First, Daemon specifically told them that Aemond has a glass eye and is quite a good fighter so why would either of them think a little child is the one they are looking for?
Furthermore, one of the men even regularly works inside the Red Keep and the other works nearby, so surely they would have some degree of familiarity with the royal family already and would've seen Aemond before and would know who he is.
They didn't. They couldn't find Aemond, so they decided to take out the son they could find.
shareThat in itself doesn't make sense because surely killing an innocent small child is not really an effective substitute for the actual man who killed Rhaenyra's son.
shareYou're forgetting who sent them on the mission. I'm sure he's fine with it. Not a perfect substitute, but a strike nonetheless - "A son for a son"
shareYou have to think that Rhaenyra will think this to be a pointless and unfortunate act and will not be happy with Daemon for ordering such a thing. But maybe I'm wrong. Rhaenyra is not exactly a paragon of virtue.
share1: Nope. He asks "What if we can't find him?" and you got your answer by what you saw.
2: Nope. No reason to for him to hang around Red Keep.
Since you like to overthink things, question for you is, why do you think she pointed to the one she did?
1. If we are to understand that that is actually the order that Daemon gave, then it doesn't make sense because Daemon should know Rhaenyra well enough to understand that she isn't going to be satisfied with the murder of just any ol' royal kid, she wants Aemond specifically.
2. It seems to me that he is already in the vicinity of the Red Keep and he makes it clear as well that he is no fan of the Hightowers. So he's intimately familiar with the Hightowers but can't identify their son who is known for his military prowess and glass eye?
In regard to your question, I don't know because it wasn't clear to me which child was killed and which one she ran off with.
Daemon has been itching for action, any action. He's angry that she hasn't been doing more. You're acting as though Daemon doesn't color outside the lines.
share1. Make perfect sense, if that's what happened. If it's not, you'll find out in the next episode, where we see that Daemon's not happy. You'll just have to tune in to find out.
2. Bro some rando ratcatcher does't give two shits about royal family members known for whateverthefuck. But who cares: Daemon preemptively offers that information on his own accord - not in response to questions "Who is Aemond? What does he look like?"
I don't know if your copy cut off early or what but Helaena literally says they killed the boy.
But your time is better spent on more interesting question like: Why did he bring the dog? Why did he kick him? Why so much talk about rats when we didn't see any? Not even any squeeking? Were they even in the right castle if there were no signs of rats? 10x more interesting questions to focus on.
"Why so much talk about rats when we didn't see any? Not even any squeeking? Were they even in the right castle if there were no signs of rats?"
You didn't see any rats?
"when we didn't see any?"
So you didn't see the episode?
has season 8 started already? I'd say it's about time ^^
shareThe mechanics and setup for the event felt strange to me.
Why would Daemon entrust this particular task of killing Aemond to these two dudes? Why did he even think they could succeed instead of meeting a Kingsguard and then dying that way? Why would they accept this mission given the incredibly high risk of it going wrong for them? Killing Aemond in the palace, if they met him would be loud and result very likely in guards coming straight to them. Why was the Royal palace so deserted?
I think I know what they'll do. Criston was supposed to be on guard duty, but was instead having sex with Alicent - guilting both. And Larys might come under fire too due to him telling Alicent that he had dealt with all traitors in the palace, although there's no evidence that they helped those guys - except there was hardly anyone around when they went in the palace.
Hmm, your explanation is plausible. And I do agree with you that the whole plan seemed strange from the beginning. "Yeah, let's just walk into the palace and kill a member of the royal family. We'll get a bit of gold out of it." It definitely seemed like a phenomenally high risk, not to mention the fact that they are moving around the castle in plain sight, meaning they could easily be identified afterward.
shareCheese knew all of the secret passageways throughout the castle and would be able to slip in and out, giving them a fair chance of escape. However, the show seemed to lean on them simply being ignored due to being ratcatchers, rather than relying on stealth, so it did seem a lot more dangerous for them than how I had imagined the scene to play out.
share"Why was the Royal palace so deserted?"
I was wondering the same ...
They even walk across the throne room, where the king is chatting and guards are standing, and no one says a thing.
"Oh, it's the royal rat catcher, the most important man of the Red keep, he can walk wherever and whenever he pleases."
If you think the original assassinations plan doesn't make any sense, then you should consider perhaps what happen is the unspeakable plan all along.
shareTo be fair, the assassins explicitly asked Daemon what they should do if they can't find Aemond. The audience didn't get Daemon's answer since what happened was meant to be somewhat a surprise. We can only extrapolate that Daemon instructed them to kill one of Daemon's sons as a contingency.
shareYeah, I didn't think of that when the scene happened, but I do suppose now that they were acting under Daemon's instructions. I think that, if that's the case though, the screenwriters should've come up with a way to make that more clear and obvious.
shareI knew what was going to happen, and omitting the contingency plan seemed like a clumsy misdirect to make the eventual target, a young child, a surprise for some. They allowed the audience to be privy to the main plot but not the contingency, which is probably an odd narrative choice just for the surprise factor.
share