House of the Dragon’s next funeral is for Rhaenyra and Alicent’s friendship

polygon.com:

So the Brackens hate the Blackwoods, and the Blackwoods hate the Brackens. It’s been this way for as long as anyone can remember. The start of it all, we are told, is lost in time. Does it matter that the Brackens pledged to Aegon and the Blackwoods to Rhaenyra? Probably not. Violence is cyclical, and the young men from each family arguing at the start of this week’s House of the Dragon were primed for conflict long before they were born. They’re doomed to a grim death, as are the countless countrymen that will join them, as the inertia of this particular cycle runs its course.

The opening vignette of this week’s House of the Dragon underlines how its characters are no longer the masters of their own destinies. War is easy to slide into and difficult to avoid, as it needs no justification to perpetuate itself. That doesn’t mean they’re willing to accept this, though. Continuing the stages-of-grief metaphor from last week, this week’s episode is about bargaining — culminating in a final conversation between Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke) where the two attempt exactly that. With a new status quo that has placed an ocean between them, the relationship that House of the Dragon is built on gets precious little screen time, even as it still drives their individual convictions. Once upon a time, these young women’s friendship had the potential to break the cycles set in course by men; now that potential is imperiled. Is there any way out?

As the twins Arryk and Erryk are buried, Rhaenys reminds Rhaenyra that she is not above getting lost in this cycle. She asks what caused the current conflict Westeros finds itself in. Was it the stolen throne? Or Lucerys’ death? Or Aemond’s lost eye? When the fight begins, will it even matter? “When the desire to kill and burn takes hold,” Rhaenys says, “all reason is forgotten.”

Or, as Ser Simon Strong, the castellan of Harrenhal, tells Daemon when he arrives to claim the very damp, hilariously uncontested