Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen's (Emma D'Arcy) time on the Iron Throne has been an absolute nightmare.
Her treasury? Empty. The Gold Cloaks? Murdered. Tumbleton? Taken hostage by Ormund Hightower (James Norton). Now, as if things can't get any worse, her own throne has betrayed her.
In House of the Dragon Season 3, episode 6, Rhaenyra endures yet another rough session of listening to her subjects' petitions. The citizens of King's Landing are worried about rising costs of their basic needs, as well as the lack of protection from the Gold Cloaks. Rhaenyra is unequipped to answer their worries, and as she stews in her discomfort and rising panic, the Iron Throne cuts her finger and draws blood.
Rhaenyra hides her injury, but as she does, she looks towards one of the statues of the Targaryen kings lining the throne room. It's that of her father, Viserys (Paddy Considine), seen holding what looks like a model of Old Valyria. Viserys was no stranger to getting chopped up by the Iron Throne himself. Throughout his reign, he suffered many minor injuries from the throne's swords. They were the Iron Throne's way of saying he was unworthy, that he was losing his grip on the realm. Eventually, the wounds festered and led to his drawn-out, rotting death. From just this one cut alone, Rhaenyra sees her father's fate playing out before her. She knows her time on the Iron Throne is in peril.
A similar sequence plays out in George R.R. Martin's Fire and Blood, although it takes place far earlier in Rhaenyra's reign. When she first sits on the Iron Throne in the book, Rhaenyra picks up cuts on her leg and palm and leaves the throne room with blood running down her body for everyone to see. It's visual proof for the realm that the Iron Throne is straight up rejecting her.
When House of the Dragon initially omitted that detail, I thought it was the show's way of legitimizing Rhaenyra's rule and silencing the "historical" sources in Fire and Blood, who may have embellished her downfall. Now, though, it's clear that the show was just taking a longer approach to Rhaenyra's decline as a ruler. Instead of immediately shunning her, the show's version of the Iron Throne must have thought, "You know what? I'm gonna give her some time to prove herself." When that didn't work out, it decided it was time to give her a very painful wake-up call by turning her hand into mincemeat.
The cut is still small enough that Rhaenyra is able to keep it private, unlike in Fire and Blood, where it's a public affair. Still, as Rhaenyra keeps unravelling, could the Iron Throne keep doing more visible damage until, like Viserys, Rhaenyra's unworthiness is visible to everyone?
More importantly, what are the Iron Throne's criteria for a good ruler? Because it certainly wasn't slicing and dicing Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) while he sat — unworthily! — on the Iron Throne. Nor did it chop up the tyrannical Joffrey Baratheon when he was king. Did the Iron Throne get lazy, or is a non-sentient chair of swords just maybe not the best judge of a monarch?
