Welcome to House of the Dragon MVP, our series highlighting each episode’s Most Valuable Player in the game before the Game of Thrones.
Viserys Targaryen, first of his name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and protector of the realm, is a train wreck.
He tortured his wife to death, alienated the most powerful house in Westeros to marry an obvious plant, couldn’t stay sober at a two-year-old’s birthday party, ignored the mounting tension between his daughter and his wife until someone literally lost an eye, and bits of his corporeal form have been physically falling off for decades. There’s not much King Viserys is good at, except Valyrian Legos.
That said, the king does love his family, and House of the Dragon Episode 8 « The Lord of the Tides » is a perfect example of love being enough to make a difference in the world. For all his gentle uselessness in life, King Viserys finally made the direct and impassioned plea for peace that was needed to heal his family and his kingdom — a big enough move to grant him this episode’s MVP in a positive way, until the magical circumstances of his (probable) death went and moved the needle even further in the direction of chaos.
This episode sees the king in a wretched state. The mysterious wasting disease that’s plagued him since Episode 1 has reached its nearly fatal conclusion, and he lives in constant pain dulled only by a mind-addling painkilling potion. The drugs keep him comfortable, but they’re also a boon to the Hightowers, who plan to use the King’s absence from politics as an excuse to push their anti-Velaryon bastard agenda: disinheriting Princess Rhaenyra’s son Lucerys from inheriting an ailing Corlys Velaryon’s title of Lord of the Tides, thus declaring him a bastard, and giving the title instead to Corlys’ brother Vaemond.
Unfortunately for the Hightowers and their supporters (a.k.a the Greens), they’ve fucked around one time too many. Rhaenyra’s presence in King’s Landing activates King Viserys’ long-dormant Find Out mode, and he rises from his deathbed to support his daughter and lay the smackdown on Vaemond Velaryon with a violent assist from his brother Daemon. It’s a rousing victory for Rhaenyra’s party (the Blacks), who established the « my sons are totes not bastards » party line in the previous episode — so rousing that the Greens are officially humbled.
Viserys continues said humbling at a family dinner after the proceedings, at which he performs the dopest Game of Thrones face reveal since Arya whipped off her Walder Frey face and removes his gold mask to reveal that half of his face is gone. He’s not on the brink of death, he’s 50% over the line and a stiff wind will blow him right over it, making his dinner speech the most important he’ll ever give in his life. He tells his family he loves them — all of them — and begs them to mend their differences in the name of the love they bear him as their father, brother, husband, grandfather, and cousin.
And it works! It definitely, totally, a little bit, sort of, if you squint, not really, actually doesn’t, completely ends up doing the opposite of works. Dinner is fine; the Velaryon and Targaryen sons only get into one life-threatening altercation, but just when it looks like Queen Alicent is ready to accept that Rhaenyra and her strong sons will inherit the throne over her own trueborn children, quiet hell breaks loose when the dinner ands and the queen overhears Viserys’ dying words.
Delirious, Viserys speaks of the Song of Ice and Fire, the Prince Who Was Promised, and the cold threat that will come from the North. He also speaks of « Aegon, » almost as if the Prince is there before him, and whispers that Aegon is the one who will save them. Alicent interprets this as Viserys telling her to crown her son Aegon to save the world. She is wrong.
This is Viserys’ second-ever Dragon Dream, one of the gifted prophecies that have guided House Targaryen for centuries, and through it he is witnessing something every Thrones fan knows to be true: Aegon Targaryen, a.k.a Jon Snow, will unite the realms of men against the White Walkers in the north. That Aegon is the Prince who was Promised.
Which, you know, Viserys could have maybe clarified. But instead of letting Alicent know what the hell he’s talking about and avoiding the war he literally just avoided, Viserys floats off to his death hallucinating a hopefully better-paced rundown of Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Rest in Peace, Viserys. Nobody else is going to.
