At the end of this week’s episode of House of the Dragon , Rook’s Rest and its environs are a smoking ruin . Hundreds of soldiers on both sides of the conflict lie dead or dying: crushed, scalded, or utterly incinerated. On a human level, it may be for the best that two of the beasts capable of creating such carnage are also incapacitated.
Yet, as a human, I must admit that my sympathies don’t really lie with my melted fellow men. My main emotional response to “The Red Dragon and the Gold” pertains to its titular mounts. I don’t like it when the dragons get hurt.
When I remember the battle at Rook’s Rest, it won’t be primarily for Rhaenys resigning herself to death . It won’t be for a crispy King Aegon looking like Anakin on Mustafar. It certainly won’t be for Criston Cole possibly suffering a concussion.
It will be for Sunfyre yelping in pain after getting clawed by Meleys, then screaming and smoldering as he falls. Or, moments later, Meleys—Vhagar’s jaws clamped around her neck—taking one last, devoted, apologetic look at Rhaenys before the light fades from her eyes and she plummets lifelessly to the ground. Yes, I felt worse for the dragon whose corpse crashed into Rook’s Rest than for the many members of House Staunton who were smooshed by said corpse.
I also felt worse for the dragons than I did for their riders—though the dragons made me care about the riders’ deaths more than I otherwise would’ve. House of the Dragon ’s monarchs and .