That was indeed Dan Fogler and I don’t know what his part in all this is yet.
It seems a little silly that he doesn’t consider his granddaughters as heirs given that his entire support of Rhaeneras claim is that women could be heirs. I had assumed that that was the reason that she refused to legitimize the sons. The scrutiny of her own bastards is a bit of a weak reason to piss off your main supporter. And I think even her main supporter refusing to name one of his daughters as his heir is more dramatically interesting. Rhaenyra can simply say that legitimizing his sons that he could have a male heir undermines the logic of her own claim. It’s so obvious that I’m a little bit confused why this point wasn’t even raised.
Perhaps the families just consider Baela and Rhaena to be Targaryens through their father Daemon rather than Velaryons through their mother. You’d think Daemon would want to expand his own line’s influence though. Agreed that Rhaenyra should be supporting women’s legitimacy as SenorBeef points out. Also seemed strange that when Corlys, Baela, Alan and Addam are together after the battle looking at the ruins of Driftmark, Corlys names Addam as his heir and Baela doesn’t have a problem with it. This show makes less and less sense with each passing episode. The dragons sure are pretty though.
I may be a little too critical. I guess he may prefer children rather than grandchildren - especially if the grandchildren are from a sort of competing house - to be his heirs to make them more clearly Velaryon. It’s still a tactical mistake on Rhaenyra’s part and quite frankly ungrateful – he’s right, he basically gave everything to Rhaenyra, sacrificed his town, risked his house, and asked for almost nothing - to ask for him to legitimize some sons is a very tiny ask. And how bad it looks for her is pretty mild. He’s right to be pissed off at her. I’m not sure if it’s bad writing or just a lack of savvy on her part. A lot of this episode was about how unprepared she was to do the day to day work as queen, so I guess it might fit that theme, but it seems like a hard decision on her part to justify.
He named Alyn, not Addam, his heir. Last season, after Corlys became Rhaenyra’s Hand, he offered to make Baela his heir. She turned him down saying that his heir needed to be salt and sea and that she was fire and blood. Of course, that was when she expected to be Queen at some point but she probably still prefers to be a dragonrider princess rather than a sailor like Alyn.
Yeah, Corlys ideally wants a sailor as heir and Addan definitely IS the best choice. Rhaenyra seriously fucked up, she also pissed off the nobles and I imagine Daemon is not thrilled either.
Oh, I retract my criticism re: Baela then. I remember that now. I didn’t remember that before. Probably because of the two years between seasons.
I’ll have to rewatch some of S2 first I think to catch up. Maybe the last episode is enough?
Torrhen Manderly
Boy the Hightowers really have some huevos. I hope the plan is more interesting than “delay until Aemond and Vhagar can kill like 7 dragons.”
Interested to see where Aemond is. Doesn’t seem like Alys told Cole anything that satisfied him.
Dude is crazy, if anything I think he expects Daeron and his little dragon to solo Vaghar. They keep teasing us with Sunfyre, last episode it was claimed he was rotting but Aegon claims he is alive now. I didn’t notice any obvious signs of rot.