***House of the Dragon spoilers ahead!***
The newly-released episode two of House of the Dragon, “The Rogue Prince,” properly introduced us to one of this season’s main villains—as much as a show set in the Seven Kingdoms can have an actual villain rather than a whole array of characters in different shades of grey.
The Crabfeeder appears on the scene doing the very thing that earned him his moniker: nailing pirates to wooden blocks right on the beach so that they can either be eaten by crabs or drowned by the rising tide. You know, typical Westeros-style violence.
But who exactly is this Crabfeeder person that worries Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, so much that he has brought him up in pretty much all of the Small Council sessions we’ve seen in House of the Dragon so far, urging the King and the other members of the Council to do something about him?
The Crabfeeder’s real name is Craghas Drahar, and he hails from Myr, one of the Free Cities—the nine cities of Valyrian descent on the westernmost part of Essos that have interacted pretty frequently with Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms.
Pentos, the city where Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen sheltered in Illyrio Mopatis’s mansion, is one of the Free Cities. So is Braavos, where Arya Stark learns the ways of the Faceless Men. The others are Lorath, Norvos, Qohor, Tyrosh, Lys and Volantis.
Drahar, portrayed in House of the Dragon by Daniel Scott-Smith, is one of Myr’s prince admirals and one of the leaders of the Triarchy’s army—meaning the alliance formed by the cities of Lys, Myr and Tyrosh to defeat Volantis and gain control of the Disputed Lands just a few years before the Great Council shown at the beginning of “The Heirs of the Dragon.”
After having defeated Volantis, the eyes of the Triarchy moved to the Stepstones, a bunch of small islands in the middle of the Narrow Sea between Dorne and the Disputed Lands— a notorious den of pirates, the very same one that the Crabfeeder likes to use to fill his crab friends’ little bellies.
And this is where the Westerosi lords come into play. Of course, they were happy at first that someone was doing the work of ridding the Stepstones of their pirate inhabitants for them—but they all quickly changed their tune as soon as the Triarchy started to ask for exorbitant tolls to have safe passage through the Stepstones. We have seen Lord Corlys Velaryon being particularly worried, which makes sense considering he owns the largest fleet in the Seven Kingdoms and stands to lose the most from the Triarchy occupation of the islands.
The dialogue Lord Corlys has with everyone’s favourite unhinged dragonlord, Daemon Targaryen, at the end of “The Rogue Prince” is a pretty good indication that there’s some major trouble coming for the Crabfeeder—trouble that could very well be mounted on Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm. The trailer for the third House of the Dragon episode, “Second of His Name,” all but confirms it.
And here are some spoilers for how the Crabfeeder is going to fare in the upcoming episodes of House of the Dragon, just in case you like to know how things go beforehand—straight from The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood.
The alliance between Lord Corlys and Prince Daemon will indeed mean an almost open war on the Stepstones, with Daemon and Caraxes driving out the Triarchy’s forces from the islands. To make a long story short, Daemon, in a display of his usual modesty and rationality, ends up crowning himself King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea.
Considering that episode four of House of the Dragon is titled “King of the Narrow Sea,” we can expect the Stepstones plot to continue well beyond episode three. If you think that King Viserys will like all of this crowning on the part of his brother, then think again. That’s what the famous reconciliation at the tourney for Viserys and Alicent’s fifth wedding anniversary, the one where the “blacks” and the “greens” earned their nicknames, will be for.
Daemon and the Crabfeeder will meet in open battle after about two years of Daemon first attacking the Stepstones—and let’s just say the latter will get very close and personal with Daemon’s Valyrian sword, Dark Sister.
(via: AWOIAF; image: HBO)
