After each episode of House of the Dragon, HBO’s prequel to Game of Thrones, Slate writers gather to answer an age-old question: Who is the worst person in Westeros? This week: senior editor Rebecca Onion and editorial assistant Nadira Goffe answer the call.
Rebecca Onion: I have a few second-place candidates, but I propose that King Viserys is the Worst Person in Westeros this week. Everything he does is more bumbling than the last thing. He famously wanted a male heir so badly that, in the first episode of this series, he subjected his wife to a non-consensual and ultimately fatal C-section. In his grief, he did something that was, in my mind, actually dumb, and named his daughter Rhaenyra his heir. I want women to be in charge, sure, but Viserys should have known that this would lead to trouble! Blah blah, he was so deep in grief he didn’t think he’d remarry, blah blah, when obviously he would—he is a king! Now we’re a few years on and he HAS a son, thanks to Alicent Hightower, and he is dithering over whether he will name Aegon the blond toddler as his heir. Everyone is just waiting for that to happen, and no matter how many times he tells his daughter he’s sticking with what he promised, she knows, and everyone knows, that he will eventually cave. Meanwhile, he’s whining at his son’s name-day party about too much “politicking”—which is like, My man, you are the king? Politics are inevitable—and getting super drunk to avoid thinking too hard about this mess. I think I would like him more if he went ahead and made Aegon the heir! But is there any part of you that feels proud of him for sticking by the daughter? I feel antifeminist for being like, “Give up, guy.” But it feels like he’s going to get her in real trouble, and him too.
Nadira Goffe: I do feel proud of him for sticking by Rhaenyra, eventually, but it’s the only good thing he actually does! However, I don’t entirely blame him for dithering on that for a moment … Rhaenyra was being incredibly insolent and bratty this episode. I sympathize with her greatly, and she’s maybe the only character so far that I actually really enjoy, but I keep thinking back to the conversation between her and her cousin Rhaenys, from the previous episode, about whether the lords will ever support a female leader … And, you’re right, I feel like Viserys’ decision to stick by his daughter, though it may be the morally right decision, is not going to end well.
Onion: Rhaenyra did see the symbol of royalty, the White Stag, in the forest, where she was with the knight Criston Cole, having stomped off in a huff. (In a romance novel, she and Criston Cole would have shagged, but in this show, they did not. Nothing happened, not even a little, and though this didn’t make Criston Cole the Worst Person in Westeros, it did make him the most annoying.) But do you think Rhaenyra makes any kind of a candidate for the crown this week? She was so whiny! As the consumer of a lot of historical fiction, I think I may also just be annoyed with the familiarity of her plot line. How many times have I read or watched a heroine who is nobility and is supposed to marry for her family, and doesn’t want to, and so on? I get bored! But that’s not Rhaenyra’s fault. It’s my fault for reading too much of that stuff.
Goffe: I couldn’t believe nothing happened in the forest. This show gives us sex when we don’t want it, and withholds romance when we do! I think we could surely propose Rhaenyra as WPiW, because I do want to sit her down and say, “Girl, you’re refusing to see other peoples’ sides in this situation.” But I think we should also immediately remember that she has more right than almost anyone to be whiny! Her mother and infant brother both died suddenly and tragically, her father wed and impregnated her only friend (and the only one around her that was her age!), and this baby born of her father and former best friend is primed to eventually take her place as heir to the throne.
So, while Rhaenyra was being particularly annoying this episode, I say we should move on to the next candidates. I think the frontrunners are: Daemon (simply for shooting the messenger?), Otto fucking Hightower (*rolls eyes*), and, as you said, Viserys.
Onion: It’s interesting that Daemon has not yet won the hallowed title of WPiW, despite being the Bad Seed and, well, the kind of character you’d name Daemon. Of course, Daemon had to be pulled off of the soldier who came to tell him that his brother was finally going to send help to put an end to the fight that he and the Velaryons are having with the Crab Feeder. He’s pissed, but then they use the fresh troops Viserys sent to crush the Crab Feeder, who barely had a chance to even be a Big Bad on this show. Daemon wants to both be mad at the world, and win.
Goffe: I think we never pick Daemon because he’s horrible, but one-dimensional, and at least, unlike Viserys, he makes a decision. Viserys makes them every once in a while, but when he does they’re always Bad™, like the C-section call or naming Rhaenyra heir. When we see Daemon go off the rails, we’re not surprised. It’s what he’s wired to do, it seems. That doesn’t make it right, but the predictability makes it easier to dismiss.
Onion: They do present such a comical contrast. Viserys in this episode: In the forest, stabbing the wrong (not white, not a symbol of royalty) stag, which is fully restrained by others, and having to do it twice to actually kill the beast. Daemon: Lying under a literal rain of arrows for what seemed like far too long to draw out the Crab Feeder to his doom. Even if Daemon is “bad,” at least he’s watchable. But let’s talk Hightowers. Why would you argue for Otto to get the nod, two weeks in a row?
Goffe: First, Otto manipulates his young daughter into cozying up with the king, then Otto attempts to manipulate her further to do his bidding. He has totally removed all sense of her autonomy and just sees her as entirely his pawn. (This is something that cannot be said about Viserys, who seems to actually dial into the teenage girl vibe in the way he talks to Alicent, saying “you’ve been miserable and lonely” etc.) On top of that, Otto truly went for it by proposing that a two year-old boy be betrothed to his teen sister!
Onion: That was so funny and uncomfortable. In the book about the Targaryens book, Fire & Blood, the incest tradition is omnipresent. There is constantly a Jaehaerys who is marrying both of his sisters but preferring one to the other, causing court gossip, and there are Targaryen sibling groups where male and female siblings pair off with one another when they’re elementary-school age, and so on. But this show is doing something interesting where they reserve the mention of incest for the bad people.
Goffe: The thing about incest that close, though, is that, as far as we’ve seen it in the show (not the books), it was voluntary between Cersei and Jaime. And the Daenerys-Viserys incest, in Game of Thrones, was clearly coded as sexual assault committed by Viserys (who’s Viserys III, a descendent of Viserys I, our Paddy Considine character) and done behind closed doors. In House of the Dragon, I think with the way Viserys laughs off Otto’s earnest suggestion, we’re supposed to believe the idea was just a little TOO bold.
Onion: Otto is kind of right that marrying Rhaenyra to her half-brother would solve their succession problem. But … yeah it’s not good, to see a young boy in the throes of a tantrum and be like “mmm, marriage material.”
Goffe: I mean, here’s the thing: Otto is an ass, because if he was going to suggest off-putting marriages, he should have been more forthright in advocating for Viserys to marry Corlys’ daughter. But, he wanted to prime Alicent for the spot.
Onion: To briefly advocate for Alicent as WPiW: I think her desire to just have things go back to the way they were before she married the king is misplaced. You hid your romance from your friend, then basically took her dad and also took her future!
Goffe: But they’re only, what, 17 or 18? She’s a child, and I don’t think she would have started that romance if her father didn’t force her to. She was forced to do something that she knew would ensure she would lose her only and best friend and now she just wants her friend back? I think that’s fine. Though she is a little naive for thinking it will all be hunky-dory.
Onion: You’re right. I should not be blaming Alicent for this, I should be blaming Otto, and also Viserys, who admitted to his daughter this week that there was a reason he chose Alicent over the Velaryon pre-teen. (He doesn’t say it, but we know that he means that he found her—his daughter’s best friend—attractive, which, ugh.) And that means we are full circle, to Viserys as the Worst Person in Westeros! Congratulations to us all.
