If the weddings are a doozie in Westeros, it is the funerals which are the real howlers.

Family gatherings are normally vectors for incredible drama but when the Targaryen clan get together, you can bet there will be plenty of blood, nudity, fighting, public drunkenness and sex – the dirty incestuous kind.

After the funeral rites and Laena’s body, entombed in a stone coffin, is dumped into the sea, the shenanigans begin: Aegon the Masturbator gets inappropriately wasted; Rhaenyra and Daemon couple on the beach while Aemond graduates from dragon-shopping to dragon-stealing, then accuses his half-nephews of being illegitimate bastards, then loses an eye for his insults; and if that were not enough, a stepmom attacks her stepdaughter, drawing blood, literally demanding an eye for an eye.

They don’t do half-measures in Westeros. They go all the way.

Paddy Constantine is at his brilliant best in this episode playing the faded, withering, disease-ridden patriarch with an incredible poignance. Here is a man fighting the drumbeats of inevitability: civil war within his own family. He knows what his own arrogance and stubbornness has wrought, his family is split asunder and he is powerless to stop the in-fighting. Viserys cuts an impotent figure, raging against the interminable “ugly game” of thrones which will sweep his legacy aside once he is cold in his grave.

As the family gathers in the hall, Viserys demands answers as to what has transpired and asks incredulously: what is all this ‘bastard’ talk? It is Aegon the Masturbator who says what everyone has been whispering for years about Rhaenyra’s sons.

“We know father…everyone knows,” he tells Viserys. “Just look at them.”

“We are family,” Viserys appeals to stony silence in the room.

“Now make your apologies, show goodwill to one another, your father, your grandsire, your king demands it,” Viserys says, but his words ring hollow.

Queen Alicent brushes her husband’s words aside; she wants Lucerys’ eye in return. Enraged, she grabs the King’s dagger, and tries to extract her pound of flesh, but is stopped by Rhaenyra. They tussle, exchange harsh barbs and they are finally separated but not before Alicent draws blood, slashing Rhaenyra’s left hand. It is at this moment that viewers can see competing factions who stand facing one another: Daemon, Rhaenyra, and the Sea Snake on one side, and Alicent, her father Otto, Aemond and Ser Criston on the other.

The best moment in the whole episode belongs to Aemond, who steps into the middle of the face-off and advises his mother, Queen Alicent: “Do not mourn for me, mother. It was a fair exchange. I may have lost an eye but I gained a dragon,”

Aemond’s bravado appears to have shifted the power dynamics as he now rides the magnificent she-beast, Vhagar. Expect more blood and vengeance in future episodes.

Later, Otto Hightower almost swells with pride as he discusses the night’s bloodletting festivities with a shamed Alicent.

“I have never seen that side to you my daughter….we play an ugly game…and now, for the first time, I see you have the determination to win it,” Hightower said.

With a father like that, it is small wonder why Alicent eventually turns to villainy.

Later, as they return to King’s Landing by ship, the slithery Larys casually offers to balance the scales — presumably with some cleverly arranged eye gouging involving the dark-haired princes — Alicent clearly turns him down but lets him know that his offer and discretion is well received. More cloak and dagger stuff is in the cards.

Later, the incestuous Rhaenyra and Daemon get married in a shotgun destination wedding style with ringbearers — their children still dressed in black — and with only minimal blood (theirs) — spilled. Why the ceremonial blood wedding? You just never know with those nutty Targaryens.

One note is that the show departed from “Fire & Blood,” the George R R Martin novel, in which Laenor is killed by Ser Qarl. Maybe it’s because of the show’s checkered history of dealing poorly with minority characters such as Jacob Anderson’s Grey Worm and Nathalie Emmanuel’s Missandei. So when the episode ends with Laenor sailing off with his gay lover after faking his death, a small cheer went up from black Twitter. The show’s writers knew they could not kill Laenor, a gay black male, and treat him as expendable. No, no, no…that would be like killing a unicorn.

So onto the next episode, The Lord of the Tides. The Battle of the Kiddos is now truly on.