House of the Dragon season 1 episode 3 breakdown 

Spoilers ahead
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You have been warned

As the royal entourage prepares to feast on prince Aegon’s second name day, we find Rhaenyra sulking away. The dynamic shift between Rhaenyra and Alicent’s relationship, following the latter’s marriage to Rhaenyra’s father, was established through a short scene. A pregnant Alicent comes to mend things with her friend but she only ends up widening the rift by asserting her position as the queen. When Rhaenyra turns a deaf ear to her pleas, an impatient Alicent commands her to join the feast. This pattern might end up forcing the former friends on the opposite sides in the battle for the throne. 

In the carriage, on the way to the hunting grounds, King Viseyrs asks Rhaenyra to join his hunting party. To which she disdainfully replies that she hates killing boars because they squeal like little children. Later in the episode, while she runs off with Ser Christon Cole, she gets attacked by a rogue boar and is forced to kill it. Even though a bit too on the nose, the scene still effectively communicated the death of Rhaenyra’s innocence and possibly foreshadowed the despicable, amoral things that she might have to do in order to protect herself. 

An inebriated Viseyrs is seen drowning in wedding proposals and unwarranted council. Otto Hightower even suggests that the king might quell many disagreements with a single stroke by betrothing a two-year-old Aegon to his step-sister Rhaenyra, we have to keep in mind that marrying within families is not a strange custom for the Targaryens. The manner in which Viseyrs shot down every proposal showed that he was even more frustrated at the fact that there was no right solution to the problem. 

His conversation with Alicent at the campfire showed us that he truly cared for his daughter and that he hated the thought of forcing any choices upon her but he was also agitated that Rhaenyra’s stubbornness and the question of her marriage might end up driving him mad. If the issue of Rhaenyra’s betrothal becomes a key factor that somehow ends up taking the king’s life, then the sheer guilt of that could propel Rhaenyra to take reckless decisions in the future.

An arrogant Jason Lannister is seen courting a visibly disinterested Rhaenyra. After his unsuccessful attempt, Jason directly approaches the king at dinner and broaches the subject of Rhaenyra’s marriage and even goes so far as to suggest that her getting married to a house as wealthy as the Lannisters might solve a lot of problems for the king. A visibly drunk Viseyrs takes offense to that, shoots down the proposal, and reprimands the Lannister. This could possibly mean that the Lannisters could ally with forces diagonally opposite to Rhaenyra and her loyalists in the future.

The biggest foreshadowing of the episode comes when King Viseyrs goes after a white hart, a mythical stag, the hunting of which is seen as an auspicious event, a supposed divine approval of the successor of the throne. Viseyrs’ hunting party could not find a white hart and had to make do with a regular stag, which he ended up butchering erratically, prolonging the poor beast’s suffering. Meanwhile, Rheanyra, who had earlier run away from the hunting party after being hounded by marriage talks, is joined by Ser Christin Cole. After a night of bonding over boar slaughtering, Rhaenyra and Cole casually come across a white hart in the morning, Ser Cole draws his sword but the princess, enamoured by the beauty of the beast, decides to let it go. The sighting of the white hart comes as a clear sign that Rheanyra will ascend the throne but we need to keep in mind that A Song of Ice Fire is not your typical fantasy novel that cares much for divine signs. In the Game of Thrones series, Melsandre swore up and down that her Lord of Light favoured Stannis Baratheon and that she saw the future in which Stannis took the Iron throne. It was not a lie that she fabricated, as much as she was a deceiver, we know that she truly believed in Stannis Baratheon. We now know how that turned out to be. So, maybe the white hart sighting could be a red herring, or maybe not.

The episode ends with a delightfully dramatic and intense fight scene, the intensity was stretched to an exciting extent through the wonderful use of silence and music, Daemon barely spoke any lines throughout the episode and that somehow elevated his presence. The gripping battle ended with a blood-drenched Daemon Targaryen pulling the mutilated body of the crab feeder out of his cave and declaring victory. Even though the episode ended with an action-packed battle sequence, it was a little disappointing to see that the end of a much-hyped antagonist came abruptly, and off-camera. Daemon’s pettiness in not accepting his brother’s help even in such a desperate situation somehow still adds to his likeability, I guess that’s the mark of a great performance coupled with wonderful writing.