Fire & Blood Files: The Significance Of The Dragonseeds’ Campsite
by Austin Gorton
The third season of House of the Dragon bowed Sunday night with the long-promised Battle of the Gullet.
A key event in the “Dance of the Dragons,” the colorful sobriquet for the ongoing civil war between Rhaenyra Targaryen’s (Emma D’Arcy) Blacks and her half-brother Aegon’s (Tom Glynn-Carney) Greens, the Battle of Gullet is filled with exciting naval and aerial combat and culminates in a key turn of fate for one of the Dance’s main characters. Yet the battle, as it appeared on screen, differed somewhat from the way its described in Fire & Blood (the fictional history of the Targaryen dynasty on which the series is based), notably in the number of dragons involved.
In the book, the bastard Dragonseeds and their dragons — Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew)/Vermithor, Ulf White (Tom Bennett)/Silverwing, Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty)/Seasmoke — all participate in the battle, helping decimate the Triarchy fleet in their first major action since claiming their dragons. Yet all three spend “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood” far from the action, near the castle of Harrenhal — and the exact location where they’ve set up camp raised the eyebrows of attentive book readers.
**Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 1, “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood” below**
Harrenhal — the enormous, decrepit, possibly cursed and definitely spooky castle in the heart of the Riverlands — was a central location of the previous season, the setting of Daemon’s (Matt Smith) season-long head trip. It is situated on the edge of large lake called the Gods Eye. Within the Gods Eye is a small island that is called the Isle of Face, and it is on that island that Hugh, Ulf and Addam spend most of the episode.
Strategically and geographically, it makes sense: Daemon has taken the host he assembled last season and marched west to meet the oncoming Lannister forces (the aftermath of that encounter is seen in this episode) while Alicent’s (Olivia Cooke) visit to Dragonstone last season informed the Blacks that Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) will soon be making for Harrenhal atop his dragon Vhaegar, to meet up with the Green force led by Criston Cole (Fabian Frankel). Thus, stationing the three dragon riders on the Isle of Face, where they’re less likely to attract the attention of the smallfolk, while still remaining within striking distance of both Cole’s forces and Daemon’s army is sound. But dropping them onto the Isle of Faces is a big deal for book readers, because, canonically, no one in living memory has ever stepped foot on the island.
The Isle of Faces is steeped in magic. It is one of the few locations in the south of Westeros (beneath the Neck) known to contain numerous Weirwood trees, the mystical trees with faces carved into them (there is one located inside Harrenhal, as seen last season). As such, the Isle of Faces is home of the Green Men, an order created to tend to the Weirwoods.
It is also purportedly the location where the Children of the Forest (those creepy elf-like beings who hung around Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) and Max Von Sydow in the later seasons of Game of Thrones) signed “the Pact” with the First Men, the agreement which ended their centuries-long war, and included the caveat that the First Men would stop cutting down Weirwood trees — the reason so many such trees can be found on the Isle of Face is because all the trees on the island were given a face so the gods could witness the Pact (find out more about the Green Men here).
Since the signing of the Pact, it’s said that no outsiders have successfully visited the island, with the occasional riverlord or such who tries to reach the island via boat being ultimately turned away by sudden winds or flocks of ravens. Of course, only the Targaryens had dragons, and thus, the ability to fly to the island. But no such reliable accounts of that ever happening exist, with one exception.
It is briefly mentioned in Fire & Blood that Addam of Hull may have flown to the Isle of Faces to commune with the Green Men, but this account is questioned by the (fictional) author of that history. Nevertheless, that is the closest thing readers have gotten across any of Martin’s writing of anyone ever actually going to the Isle of Faces. And yet, in this episode, three people are hanging out there.
This could just be the show winking at fans and acknowledging that line from Fire & Blood, embellishing the tale (as the show is wont to do) to include Hugh and Ulf alongside Addam as dragon-borne visitors to the island, especially given how much geographic sense the Isle of Faces makes as a base of operations for their (show-invented) mission in this episode. But given that the episode makes a point of dropping Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) — self-described witch and a key figure in the weird mojo surrounding Daemon and his Weirwood-induced visions last season, as well as a character whose role in the broader Dance is intentionally left vague in Fire & Blood — onto the island, as well as the fact that the Gods Eye lake surrounding the island is the setting of one of the Dance’s biggest moments, it’s possible that House of the Dragon may have something new and tricksy up its sleeve when it comes to Alys, magic, and the Isle of Faces that it’s teasing here.
