In the Flesh: House of the Dragon s2e07 'The Red Sowing'

‘The Red Sowing’ comes as close to horror movie territory as House of the Dragon has yet dared to tread. Its penultimate sequence in which a slew of prospective bastards of House Targaryen attempt to bind and mount the ancient dragon Vermithor is a charnel house nightmare like something out of The Descent, the hoary old monster gorging itself on burning human corpses while others stagger in flames through shallow pools of muck or simply scream and beg for mercy that very clearly will not come. Only Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew) has the stones to stand his ground and give it right back to Vermithor, finally gentling the gigantic dragon and putting a very, very dangerous new piece on the board. It’s interesting to watch tradition crumble and slough away under the pressures of war. The order of dragonspeakers condemns Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) plan to let her family’s bastards try their luck as dragon riders. “The dragons are sacred,” says their representative. “They are the last magic of Old Valyria in this sad world.” Rhaenyra’s son Jacerys (Harry Collett) earlier berates her for endangering his claim as her heir by breaking its last intact link as a qualifying feature: his possession of a dragon. What they’re all talking their way around, whether in terms poetic or petty, is that the line between commoner and highborn is getting dangerously thin.

And for what? As the slump-shouldered and diseased wreck of King Viserys I (Paddy Considine) warns his brother, Daemon (Matt Smith), the crown destroys everyone who wears it. It’s one gigantic assache that isolates and deforms the wearer until death finally stops by to provide some relief or, like the directionless Alicent (Olivia Cooke), you get booted aside and replaced by your own loved ones, consigned, at best, to watching the crown do to them what it did to you. With Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carnie) screaming his way through grueling medieval physical therapy sessions, Daemon contemplating treason as specters torment him waking and sleeping, and Rhaenyra wagering her regime’s entire future on what amounts to a roll of the dice, the only decent picture of feudal leadership we get is newly-minted Lord Paramount of the Riverlands Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes), a teenage liege lord who mere days into holding office deftly threads the needle of appeasing Daemon and his own affronted and horrified bannermen. It’s almost unnerving to see a noble who rules by something other than brute force and intimidation in action, though the scene does end with a brisk beheading.

Through Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), Ulf, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), and Hugh the show continues to interrogate questions of the peasantry’s agency, nature, and place in the world. It’s interesting the way House of the Dragon has managed to outline a world where systems and custom are subject to such tremendous pressures that in effect it’s the coin flip of character that determines whether events settle into order or explode into violence and madness. It’s hard not to see our own time of great political flux, oppression, and uncertainty reflected in that swirling morass. Violence shakes the twin edifices of custom and comfort until other paradigms emerge as possibilities in the minds of the people and of their rulers. The placing of dragons into the hands of commoners represents just such a seismic shift in thinking, with the emblematic beasts suddenly uncertain in their symbolism, the world around them hard-pressed to understand what has changed, and how. Whatever it is, you can bet the answer will be given in fire and blood.