Episode 6 of House of the Dragon Season 2 confirmed the two brothers are illegitimate Velaryons—and earned one of them a dragon.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 6 of House of the Dragon Season 2.
After dropping hints in a few different episodes that Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim)—the sailor who pulled Corlys (Steve Toussaint) from the water during the Stepstones campaign—and his older brother Addam (Clinton Liberty) are the illegitimate sons of the Sea Snake, Sunday’s installment of House of the Dragon Season 2 confirmed the brothers’ Velaryon heritage.
Not only did we see Alyn shaving off what appeared to be silver, Velaryon-style hair while having a conversation with Addam about their parentage, but Corlys also appointed Alyn as his first mate in what seemed to be a gesture of fatherly reckoning. With Rhaenys (Eve Best) and Laena (Nanna Blondell) dead—and Laenor (John Macmillan) believed to be—Alyn and Addam are some of the only family members Corlys has left. And after Baela (Bethany Antonia) denied his offer in Episode 5 to name her as heir to Driftmark, Corlys seems to have realized he needs to get his affairs in order. Unfortunately, Alyn doesn’t seem all that inclined to take up a place at his father’s side.
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“We’re so used to dealing with the upper echelons of society in this story, and they are always trying to climb to be part of that society, whereas Alyn doesn’t care,” Salim told EW of his character ahead of the season premiere. “He just does his job. He knows what he’s good at and he knows what he wants. He cares not for those people who are sitting in their little thrones because that was crushed the day he was born.”
Meanwhile, Addam was busy experiencing the most dramatic power swing of the episode by transforming from a lowly shipwright into the realm’s newest dragonrider. Following Team Black’s failed—and fatal—attempt to have Ser Steffon Darklyn (Anthony Flanagan) claim Seasmoke, Laenor’s former dragon apparently decided he’d had enough of flying solo and set out to find a suitable rider on his own. Given the fact that a dragon won’t let anyone else mount it alone while its rider is still living, Addam claiming Seasmoke doesn’t really make sense unless we assume Laenor ended up dying in Essos somehow. But we’ll go with it.
In Fire & Blood, the A Song of Ice and Fire companion novel on which House of the Dragon is based, both Addam and Alyn are considered “dragonseed,” meaning they’re descended from Valyrian dragonlords and have the potential to bond with dragons. However, in the book, the brothers are rumored to be the illegitimate sons of Laenor rather than Corlys, which would make them part Targaryen thanks to Rhaenys. In the show, it’s currently unclear why Corlys would be unable to claim a dragon while his sons with a non-Targaryen mother can. Unless, of course, it turns out their mother also had some Targaryen blood.