Review: A good man makes a real bad decision on 'House of the Dragon'

ALERT: Contains spoilers for the ‘Game of Thrones’ series up through episode two of ‘House of the Dragon’

Good, honest men usually have a tough go of it in the “Game of Thrones” universe. Just ask Ned Stark.

King Viserys Targaryen isn’t a perfect man by any means. He doesn’t seem to have the ruthless streak that it can sometimes require to rule a kingdom like Westeros. But he does seem to have a good heart, and a desire to do right.

Last week’s “House of the Dragon” premiere put him in an impossible situation that left his wife and male heir dead, his brother permanently estranged and the entire kingdom on edge as he named his daughter Rhaenyra the first-ever female heir to the Iron Throne.

Viserys did so under a pretty heavy cloud of grief, so maybe it slipped his mind that — as politics go — he’s going to need to find himself a new wife, and soon.

And once again, due to the nature of the fictional world we find ourselves in, I have to sit here and endorse something that is patently awful. But here it is: Viserys should have married the 12-year-old.

Context is (clearly) important here, both to justify that previous sentence and to illustrate how even a king can get squeezed in a vise by the way those around him conspire to gain power.

First off, Viserys shouldn’t have named Rhaenyra his heir. He did it because he was super mad at his brother Daemon, and with good reason. But throughout “Game of Thrones,” we heard about how “the gods toss a coin” when a Targaryen is born, to determine if they will be wise or mad. Viserys seems like a pretty wise son of the Dragon.

Second, he has a chance to course-correct when the only other house from his Valyrian bloodline, the Velaryons, propose a marriage to Laena Velaryon. She’s the aforementioned 12-year-old, and I really can’t explain how gross it is to hear a wonderful little girl say to a middle-aged man: “My mother says you will not bed me yet … until I am 14.”

That being said, this is (ugh) the smart move, politically and in order to keep his family a.) on the throne and b.) safe. Corlys Velaryon controls most of Westeros’ naval arsenal, he’s the richest man on the continent, and (whyyyyy are you making me do this, George R.R. Martin???) he’d almost surely be able to get that male heir he’s been after.

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The king’s choice at the end of the episode, to marry his new good-time-chats-buddy Alicent Hightower, is actually two really poor choices. He’s marrying for love, which almost never works out when we’re talking royalty, succession and the like. And he’s making a bad political decision as well, sending the Velaryons right into a collab with Daemon Targaryen.

It looks like Daemon and Corlys are going to head out on a little extracurricular adventure to secure Corlys’ shipping lanes and put a hurting on the Crab-Feeder, a curious mask-wearing, sea-faring villain who leaves his living victims nailed to driftwood for the low-tide crabs to pick at — hooray, more gross things.

Someone remarks that the Crab-Feeder is a prince from the eastern city of Myr, but if there’s one thing this universe has taught me, it’s that characters don’t always know what they’re talking about. I have not read the book this story is based on (“Fire & Blood,” named for the Targaryen family motto), so I don’t know if his identity is a secret to everyone. I’d rather find out through the show.

This episode’s centerpiece was the standoff between Daemon and his City Watch, Otto and the Kingsguard and — much to everyone’s surprise — Rhaenyra on the back of her dragon Syrax, just in time to even the odds and ruin Daemon’s little trap.

Rhaenyra really shows in this episode why she’s much more deserving than Daemon to be heir to the throne. Daemon is a stupid, impulsive brat, stealing the dragon egg meant for his dead nephew’s crib and pretending his girlfriend is pregnant all to get a rise out of his brother. Then he tried to spring a trap that Rhaenyra saw right through. She calmly got off her dragon, explained the situation to Daemon and, just as she told her father, got the egg back without any bloodshed, “which it did not seem Ser Otto would be able to do.”

But again, everyone is being squeezed here. Rhaenyra, as she’s reminded by her aunt Rhaenys, is also in an impossible position. Women don’t get to sit on the Iron Throne, and as much as she understands that her father needs to remarry, she’s also starting to see that maybe she’s better at politics than she thought.

So the look on her face when her father tells the Small Council he’s marrying her best friend is just crushing, in so many ways. Alicent has been secretly meeting with her father — and even if it’s been as her father’s pawn in a bid to better his own standing, there’s no way to explain to Rhaenyra that will justify it.

This is the wedge that’s going to start dividing people into the the Blacks and Greens who fight the Dance of the Dragons later on in this series.

Once again in the “Thrones” universe, an honest decision by a decent man ripples out into disaster for the entire continent.

“House of the Dragon” episodes air Sunday nights on HBO Max.

A few loose scales

• Speaking of scales, I really like the way they are really differentiating one dragon from another. Daemon’s dragon Caraxes isn’t just a red copy of Syrax; he’s smaller, more nimble-looking and has that long, slender neck. As impressive as Dany’s dragons were, they were kind of just different-colored copies of one another.

• Rhys Ifans is doing a great job playing an unlikable guy. He’s got just the right combination of humility and smarm. I’m curious if he successfully navigates the choppy waters to come, or if he’s going to revel in his new status and take his eye off the ball.

• New intro sequence! I’m kind of disappointed that the theme song is just the “Game of Thrones” title music with a few beats removed here and there. I was hoping there would be some fire to go with all the blood, but alas, not so much. I don’t really know what this new intro sequence is supposed to be showing; is it perhaps going down into the cracks and crevices of Viserys’ model of old Valyria? I’ll have to watch it again.