She is recruiting random little folk to tame dragons. She doesn’t know these little folk. They could easily just take the dragon and do whatever they want, be it join the greens or fly away with it and just chill for a bit. There’s not really keeping them loyal to Rhaneyra.
Another issue is that she’s assuming the little folk that tame a dragon are willing to go to war. Not everyone is willing to face that level of danger. They may say they are and even mean it, but when the confrontation is about to happen and they realize the danger they’re in, they could easily renege.
Lastly, these people could be mad. They could potentially just burn a few important people when it’s least expected.
The whole strategy seems deeply flawed.
Put yourself in Rhaenyra’s shoes: All she knows is Daemon has fucked off to god knows where and she cannot win the war without more dragons. You make good points, though. It’s a hail mary for sure.
She doesn’t actually need them to fight, it’s about who had the most nukes (dragons).
At the end of the last episode Ulf lured Aemond out of King’s Landing and to Dragonstone where Aemond immediately noticed new dragons and smartly retreated. That’s a potential 6 v 1 battle (Syrax, Vermax, Moondancer, Seasmoke, Silverwing, & Vermithor), plus Daemon is a wildcard.
Vhagar is strong, but 6 v 1? That’s a risk. Even if the riders are inexperienced (and die), those dragons are fighters.
And what backup does he have? Sunfire is nearly dead. His old town brother/dragon are far away. That leaves Dreamfyre, and something tells me Helaena isn’t much of a fighter.
Arguably this puts them in a stalemate position. More accurately however it means no one gets to use a dragon. This is great for Rhaneyra who is winning the war of propaganda and smallfolk. She can afford to wait it out.
I agree that this is also a risky move. However at the moment all these new dragonriders need to do is stay at Dragonstone. That’s a pretty safe prospect at the moment, so staying loyal is easy at the moment. I expect that might change before/during/after next episode since war changes things.
At least with Seasmoke and Adam she checked his intentions and he swore fealty. For the small folk from kings landing she gave a pretty good inspirational speech which dropped a “some of your may die” before yoloing to the dragon mount. I hope on the retrospective they discuss wether some sort of triage system might of led to better outcomes.
if she doesn’t have a plan in place to have them all killed or separated from their dragons when she’s done using them, she’s a fool.
The whole strategy seems deeply flawed.
Because it is. Jace said it best if any lowborn bastard(s) can claim a dragon, how can he (and by what right) sit the Iron Throne after Rhaneyra is dead. This is desperate hour for Rhaneyra.
