was Promised had quite an effect. We see her studying up on Targaryen family history, clearly in search of more information about the Song of Ice and Fire—and proof, one way or the other, that Viserys actually meant to anoint Aegon and not Rhaenyra as his heir.
But both Alicent and Rhaenyra seemed to realize after their meeting that there’s no going back now. Alicent’s calling an open house in King’s Landing to announce her big whoopsie and decree that Rhaenyra actually is the rightful queen couldn’t possibly do much to cool down the greens and their supporters—especially with Ser Criston Cole’s ongoing march across Westeros, which has seen him ignite tribal factions and behead any Rhaenyra backers that he comes across, noble house or no. There were off-ramps on the road to war, but they’re all in the rearview mirror.
Now Alicent’s firstborn, whose Hightower-engineered usurpation is the genesis of the Dance of the Dragons, is terribly injured. Alicent has long made clear that she doesn’t particularly like Aegon, and knows all too well about his history of violence and lechery. But one of her four children has now been nearly murdered by another, compounding a strategic disaster—Aegon and his dragon Sunfyre were, among other things, a major military asset—with a personal one. After Aemond’s attack, the king is in no condition to defend his own claim to the throne.
Oh, and there’s the small matter of Alicent asking the grand maester to whip up a goblet of his finest abortifacient to de–Criston Cole her uterus. (Which newly crowned master of whisperers Larys Strong immediately figures out, of course: Nothing like a heating pad to the womb to throw a gossip off the scent of a clandestine abortion.) We see Alicent touch a swell in her stomach before drinking the concoction, suggesting that she feels genuine regret about the decision. Might she have wanted to continue the pregnancy and make her relationship with Cole public? It’s possible. But Alicent’s political choices have left her in a place where she has to put her own romantic desires to the side—a situation that is made especially tragic given the nature of her marriage to Viserys, which seemed to be anchored less in love than in the maneuvering of her father.
9. Rhaenyra Targaryen
The first open volley of the Dance of the Dragons was a serious loss for the blacks. Sure, Aegon is now wounded and Sunfyre is down for the count, but the loss of Rhaenys and Meleys is a massive blow. Rhaenys was Rhaenyra’s staunch ally and often her only defender at the Dragonstone Small Council. She and her dragon—among the biggest held by the blacks—were also a crucial cog in Rhaenyra’s war machine. So far, the blacks’ naval blockade had been the most successful part of Rhaenyra’s strategy. But it was Meleys’s patrols of the sky that made it possible.
Surely that means that Rhaenyra will now need a new dragon to take on the job—but who? Having steadfastly refused her eldest son’s entreaties to do anything riskier than visit allies at Winterfell, she’d undoubtedly oppose sending out Jace and Vermax. Baela and Moondancer are already tied up with patrols of Westeros, Daemon and Caraxes are hemming and hawing over things that go bump in the night at Harrenhal, and Rhaenyra can hardly spare the time to do it herself atop Syrax. The blacks’ other paired dragons are still too small to be of use (and, besides, they belong to Rhaenyra’s younger children, of whom she is doubtlessly hyper-protective since Luke’s death). Could that be Seasmoke’s music?
Rhaenyra’s husband should be one of the blacks’ greatest assets. Instead, having cried toxic masculinity and fled to Harrenhal, Daemon has put his feet up. He has yet to deliver on any new Riverlands support, which the blacks sorely need; instead, he’s flirting with Alys Rivers.
10. Daemon Targaryen
What are Daemon’s accomplishments at Harrenhal so far? Let’s see: Taking up space, insulting the resident Strongs, making eyes at a fetching brunette, and—increasingly—having violent, vivid dreams. This week, Daemon finally spoke to said brunette, Alys Rivers, whose passions include making witchy brews and speaking in riddles. You might think that Daemon’s recent nightmares—including one in which a young Rhaenyra taunts him before the Iron Throne until Daemon beheads her, only for Rhaenyra’s disembodied head to keep on taunting—would give him pause about accepting one of said witchy brews. (I love and miss Milly Alcock’s presence on the show, but I’m not sure that recurring dream sequences are the right way to bring her back.) But no: He downs the concoction and proceeds to have one hell of a trip. Not sure this is a tremendous military strategy, my guy—nor, obviously, a good look as a spouse. The third time does not seem to be the charm for Daemon’s marriages.
11. Oscar Tully
The young heir to the Riverlands has had better days. First, he fumbled his greeting of Daemon at Harrenhal, wavering over what title to use. Then, Daemon asked after Oscar’s infirm grandfather—only to suggest that Oscar speed things up and suffocate him in his bed.
That, by the way, is Oscar … as in Oscar the Grouch. Oscar got off comparatively easy: His dad, Elmo, named his other son Kermit, and dear old clinging-to-life grandpa is named Grover. George R.R. Martin contains multitudes.
12. Rhaenys Targaryen
It’s hard to imagine that a week that ends with crushing military defeat and death would not have the Stranger’s arrival as the principal lowlight, but Rhaenys may unfortunately have pulled it off. The Queen Who Never Was spent her final days among the living trying in vain to sell Rhaenyra’s efforts to avoid outright war to her Small Council. And, oh yeah, popping by to visit her husband at the docks and encountering his new bestie, Alyn, whom Rhaenys strongly hints she knows is Corlys’s son. “Your mother must have been very beautiful,” she tells Alyn, sadly touching his cheek—no doubt thinking not just of Corlys’s long-ago betrayal but also the early deaths of her own two children.
At Rook’s Rest, Aemond’s attack atop Vhagar looked only to have been directed at his brother: With Aegon and Sunfyre downed by a direct blast of dragonfire from Vhagar, the prince seemed willing to let Rhaenys and Meleys flee. Rhaenys appeared to realize as much, looking back at the biggest, baddest, pouchiest dragon in the land as she flew back toward Dragonstone before deciding, with a world-weary resoluteness, to make a U-turn and fight Vhagar in what she surely knew was likely to be a doomed mission. It was, of course, but Rhaenys went out fighting, and for that we award her some posthumous bonus points. Rest in power.
13. Aegon Targaryen and Sunfyre
Not a great week for the current sitter of the Iron Throne! First, he was belittled by his younger brother in front of the Small Council. Then, enraged, he turned to his mother for support—only for Alicent to retort, “What thoughts would you have?” The dowager queen continued, “Do simply what is needed of you: nothing.” I’m not saying it excuses what came next, but you can see how it might leave a certain capricious royal itching to prove himself.
Still: Unilaterally deciding to mount Sunfyre and fly into battle at Rook’s Rest after a casual day of drinking alone in his chambers was, on balance, not a very good move—even though Sunfyre stopped just short of giving him a kiss when he turned up in the Dragonpit, wine breath be damned. Aegon really Leeroy Jenkins’d a fight with the dragon that’s been holding down the naval blockade that’s got King’s Landing on the ropes. Obviously—obviously!—Aegon and Sunfyre didn’t stand a chance against Rhaenys and Meleys even before the boozing.
Now both he and his mount are seriously injured from the fight and—oh yeah—Aemond blasting them both with dragonfire. Criston Cole’s arrival after the battle narrowly saved Aegon from execution at the hands of his brother, but even if the king and his dragon survive their wounds, it’s unlikely either will have an active role in the Dance of the Dragons again anytime soon. Aemond had already been undermining his big brother, and he’ll doubtless take advantage of this power vacuum.
