Why That Character Killed Themselves In House Of The Dragon Season 2, Episode 2

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for House of the Dragon season 2, episode 2.

Contains discussion of suicide.

Summary

• Ser Erryk Cargyll tragically kills his own twin brother in a duel before taking his own life in House of the Dragon.
• The Cargyll twins’ battle was a response to Blood and Cheese killing Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen in the season 2 premiere.
• Erryk’s suicide may have been due to the taboo of kinslaying in Westeros.

Ser Erryk Cargyll kills his own brother, Arryk, in a duel in House of the Dragon season 2, episode 2, before taking his own life in a tragic end to the instalment. The duel of the Cargyll twins, taken from the pages of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, comes as a direct response to Blood and Cheese killing Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen in the season 2 premiere, and is the first (of what should be many) action and fight sequences in the show’s sophomore run.

With Arryk arriving on Dragonstone and impersonating his brother in an attempt to murder Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, it was always likely to end with at least one of the brothers dying, if not both. However, not even book readers would have been able to foresee exactly how the battle played out in House of the Dragon season 2, episode 2’s ending, with some notable changes to the source material as Erryk falls on his own sword after killing his brother.

Why Erryk Cargyll Killed Himself In House Of The Dragon (& Was It Him?)

There Are A Couple Of Potential Reasons For Erryk’s Death

Ser Erryk’s death is most likely as a result of the love he still had for his brother, despite them going their separate ways. As Arryk noted earlier in the episode, the pair were once one soul in two bodies and, despite their diverging paths, that didn’t just completely disappear. They came into the world together, and Erryk may have felt that it was only right for them to leave it together too; that he could not live knowing his brother was not only dead, but that he had killed him.

Kinslaying is considered a massive taboo in Westeros, and so Erryk was quite literally falling on his own sword because of that…

While Erryk was performing his duties as a member of Rhaenyra’s Queensguard and protecting the person he was loyal to, he may also have felt a sense of dishonor in the killing of his brother. Kinslaying is considered a massive taboo in Westeros, and so Erryk was quite literally falling on his own sword because of that, either to try and reclaim a sense of honor or because of the shame he felt he had brought upon himself (not too dissimilar to seppuku, a ritualistic form of suicide among samurai).

There is, perhaps, a question of whether that really was Erryk who died by suicide at the end of the episode. Certainly, from watching the fight, even slowed down, I found it hard to be 100% certain. There would be something quite interesting in Arryk feeling he had been wrong to go against his brother and Rhaenyra at the very end, but the context of the scene – with him calling her “your grace” – does certainly fit Erryk a lot more.

How The Duel Of The Cargyll Twins Is Different To The Book

House Of The Dragon Made Significant Changes To Fire & Blood

There are a couple of key changes to Fire & Blood in House of the Dragon season 2‘s depiction of the fight between the Cargyll twins. While the basic set up is the same, with Arryk disguising himself as Erryk on Dragonstone, Rhaenyra herself was not present for the fight, at least according to the various historical accounts offered. Also, the book has the brothers happen upon each other and draw swords, rather than Erryk arriving just in time. However, there are three different versions of what happened in the book:

• Grand Maester Munken claims they fought for an hour, and their sound of the duel attracted a horde of onlookers, but none could tell the twins apart in order to intervene. He goes on to say they “dealt each other mortal wounds, and died in one another’s arms with tears upon their cheeks.”
• Septon Eustace offers no real detail of the matter, but just that they slew each other.
• The Testimony of Mushroom has it that the brothers’ battle was short and vicious. They called each other a traitor, Erryk almost cut off his brother’s arm, but then Arryk drove a dagger into his stomach. He also claims that Arryk died instantly, but Erryk “took four days to die of his gut wound, screaming in horrible pain and cursing his traitor brother all the while.”

In the end, the outcome is the same: both Cargylls are dead. There’s also a bit of Munken and Mushroom in the show’s version – the declaration of love from the former, the shorter, nastier duel of the latter. It is also possible, of course, that Rhaenyra does not disclose Erryk took his own life and instead tells people he and Arryk killed each other, which could even explain some of the differing accounts that come after House of the Dragon‘s timeline.

New episodes of House of the Dragon release Sundays at 9pm ET on HBO and Max.