A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms Episode 3 Gives Us More Reasons To Hate House Targaryen

Don't attend any Westerosi puppet shows if you haven't watched "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" season 1 episode 3, "The Squire." Spoilers ahead!

Throughout the "Game of Thrones" universe, we've encountered some pretty odious members of the Targaryen family. I'll delve more deeply into the first spin-off and prequel "House of the Dragon" shortly, but in the second big show set in the fictional world of Westeros created by author George R.R. Martin, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," we meet a few more members of this dysfunctional clan. One, though, is a surprise: Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), the slight and humble squire who's pledged himself to Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), is actually Aegon Targaryen, a future king of the Seven Kingdoms.

While Egg is pure of heart, the same cannot be said of his older brother Aerion, played in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" by Finn Bennett. In the original book series,"Tales of Dunk and Egg," Aerion is precisely as he appears on-screen — a young man struck by the hereditary "madness" of the Targaryen family tree who dabbles in casual cruelty. We see this in action in "The Squire" when, offended by a puppet show that depicts a dragon (the enduring symbol of House Targaryen), he breaks the fingers of Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford), the puppeteer he considers guilty, in one of the series' more brutal moments to date. Duncan, who was summoned by Egg (and is clearly sweet on Tanselle), defends her, further provoking Aerion's wrath. Ultimately, Duncan is only saved from a horrible fate by Egg interfering, but Aerion continues a grand tradition of being a truly terrible Targaryen.

The first Targaryens we meet in all of the "Game of Thrones" universe, at least on-screen, are siblings Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen, played respectively by Harry Lloyd and Emilia Clarke. (As a reminder, these two, introduced in "Game of Thrones," are descendants of everyone else we're discussing here; that show is the most "recent" in the timeline, so to speak). Daenerys develops her own issues later, and I'll get to that, but she's great at first. Viserys? That's a whole different story. 

Right from the jump, Viserys is odious, slimy, and disgusting, ogling his own sister's naked body (although, considering how much the Targaryens love incest, that's maybe the most "normal" thing he does) and delighting in the violence committed by her new warlord husband, the Dothraki champion Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa). Viserys is so unbelievably awful in every imaginable way that it actually feels great when, defending Daenerys, Drogo drops a whole pot of molten gold on her brother's head, killing him.

Things aren't much better in "House of the Dragon." Even though we're ostensibly supposed to identify with the self-crowned queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) as she fights her stepmother and former best friend Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), she does some pretty horrifying things — like sending a bunch of common men to their deaths in season 2 in an attempt to see if any of them might be dragonriders. Alicent's son, Aegon II Targaryen, is just plain awful, unrepentantly abusing maids in his spare time, and his brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) kills his own nephew. Ultimately, Aerion is just carrying on a long-standing family tradition ... of being the worst.

It's no secret, even this early in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," that Aerion is the worst. In the same episode, we watch, along with Duncan and Egg, as he participates in a particularly brutal joust where he kills his opponent's horse in front of the entire court. It speaks to just how crappy Aerion is and how bad his reputation is that Duncan's friend Raymun Fossoway (Shaun Thomas), says he suspects Aerion murdered the majestic beast on purpose. "Aerion's just vain and cruel," Raymun — the cousin and squire of Ser Stefon Fossoway, who allies himself with Duncan in his spare time — muses as he and Duncan hang out.

Now that we know Egg is Aerion's younger brother and an heir to the Targaryen dynasty in his own right, we can only hope that Duncan is protected from Aerion's wrath ... but there's no doubt that we'll see this Targaryen just get worse and more reprehensible as "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" continues its excellent inaugural season. The series airs new episodes on Sunday nights at 10 P.M. on HBO and HBO Max.