House of the Dragon: Season 3 Episode 3 ‘Rhaenyra Triumphant’ explained

*Warning: Major spoilers ahead*

With Team Black taking King’s Landing, Daemon, flanked by Ulf, Hugh and their dragons, heads out to meet with Lord Ormond Hightower and demand his army’s surrender.

Reluctantly, but to avoid any further bloodshed, Ormond bends the knee and declares his fealty to Queen Rhaenyra. At Daemon’s urging, he agrees to hand over his nephew, Alicent’s youngest son Daeron, to him to be held as a hostage.

Ormond says goodbye to the blond-haired teenager, and Daeron remains silent as he is taken by Daemon to King’s Landing. Taken before Rhaenyra, she questions him about his actions during the war, but he says nothing. He is taken to a chamber as prisoner, and Daemon tells her, that as an heir to Aegon, he must be killed.

Rhaenyra and Team Black may now have a hold on King’s Landing, but it takes more than sitting on the Iron Throne for her to be considered a Queen. Within a day, demands are being made of the new Queen by her people. Rhaenyra is now without a small council, (she bitterly refuses to bring her council from Dragonstone, feeling they are traitors for advising against taking the throne). She still grieves for Jaceaerys, and discovers to her dismay that the crown’s treasury is missing – the gold removed and hidden who knows where. And to top it all, the castle is infested with rats – Aegon having executed all the ratcatchers in KIng’s Landing in revenge for his infant son’s assassination.

With pressure mounting, Rhaenyra’s grip on reality begins to loosen, and as she speaks to Mysaria she stops dead in her tracks when she hallucinates Jace walking in the halls. But her mental health is the least of her concerns.

With Aegon still missing and Aemond is only a dragon’s flight away in Harrenhal, her position on the throne remains tenuous. She decides to claim that Aegon is dead, and requests the High Septon officially coronate her, but he refuses to until he sees Aegon’s body. He warns Rhaenyra not to cross the faith, as the ramifications among the smallfolk would be dire. Rhaenyra wisely heeds this warning.

Hearing petition from the smallfolk, a former spy of Mysaria’s asks the new Queen for justice – during the blockade on King’s Landing, the nobles of the city hoarded what they could for themselves, leaving the poor to starve. She asks her if she will be the Queen that she promised and stand up for those who suffered during the war.

Unsure how to cope with the demands of the smallfolk and the nobles under her rule, Rhaenyra decides to seek advice from the one person who knows the inner workings of King’s Landing: Alicent.

Alicent, who is locked in a room alongside daughter Helaena, is not exactly pleased to see her once close friend when she drops by for advice. Having just witnessed her father beheaded in front of the court by Rhaenyra, it’s safe to say their relationship is strained. Helaena wishes to see her daughter, who has been taken from her, while Alicent wants to know what comes next.

When Rhaenyra asks where all the gold has gone, Alicent says she doesn’t know – her father might have known but he was executed before being asked. When Rhaenyra accuses her of withholding the information, Alicent reminds her that she held up her end of the bargain as best she could, clearing the pathway for her to get into the Keep without disruption.

In another request, dragonseed Hugh requests he and his family have somewhere to live and be safe away from his home in Tumbleton. She promises to get round to it, and thanks him for his service so far, but she has a million things on her plate at the moment and it is not currently a priority.

Rhaenyra enjoys a dinner alongside Lord Corlys, Alyn and Addam, during which Corlys reveals their position to her as his bastard sons. After everything they’ve done for her in the civil war, Corlys asks that she officially legitimise them as his heirs, with hopes for Alyn to take over his position as Lord of Driftmark (or what’s left of it, after Sharako Lohar burned it to the ground).

However, she’s hesitant to do so, and later on when she and Daemon knight dragonseeds Ulf, Hugh and Addam, she declines to give him the Velaryon name. This enrages Corlys, who confronts her about denying his request after everything he sacrificed for her – losing his wife, his ships, and his home in her name.

She notes that she needs to be taken seriously, and due to her own family’s “sensitivities”, she needs to establish herself before establishing bastards as legitimate.

Corlys sees red and angrily lashes out at the Queen for her hypocritical behaviour considering all three of the sons she had during her marriage to his son Laenor were clearly bastards, but he accepted them all. He demands she “say aloud the reason your children deserve what mine are denied” but she cannot.

Calling all the noble houses to a feast at the castle, Rhaenyra leaves them all disgusted when the main course is revealed to be cooked rats.

She then chastises them all for stockpiling food and leaving her people to starve – forcing them to resort to eating rats like the meal they’re turning their noses up at. She then announces her Gold Cloaks were, at that very moment, plundering each of their stockrooms to distribute their supplies to those who need it more. The noble houses are horrified, declaring it an injustice, but she refuses to hear it. Lord Manderly is the only person who seems somewhat amused by her statement.

Later that evening, as supplies are distributed to the starving smallfolk, Rhaenyra admits to Daemon she knows it is a short-term solution to a bigger problem, and requests he go to the Eyrie in order to get fealty and gold from Lady Arryn. What she doesn’t know is that his daughter, Rhaena, is currently seeking asylum there after causing chaos at the Battle of the Gullet with her dragon, Sheepstealer…

As she joins the efforts to distribute food to the people, Rhaenyra takes a moment of joy in doing something she believes is worthwhile as a Queen for the first time, giving a speech and basking in the adoration it gives her.

Unfortunately for Rhaenyra, a brief moment of enjoyment is all she’s set to get as her first days as ruler come to a close.

Lord Ormund had a secret card to play. The boy he handed over was not Daeron – something that becomes obvious when he’s presented to his mother Alicent, who doesn’t recognise him. It’s just a common boy who Ormund had coerced into playing the role, even dying his hair, under threat of killing his mother if he didn’t play along.

When the ruse is discovered, Daemon and Rhaenyra are baffled by the move – but by this point Ormund is several steps ahead of them, and they get word he has taken control of the town of Tumbleton with his army.

Contrary to Daemon’s belief, it appears there are more threats than he thought when it comes to Rhaenyra’s position. Rhaenyra declares she’ll send dragons to burn them, but in doing so she’s reminded it will result in a lot of collateral damage, with innocents being caught in the crossfire (including, not that she realises, Hugh’s family).

As Gold Cloaks pull down the Hightowers Green Banners from the castle walls and burn them, Rhaenyra stares into the flames, enraged.

After two episodes filled to the brim with death on both sides of the civil war, ‘Rhaenyra Triumphant’ marks the first episode of the season where there aren’t any major losses.

However, with her plan to confront Ormund, Aemond still in Harrenhal and Aegon still on the loose, it looks like the bloodshed isn’t going to end anytime soon.