With Aegon on the run, Aemond wounded and Otto dead, Rhaenyra was running out of enemies. Enter: Ormund Hightower.
Rhaenyra gets her monkey’s paw moment in Episode 3 of Season 3 of the series. House of the Dragon. She has the Iron Throne, but it turns out that ruling a kingdom is harder and less fun than capturing it. She is not the first monarch in Song of Ice and Fire to learn this lesson.
Just last season, King Viserys told his brother in a dream that the crown was so heavy that it wasn’t worth it. “It crushes the wearer,” he says.
IN Game of ThronesRobert Baratheon has a quote that is so fitting for this episode that it’s worth speculating whether showrunner Ryan Condal and writer Sarah Hess were inspired by it. In the very first chapter of Eddard Song of Ice and FireRobert says to Ned:
“I swear to you, sitting on a throne is a thousand times harder than winning it. Laws are a tedious business, and counting pennies is worse. And the people… there is no end to them. I sit on this damn iron chair and listen to their complaints until my mind goes numb and my ass hardens. They all want something, money, land or justice. The lies they tell… and my lords and ladies are no better. I’m surrounded flatterers and fools. It can drive a man crazy, Ned. Half of them don’t dare tell me the truth, and the other half can’t find it.
Rhaenyra faces all of these problems from the very first day of her reign, with the added obstacles of an empty treasury, a septon who won’t anoint her, the hand of a queen who feels like she’s betraying him, and a castle full of rats. As discussed last week, Rhaenyra’s capture of King’s Landing has put her in her strongest position, but the war is far from over.
Besides, she now has a new enemy. With Aemond wounded, Aegon in captivity, Alicent in captivity, and Otto dead, this series needs a new antagonist. Enter: Ormund Hightower.
In just a few episodes, Alicent’s cousin and Lord of House Hightower has established himself as a worthy successor to Otto as a schemer. We first met him in the season premiere, and he immediately made it clear that he would be a player in this conflict when he practically shrugged his shoulders at the news that King Aegon II was dead and Aemond had taken his place. Now, in this episode, he comes up with a classic Hightower duplicity: a plot to send the fake Daeron to Rhaenyra as part of a false surrender.
Ormund’s ploy is off-book, but way off-topic. IN Fire and bloodOrmund’s master is near King’s Landing, so none of this – Ormund meeting Daemon, his “surrender” and his handing over the fake Daeron – doesn’t happen on the page. But this type the plot point is very familiar Song of Ice and Fire readers.
The medieval-inspired setting of this world means that none of the characters truly know what each other looks like unless they physically meet. We already got a hint of this reality in this season’s premiere episode when soldiers loyal to Rhaenyra don’t recognize Aegon. In books, characters use this all the time.
Do you remember in Game of Thrones when Ramsay Bolton forces Sansa to marry him to help establish his rule over the North? In the books it happens completely differently. IN Storm of SwordsRoose Bolton, Ramsay’s father, realizes that almost all the Starks are dead or missing. Since there is almost no one left who can identify the missing Stark girl, he creates a fake Arya Stark – a girl named Jeyne Poole, who was actually Sansa’s best friend at Winterfell. Jane knows every detail about Winterfell and the Stark family in order to demonstrate her legitimacy if questioned, and she is lured into the plot with the promise of becoming a true noble lady. So, it’s not Sansa who marries Ramsay, but Jeyne pretending to be Arya.
Arya and Sansa themselves also use hidden identities to evade would-be kidnappers. Arya goes by the names “Arry”, “Weasel” and “Blind Beth” at various times as she moves across Westeros and on to Essos (and into the series’ second season). ThronesShe serves as Tywin Lannister’s cupbearer, but he does not recognize her). Sansa pretends to be “Aleyna Stone”, the bastard of Petyr Baelish, when she arrives in the Vale after being taken away from King’s Landing by Littlefinger.
Still other characters pretend to be someone else. When Barristan Selmy arrives in Essos to meet Daenerys, he first introduces himself as Arstan Whitebeard, a false name. When Tyrion travels from Westeros to Essos, he uses the aliases Yollo and Hugor Hill.
But in the books there is a completely different character – another Aegon Targaryen, nicknamed Young Griff, who was cut out from Game of Thrones but whose personality is central to what happens in the novels. Griff has Valyrian eyes and eyes and claims to be the lost son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell. Is he really is Rhaegar’s son will be hugely important to this story – technically he will precede Daenerys in the line of succession. But no one, not even book readers, knows whether it is actually legal.
In a world without photographs and social security cards, it is difficult to prove identity. So while this particular storyline with the fake Daeron doesn’t appear in the books, it is entirely consistent Song of Ice and Fire storytelling.
Ormund knows that this ploy can only buy him a little time before he finds out. And at the end of the episode, we learn that his master has captured Tumbleton, a trading town near King’s Landing. The “young dragon” – Daeron’s Tessarion – is with them.
(Unfortunately, this plot point falls apart a bit in Tessarion. How did Ormund manage to turn in “Daeron” but not the boy’s dragon? The Blacks immediately took Tessarion to the Dragon Pit and placed it under maximum security. And yet the Hightowers just brought Tessarion back at the end of this episode. How did that happen? Some suspension of disbelief needs to be done here for this to work.)
Ormund essentially took the city hostage, since Rhaenyra’s attack would mean burning the inhabitants inside. “What does Ormund hope to achieve?” Rhaenyra wonders out loud at the end of the episode. “He can’t win.”
An interesting situation is brewing. Tessarion is a young dragon who at one point in the books was described as being half the size of Vermithor, Hugh the Hammer’s steed. Rhaenyra tasked Daemon with going to the Vale, but even a force consisting of Hugh, Ulf the White (whose Silverwing should also be much larger than Tessarion) and Addam of Hull (whose Seasmoke should also be larger, although not as dramatically) should be more than enough to overwhelm Daeron and Hightower’s forces. But Ormund would have known this when he created this plan. As shown in this episode, Ormund is cunning and up to something.
We’ve already learned a lot more about Ormund than we ever did in the books where he doesn’t exist. What big character. WITH Fire and blood written like a history book of the universe, and the main sources of this story are not related to the master of Hightower, his actions are presented at some distance. This is mostly limited to where his army is moving and what battles they are fighting.
One such battle has already been missed from the screen. In the book, the Reach is sharply divided over who to support in this war. The Hightowers obviously fully support Aegon and the greens, but the Tyrells – their overlords – are at this time under the control of a small boy and decide to remain neutral. Other important houses in the region, such as House Tarly, Caswell, Costain, Rowan, and Bisbury, decide to support the blacks. Fire and bloodWhen Ormund travels from Oldtown to King’s Landing, he doesn’t just follow the pink road to the gates. He immediately enters the battle at Honeywine, near Oldtown.
These other houses of the Reach surround Ormund’s army, cutting off his retreat to the Old City and driving his forces back to the banks of the Honeywine River. Defeat seemed inevitable until a dragon appeared in the air. It was the Tessarion ridden by Daeron, and it turned the tide of the Battle of Hightowers. After the battle, Ormund knighted Daeron, calling him “Daeron the Brave”.
Well, that was pretty bold, wasn’t it? Faking your own capture, knowing that your mother and sister are behind enemy lines, that same enemy vastly outnumbers and outnumbers you, and your older brother – the king you’re fighting for – is missing? Flying over an army without dragons and melting their armor is one thing, but this plot is even bolder. Ormund intrigues me, but I can’t wait to meet Daeron.
Given the reality presented above, it would make sense for Ormund and Daeron to essentially abandon this episode. Instead, they came up with one of the most interesting page-to-screen transition changes we’ve ever seen. Rhaenyra’s position still appears to be dominant, but the cracks are already visible. And the war continues.
Riley McAtee
Riley McAtee is a senior editor at The Ringer, focusing on two of America’s biggest sports: the NFL and Survivor.