House of the Dragon Episode 10: Summary and Ending Explained! Every Single Explanation! Why Rhaenyra Aborts Her Baby?
House of the Dragon has come to an end, After ten episodes, Sundays sitting in front of the television waiting for what will happen in the Game of Thrones prequel that has hooked us with its premise about the events 300 years after Daenerys Targaryen will sit on the Iron Throne and continuing this extraordinary medieval saga and fantastic literature recovered from Songs of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. Season 1 of The House of the Dragon has raised during all this time the events that will lead us to the Targaryen Civil War, which ends with the ruling House of Westeros (Poniente), and which is called The Dance of the Dragons. One where, as we have seen throughout all these episodes, ‘the Greens’ and ‘the Blacks’, the Hightowers and the Targaryens; face each other to see who will rule the Seven Kingdoms.
House of the Dragon Episode 10: Summary What What Happened
The ninth episode of House of the Dragon, and knowing that the second season is already confirmed, everything was left for said confrontation. Where the Greens, led by Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), Hand of King Viserys, begin to plot the coronation of Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) and where, after being pardoned by a Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) who escapes of King’s Landing epically riding his dragon, they leave the table set for the Targaryens and Hightower, black and green, to face each other, at last, in the epic battle that was promised to us and of which he spoke since we saw the Baratheons, Lannister and Stark, fight for the long-awaited Iron Throne. Leaving us a final chapter full of epic moments and that we summarize here in the 10 most impressive parts.
Rhaenys Arrives With The News That King Viserys Targaryen Has Died
With no time jumps, episode 10 picks up exactly where the previous episode left off, with Rhaenys Targaryen flying high with Meleys and arriving at Dragonstone where, moments before, we see Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) talking to his son, Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault) and we discover that the young man fears for his legacy as the future heir to the Driftmark. The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Rhaenys, who explains Viserys’s death, while Daemon accuses the Hightowers of treason and killing the king; to then move on to Rhaenys’s explanation of Aegon II’s coronation.
The Greens are coming for you,’ Rhaenys explains in the story of how Aegon was crowned in front of the masses. And, at the moment of being confronted by her niece, Rhaenyra, for not burning them all, it is her aunt who replies: ‘This is not my war to start it and proceeds to explain how Alicent asked her to join the cause of the greens, but she rejected him because of his loyalty, expressed in earlier chapters, to Viserys’s order of succession.
Rhaenyra Aborts Her Baby
Confused by the news, Rhaenyra goes into premature labour. With deep pain, and everything happening around her quickly. Daemon (Matt Smith) organizes the troops for an immediate attack and the protection of Dragonstone; After Rhaenyra informs her children of her grandfather’s death, she orders Jacaerys (Harry Collett) that no decision be made without her command. ‘Jace, you are heir now,’ Rhaenyra says to her firstborn. And, with Rhaenyra’s Privy Council waiting, it is she who expels a blood-encrusted baby with her bare hands from her.
The Coronation of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen
Faced with the premature loss of her baby, Visenya Targaryen, the ceremony takes place where the baby is cremated. With the entire court of Dragonstone present, there is the arrival of Ser Erryk Cargyll (Elliott Tittensor) whom we saw with his twin brother looking for Aegon in the previous chapter. To everyone’s surprise at his arrival, it is the knight who kneels and hands him the crown of King Viserys. Daemon takes it and crowns Rhaenyra as queen, remembering how she did it in chapter number 8 when Viserys dropped that same crown while sitting on the Iron Throne. Everyone swears allegiance to the new queen by kneeling, except Rhaenys, whom we remember by her nickname of ‘the queen that wasn’t, so he did not kneel before his niece.
Daemon Looking To Show The Strength Of The House Of The Dragon
Before Rhaenyra’s coronation, we see Daemon eager to go to war. With the Council gathered before the queen in search of allies, inviting Baela and Rhaena, daughters of Daemon; it is the character of Matt Smith who encourages the queen to reinforce herself with the dragons that she has been looking for. With dragons still riderless and to be claimed, plus those of his family, Daemon says that they are 13 dragons to 4 from the Hightower. Proving that it was not the allied men who won the war with Aegon the Conqueror, but the dragons who did; proposing Harrenhall as a vast site where they can gather their dragons.
Otto Offers Aegon’s Terms To Rhaenyra And Daemon
The Council, where Daemon deliberates his strategy, is interrupted by the arrival of Otto Hightower at Dragonstone. The new Hand of the King Aegon II is greeted by Daemon and quickly surrounded by Rhaenyra riding Syrax. To Otto’s bewilderment over Viserys’s crown on Rhaenyra’s head, it is he who offers Aegon terms for his surrender, offering to keep his lands in Dragonstone and Driftmark, as well as his line of succession and to be standard bearers and nobles in the king’s court.
‘I would rather feed my dragons to my children than they carry banners and goblets for your drunken king,’ says Daemon. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra takes the opportunity to remove the symbol of the Hand of the King and say ‘you are just as Hand of the King as Aegon the king’. And, when Daemon is about to draw his sword, it is Otto who gives Rhaenyra a present from Alicent, a leaf he tore as a young man from a book (a scene we saw in the first episodes) to remember the friendship and loyalty between the now, queens. Making Rhaenyra let Otto go and postponing his decision on Aegon’s proposal.
Daemon Challenges Rhaenyra To March To King’s Landing
Before Otto’s message, it is Daemon who rebukes the queen again about using dragons instead of finding allies. And, before a confrontation in front of all those close to him, it is Rhaenyra who tells him about his duty as ruler. ‘I will not rule a kingdom of ashes and skeletons,’ says the queen in response to the use of dragons in war. As Daemon complains about the declarations of war, ‘you must put down rebellions’ and about her resemblance to her father, Rhanenyra who, being strangled by her husband and her uncle, tells him about Aegon’s prophecy The Conqueror. ‘Viserys was a dreamer Dreams do not sit on the Iron Throne, dragons do‘, the prince concludes.
Corlys Survives The Battle For The Stepstones
Later, we see Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) recovering from the battle on the Stepstones and talking to Rhaenys about what happened after his departure. In addition to telling her about his brother’s death, he shows her the landscape with the two Targaryen kings. As he suggests going to Driftmark with his grandchildren, it is Rhaenys who explains that Jacaerys, Lucerys and Joffrey, being heirs to the throne, will never be safe. When he tries to rebuke Rhaenyra, whom he still blames for the death of her son Laenor, it is Rhaenys who defends the queen and explains that she is the only one cautious about going to war, ‘she is the one who maintains the kingdom’, explains to her husband.
Jacaerys and Lucerys As Messengers In Search Of Allies
Given this, it is Corlys who goes in search of the queen, and to convince Rhaenyra about her actions and about the people who have betrayed her; she finds consistency in her speech and says that House Velaryon will be an ally of the Targaryens once more. ‘I made a promise to my father to keep the kingdom united, I will not strike the first blow’, says Rhaenyra before a council that looks to its dragons for strength and the key to war. ‘I want to know who my allies are before it all starts,’ he finishes her off.
At this speech, Corlys is cheerful and says that, given their recent victory, the Stepstones have already secured the area for the kingdom. Therefore, the Narrow Sea is a safe area for them, proposing a blockade for all the merchandise that arrives from that area to King’s Landing. This is an essential site for all supplies in the capital of the Seven Kingdoms.
With the proposal of Corlys, and with the hand of the Targaryens in the best position to face the capital, Rhaenyra expresses her interest in keeping the troops of Winterfell (Winterfell) Vale (the Valley) and Storm’s End (Bastion of Storm) as allies storms). It is Jacaerys who proposes, along with his brother Luceerys, to go with the message on his dragons, a faster method than the ravens. Method accepted by Rhaenyra with the condition of the oath of him before the seven gods, on their quality as messengers and not warriors.
However, when Lucerys arrives at Storm’s End, she finds that her cousin, Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), has arrived before meeting Borros Baratheon, to whom her father once swore allegiance to Rhaenyra as heir. Upon reading Rhaenyra’s proposal, Borros Baratheon (Roger Evans) is outraged, as ‘the greens’ proposed marriage to one of Aemond’s daughters. Given this, he gives Lucerys his withdrawal, an issue that Aemond takes advantage of to provoke him, calling him a bastard and a traitor. ‘I don’t want a fight, I want your eye in exchange for mine,’ says Aemond, eager for revenge, and as soon as the fight is about to break out, it is Borros who defends Lucerys’s position as messenger and orders no fight in the living room.
House of the Dragon Episode 10: Ending Explained
The final episode starts with a very familiar staging that directly links to the outcome of the previous instalment. While Rhaenyra, pregnant, talks to her children preparing them for her future, Rhaenys, recently descended from her dragon, appears to announce that her father, King Viserys, has died. And that’s not the worst part: the Hightowers have manoeuvred to crown Aegon before all the people of King’s Landing, thus giving him legitimacy against his true right of succession. The impact makes Daemon seem to forget about the familiar and human side of him, even more so when Rhaenyra goes into premature labour.
The queen without a crown suffers to give birth and refuses to be helped, in a raw and very complicated scene in which her suffering is compared to that of a caged dragon. Sparing no blood, and empathizing with Rhaenyra’s suffering, the baby is stillborn. By then, she has already ordered her son Jacaerys not to do anything without her permission, knowing that Daemon only thinks of revenge and prepares Dragonstone to defend her. Rhaenyra’s grief is depicted in a scene where she tucks in and cradles the dead baby before shrouding it herself. Daemon’s, more restrained and solitary, shows him on the beach looking at infinity. When they cremate her small body, one of the Cargyll twins, who already had a leading role in 1×09 without being carried away by the Hightower rebellion, appears to give him the crown of Viserys and swear allegiance to the queen. Daemon crowns Rhaenyra and kneels before her: “My queen. “Everyone kneels, except Rhaenys.
Family and personal suffering are forgotten, for the time being, to focus on preparing for war. Rhaenyra leads her first Council as queen, in which they go over her possible supports. In addition to the houses that swore allegiance to him and do not know if they will comply, they put the importance of dragons on the table. Daemon does the math and emphasizes that they have more dragons than “the green ones” (the Hightower side, as opposed to “the blacks” which is Rhaenyra’s side), emphasizing that there are more riderless dragons and that they also have eggs that they will hatch The dragons begin to present themselves as keys to the future of the war.
The planning stops because Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King, is at Dragonstone’s gates. In the same location where at the beginning of the series Rhaenyra arrived with her dragon to ask her then-only uncle Daemon to return the dragon egg (which represents the San Juan de Gaztelugatxe walkway, which La casa del dragon recreates by computer without going to record as Game of Thrones did), they come face to face. And in the same way, but this time with the crown on her head, Rhaenyra arrives on the back of her dragon. In an exchange of words calculated to the millimetre of her, Otto Hightower addresses her saying “Princess Rhaenyra”, to which she replies: “I am now Queen Rhaenyra, and you are traitors to the realm. “The Hand of the King exposes her offer to prevent war, but an angry Rhaenyra ends up ripping the Hand emblem from his chest. This is when Otto Hightower tries to enter from a more personal side of her: he gives her a piece of paper that turns out to be the page of the story that Alicent made her learn when they were children, and tries to soften her for that deep childhood friendship. As Daemon prepares to fight, Rhaenyra orders him not to and defers her response the next day.
They reconvene their Council to prepare for war, but the tension does not subside. Rhaenyra considers accepting Otto Hightower’s offer to avoid ruling a kingdom ravaged by war and burned by Dragonfire, and Daemon gets pissed off and confronts her in front of everyone. The queen asks to be left alone, and with the room already empty there is a major confrontation due to what happens, but above all because of what is said: he grabs her by the neck because she recognizes that she wants to maintain the union of the kingdom based on the second prophecy, which is none other than the Song of Ice and Fire that connects with what Game of Thrones narrates centuries later. Daemon, determined to fight for the Iron Throne, answers him with a phrase that will be important in the outcome: “The prophecies did not make us kings, the dragons did“.
Rhaenyra And Rhaenys, Sorority And Intelligence
After a long time away fighting the Triarchy and being on the brink of death, Corlys Velaryon returns and finds himself bedridden on Dragonstone. His wife, Rhaenys, blames him for abandoning her when she needed him most. And without further ado, she reveals that Daemon cut off his brother’s head after he claimed his throne and called Rhaenyra’s children “bastards”. Tired and hurt, Corlys explains that he has learned and no longer aspires to the throne, that he just wants to retire and stay away from the war watching his grandchildren grow up. But Rhaenys returns to give another turn of the script: Tells her that they can’t stay out of it because the children won’t be safe while Aegon is King and that they must support Rhaenyra. She also expresses it with a reflection that, among so much male testosterone that is already preparing for war, only she does: “He is saving the kingdom from disaster. All the men around the table urge her to lead the kingdom to war. Rhaenyra is the only one showing restraint. “Remembering that Rhaenyra was an accomplice in the death of her son (although in reality, she escaped on a raft, and it will surely be very important in the future because her reappearance would invalidate Rhaenyra’s marriage to Daemon), Corlys opposes to support her.
But everything changes when he joins the Council table. Corlys Velaryon appears imposing, received by the queen herself, leaving Rhaenys in the background. After making it clear that they must take action, he recognizes her as queen and lends her support with his entire fleet, as well as announcing that after her victory in the Narrow Sea they can block the trade of King’s Landing. In a scene in which the camera searches for the faces and gazes of Rhaenyra and Rhaenys, highlighting a true example of sisterhood and strategy and placing Rhaenys as one of the stars and key characters in the plot twists, she offers to lead that operation on the back of her dragon.
Spurred by the support of the Sea Serpent, they reinforce their plan to gain support. Prince Jacaerys proposes that they deliver the queen’s messages by flying her dragons. The queen approves, commissioning her eldest son Jacaerys and her youngest son Lucerys to fly to different points to claim their sworn allegiance to her. Anticipating what was to come, Rhaenyra bids her son’s farewell to her, asking them to be messengers, not warriors.
The Dragons Decide
The little action of the chapter is concentrated in the last 10 minutes and the character of little Lucerys. He arrives at his destination in the south to reclaim the support of the Baratheons, but as his still-young dragon makes landfall, the massive Vhagar ridden by Aemond – the one who left him without an eye – looms in the background. The “negotiation” with Borros Baratheon is short-lived because the “green” side, with Aemond as a messenger, promises them a wedding with one of his daughters to improve the position of their house, while Rhaenyra only reminds him that his father has sworn allegiance as heir to the Iron Throne, and Lucerys adds that he is already engaged to his cousin Velaryon.
When, without having succeeded, he is about to leave, Aemond stops him and asks him to cut out his eye to offer it as a reward. Lucerys refuses to fight, repeating her mother’s words that she has come as a messenger and not as a warrior. Borros Baratheon supports him, forces that no blood be spilt in her hall, and Lucerys leaves on the back of her dragon Arrax and in the middle of a strong storm. Predictably, Aemond chases after him on top of Vhagar, the largest dragon in the Seven Kingdoms, who is twice the size of Arrax.
At first, it seems to be a chase just to scare and frighten Lucerys, and, when Lucerys takes advantage of the smaller size of his dragon to mislead Aemond, everything seems to be over. But the dragons decide: Arrax does not obey Lucerys and unleashes a blaze in Vhagar’s face. And just when he seems safe, Vhagar doesn’t obey Aemond even though he yells “no, not Vhagar!” and in one bite he rips apart Arrax and kills the little one, whose remains fall from the clouds. Aemond realizes what he just did. In the last scene of the chapter, and of the season, Daemon tells Rhaenyra, who completely changes her face and seems ready to go to war, leaving aside the moderate strategy that Rhaenys had praised.
The season finale of House of the Dragon arrives when we see Lucerys mounted on Arrax fleeing Storm’s End in a hurry, to be confronted by Vaghar, remembering that the latter is the largest living dragon in the kingdom, it is Lucerys who asks Arrax hastily flee from Aemond and Vaghar’s pursuit. But, when everything seems that Lucerys will get out of the jam, Arrax disobeys him and attacks Vaghar with fire. Which causes Vaghar himself to disobey Aemond and hastily search for the dragon and his rider.
After a new and disturbing chase, where both riders seek to tame their beasts, Vaghar, disobeying Aemond, intercepts Arrax and Lucerys and with a single bite splits them in two. Thus giving rise to the death of Lucerys Velaryon. Concluding the tenth and final chapter of House of the Dragon season 1 with Rhaenyra learning of the death of her child and, without saying a word, we know what is coming. Just looking at her face as we see our shocked faces reflected on the black screen rolling over the credits, we know what’s to come: A Dance with Dragons.
