One Line Completely Ruined House Of The Dragon Season 3 Premiere

House of the Dragon has returned with a season three premiere that was emotionally devastating in the way audiences have come to expect from the Game of Thrones prequel series. The episode was stuffed with ugly reminders that war is hell and that those least able to understand war’s brutal costs are the ones most likely to be consumed by it. But while the premiere’s action scenes can stand alongside the best in the franchise, other parts fell flat, particularly one moment with Queen Rhaenyra that I don’t think I can ever forgive.

I can confidently declare this right now: The Battle of the Gullet gets automatic entry into the best fight scenes in all of Game of Thrones history. Its quality as a tense, visceral, and consequential action scene puts the battle right up next to franchise greats, on par with the Battle of The Bastards, the siege of Winterfell, Hardhome, and the Trial of the Seven. The Battle of the Gullet also gave us greatness beyond the action with a pair of characters I’m going to sorely miss: Admiral Sharako Lohar and her ship the Bitchfist.

We were introduced to Admiral Lohar— played by trans actress Abigail Thorn— last season, and while we got a brief glimpse of what that character was like then, in this episode she really got to shine. She was incredibly fun to watch, commanding her Bitchfist (my goodness what an incredible name for a ship) with a singleminded intensity that we don’t typically get to see from the series’ female warriors. Admiral Lohar is like if Brienne of Tarth had a sense of humor, and it’s rare that a character introduced and taken out so quickly is so memorable that she shames the main characters, particularly Queen Rhaenyra Targaryan. 

While the battle rages, elsewhere Queen Rhaenyra is throwing a fit because nobody will let her fly her dragon to the Gullet to rescue her naval forces under attack. I understand that the deeper metaphor of House of the Dragon is a treatise on misogyny and Westeros’ unwillingness to tolerate a female ruler for the sake of a man, despite how unfit that man is. (Feels familiar, no?) Queen Rhaenyra is frustrated that the men around her, her own Queensguard and son included, don’t take her seriously. Up until this point, Rhaenyra has handled this frustration gracefully and it seemed like the writers were building her up— making her endure these indignities until she can’t anymore, snaps, and pulls a Daenerys. But with this episode, it felt like the writers missed the mark with her characterization completely.  When her efforts to help out in the Gullet are thwarted and she’s locked in her room, Rhaenyra starts cutting up her dress, sobbing while bastardizing a quote from my favorite queen in history, Queen Elizabeth I. She said, “I may appear to have the weak and feeble body of a woman but I possess the heart and spirit of a king.” 

I appreciate that the folks in the writers’ room are students of history and want to draw comparisons between Rhaenyra and one of the greatest female rulers in all of history, but they could not have picked a worse way to do that. When Good Queen Bess said, “I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king,” she shouted it on horseback, clad in armor, addressing her army before the English navy’s surprise defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. In Rhaenyra’s mouth, given as a tearful aside to one of her councillors, the words lose all the weight of their historical power. They become meaningless. Meanwhile there’s a woman half a world away, tearing shit up with her Bitchfist, that would have been perfect for a one-liner like that. If Admiral Lohar had said a remixed version of Queen Elizabeth’s quote I would have stood and cheered and half the internet would be cheering with me.