Criticism and Review of the Dragon Family series Season two, episode seven

When Rhynera shares the news of Adam’s dragon riding and his oath to serve him with Missaria, Missaria says, “Lucky was on our side.” Rhynera immediately corrects him: “Luck? It is more like it was destined”; He again uses the same word he used earlier to describe the task of the promised prince: “appointed to lead, strengthen, and unite the seven kingdoms against their common enemy.” A little further on, when Jeserys warns her mother that finding Targaryen bastards to take over the dragons could undermine or jeopardize her claim as heir to the Iron Throne, Rhynyra replies, “I’m not happy with that. But I can’t act against the fate that the gods have determined for me.” Also, the dragonslayers emphasize this point in the most flowery way possible: when they protest that commoners shouldn’t have been allowed to possess these sacred creatures, Rhynera says, “Yet the gods brought them here.” But the dragon slayer corrects Rhynera: “You brought them here yourself.” Finally, after summoning Vermitor, Rhaenyra says to the Dragonseeds, “I’ve had my say. The dragon himself chooses it.” This line, which shows that Rhynera has surrendered to the will of the dragons (read: gods), is reminiscent of what her father told her in the first episode of the series: “The idea that we control the dragons is nothing more than an illusion.” The idea that “we control the dragons is nothing more than an illusion” is one of the things that lead Rhaenyra to the conclusion that she must follow them; Rhynera has come to the conclusion that he plays the role of the prophet of the dragons, the role of the hand tool of the gods to fulfill their will.

Rhynera takes Seasmoke’s conception with Adam as another undeniable sign from the gods. It is precisely the miraculousness and unprecedentedness of this event, both for the viewer and for Rainier, that makes him certain about his divine mission.

Rhynera likes to believe that she is a chosen hero walking a path ordained by the gods for a higher purpose, because this belief makes the difficult decisions and the resulting casualties and bloodshed easier and more justifiable. Just as Alicent’s misinterpretation of Viserys’ dying cryptic words about Aegon’s prophecy provided justification for her to go along with her childhood best friend’s usurpation of the throne with less pangs of conscience; In this case, she could redefine herself as the dutiful wife who takes on the difficult responsibility of carrying out the last wishes of her beloved husband. Now Rhynera can also rely on the fate that the gods have determined for him, avoid accepting the responsibility of his actions and find himself a prisoner of the path that he has no choice but to follow, himself the executor of an exhausting but necessary task assigned to him by divine forces. have redefined it. Another aspect of Rhaenyra that gives her a religious charge is her speech sequence for the Dragon Seeds: Ryan Condal has said that it was Emma Darcy’s idea that Rhynnera should walk among her followers like the spiritual leader of a religious cult. In his speech, he inspires the courage and self-confidence of the dragon seeds, tries to give a humanitarian aspect to their work and deceives them by drawing a utopian world: imagine a future where pain, suffering and bloodshed will end, and you will play a role in realizing it with your work today. had The fact is that the arming of Vermitor and Silverwing will not only end the current crisis, but will only expand the radius of destruction.

During the speech, Rhynera’s attention is momentarily drawn to the Maraxes skull in the next room; It is no secret that the dance of dragons will lead to the extinction of these animals, so it is as if we are witnessing two different points in time in this scene: the decision itself and its consequences; Its starting point and its ending point. This decision will accelerate the transformation of dragons into decorative skulls. Another of Rhynera’s justifications is that if we increase the number of our dragons compared to the enemy, then we can force the enemy to surrender without bloodshed. This justification is reminiscent of one of Littlefinger’s famous dialogues in the fourth episode of the second season of “Game of Thrones”; Margaery Tyrell says: “I was not trained in martial arts, but with a simple calculation, the side with more numbers will be known as the winner.” Littlefinger replies: “If the war was with arithmetic, mathematicians would rule the world by now.” Rhynyra’s justification is that she makes this decision out of necessity with the motivation to protect the land, but the ironic part is that this decision will not only lead to the extinction of the dragons in the long run, the same weapons that decades later will be used to stop the invasion of the White Walkers and the undead army. They need to protect the land, but with the Targaryen family weakened and overthrown, whoever sits on the Iron Throne when the White Walkers attack is not a Targaryen king or queen.

Another clever change the series made in the book is the way the “Red Planting” event itself takes place: in the book, the event is described as if the dragon seeds are lining up and trying their luck to become a dragon one by one. In the book, red planting is completely voluntary. But the genius of the series is that it depicts this event similar to the movie “Battle Royale” or “Hunger Games”: some people are left in a closed battlefield and are forced to fight tooth and nail for survival; The last person standing will be the winner. Rhynera opens doors to people, doesn’t allow them to escape, and doesn’t give them a chance to opt out. Because Rhynera can’t take the risk that the will of the dragon seeds will be weakened by seeing the people ahead of them fail, seeing the painful death of the people ahead of them, and give up on doing this. As Rhynyra watches the mass slaughter from a vantage point, it’s clear that she’s moved by the horror it’s caused, but she makes sure to close her heart to it: now that it’s certain to her that Adam’s dragon riding , it has been an unseen aid from the gods to their chosen person, he views the burning of these people as a necessary evil, he benefits from the necessary story or narrative to justify the morality of his action and relieve the torment of his conscience.

We know that members of the House of Rhyneria are prone to having all their thoughts consumed by prophetic dreams: Viserys drunkenly confesses to Alicent in the third episode of the previous season that what killed Rhyneria’s mother was her obsessive attention to her dreams and prophecies; What killed the love of her life was the belief that the world revolved around her and that the promised prince of Aegon’s dreams would be her son’s conqueror. Relying on his dream, Viserys condemned his wife to ten years of suffering to the point of death for bearing a son, and when his wife’s delivery was difficult, he used this prophecy to justify ripping open his wife’s womb and sent her to He condemns the terrible death that he had no role in choosing. The tragic end of the father, a man whose self-destructive preoccupation with prophecies led to the death of his wife and irreparably shattered her emotionally, is a warning for the girl’s future. In other words, this episode finally saw the appearance of the evil Black Queen we’ve been counting down to, and it was both surprising and terrifying to see after the slow-but-steady build-up and development of her character arc over the past two seasons.

But Riniera’s self-saviorism, which justifies the sacrifice of people as a difficult but moral duty to save the world, reminded me of a quote from Slavi Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher: Žižek says somewhere about this: “The problem of those in power is how to make people Make them do dirty work without turning them into monsters. This was the problem of Heinrich Himmler, the commander of the SS organization of the Nazi Party; When Himmler was faced with the task of killing the Jews of Europe, he knew that eventually someone had to do this dirty work. Žižek explains that in Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem, the philosopher describes how the Nazi executioners endured the terrible things they did. Most of them knew very well that what they do causes humiliation, suffering and death of their victims. The way out of this predicament was that instead of saying, “What horrible things I did to people!”, they said, “What horrible things I had to watch to do my moral duty, or how much it weighed on my shoulders!” In this way, they were able to reverse the logic of resisting temptation: the temptation they had to resist was the temptation to feel pity and sympathy in the face of the suffering of other human beings; The temptation they had to resist was the temptation of not killing, torturing and humiliating others. In other words, anyone can be convinced to sacrifice his life for his country (or any other cause); But from Hilmer’s point of view, the highest moral act is to suppress our humanity and sell our souls to the devil to do the most horrible things. As Rhaenyra orders the doors closed on the dragon seeds and watches them burn from the balcony, she probably consoles herself with the same justification: as the promised savior of the world, she has an obligation to close her heart to the pain of others, this time. To bear the burden to unite the land.

But aside from Rhaenyra, I mentioned a bit above that Jesyris warns her mother that finding Targaryen bastards to take over the dragons could jeopardize her claim as heir to the Iron Throne; This scene is another ingenious change of the seventh episode compared to the book, which needs special attention. Ingenious in the sense that here we are faced with a change that, while distancing itself from the book, is rooted in the book itself; It means that the authors have used another part of the book to fill in the blank space of the part they changed. I mean, in the book, it’s Jace himself who comes up with the idea of ​​using dragon seeds to possess riderless dragons. But his television counterpart’s opposition to this idea is based on another part of the book; Jace’s argument is that the only thing that sets me apart from other Targaryen bastards, the only thing that legitimizes my claim as crown prince of the Iron Throne, the only thing that can keep people’s mouths shut about my parentage is that I’m a dragon rider. But if the silver-haired vassals of the Valyrians become masters of the dragon, he will lose the only advantage that has so far kept his position secure.

In the book “Fire and Blood” exactly this point is mentioned; In this section we read: “By royal decree, each of Velarion’s sons was given a dragon’s egg while they were in the cradle. Those who doubted the authenticity of Rhynera’s sons whispered that the eggs would never hatch, but the birth of the three little dragons disproved their words. The baby dragons were named Vermax, Arax and Tyraxus. And Septon Eustace says that his majesty sat Jace on his knee while holding court meetings on the Iron Throne, and Viserys was heard to say: “One day this throne will be yours, son.” So, it is natural that Jeseris expresses concern about this. In the last few episodes, there’s been talk of what allowing commoners to possess dragons means for the Targaryen dynasty as a whole and how it undermines the public’s belief in their exceptionalism, but Jaceris’ situation means that the negative consequences of this decision are only on a macro level. It is not summarized, but it can also affect people on an individual scale. So, I loved the Jasiris and Rhynera duet sequence for two reasons: First, because it finally gives this character a unique inner conflict that she’s been missing so far. And secondly, because this sequence is perhaps the first time the series has highlighted Jaceres’ emotional pain caused by her mother’s neglect of her secret romance with Harvin Strong. So, unlike Stephon Darklin’s choice to take over Seasmoke, which was portrayed as the result of the two of them colluding and a mother-son project (even Jace was there to keep his mother away from the danger of the fire), Jaceris’ tragic absence from the finale of episode 7 It attracts our attention in a special way.

But while Rhynera is busy believing in her divine mission, Alicent’s personal journey in episode 7 is reversed: this time we encounter Alicente who, perhaps for the first time since Rhynera’s wedding ceremony last season, is not wearing the green dress or the seven-pointed star necklace of religion, but He’s back to wearing the same turquoise blue he wore before his friendship with Rhynera broke down. If wearing his green clothes was a sign of declaring war and asking for help from his fellow Hightowers, taking off the green indicates his non-belligerence and losing his commitment to his own front. While Rhaenyra finds a new motivation to fight in the form of Adam and Seasmoke at the beginning of this episode, Alicent has so far had at least three hangers-on to justify her participation in Rhaenyra’s usurpation of the throne, and she has gradually lost every single one of her moral moorings: (1) her desire Viserys’s death was caused by his own misinterpretation; (2) In the ninth episode of the previous season, he told Rhaenys Targaryen that: “We women may never be rulers, but we can guide men to make better decisions and give them advice.” But by preventing him from becoming viceroy and then being expelled from the small council, this justification did not last either; (3) Finally, his third justification was that if Rhynyra came to power, he would kill my children who could challenge his claim. But Alicent gradually realized the weakness of this justification: because it was she herself who, by placing the crown on Aegon’s head, hung this sable from the necks of her children. Even the innocent Helena was almost a victim of this conflict during the people’s rebellion in last week’s episode. So, what’s left to go on?

Seeing a mouse in her room, Alicent says, “Nothing is clean here.” This sentence not only indicates that the uncontrollable increase of these rodents in the Red Castle has become a new health crisis with the mass hanging of the rat-catchers, but also indicates Alicent’s sense of mental and moral pollution, which makes her flee from the suffocating atmosphere of the castle. The court encourages towards nature. Alicent floating helplessly on the water of the lake, symbolizing her longing to feel clean, evokes a similar moment in Arya Stark’s storyline from the A Song of Ice and Fire books. For example, somewhere in the books we read in the description of Arya’s thoughts: “Arya felt that the lake was calling her. He wanted to jump into those calm blue waters, feel clean again, swim under the sun and splash the water around. Also, Alicent’s longing look at the falcon flying over her head, which reminds her of the freedom she doesn’t have, evokes a similar part in Aria’s story; In the description of this section, we read: “At a distance of thirty steps from the shore, three black strong men were crouching on the water; How calm… no one had told them that there was a war and they did not care about the burnt cities and massacred people. He stared at them with regret. A part of him wanted to be a swan. In addition, somewhere in Sansa Stark’s story line, during her stay in the Vale, she thinks to herself: “A falcon with its blue wings spread against the morning sky was soaring over an icy waterfall… I wish I had wings.” . We have to imagine that Alicent was thinking the same thing while staring at the falcon flying overhead. Alicent’s situation is reminiscent of the unfortunate fate of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Unlike Ophelia, who sees no other choice but to commit suicide in the river in front of her, Alicent discovers that she still has one more reason to live: as Olivia Cooke has mentioned in her interviews, to protect her most vulnerable daughter. , and keeping him safe from the poisonous atmosphere of the Red Castle is now his most important reason to fight.

Huey Potek and Olaf are not the only characters in this episode who manage to tame the dragon; This is also true as a metaphor for Oscar Tully; The dragon he tames with his words is Daemon Targaryen. A famous quote from George R. R. There’s Martin, who has been particularly honest about Damon’s storyline in season two; “Dragons act as a nuclear deterrent, and only Daenerys has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world,” Martin says of Daenerys’ dragons. But is this enough? This is one of the issues I am trying to address. The United States currently has the ability to destroy the world with its nuclear arsenal, but this does not mean that we can achieve certain geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but that power does not give you the power to fix, improve, or build.” For example, King Jaerys couldn’t point his dragons at the common people who had rebelled against the Targaryen tradition of intermarriage and order them: either you live with this tradition or you will burn in the fire! This coercive approach taken by the tyrant Maegor had failed and led to the weakening of the Targaryen dynasty. Instead, Jahris used a softer, more subtle power to legitimize marriages within the Targaryen family.

He drew up a charter called the “Principle of Exceptionalism”, which presented the Targaryens as a different people with different laws and customs from the Andal race, which he spread throughout Westeros with the help of religious missionaries. This is also true of Aegon the Conqueror himself: after conquering Westeros, he did not try to force Valyrian traditions and culture onto Westeros, but instead chose a family crest for himself (uncommon among the old Valyrian houses) and with Converting to the dominant religion of Westeros, the Seven, transformed himself from a foreign conqueror into a familiar Westerosi; He may have won his kingdom by threatening the dragon, but to keep it in the long run he had to resort to more subtle methods. Daenerys Targaryen during her reign in Meereen, although she uses the threat of dragons to end the slave trade and disrupt the past order of affairs, she immediately realizes that in order to build a new order and reform the world structure whose economy is based on slavery, It requires a more subtle and complex power than dragons. Now this issue is also true about Damon in a different way; The rogue prince has always been one to get his way through physical force: from maiming a gang of King’s Landing criminals for crime control and his one-man attack on the Zircon Crab army to murdering his first wife. He insisted throughout the second season that the dragons’ menacing power, or in other words, sheer force, was enough to rule.

That’s why he couldn’t understand how hiring blood and cheese to kill little Jaheris could lead to the tarnishing of Rhaenyra’s reputation and his political assassination; His attempt to gain the support of the Bracken family by threatening to burn them failed; His suggestion to Oscar Talley to suffocate his sick grandfather with a pillow was unsuccessful; Deputizing Willem Blackwood to subdue the Brackens by stealing their women and children, destroying their land and livestock, and burning their shrines only worsened the situation, drawing the wrath of the Riverland clans. So, Damon’s character arc throughout the second season has been about his awareness of complex power relations. Just as Daenerys is forced against her will to take a husband with the blood of a gypsy to ensure peace in Meereen, Damon is forced not only to acknowledge the limits of his power and ask Alice Rivers for help, but also to gain the support of the Houses of the Riverlands. He has to rely on Oscar Tully, put his teeth on his liver and endure his humiliation in public. In other words, Damon wanted him to be known as the one responsible for mobilizing the great army of the River Land. But in this scene, he is forced to come to terms with the fact that the families of the River Land are surrendering their swords to Rhynyra’s front, not because of him, but in spite of him. Oscar Tully’s argument is that as much as we hate the representative of Rhaenyra, we must remain loyal to the oath our forefathers took to King Viserys to support his heir.

Many had said why Damon looked upset and anxious after cutting off Willem Blackwood’s head; Ryan Condall has explained that although Damon is not one of the most honorable men in Westeros, he has a set of moral principles for himself; Just as the boss of a mafia gang may not hesitate to kill members of a rival gang, his professional principles prevent him from cooperating with the police as an informant in order to bring down his rivals. Another reason is that Willem Blackwood was an ideal soldier from Damon’s point of view; A loyal, like-minded soldier willing to do whatever dirty work Damon required. Therefore, the beheading of the only person present in this group who admired Damon, is his practical admission to the failure of his previous ways and methods. Thus, throughout this season, Damon experiences the true meaning of ruling, and what he ultimately learns is that ruling is more troublesome, exhausting, and complicated than he cares to deal with. This experience will likely not only humble Daemon enough to stop defying Rhynyra, but will likely help him empathize with the difficult position Viserys was in as a ruler, making him more forgiving of his brother’s slip-ups. Now that it has been proven to him that he has not even succeeded in mobilizing the families of one of the Seven Kingdoms, perhaps he will no longer judge his brother as a weak kingdom as angrily as before; Or maybe even expressing his satisfaction that Viserys has saved him from being crushed under the crushing weight of the crown by naming Rhaenyra as his successor. In the first episode of the series, Viserys describes his brother: “Yes, that’s right. Damon is ambitious, but not for the throne. He has no patience.” At this moment, Damon, who is secretly listening to the small council, smirks at his brother’s words. Damon’s smirk can be interpreted as his not agreeing with Viserys’ opinion. But in the long run, Damon comes to the conclusion that his brother knew him better than himself; Viserys may have been wrong about Damon not being ambitious for the throne, but he was right about him not having the patience to rule.

Damon wanted him to be known as the one responsible for mobilizing the River Land’s great army. But he is forced to come to terms with the fact that the families of the River Land are surrendering their swords to Rhaenyra’s front not because of him, but in spite of him.

But human characters aside, we get to the real stars of this episode: Vermitor and Silverwing; The dragons of King Jeheris and Queen Alisan, who have never had any other riders except these two. Vermitor was born around the year 34 after the conquest of Aegon; A Dance of Dragons begins in 129 AD, so Vermitor is about a hundred years old. After Vigar, Vermitor is the oldest and largest dragon in Westeros. Described as a bronze-colored dragon with yellowish-brown wings, this beast is known as the “Bronze Fury”, and along with Kraxis and Seasmoke, it is considered one of the more or less battle-tested Black Faction dragons with a history of being in has had a war However, Jaheris’ reign, despite its length, was so uneventful that the old king only used Vermitor twice as a weapon of war; When he used his dragon fire during the short-lived Third and Fourth Duran Wars. The third war of Dorne took place in 61 after the conquest of Aegan. Jaheris’s first enemy was a self-proclaimed king known as “Vulture King”; He was the leader of a group of rebels and bandits who would invade and pillage the Stormlands (an area ruled by House Brathion), Dorne’s northern neighbor, before fleeing and disappearing into the mountains of Dorne. Jaheris used Vermitor to burn down the scattered mountain camps of the Vulture King. Jeheris has a famous quote about the King Vulture: “He calls himself a vulture, but he doesn’t fly.” He hides. He should call himself a mouse blind.

اما حضور جِهِریس در چهارمین جنگ دورن پُرآوازه‌تر و افسانه‌ای‌تر است: این جنگ که به «جنگِ صد شمع» نیز مشهور است، It happened 22 years after the previous one: when Jahris’ drug team entered Dorne to suppress the Vulture King, the prince of Dorne had given up on intervening his own forces. But his son, Prince Morion Martell, had taken the Iron Throne’s march into Dorne as an insult to the Dorneans. Therefore, after Prince Maureen succeeded his father, he intended to remove this stain from Dorne’s pride; And as a result, he plotted to attack the Seven Kingdoms. In order to surprise the land of the storm, he decided to attack it not by land, but by sea. But the folly of Morion’s plan was that Jaheris not only had a spy in Prince Morion’s own court, but also had friends among the lesser lords of Dorne. So they knew about the attack of Prince Morion’s fleet at least half a year before; In the book “Fire and Blood” about the Fourth War of Dorne, we read that Jahris Targaryen and his sons, Aemon and Baelon, were waiting for Prince Morin’s forces to approach: “And just as Morion’s fleet passed through the sea of ​​Dorne, Vermitor, Craxis, and Vygar came through the clouds. They landed on their heads. Shouts went up and the Dornish filled the sky with arrows and spears and catapults, but shooting a dragon is one thing, killing it is another. A few arrows ricocheted off the dragon’s scales and one landed on Vigar’s wing, but none of them hit any vulnerable spots and the dragons flew and spun and released a huge stream of fire. One by one, the ships caught fire. When the sun went down, they still burned “like a hundred candles floating on the sea.” Until half a year later, the burnt corpses came to the shores in waves, but not a single living Durani set foot in the lands of the storm. The fourth Doran war started and ended in one day.

But more than using Vermitor in war, King Jehris has used it as a threat to prevent war. For example, there is a famous story centered on Vermitor, which goes like this: In the history of Westeros, there is a character named Lord Rogar Baratheon; Lord Rogar was Alyssa Velarion’s second husband; Alyssa Velarion was the mother of King Jehris. Alyssa Velarion’s first husband was King Aenys Targaryen (Jahris’ father). When King Aeneas married his eldest son and daughter, the people revolted against this action, which was a heinous and intolerable taboo according to the teachings of the Haft religion. So, when Jaheris rose to power as a teenager and decided to marry his own sister Alyssan, Lord Rogar, not wanting this decision to reignite the rebellion of the Religion Army, plotted to remove Jaheris from the kingdom, but failed. . The point I’m trying to get across with this introduction is this: Lord Rogar pledges his allegiance to Jahris again, asking if the King needs a hostage from his side to ensure his future loyalty. Rogar suggested that three of his brothers had young children that he could send as hostages to Jahris’ court. In the description of Jahris’ response, we read: “In response, King Jahris descended from the Iron Throne and took Lord Rogar after him. He went from the hall to the inner storeroom. Where Vermitor eats. A cow for the dragon’s breakfast had been decapitated and lay on a stone slab, blackened and smoking, because the dragons always roasted it before eating. Vermitor had feasted on the flesh, tearing large chunks of it with each bite, but when the King reached Lord Rogar’s company, the dragon lifted its head and stared at them with eyes like a cauldron of molten bronze. While scratching the big dragon’s jaw, Jahris said: He is getting bigger every day. Keep your nephews and nieces Lord. Why should I ask for hostages? I promise you, that’s all I need. But Grand Master Banifer heard the words that Jahris had not uttered. Banfir wrote as follows: His Majesty said without speaking: As long as I have this dragon, every man, woman and child in the lands of storm will be my hostage. Lord Rogar clearly understood this too.

In other words, Jahris knew how to use the indirect threat of dragons to gain the unquestioning loyalty of the lords under his command. Vermitor, however, has also played a prominent role in the development of Westeros and Jahris’ royal journeys to unify the country: for example, in the book “Fire and Blood”, we read that one of Jahris’ goals was to visit his land as closely as possible. Find out about his problems. Egan the Conqueror used to travel with a thousand knights, squires, horsemen, cooks and other crew. Such trips created many problems for the lords who were proud to host these royal visits. Keeping and feeding so many people was a difficult task. Even the cellars and storehouses of the richest lords were empty of provisions after the departure of the king. But Jahris was determined that no more than a hundred people would accompany him on each trip. “As long as I’m on Vermitor, I don’t need to carry around swords,” he said. In this case, not only did fewer companions allow Jahris to visit smaller lords (those whose castles were never large enough to host Aegon the Conqueror), but he could travel across the continent faster and see more places.

But let’s move on to Silverwing’s rage: unlike Huey Potek, who has to stare into the terrible eyes of death and face the possibility of being incinerated in order to ride with Vermitor, Olaf’s ride with Silverwing happens in the easiest and funniest way possible. . This is consistent with what is described of Silverwing’s character in the book. The female silver dragon Queen Alisan hatched around the year 36 after the conquest of Aegon. Just like Vermitor, this beast was mostly used as Alisan’s vehicle throughout Westeros and lacks battlefield experience; In fact, the Silverwing was absent from even the Third and Fourth Dornish Wars, and there is no evidence in the written history of Westeros that the beast took part in any sort of combat. “Fire and Blood” describes Silverwing as a “docile” dragon. There is a sentence in this book that highlights the kindness of Silverwing compared to the usual fierceness of other dragons: Queen Alyssan had a daughter named Deila, who was very sensitive, shy and fragile; In her description, we read: “Deila always looked scared. The slightest reproach made him cry. Dilla had a cat that she loved, until the cat grabbed her and Dilla never went near any cats again. “Dragons scared him, even Silverwing.”

The key phrase in the above paragraph is “even Silverwing”; This phrase means that Silverwing does not rank with other dragons in terms of predatoriness; That said, it might make sense to be afraid of other dragons, but to be afraid of Silverwing seems particularly odd. Apart from this, the fact that the series depicted the way Seasmoke, Vermitor and Silverwing possess differently from each other is one of the wise decisions of the writers: their different behavior in dealing with their riders not only helps to emphasize the dragon’s own freedom of choice and independence. It should be emphasized in the choice of its rider, but it gives a unique personality and identity to each of them. The next thing you should know about Vermitor and Silverwing is that the relationship between these two dragons was more intimate than any other dragon in history; To the extent that it is stated in the book that these two dragons slept by wrapping around each other; Something that reflected the love of King Jaheris and Queen Alisan. In fact, it is stated in the book “Fire and Blood” that: “Some say that the bond between a dragon and a dragon rider is so deep that this beast shares in the love and hatred of its rider.” So just as Veegar, feeling the rage, hatred, and desire for violence and harm that Eymond felt towards Luke, arbitrarily attacked Arax, Vermitor and Silverwing shared in the deep love their riders had for each other.

The last noteworthy point about Silverwing is related to a part of the book that every time I reread it, I get emotional and have tears in my eyes; The part that I feel is necessary to know in order to understand the tragic depth of the upcoming events in the series. In the book, we read about the last years of Queen Alisan’s life: “The last years of Alisan Targaryen’s life were sad and lonely. The good Queen Alisan, in her youth, loved all people, from lords to subjects. She loved her women’s meetings, listening, learning and doing things that would make the country a kinder place. She had seen seven kingdoms more than any queen before and after her. He had slept in hundreds of castles, charmed hundreds of lords and arranged hundreds of marriages. He loved music, loved dancing and loved reading. And oh, he loved flying so much. Silverwing had taken her to Oldtown, the Wall, and a thousand places in between, and Alisan had seen them all as few had: through the clouds. That Silverwing, the same beast that had created such beautiful memories for Queen Alisan, or Vermitor, the same beast that played a role in healing the wounds left from the wars of the previous generation and uniting the country, are going to be used as terrible weapons of war, deeply it is sad.

But one of the most important information that the seventh episode reveals is the identity of Hugh’s mother. Hugh tells his wife that his mother was a sex worker in a brothel, and that his mother had told him when he was a child that he was no different from his nephews. “His nephews” means Viserys and Damon. This means that Hugh’s mother was the aunt of Viserys and Damon and these two are Hugh’s cousins. The question is, how did a Targaryen princess get out of a prison? This information was enough for readers to immediately guess the identity of Hugh’s mother with certainty: Hugh’s mother is Serah Targaryen. King Jaheris and Queen Alisan had thirteen children, and Princess Serah was their ninth child. Lineol Strong told Viserys in the third episode of the previous season: “King Jaheris ruled in peace for half a century while his children drove him to the brink of madness… especially his daughter.” She was one of those girls who is most famous for her outbursts. In the book “Fire and Blood”, we read in his description: “Sera’s princess was a source of trouble from the very first day; Quick-tempered, demanding and disobedient. The first word he uttered was “No” and he said it repeatedly and loudly. They could not wean him until he was four years old. Even as she ran around the castle, she talked more than her brother Vigon and her sister Deila, she demanded her mother’s milk, and she would rage and scream whenever the queen dismissed another nurse. Sera Targaryen was passionate and stubborn and attention-seeking, and whenever her wishes were not met, she would get angry.

Also, another description of Sera states: “Sera, who was born three years after Deila, had all the boldness and courage that her sister lacked, plus an insatiable appetite… for milk, food, affection, and admiration.” . As a baby, she screamed more than she cried, and her ear-splitting noises had become the terror of all the maids of the Red Castle. Grand Master Elisar wrote about the princess when she was two years old: “She wants everything she wants and she wants it right away. When he grows up, seven will reach Dadman. It is better for the dragon keeper to chain all the dragons.” Little did he know how prophetic his words would be.” Septon Barth, hand of King Jehris, wrote about Princess Sera when she was 12 years old: “She is the king’s daughter, and she knows it well. Servants tend to his every need, though sometimes not as quickly as he would like. Great lords and beautiful knights do all kinds of favors to him, ladies of the court respect him, girls of the same age compete with him for friendship. Sera takes all this to herself. If he were the king’s firstborn or, better yet, his only child, he would be perfectly pleased. Instead, he found himself the ninth child who has six older and even more popular siblings. In another place, in the description of Sera’s pranks, we read: “The line between innocent jokes, mischievous mischief, and wicked acts is not always discernible for someone that young, but there was no doubt that the princess crossed these lines freely. She always sneaked cats into her sister Deila’s bedroom, even though she knew she was terrified of them. He once filled Deila’s bathroom basin with bees. When he was ten years old, he sneaked into the White Sword Tower, took all the white robes he could find and turned them pink. By the age of seven, she had learned when and how to enter the kitchen to escape with cakes and pastries and other treats. Before he was eleven, he was stealing wine and beer. At the age of twelve, it was rare that he was not drunk when he was summoned to the sept for prayer.

However, Sera was not without her positive qualities: she is described as an intelligent, beautiful, charming and seductive girl. Jahris and Alisan hoped that as Sera grew up and matured, she would give up her rebelliousness and mischievous habits. But it didn’t happen like that. At the age of fourteen, Sera first stated that she would like to marry another ruler, such as a prince of Dorne, so that she could become a queen. But he changed his mind a little later: “Why should he dream of distant princes, when he can have as many servants, knights and lords as he wants?” Very soon, among all the people around her, Sera became close with three young noble men and two girls of the same age, and these six people were inseparable and participated in every celebration and banquet together. Until finally, one of Sera’s jokes led to the collapse of their group. One night, Sera and his friend take the dull-witted court clown named “Tom-e-Josham” to a club in the king’s dock and provoke him to have a relationship with girls. The news of this joke spreads and reaches the ears of the king and queen. Interrogating Sera’s friends, the king and queen discover that one of them is pregnant, and does not know who the father of the child is. They then interrogate Sera about it, and Sera reveals that she has had affairs with all three of their crew’s boys and would like to marry all three of them, just as Egan the Conqueror had two wives. Jahris gets angry and orders Sera to be imprisoned in his bedroom. That night, Sera escapes her room, goes to the dragon’s lair to possess a dragon, and then escapes. But the dragon guards stop him.

Finally, Jahris and Alisan come to the conclusion that they must send Sera to Oldtown to be trained as a silent sister (the same women who are responsible for shrouding and burying the dead) in order to break even. Septon Barth claims that the intention of Jahris and Alisan was to scare Sera and they wanted to forgive her and return her to the court after a few years. In the meantime, each of the boys of the Sera group was punished in some way; One of them worst of all: one of them demanded a trial by combat and was killed by Jahris himself, forcing Sera to watch her lover being killed from her cell window. Sera, however, had her own plans: after a year and a half, she escapes from Old Town, goes to Lis Island, and works there in one of Lis’s luxury clubs. Jahris never tried to reconcile with Sera; And Sera never answered her mother’s letters either. Later, news came that Sera had moved from Lys to Volantis, where she owned her own mansion and became a wealthy woman.

Years passed and Sera never returned to Westeros. When the Great Council of 101 was held, the same council in which Jehris’ successor was to be chosen from Rhaenys and Viserys, three men came from Essos and claimed the succession; They claimed to be Sera’s bastard children (each from a different father) and thus considered Jahris’ grandchildren. Sera himself sent a message that: “I have my own kingdom here”, so I don’t need to claim my succession. From this point on, we don’t know what happened to Sera. We only know that Jahris, in his old age, suffering from dementia and spending most of his time in bed, mistook Alicent for Sera (the age difference between Alicent and Rhynera is greater in the book) and thought she was from across the Narrow Sea. He has returned to him. It is possible that Sera was alive at the beginning of Dance of the Dragons; If so, he must be in his early sixties. Therefore, it is possible that Hugh was born in Essos and migrated to Westeros as a young man. It is mentioned in the book that Hugh was the bastard son of a blacksmith. But he says in the series that he never knew his father. However, it is possible that a blacksmith adopted Hugh as a child and brought him to Westeros with him. The point I’m trying to get at is this: It is deeply ironic that Sera’s son, the very girl who most discredited Jahris, the very girl who Jahris had stopped from possessing her own dragon, now owns Jahris’s dragon. .