Why Lucerys' Death is Such a Big Deal for House of the Dragon?
As you might have expected, House of the Dragon season 1 came to a thrilling cliffhanger ending with death.
After being sent to the Baratheons to shore up an alliance and prevent conflict, Lucerys discovers he has been beaten to it by his uncle and long-term adversary, Aemond Targaryen. Aemond, it appears, has secured the support of the Starks, Tullys, and Baratheons before Lucerys can even get a look in.
But this is not the reason that war now seems inevitable.
It's safe to say that both sides have thus far done their best to prevent a war; Rhaenyra has opted for diplomacy over violence, despite her firm held belief that the Iron Throne is rightly hers, and Queen Alicent has tried to broker peace with Rhaenyra and her family, offering them positions at court rather than going down the perhaps more obvious route of executing them.
But Aemond's actions in episode 10 make battle inevitable. Now, it appears that the death of Lucerys is an accident. After setting Vaghar after Arrax in what we can only assume is an attempt to laud his superiority over his nephew and frighten him, Aemond struggles to hold his dragon back.
Arrax breathes fire in the face of his much bigger adversary, and we see the power of the dragon as she ignores her rider's requests and kills both Arrax and Lucerys.
And this changes everything. Rhaenyra is not a stranger to loss. Both her parents have died. Her lover has died. And she has already experienced the 'loss' of the Iron Throne – a loss that would have most likely been compounded by Aemond's visit to the Baratheons under any circumstances.
The loss of her son, however, trumps all of these. In the same way that Aemond's face gives away his horror as he realises what he's done, Rhaenyra's expression in the final scene is one of war. The Iron Throne, it seems, is no longer her primary motivation. Diplomacy and manoeuvrings seem far from her thoughts. The death of Lucerys has changed the face of politics in Westeros and set Rhaenyra on a path of revenge and destruction.
Whether she is able to gather her thoughts and launch a tactical assault on the crown or is so consumed with rage that she cannot think straight and simply goes for all-out war, is yet to be seen. But one thing seems certain – the killing of Lucerys has set in motion a war that will redefine Westeros.