Aemond is House of the Dragon’s most tragic character, and best villain

A Song of Ice and Fire has by no means lacked for compelling villains. While the most memorable are usually the merciless and unrepentant monsters like Joffrey Baratheon or Ramsay Bolton, the ones that make the sequence particular are its formidable and advanced schemers — a broad vary that makes up everybody from Littlefinger and Cersei, to Tywin Lannister.

House of the Dragon provides nice characters to the sequence’ legacy on each fronts. But its most attention-grabbing addition is Aemond Targaryen, whose combine of cleverness, impulsiveness, and a sapphire eye makes the present’s model of him one of A Song of Ice and Fire’s best and most tragic characters.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for House of the Dragon episode 10.]

A Song of Ice and Fire is a sequence that not often trades in pure villainy, at the very least amongst its most distinguished forged. Instead, it provides us self-interested characters who’re villainous solely insofar as their ambitions towards energy outweigh their morality, and when these ambitions usually battle with the story’s foremost characters. But they’re at all times well-reasoned and comprehensible, and outright violence is not often their prefered methodology.

The tales of the sequence’ best schemers, like Littlefinger or Varys, are virtually revenge tales, as they grasp for energy that they, of their minds, deserve, however from which they’ve been unjustly disadvantaged by the world. Even when, in the case of Tywin and Cersei, they’re the most highly effective folks in Westeros, they crave the recognition and title that their energy, intelligence, and affect ought to include, however not often does.

Image: HBO

When the sequence does select to make a foremost character really terrible, on the different hand, it tends to take action by highlighting their violence. These monstrous characters are the reverse of the schemers in that they’ve energy and they acknowledge it, however they haven’t any ambitions past cruelty. Characters like Joffrey and Ramsay perceive the energy they’ve solely as the capacity to wield violence in opposition to these weaker than themselves. Such brutality is not often ever retaliatory and even motivated past sadistic want and a needy expression of superiority. The sport of thrones is much less attention-grabbing to them than the sport of sadism.

House of the Dragon’s Aemond Targaryen is available in someplace in between these two extremes. He is deeply formidable, extremely motivated, clever, and expert, but in addition pushed by a way of revenge that (particularly in episode 10) is essentially violent. Much like House of the Dragon’s different malcontent second-son, Daemon Targaryen, Aemond feels that he is deeply deserving of greater than his careless and weak brother — significantly after a childhood that we’ve seen was full of bullying from that very same brother and his (probably) bastard cousins. Daemon discovered that energy in his penchant for violence and the energy of his dragon, and as a result of Aemond appears to have modeled his life after his uncle, that’s the place tries to seek out it too. But like most intergenerational relationships in A Song of Ice and Fire, Aemond’s youthful view of his uncle’s heroics led to an amplified model of Daemon that exists solely in Aemond’s thoughts, and solely tells half of Daemon’s story.

Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO

Aemond pulled Daemon’s princely bluster, cleverness, and haughty delight, however he ended up with the also-ran inferiority that drives Daemon’s extra harmful impulses. The consequence is an adolescent who’s intelligent sufficient to win over a home to his mom’s trigger, sensible sufficient to check greater than his brother and prepare tougher than him, but in addition one which’s impulsive sufficient to seize a rock in a fist struggle in opposition to his little cousins and threaten to kill them.

But the tragedy of Aemond’s place in the heart of the sequence’ villains implies that, like the schemers, he is unable to completely acknowledge the energy he really wields, however like the monsters, that energy is restricted to violence. By the time Luke arrives at Storm’s End, Aemond has already gained the prize. The Baratheons will assist Aegon as the king, as an alternative of Rhaenyra. But for Aemond, this is additionally an opportunity for revenge — an eye fixed for an eye fixed. It could also be violent, however in a strictly biblical sense, it’s additionally truthful.

When Luke rejects his provide to settle the rating, Aemond decides that some worth have to be paid, even when he doesn’t intend for that worth to be dying. When Aemond loses management of Vhagar throughout their mid-air duel with Luke and Arrax, and the dragon eats them each, Aemond turns into one of the few characters in A Song of Ice and Fire to drastically underestimate his personal capability for enacting hurt, and the penalties his impulses would possibly embrace.

“The Black Queen” is very intentional about its portrayal of Luke’s dying: Both boys battle to get their dragons beneath management, and sadly neither understands what it means to carry such a beast to a struggle. In the second, Aemond’s cool resolve provides approach to determined cries to get the greatest and oldest dragon to take heed to him. Lucerys’ dying isn’t a case of spoiled princely sadism like Joffrey, or a coldly calculated transfer up energy’s invisible rungs. It’s a tragic accident at the fingers of an adolescent who, after a lifetime of being bullied, didn’t perceive how the stakes had modified. After a lifetime of feeling inferior — together with throughout the crowning of his personal unworthy brother as king — Aemond now wields the energy to finish lives and begin wars. He is an anime villain, if an anime villain was the one chargeable for inciting World War I. And sadly, with all of Westeros headed towards struggle, doubling down on his worst instincts could also be the solely means for him to thrive.