hotd thoughts: episode ten:

aemond v. lucerys

(spoilers ahead):

for those saying aemond didn’t want/expect lucerys’ end to be that way, like huh?? a dragon is bound to it’s rider and their feelings, one would expect that hatred towards rhaenyra and her side to seep through that. not only that, it’s not as if he didn’t gode and threaten a poor boy of thirteen into drawing his sword in defense of his person. if not for baratheon and his men, lucerys would’ve perished right there in that hall by his fully grown uncle. his uncle, who is demanding an eye in payment for a strife years past, just as aemond’s mother did when lucerys was barely out of toddlerhood, for a slight aemond himself told his mother to put to rest since he got vhagar in the end. lucerys only came as a messenger of his mother, to speak to his cousin to urge him and his house to honor the oath house baratheon had already pledged years prior to rhaenyra. so in the end, lucerys did not come to, seek to, or wish to fight. thus it makes sense lucerys would attempt flee storms end on arrax, when by all action and word, the young prince’s uncle was ready to draw blood. then aemond made a fully concious choice to mount vhagar, in anger, and take to the skies in chase. vhagar, who is a war machine in her own right, would not see arrax flying away as anything but a battle rather than a scared dragon attempting to to save itself and it’s mount. aemond could have stood in the castle’s courtyard watching the boy-prince flee, but he did not. his face after arrax and lucerys plunge to their deaths does give off a regretful demeanor, insofar that the result clearly shows he is actively understands his complicity in the jump start of the war’s turning from ravens to bloodshed. actions speak louder than words and despite trying to call off vhagar, it remains so that ultimately aemond made conscious choices taking to the sky thus becoming a kinslayer, the most hated thing in westros, and changed the trajectory of the land’s history forever. the greens kick started this brewing war with aegon the elder’s usurpation. then aemond furthered it with the murder prince lucerys and his dragon, arrax.