So why would Daemon kill a guy for them to use as a fake Laenor?
Yes, even then most of the latest episode was black silhouettes. We turned on adaptive-HDR setting on our TV and it helped lighten the dark scenes, but with very bad motion-smearing artifacts as a result. This is the only show, on any streaming channel, with this consistently bad dark scenes problem.
I didn’t see that post until I had already made mine, and I had forgotten that bit, but you’re right. Which surprises me because I’d have thought them not knowing that Laenor is alive would make for more drama.
Still, murdering a random innocent servant so you can finish your plan without spilling any “noble” blood is not exactly less evil.
Yeah it seems like it only works if Daemon is fully aware of the plan. And he would consider the life of a common servant as far less valuable than Laenor’s, given that Laenor has old Valyrian blood.
I imagine Daemon (and maybe other Targaryens too) view the people’s worth in this ranking:
Targaryen with true Valyrian blood on both sides (Viserys, Rhaenyra, Rhaenys, Daemon)
Targaryen mixed with noble blood (Alicent’s children: Aegon, Aemond, Helaena)
Velaryon true blood (all Valyrian) – all of Corlys’s family
Velaryon mixed with noble blood – don’t think we’ve seen this category yet?
Targaryen/Velaryon bastards, or mixed with commoners (Rhaenyra’s children)
Nobility (Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, etc)
Noble bastards
Commoners
Try going into your TV settings and make sure you have it in “Standard” and not “Cinema”. Then increase your backlight and brightness settings. Try messing with contrast too, see if significantly higher or lower values than your current setting help the dark scenes stand out more.
They should look dimmer than the rest, they’re supposed to. But if you are just seeing silhouettes I expect something is off with your contrast.
Daemon wanted to marry Rhaenyra but couldn’t as long as she was married to Laenor.
Right, but the question was whether the Targaryens were in on Laenor escaping or not.
Corlys’s wife is a Targaryen.
yeah, I meant the rest of them, of course
I just meant that since she’s a Targaryen then in your chart their kids would actually fall slightly above Targaryen-mixed-with-Westerosi-noble because they are Targaryen-mixed-with-Valyrian-noble
Their kids would be Velaryon-pure. If the man were a Targ and his wife a Velaryon, then they’d be Targ-pure. Kinda weird, but they’re still quite paternalistic.
My favorite scene might have been the heartfelt conversation between Laenor and Rhaenyra. I’m glad that Rhaenyra didn’t end up conspiring to murder Laenor. That would have been really hard after this scene.
The conversation between Rhaenyra and Corlys was also good.
And of course, seeing Vhaegar up close was pretty great.
The wedding at the end, showing the union of the Velaryon and Targaryen children was also touching.
I really wonder how Alicent managed to raise two monsters like Aegon and Aemond. I wonder whether they will explore that.
And their father is actually a decent guy, though not a greatly effective ruler.
Yes, exactly. He has many faults, but he genuinely loves his family—his spouses, his children, his grandchildren. I really like that characterization of Viserys. That he has this goodness in him, but he still doesn’t have the ability to make the choices that will avoid catastrophe.
So far I think it’s Viserys I have the most empathy for.
How is Aemond a monster? He had no dragon, he courageously claimed Vhagar, then they ambushed him 4 on 1 and cut his eye out.
Just caught up on the last 2 episodes, and I’ll reiterate that I think the show is excellent. The characters are far more complex than those in GOT, and they are also allowed to evolve. I noted in an earlier post that the adult Rhaenyra was the not the same as the young adult version we saw in the earlier episodes. Now I think that was intentional, and none of the characters are really the same. And that’s natural, as people do change over time. That said, this was also apparent in the early episodes, when we saw Viserys try so hard to have a son as an heir (although the price was paid by his wife). But he became so reliant on Rhaenyra that he still named her heir, even when his new queen actually did produce the sons that he so desired.
I wonder how the Velaryons can accept that a Targaryen just came in and took one of their dragons. Is that the way dragon ownership works? Can anyone just claim any dragon?
I don’t know that there is a whole lot of detail regarding dragon ownership and operations in the source material.
I would think so because it’s really up to the dragon, and failing would be a death sentence. I assume non Valyrians would not even try.
I guess you must have missed the bit where he beat two little girls, and two boys younger than him, threatened them with death from fire, and tried to brain them with a rock.
They jumped him and where beating him quite handily four on one before he had to get serious.