A lacking eye, a rotten tooth, a razor-thin scar standing out furious in opposition to pale pores and skin. So a lot of “The Lord of the Tides” is structured across the accidents House of the Dragon’s solid have accrued all through their troubled lives. Even the titular incident, a succession disaster inside House Velaryon, is prompted by Lord Corlys (Steve Toussaint) struggling a grave wound in battle. We by no means see the wound; the truth is, Lord Corlys doesn’t seem on display screen in any respect, however data of it units into movement a battle for energy that prices a person his life and units the royal household as soon as extra at one another’s throats. Think of it like Laura Palmer’s absence in Twin Peaks, the form of emptiness that creates a whole story simply within the damaging house it leaves behind when it disappears.

This is a household that may’t cease hurting itself, and no one has suffered extra in that regard than King Viserys (Paddy Considine). However unsuitable he’s to cling to the hope of an not possible establishment, nonetheless deluded he’s as to his energy to make the folks he loves settle for peace, it’s agonizing to see him so diminished, his physique skeletal and sunken, lined in open sores, his thoughts addled by the opium tincture generally known as milk of the poppy. Even drawing breath, he’s as a lot a wound within the cloth of the dominion as Lord Corlys.

The emotional wounds dealt forwards and backwards throughout the divide between the 2 courtly camps are as current because the bodily. When Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) first sees Alicent (Olivia Cooke) upon returning to King’s Landing after a six-year absence, her hand flies directly to the scar on her forearm, mirroring a later scene through which she and Alicent clasp fingers with apparently unfeigned heat. Alicent rubs Rhaenyra’s arm and wrist as if in apology, and for the primary second because the time skip it appears as if some flicker of the romantic spark that animated their shared childhood might be reignited. Cooke and D’Arcy have a direct chemistry robust sufficient that even the data that this rapprochement is doomed can’t dent the change’s energy. Their showdown within the Red Keep’s throne room is equally charged, the entire of the court docket wanting on as they air their soiled laundry with ever-mounting venom. Rhaenyra’s open outrage is charming, D’Arcy’s hawkish, aristocratic options completely suited to the towering contempt of a princess who’s by no means needed to play petty video games and so finds repellent the half-truths and evasions by which Alicent conspires to strip her sons of their inheritance.

Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO

At the royal dinner, which Viserys insists on attending despite his quickly declining well being, the king removes the gilded masks he wears at court docket to cover the open lesions consuming by his cheek right down to the muscle. He begs his household to see him not as their king however as a husband, a father, and a grandfather, and the social tactic he makes use of is the ghastly sight of his wounds, an unavoidable reminder of his mortality. The wound and old-age make-up utilized to Considine are actually spectacular, steering away from the pitfalls of rubbery latex pores and skin and unconvincing CGI. He seems like nothing a lot as a medieval leper, entombed in his huge cover mattress behind the uncared for examine the place he as soon as toiled so fortunately over his mannequin of Old Valyria, now lined in cobwebs.

That historical freehold is yet one more structuring absence, supply of the dragons the royals covet and of the bloodlines they cling to and wield in opposition to each other to contest claims of legitimacy. There is an etiquette to the follow, a reliance on invoking these absences with out mentioning them by title. When Vaemond Velaryon (Wil Johnson), chafing in opposition to the plain lie of the parentage of Rhaenyra’s sons, dares to maneuver previous innuendo and into accusation, the risks of probing at such a wound with one’s fingers swiftly grow to be obvious.

Ironically, it’s solely after Vaemond’s demise that we see him handled with any tenderness. The smug, abrasive man is laid out by the silent sisters to be embalmed, the severed halves of his head laid reverently in line like one thing out of Hellraiser. We revere and memorialize our wounds as a result of to confess they’re meaningless is to confront our personal powerlessness, our insignificance within the face of entropy. And as Viserys attracts what could also be his final rattling, anguished breath, it’s arduous to not suppose that his lifetime of ache will grow to be simply one other wound his descendants and widow can’t cease selecting at, one other absence into which they’ll venture their very own that means.

It’s just like the serving lady Diana, who on the episode’s begin is introduced shaking and in tears to Alicent, the place she recounts her expertise being raped by Prince Aegon. Alicent provides her false sweetness and luxury, then hush cash. Close up that wound. Pretend you haven’t bought it anymore. Except that when it’s dealt, it’s already too late. You can’t cease tonguing the outlet the place your tooth was. You can’t cease selecting the scab. After this week it appears all of Westeros’ wounds are on the verge of being torn vast open.