The queen girlbosses a little too close to the sun on this week’s House of the Dragon.

As House of the Dragon’s second season approaches its conclusion—this week’s episode is the penultimate one—it feels like we’re finally seeing some movement. I haven’t been the only viewer to complain that this season has felt painfully slow at times. (How many scenes of Daemon’s Haunted Mansion and the two queens’ Small Council woes are we going to get?) But I’m pleased with the momentum we’ve been gaining with this radical new notion sweeping Westeros: that even lowborn commoners could claim fire-breathing, winged beasts revered as quasi-gods.

This is an exciting idea, both within the show’s universe and as a plotline. Rhaenyra is sort of a revolutionary lunatic for not just allowing a common bastard like Addam of Hull to claim Seasmoke, but for encouraging other smallfolk to attempt the same with the remaining two dragons in their arsenal, Vermithor and Silverwing. It feels genuinely exciting, watching the whispers of the open audition spread like wildfire throughout the slums of King’s Landing, and to see those smallfolk who are just brave—or crazy—enough to face near-certain death in the hopes of escaping their lot in life.

The nobles are agog at the proposal, of course. Even Jacaerys is being a bit of a pill about the whole thing, in a departure from the book, where the scheme to turn bastard dragonseeds into dragonriders is said to be his idea. What do you make of his reaction in this episode, Nadira? I have to say, in my eyes, it may make him a bit of a contender for this week’s worst person in Westeros.

Thank the gods for what I am henceforth referring to as the “So That’s Why They Kept Showing This Random Guy” episode. I truly can’t tell you how satisfying it was to finally, finally, figure out why we were supposed to care about Addam of Hull, Hugh Hammer the blacksmith, and that one guy who seems to live in his local tavern and never stops running his mouth about being of highborn Targaryen descent. (The interwebs are telling me that his name is Ulf the White.) Now we know. Congrats, boys! You survived the fiery pits of death and successfully commanded a dragon, just to eventually lay your life down from way up high, on a dragon in a war that is sure to claim most of the winged beasts in the end.

But you are right that Young Penn Badgley (aka Jacaerys) is not too happy about his mother’s decision to invite the lowborn to lay claim to the dragons. However, if this season has told us anything, it’s that Jacaerys is actually pretty smart, and I think he’s on to something here with his teenage angst. Jace is worried that he, an obvious bastard son of Harwin Strong, will lose his main claim to the throne—which is not his signature silver Targaryen hair (he is a brunet), but his dragon. He wonders what is stopping one of these dragonriders from challenging his claim to the throne if they were to win the war. To be fair, it’s a good question! Though I could do without the bigoted classism and the insults thrown at his mother, I get where he’s coming from. He didn’t deliver the message in the nicest way, but it is a legitimate thing that Rhaenyra should be considering: What does it mean to give someone an all-access pass to Dragonstone?

So, no, Jace isn’t my pick for this week. Why don’t we take a moment and consider his point, though? After all, Rhaenyra basically allows a cadre of bastards to be burnt to bits in front of her for her own political gain—an idea, it’s worth noting, that the Dragonkeepers are so against, they walk out in protest. I get it: She’s trying to stave off an unnecessary war, yadda yadda yadda. But what do you make of Rhaenyra’s decision?

Zhang: You’re probably right that there’s more room to hold the events of this episode against Rhaenyra than against her teenage son. It is kind of hilarious that, after calling forth the hulking Bronze Fury that is Vermithor, she’s basically like, “You’re on your own, bye!” before heading to a vantage point from which she can safely observe the chaos that’s about to unfold. And unfold it does: So many of these poor folks wind up burnt to a crisp or straight-up gobbled whole by the dragon, all while their queen looks on. Of course, you could argue that she does give them fair warning before they make their choice—but how much choice do people of their station really have in life, sandwiched between war and starvation and a dragon? Perhaps one could also argue that Rhaenyra is ultimately trying to spare more innocent lives by sacrificing those of these willing bastards; after all, she reasons, if the Blacks have enough dragons, then the Greens will have to give in and end the war. (Sure, that’ll happen!)

Still, it’s hard to watch Rhaenyra let all those distant cousins die very painful deaths. On the one hand, this is some long-overdue character development for her, after much of this series has painted her as a just, restrained queen going up against the less morally upstanding Greens, who have stolen her crown. On the other hand, yeah, maybe she should get a turn in the WPiW chair this week.

But first, I’d like to hear what you make of Daemon, a perennial favorite for WPiW. Over at Harrenhal, the riverlords have gathered following the death of the old Lord Tully. The new liege lord of the riverlands is the young Oscar Tully, whom Daemon dismissed just a few episodes ago. To make matters more complicated, the only thing Daemon has accomplished thus far in his time at Harrenhal—besides tripping balls and seeing ghosts—has been encouraging the Blackwoods to commit war atrocities against the Brackens, a little oopsy that now threatens to permanently sour his relationship with the riverlords, unless he makes a tough decision.

Goffe: Ah, Daemon. Daemon, Daemon, Daemon. If there’s anything about this season that has been equal parts exciting and cringeworthy to watch, it has been, respectively, Daemon’s acid trip and near-absolute political failure over at Harrenhal. Surely trying to gain the sworn swords of the men in the riverlands by securing the support of House Tully—who already made an oath to support Viserys’ decision to make Rhaenyra his heir—couldn’t be that hard. But Daemon, who has spent his hallucinatory time at Harrenhal whining over why he wasn’t fated to inherit the throne while proving exactly why he wasn’t fit for the seat, makes you think it might be impossible.

Apparently the riverlands are held together by their oaths, but not as much as they are governed by their sense of justice—and for Daemon’s crimes, someone had to pay. Oscar Tully tells Daemon that if he wants their swords, he has to behead Willem Blackwood, who was among those responsible for raping and pillaging their rival Brackens on Daemon’s orders in the first place. If I had to pick a favorite Westerosi this episode, it would surely be the child-lord Tully, who finds a way to both uphold the oath his grandfather made to support the Blacks and seemingly put Daemon in his place for instigating the slew of war crimes committed by the Blackwoods. And he manages to maintain a slight hint of punk-ish, youthful rebellion while he does it—kudos to actor Archie Barnes.

Sure enough, Daemon slays someone for just doing what he asked mere episodes ago. It’s a tough way to go, but retribution was earned, and Daemon had to pay it one way or another, though he pays for it with hypocrisy instead of with his own head. It certainly makes Daemon one of my top candidates for worst person in the realm this week, but I want to make sure we exhaust all other possibilities. And here is where I turn to the other smaller characters sowing big seeds in this episode: namely Larys Strong, who, after his services were rejected by Aemond in last week’s episode, is putting his eggs in the now-incapacitated Aegon’s basket. Not only is Larys pulling the whole “I’m the only one who can understand what you’re going through” card, but he’s also putting stock in a quick recovery from the ailing king, convincing the Grand Maester to push the poor guy too much and too far in his ongoing recovery.

I had a lot of hope for Larys to be as captivating as Varys was in Game of Thrones, but this whisperer seems to be letting me down and losing at every turn. He even fails to take the rumor that the dragon Seasmoke has a new rider to heart. He’s proving to be famously bad at his job—and now he might be pulling poor Aegon into his mess with him. What did you think of Larys this episode?

Zhang: Larys has proven rather disappointing, hasn’t he? Rather than lean into how much of a creep the character was in Season 1, the show seems to have benched him as much as Aemond has. Come on, not a single foot fetish joke this season? No further preying on Alicent, who is now so down in the dumps that she’s camping out in the woods and threatening to have her own “Kendall Roy facedown in the water” moment? I have to trust that the show’s writers will take Larys somewhere with his Aegon thread, but for now, he’s simply too inconsequential to warrant being named this week’s worst person in Westeros, in my opinion.

I confess that my mind keeps circling back to Rhaenyra, standing over the dragonseed massacre with that strange gleam in her eye. As the age-old wisdom goes, I support women’s rights, and I support women’s wrongs—and in this case, I’m supporting her finally being crowned WPiW. What do you think, Nadira? Shall we give this girlboss a gold medal for her politically radical fiery carnage?

Goffe: Oh gosh, the situation may be worse than I thought if it’s foot fetish jokes we’re asking for—but I totally agree. It’s funny that you mention how overdue Rhaenyra is for a go at worst Westerosi of the week, because I had been thinking the same myself: When is she going to get back some of that mischievous glint in her eye that she had as a child?

It turns out the answer is: this week, and the reason being the gruesome deaths of some innocent people who already had it rough to begin with. In the name of feminism, let’s raise a glass for Queen Rhaenyra! The true heir to the Iron Throne and the biggest baddie of the week.