Rats have infested House of the Dragon‘s Red Keep since Season 2, but one savvy sailor may have just solved the issue.
In Season 3, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) finds the royal seat of power in King’s Landing brimming with rodents. There are no ratcatchers left in the city — Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) had them all hanged in Season 2 after the terrible business with Blood and Cheese — so the rats are free to swarm the halls.
Until Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) gives the queen an old mariner’s trick: Bring in the cats.
A naval war hero in his estranged father Lord Corlys Velaryon’s (Steve Toussaint) fleet, Alyn knows a trick or two about keeping close quarters free of vermin. Attending the queen in his father’s absence, Alyn and Rhaenyra have a heart-to-heart looking at King Viserys’ Old Valyria model.
“Incessant!” Rhaenyra says, when she finds a horde of rats scurrying about the model. “Thanks to Aegon, all the ratcatchers are dead.”
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“Onboard ship, we kept cats,” offers Alyn.
Outside of Westeros, ship’s cats have been constant companions of sailors for hundreds of years, and have been the adorable subject of many authors and maritime museums. As National Museums Liverpool writes, “Until the Royal Navy banned cats and other pets on board ships in 1975, many sailors and seafarers welcomed their whiskered crew mates on long voyages, enlisting them to keep the relentless hordes of mice and rats at bay.” The museum also says cats were symbols of bravery during World War II, and that “some were rewarded for their services on board and were even given their own uniforms!”
The respect.
Ship’s cat Stripey aboard the H.M.S. Warspite, a ship used by Britain in WWI and WWII.
Credit: Hulton-Deutsch Collection / CORBIS / Corbis via Getty Images
Royal Navy ship’s cat Convoy aboard H.M.S. Hermione in Gibraltar, Nov. 26, 1941.
Credit: Lt. S J Beadell / Imperial War Museums via Getty Images
In George R. R. Martin’s Fire and Blood, it’s Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) who solves the Red Keep’s rat problem, bringing no less than 100 cats into the building to sort that shit out. A centurion of felines! But seeing as he’s, you know, off his head at present, it’s up to Alyn to manage the situation. Perhaps this plan will include the progenitor of poor ill-fated Ser Pounce, the beloved cat of King Tommen Baratheon in Game of Thrones.
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