House of the Dragon’ Episode 7 Recap: Is This the End of the Targaryens?

Watching House of the Dragon is playing a game of contradictions.

You want to see cool fantasy warfare, even though you don’t want to see your faves fight and potentially kill each other (though someone needs to do something about Aemond). You want to root for the good guys, even though it’s tough at this point to defend one above the other (this season has been maybe too biased towards Rhaenyra, but that’s all about to change). And you want to see the dragons, even though you know that every one of them that accepts a rider is dooming itself.

In the penultimate episode of the season, we get plenty of dragons, as House Targaryen enters the beginning of the end of their dynasty.

After confronting a bewildered Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty) and easily gaining his allegiance as well as a new rider for Seasmoke, Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) confidence in her dragonseed theory is renewed, with some caveats. Addam is lowborn, and claims he doesn’t know his heritage. The Black Council is decidedly against allowing just anyone (read: non-nobility) to ride a dragon, and so is Jacaerys (Harry Collett).

He rightfully observes that allowing common folk the use of dragons undermines the Targaryens’ divine right to rule Westeros—and, not for nothing, it undermines his own claim. His possession of a dragon confirmed him in the eyes of everyone else as Rhaenyra’s heir. If anyone can do it, the Harwin Strong rumors might keep him from the throne.

Nonetheless, the situation is desperate, and Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) convinces Rhaenyra to ditch the highborn genealogies and go in search of any smallfolk with Targaryen blood. Given the royal family’s love of King’s Landing’s brothels, the city has tons lying in wait. Rhaenyra can’t rely on the nobility to be loyal to her—after all, Mysaria points out, the people fighting against her are her own family. “Let us raise an army of bastards,” Rhaenyra responds.

Corlys (Steve Toussaint) visits Addam’s new digs, and while his curt “well done” isn’t the best fatherly pep talk, it makes sense that Corlys isn’t immediately embracing his bastard kids given what has happened to the rest of his family. Addam’s brother Alyn (Abubakar Salim) all but scoffs at the idea of being a dragonrider. He knows Corlys still has no heir to Driftmark, and responds with the magic words “I am of salt and sea”—the words and the heirship that Baela (Bethany Antonia), being a dragonrider, renounced. Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell), for her part, ditches the convoy out of the Eyrie and runs into the hills to find this wild dragon that keeps eating the Vale’s sheep.