Warning: This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season three, episode two
As House of the Dragon builds towards its fourth and final season, the show has little room left for warmth. The closer it moves towards the end of the Targaryen civil war, the harder it becomes for anyone in its world to separate family from power.
One clear emotional high point in the new season is the relationship between Corlys Velaryon and Alyn of Hull. Corlys, played by Steve Toussaint, is the Sea Snake, Lord of the Tides, and one of the most powerful men in Westeros. Alyn, played by Abubakar Salim, is his son, though he has spent his life without being publicly acknowledged by Corlys.
At the end of the season three premiere, which debuted to more than 20 million people in its first three days, according to Variety, that unresolved bond seems to have been cut short. Corlys disappears during the Battle of the Gullet, leaving Alyn with the possibility that the father he has spent his life resenting may be dead before either man has found a way through what sits between them.
When Corlys washes ashore alive in episode two, which was released today on OSN+ across the Middle East, he returns to a son who briefly believed he was gone. Corlys has little left beyond the name he has spent his life trying to protect, and on the beach he offers it to the son he refused to claim.
Alyn had begun the season where the end of season two had left him: angry at a father who was always close enough to know, but never close enough to claim him. Corlys knew he was the one who had left it that way, which forced the Sea Snake to do something that did not come naturally.
“Corlys is in an unusual position because he has to be the one to make the gestures,” Toussaint tells The National. “He was the parent. He is the one who did the wrong. He is used to people coming to him for things, and now he has to be the one saying, ‘I’m sorry. Can we do this?’”
The battle catches Alyn before he has decided what Corlys can be to him. He is still nowhere near forgiveness, but he has started to see Corlys as more than the man who refused to claim him. Then the ship breaks apart, and the chance to know him seems to disappear too.
“To Alyn, that was a flash of losing everything he could have had,” Salim says. “He was just getting to a place where he was beginning to learn who his father was. They were beginning to find some form of connection, and then the world turns over and he loses him.”
On the beach in episode two, Corlys is still facing what Alyn told him at the end of season two. Alyn grew up knowing who his father was, despite being left unclaimed, and there is no explanation that can undo that.
“If you have given up a child and that child comes back upset with you, there’s no point trying to defend yourself,” Toussaint says. “There is nothing you can say that will make that child go, ‘Oh, yeah, that makes sense.’ Corlys is in that same position. There is nothing he can do to justify what he did to these boys.”
Corlys offers the name without knowing whether Alyn will take it. He cannot make it matter, and he cannot decide what it should mean to the son he failed.
“In that sentence, when Corlys says all he can give is his name, he is saying, ‘I have done you wrong. I have been terrible. This small gesture is all I have, but it is all I have,’” Toussaint says. “It is a real moment of vulnerability for Corlys.”
Alyn, meanwhile, had believed Corlys was gone. Before the battle, the Velaryon name meant the family that had shut him out: the house, the title and the recognition he had been denied. Now, on the beach, it still meant those things, but it also meant something more intimate. Corlys was not only offering a place in his house; he was offering a relationship.
“If the name had been offered with riches and legacy, Alyn would not have wanted any of that,” Salim says. “In that moment of loss, after experiencing the loss of a father, it was more than just a name. It was a path forward, an acceptance, a new start.”
The distinction gives Toussaint pause. He asks Salim whether Alyn would have known, before the battle, that the name could mean that much to him. Salim says he does not think so.
“I think Alyn’s idea of a name beforehand was based on material things,” Salim says. “It is only after he loses Corlys, or faces the possibility of losing him, and then comes back and sees everything burn, that he understands what that name means to him.”
The past remains between them. Corlys’s name cannot undo the years Alyn spent outside Corlys’s life, and Alyn’s anger has not simply disappeared. But after the Battle of the Gullet, the name can carry more than was withheld. It still means the house, the title and the public recognition Alyn was denied. It also becomes the first thing Corlys gives him as a true father.
House of the Dragon season three releases weekly on OSN+ in the Middle East
