Great episode.

Awesome episode all around.

The actor playing the one-eyed Aemond is my favorite new character on the show. Aemond is a badass fighter and he has a tempter that finally boiled over when at the dinner a roasted pig was put on the table in front of him reminding him of years earlier when the other childern gave him a pig with wing as the "pink dred." And with Aemond having to watch Jacaerys (who cost Aemond his eye) laugh about the roast pig was the final straw that sent Aemond using a play on words to imply his nephews were strong as in Strong not Targaryen.

I hope they don't age out and change the Aemond actor, that actor is perfection.

EDIT:

I typed Jacaerys that was laughing about the pig on the dinner table, but I meant to type Lucerys.

Another thing about the scene that did involve Jacaerys was that when Aemond started to repeatedly say, "Strong" implying that the Velaryon children were not Velaryon but instead Strong, Jacaerys started yelling, "say it again" just like Harwin Strong yelled at Ser Criston during their fight.

yeah aemond seems like daemon jr, big fan over here
his strong toast was hilarious
those kids are suckers who are gonna get got by someone, probably

anyway props to viserys for achieving his goal of uniting thr realm in peace and going out on top
but in all seriousness, that couple minutes following his speech when everyone was having a good time at dinner was beautiful


and alt shift x mentioned it after the 1st or 2nd ep, but aegon's prophecy being a secret handed down in this manner really is a big, dumb plothole. annoying. not gonna ruin the show for me or anything, but i really wish they found a better way

Much better episode mainly due to the fabulous work by Paddy Considine. That was tough to watch but he did a great job of portraying his weakness and pain, as well as his determination and dignity.

One thing that seems odd and maybe unrealistic to me is the sudden deaths without any repercussions.

Especially in the earlier wedding scene where Criston kills Laenor's lover (Joffrey I think?). Like wouldn't House Velaryon be pissed that you just killed one of their top servants for no reason. Noone outside of Laenor even cared and it would seem that Criston is now a big security risk, but nope, just allowed to stroll off into the garden after.

Same w/Vaemond Velaryon. He's a freakin Prince of the House Velaryon and he gets murdered and everyone's just like, well that happened. No indignation or repercussions.

I guess the message is that you can just murder anyone from House Velaryon whenever, b/c they don't care and won't do anything about it.

Daemon getting away with it mostly makes sense. The penalty was pretty clearly stated last ep, though that was like 6 years before.

I agree with the first kill at the wedding. Seems to have no repercussions. Tho to be fair, the queen probably protected him and also I don’t think the seasnake was very found of joeffory and probably didn’t mind much.

The 2nd killing I think is justified in 2 ways.
1. Vaemond calling the kids bastards is treason . That’s been made clear
2 Dameon is a prince of a higher house and he called his wife a whore.

it's a small thing, but like with many other things going on, we can assume it's dealt with in some way during these multi-year time jumps. i don't really need them to explain every little detail, and a show that did that would probably suck, actually.

tbf i don't think corlys especially would have cared that much, maybe rhaenys too. and the whole thing was so chaotic that i doubt they pinned down exactly what happened, and joff *did* pull a knife on a kingsguard, so. i'm fine just assuming that the whole thing was made right after the fact.

and to the security risk point, obviously alicent is comfortable with him, as he switched from rhaenyra's guard to her's. clearly alicent stepped in to save him, and viserys doesn't care enough to get involved.

corlys seems to be dying, and had beef with his brother anyway. rhaenys didn't seem to have much love for him either, evidenced again by the fact she didn't step in to stop him when it was clear he was going off the rails to get himself killed. the ward granddaughter seemed to be on rhaenys' side too. there are probably other velaryons who are loyal to vaemond and angry about it, but we haven't met them yet (other than those dudes who marched in with him). that death was pretty earned though, what's anyone gonna say or do about it, especially to the dragon family?

i assume the knock-on effect will be that people will be upset about it, and the navy will be weakened through all of this

This show is so much better than rings of power.

it's all a byproduct of the pacing issue. would the show be better if they slowed everything down 1/2 speed and explained all this stuff in detail and had more conversations and world building and all that? maybe, maybe not, hard to say. at this point i'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. if season 1 is largely prologue to give us context for the meat of the story going forward then i'm not that bothered. yet. but who knows, maybe they have kind of ****ed it up...

I would say it would be better to change context than pacing to explain things. Like apparently joff lover boy or whoever was killed in a tourney in the original text, wouldn't even need explaining.

But it's barely minor enough to not care.

The pacing issue for me comes down to something pretty basic - the names are all kind of similar and difficult to remember (lucerys/visyris aemon/aegon rhaenyra/rhaena), and the actor playing the role changes every two episodes; it's just hard to remember who's who especially when they are all kind of intermingled family that look similar.

also, we saw ppl getting merk'd at tournaments and stuff and no one batted an eye. i think part of the point here is that there's a lot of bs being allowed due to passivity of viserys, like they were saying in the pilot with daemon's city watch and the state of the city. empire in decay, being eaten alive by the rats and all that.


fair enough.

yeah i was talking to my mom about the show after ep7 i think and she was like what happened to the princess?
me: which princess??
her: the main one, that the show is about
me: she was in half that episode?? [realizes she missed that they changed actors during the time jump] oh, **** [explains it]
her: well that was stupid!

to get an idea of how hard it is to make these shows for everyone...

I agree. The Criston killing was lol. He brutally kills a guest of the groom-to-be at a wedding feast, and not only is he not punished but... becomes the guard for the Queen?

As for Vaemond, I guess I could see them claiming that it was treason and Daemon having the right to defend his wife's honor etc. But it's still funny how nonchalantly everyone takes it. None of the House Velaryon family members even seemed all that upset over just seeing their brother-in-law/uncle/whoever beheaded in front of them. Cut to a family dinner where the King is saying he just wants them all to get along lol.

Maybe beheading is the equivalent of just punching someone in this world, like not that big a deal.

Been trying to get caught up on the latest eps of ROP for a week now, but it's a chore. If it didn't have the LOTR name attached to it I definitely would've given up before Ep 2 ended.

can we assume that the white worm is selling info to larys? was thinking of which important characters weren't at that dinner, and, he seems to have mysterious streams of info coming in, so... makes sense i think


he's been itching to do something ****ed up for a couple eps now, so wouldn't be surprised if he makes a move next time around. perfect timing with the king dying and everything, chaos is a ladder etc

and since a couple eps actually means like 7-10 years...dude has to really be itching now...

Is Rings of Power even worth watching?

Clearly it can't be better than this show.

I would just start rings at episode 6

I wonder where "the queen who never was" fits into the rest of the story.

It feels like with her husband out of the way and son dead then her story feels finished.

But it's not?

She's getting major screen time for a reason.

Curious.

yeah it seemed like she was legit staying out of the game after they didn't pick her to be queen, but left all alone she kinda picked a side making that deal with rhaenyra. maybe she's back in the game now

the scene that made me wonder was the one where she was watching the squad clean up vaemond's corpse. would be neat if she steered clear of all the danger and bears witness to all the mayhem as the queen who should have been, but with the fact she's got a big ass dragon might make that impossible

She takes the driftwood throne?

didn't they just give it to luke? (again)


also, i guess corlys might survive his wounds

Yep. I’ll bet it doesn’t end there tho.