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Saddle up your dragon: It’s time to return to Westeros.
Game of Thrones’ much-heralded prequel spinoff House of the Dragon premiered Sunday, bringing us right back into King’s Landing like no time had passed. (Well, it takes place a couple of centuries before the events of the original series, but you know what we mean.)
Wanna know what happens? Read on for the highlights of Episode 1 (and be sure to watch our interview with Fabien Frankel, then ponder our burning questions about one particular premiere detail).
PREQUEL TO THE PREQUEL | We’re brought into this new — well, old — world during a gathering held at the end of the first century of the Targaryen dynasty. A female narrator informs us that we’re watching a council at Harrenhal, called by King Jaehaerys. Though the family’s rule was strong — with 10 adult dragons, “no power in the world could stand against it,” the narrator says — the king’s health is not. And because both of his sons are dead, he calls the summit to choose a successor.
Though more than a thousand lords attend, and 14 bids are made, only two potential successors are truly considered: Princess Rhaenys Targaryen (Nurse Jackie’s Eve Best), the king’s oldest descendant; and Prince Viserys Targaryen (The Insider’s Paddy Considine), the king’s oldest male descendant. Both stand with their spouses by the king’s side as he announces the person who will sit the Iron Throne after his death. “The lords instead chose Viserys, my father,” the narrator explains, outing herself as Rhaenyra Targaryen, whom we’ll formally meet in a moment. Then she goes on to note that the council had been called to prevent a war over who’d be in charge, post-Jaehaerys, because “The only thing that could tear down the house of the Dragon was itself.”
THERE ARE DRAGONS IN THE SKY | A title card then leaps us ahead to the ninth year of King Viserys’ reign, “172 years before the death of the Mad King, Aerys, and the birth of his daughter, Princess Daenerys Targaryen.” Annnnnd, cue dragon! A giant, golden beast soars through the clouds and over King’s Landing, giving us a little aerial tour before landing in a clearing. A teenage Rhaenyra (The Gloaming’s Milly Alcock) hops down and lovingly pets her steed (who’s named Syrax) before bantering with a nearby knight, Ser Harrold Westerling (Outlander’s Graham McTavish), and meeting up with her bestie, Alicent Hightower (Casualty’s Emily Carey).
The teens are driven back to the Red Keep, where they swing by the queen’s room. Rhaenyra’s mom is very pregnant and highly uncomfortable, and Rhaenyra thinks it’s a travesty that everyone’s more focused on the baby than on the woman about to have it. “This discomfort is how we serve the realm,” the queen says, though Rhaenyra would rather be a knight. “The childbed is our battlefield. We must learn to face it with a stiff lip,” her mom says, wearily but lovingly.
Next, the teen runs off to her duties as the king’s cupbearer at his small council meeting. Viserys seems unbothered by the matters up for discussion, which include a potential threat to shipping lanes and the absence of his brother Daemon, who’s commander of the City Watch but apparently isn’t a regular attendee of these gatherings. When Lord Corlys Velaryon (Berlin Station’s Steve Toussaint) presses the shipping lanes issue, he’s quickly shut down by the hand of the king, Otto Hightower (Berlin Station’s Rhys Ifans). The talk turns to a tournament the king is holding to celebrate the imminent birth of his next child, whom he’s sure will be a boy and who will solve the problem of Viserys’ having no male heirs. The maester on hand is like, whoa whoa whoa we can’t guarantee you a dude, but the king is happily adamant that “there’s a boy in the queen’s belly. I know it.”
SOMETHING SQUICKY THIS WAY COMES? | And now it’s time to meet Daemon (played by Doctor Who’s Matt Smith), who is insouciantly draped across the Iron Throne when Ser Harrold leads Rhaenyra to him. They speak High Valyrian to each other, and from their easy back-and-forth, it’s clear they get along; he’s rather assured of his place as Viserys’ heir, and he’s back in town for the tournament. They lapse into English as he gives her a necklace of Valyrian steel, “like Dark Sister,” she notes, name-checking one of the family’s famed swords. “Now you and I both own a small piece of our ancestry,” he says as he puts it on her, but I barely hear it because my internal Targargen Incest Detector (which, admittedly, is on high alert given what I know of the family’s history) starts pinging softly but insistently during the exchange. When the jewelry is fastened, she turns to show him. “Beautiful,” he says softly in High Valyrian. Ping! Ping! Ping!
THE QUEEN TAKES A STAND | Upstairs, maesters are attending to the king, who has a small yet suppurating wound on his back that won’t heal. He says it’s just a small cut from the Iron Throne — which still has quite sharp edges — and thinks it’s no big deal; the maesters, and Otto Hightower, seem to think otherwise. After the wound is cauterized (and thankfully, we don’t have to watch), Viserys visits Queen Aemma while she soaks in a tub and tries to get comfortable. They’re affectionate. Still, he won’t let go of the certainty that their unborn kid is a son, thanks to a dream he had about placing his son on the Iron Throne.
Things get more serious when she tells him this is their last shot; in the past 10 years, she’s had a child die in infancy, two stillbirths and two miscarriages. (Oof.) “I’ve mourned all the dead children I can,” she says gently but firmly.
DEFUND THE CITY WATCH | That night, Daemon addresses the men of the City Watch, amping them up before setting them loose on King’s Landing to carry out “justice” as they see fit. In case any of you were worried that the Game of Thrones prequel wasn’t going to go all-in on the original show’s violence, this sequence features the de-penising of an accused rapist, among other dismemberments. By the end, the brutish police force has separated so many body parts from their owners, a two-horse cart is needed to take the appendages away.
Otto is in the middle of bemoaning Daemon’s violent actions to the king when the two men walk into the small council chambers… and see Daemon sitting there with a smirk on his face. He calmly explains that he was just cleaning up King’s Landing ahead of the influx of visitors for the tournament, and his brother agrees, though cautions him to be a little less heavy-handed. (For the record, Daemon makes no promises.) Then Otto takes a dig at how Daemon is neglecting his wife, who’s at their home in the Vale, and Daemon counters by reminding Hightower that his own wife recently died, and I’m starting to think these two hate each other, guys. Viserys steps in and tells them both to quit it, and Daemon says he understands, then leaves.
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Daemon heads to a brothel, where the thought of losing the Iron Throne to a baby is weighing on him so heavily, he can’t, uh, set the wildfire ablaze? Land the dragon? Valar his morghulis? (Look, it’s been a while, so you’re going to have to give me an episode or so to get my Thronesian double entendres in order.) The woman he’s with, whose name is Mysaria (Dev’s Sonoya Mizuno), seems to be accustomed to stroking the prince’s ego. “The king cannot replace you,” she croons, hugging him to her chest.
HUZZAH! | Time for the tournament, which will be a bloody affair in more ways than one. The crowd cheers when Viserys opens the proceedings by announcing that Queen Aemma is in labor. The first few runs reveal that Ser Criston Cole (The Serpent’s Fabien Frankel), an unknown quantity at court, is quite good at jousting; when Rhaenyra asks, Ser Harrold supplies that the young man is common-born, but that’s about all he knows.
Daemon is up next, and he chooses Otto Hightower’s oldest son as his first opponent. When Hightower gets a good hit on the first pass, an angry Daemon trips Hightower’s horse on the second pass, making the horse throw his rider as he falls. Apparently that’s kosher? Anyway, when Daemon approaches the king’s box in victory, he asks for Alicent’s favor — yet another slap in the face to Otto. She gives it to him, to her father’s great consternation.
As the day goes on, some jousts devolve into horrifying hand-to-hand combat, with the crowd cheering the whole time. Rhaeyns muses to her husband that the young men who are competing have never known war, and therefore fight — as Anita so aptly put it in West Side Story — “like they gotta get rid of something, quick.” Meanwhile, on the grounds before them, a competitor literally has his face bashed in, and a nearby squire vomits as he watches.
Eventually, Daemon goes up against Ser Criston, and the latter bests the former, causing him to fall halfway off his ride and get slung down the rail like a happy hour beer at Cheers. Daemon then calls for the contest to continue, man-to-man, so it does. But Criston is as good off the horse as he is on, and Daemon eventually yields. And the mystery knight then approaches Rhaenyra and asks for her favor, which she tosses to him, wishing him luck.
R.I.P., QUEEN AEMMA | The king is called away by a maester who informs him that the baby is breech — aka feet-down position, which, in a time where anethesia-free caesarian sections rarely end well, is decidedly Not Great. Eventually, the king is called upon to make a decision: Cut Aemma open in order to try and save the baby, or lose them both.
Of COURSE the king gives the order to slice-and-dice, and of COURSE his dazed and delirious wife has zero say in what’s happening. To his (very slight) credit, Viserys looks sad as he tells Aemma he loves her, just moments before she starts crying that she’s scared of what’s happening. When they cut, she starts to scream. CAN’T SOMEONE GET THIS WOMAN A LITTLE MILK OF THE POPPY OR SOMETHING?
There’s so much blood. Let me say that again: There’s SO MUCH BLOOD. The baby — a boy whom Viserys names Baelon — is successfully delivered. But Aemma is dead. Otto brings the news to everyone seated in the royal box.
A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA | The worst part: Aemma and Viserys’ son died not long after his mother; Aemma was sacrificed for nothing. “I wonder, during those few hours my brother lived, my father finally found happiness,” Rhaenyra says bitterly, in High Valyrian, to Daemon at the funeral. Then, choked with tears, she gives the order for her dragon to set the pyres ablaze. The small council soon decides that the succession needs to be set ASAP, so they meet to debate whether Daemon is a fitting leader. Some argue that Daemon might murder Viserys to assume the rule sooner than later. (Daemon, by the way, is eavesdropping on all of this. Did no one in the king’s circle of trusted advisers think about the literal HOLES IN THE WALL?) Then Otto suggests that the king’s firstborn child become the named heir, instead.
The general reaction: A GIRL?! (It’s much the same when Corlys makes a renewed bid for Rhaenys’ sitting the throne.) Finally, a grieving Viserys yells that he won’t deal with the matter now, and that ends that. Otto is in his chambers when his daughter, Alicent, comes home. And their warm interaction makes it look like he’s one of the few good-guy characters we’ve met so far… until he tells her to put on one of her dead mother’s dreses and go to the king’s bedroom to “offer him comfort.”
She does. She brings a history book. She sits with him while he works on a giant model of King’s Landing (?) that he’s carving. She tells him she’s sorry for his loss. Meanwhile, Daemon hangs out at the brothel, where Mysaria toasts his being the king’s sole heir once more, and he winds up giving a speech about how “I’m not so easily replaced” and calling his dead, infant nephew “The Heir For a Day.” Otto reports all of this to Viserys the next morning; even Rhaenyra is taken aback to hear that her uncle celebrated the family’s loss.
Viserys summons his brother before the Iron Throne to ask him directly if he said the heir thing. “We all mourn in our own way, your grace,” Daemon says. (Heh.) Viserys unleashes upon him, saying that he’s made excuses for him forever. Daemon shoots back that he’s never once been asked to be Hand of the King, and that Otto doesn’t protect the king. “From what?,” Viserys asks. “Yourself,” Daemon replies. Then the king sends his brother back to the Vale, because he’s no longer the heir. As Daemon leaves, Viserys cuts his hand on his chair, and it bleeds.
Then the king meets with Rhaenyra to talk about continuing the Targaryen reign. He apologizes for being so focused on having a son, then tells her that he now believes she was made to wear the crown. Then he shares with her the secret that Targaryen rulers have been passing down ever since Aegon I had a very unsettling vision of the end of the world: “It is to begin with a terrible winter, gusting out of the distant north. Aegon saw absolute darkness riding on those winds, and whatever dwells within will destroy the world of the living. When this great winter comes, Rhaenyra, all of Westeros must stand against it. And if the world of man is to survive, a Targaryen must be seated on the Iron Throne. A king or queen, strong enough to unite the realm against the dark. Aegon called his dream the Song of Ice and Fire.” Good luck, kid!
So Alicent dresses her friend for a very public pledging of loyalty, and Rhaenyra stands before the Iron Throne while all of the lords swear their fealty. Meanwhile, Daemon brings Mysaria to meet a dragon I believe is Caraxes, and they go for a little ride.
Now it’s your turn! What did you think about the premiere? Grade it via the poll below, then hit the comment to let us know all of your thoughts!
It’s gonna be a bit hard to follow this one.. especially since a lot of the characters look alike with the long blonde hair…. I’ve already found myself visiting the Wiki of Ice and Fire to try to keep the relationships and history straight.
The original mostly had dark hair and all looked alike to me. Took me forever to figure out who’s who. lol
Honestly it probably took me the first 2 seasons to get down all the characters and understand the world they were in while watching GoT. I feel like I have an advantage going in here, but it’s probably gonna take me a while to get everything straight. I’m fine with it though.
Great to be back in this world! Thought the pilot was fantastic. Can’t wait for more! GOT is back!
By the way there are some great YouTube videos on the people involved in this story without any spoilers. One I thought it was very well done without any spoilers is on a YouTube site called Alt Shift X. It’s called Everything you need to know about House of Dragons. It really is an excellent video. I post a link but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to.
There is also the David lightbringer youtube channel, you get a combination of lore videos there but also non spoiler discussion livestreams about the episodes after they air.
I thought the 1st episode was amazing. They’re taking things slow, which I think is a good thing. Instead of it being a clone of GOT, I think this has the power to stand on its own. And the music was great too!!😀
… a bit brutal, but on par with my expectations.
Looking forward to this. I’m sure it will be great.
It was a good start. And end. Got a bit of chills when the theme music kicked in. (Though I’m still curious what THIS show’s theme music will be). But it does suffer from a dearth of charisma from the actors. The original had a lot of unknowns too, but they lit up the screen. Right now you almost root for Matt’s Smith’s awful character because he commands the screen in every scene he’s in. Though Ifan is great in everything he does too. Though that all may not be the actors but how dour it all is. The original was quotable funny at times, and from the early reviews this one doesn’t seem to have that. But it felt like a warm sweat shirt; comfy to be back in the world.
Was I watching “House of the dragon” or “The last duel”? Was that Matt Smith or Matt Damon? Doesn’t matter really, felt nice to be back into that world and oh man how I’ve missed the GOT main title theme! 😊
weren’t you just waiting for daemon to stab criston in the back as he was getting the princess’s wreath? why didn’t that happen? so uncharacteristic (unless he has plans for criston of course …….. and if this has already been stated in previous comments, very likely, well, great minds ha!)
Pretty much boring and unoriginal. Except for the…what was it…jousting? That was brilliant! Having a friendly (?) contest where you try and knock a guy off a horse and he, understandably, wears armor to protect himself and a helmet so he won’t get splinters in his eyes…I guess? Credit the writers for introducing us to something unique and appropriately clever for an alternate reality series set in a world with giant flying lizards that, itself, feels like I’ve seen, or read about, a number of times before.
I can’t tell if you’re joking or if you’ve honestly never heard of jousting before.
Joking. I was flipping between this and a TCM movie, so missed the more brutal parts, but it is unoriginal. I do not remember the GoT jousting, but still.
The whole thing was hollow and uninspired to me. A shadow of GoT, which I watched and, like many, did not care for the end of since they did not have the rest of the books to go by. The end scene explaining the prophecy was pointless since we that watched GoT know what happens. It seems this will be a needless blood and guts, breasts and butts, retread to get to where we have already been.
To think J.R.R. Martin could be finishing his books for his readers that paid for them instead of involving himself on this.
There was jousting GOT too. In the first season. The Mountain beheaded his opponents horse.
I’ve never seen Matt Smith look so thick. That was more surprising than the first time I saw him in the wig
The original series sucked. So, no thank you.
To each, their own.
Yet you have that name and clicked on the article anyway and typed a comment.
It was alright! Nothing super special yet, but they seem to be warming up so I’ll give them a season to see where it goes.
HOWEVER, I am pretty annoyed that they spent pre-season press hammering home that they wouldn’t be showing sexual violence against women and then we got that birth scene…. She absolutely did not consent to that. What’s wild is that the EP said in the “making of” portion afterwards that the choice was between losing both or saving the baby, but the text as presented in the show actually stated that it was a choice between her and the baby. Just one extra line of dialogue could have fixed this mess too: Have the Maester tell the Queen that he can save the baby and she’s a goner either way, giving her the noble choice to endure the pain to try to save the baby. Much less icky than what we got.
I always found that ridiculous. The whole shows is set in a middle aged type period where women are second class citizens (seems like the whole point of the first episode). Women aren’t going to have it fair or great. They just need to not glorify it. And I don’t know about you, but that horrifying scene didn’t seem to glorify anything. (Plus, an aside, there used to be s show called “The Surgery” on TLC or one of them that showed surgeries, and they were all ok to watch…except the c-section. Even in modern times that just looks gruesome.)
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Second, they cut a guy’s member off, and showed it!), but we’re going to complain about sexual violence towards women in the same show?!?!
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I agree with you that it was lose both or save the child. It was a choice. That was the whole point of the scene. That he would choice his male heir over his wife. That’s what makes it agonizing, and reflects on him. And he loses both for it. And helps seed that he realizes his daughter shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s not meant to be a noble choice. But a hard, painful one. Whether his choice was more noble than not is up to you. (Would a mother, IF she was given consent, choice herself over her baby if she thought the baby would live? Did he do it for his child or his legacy? Etc.) It’s an easy choice if it’s lose two or one.
I don’t think I made it clear, but in the after-show “Making Of” documentary the writer explicitly states that the choice was between both of them dying and cutting her open to save the child. Which is not how the show portrayed it. So whichever way it was meant to be taken, wires got crossed.
And I don’t necessarily need the male sexual violence either, the member being chopped off was too far for me. I’m not even saying the show NEEDS to be feminist or anything. I’m just saying that if the EPs are claiming that the show’s not going to show sexual violence against women, they flat out lied.
I haven’t seen the aftershow yet, but yeah, saying that is 100% BS. Maybe some CYA now. That’s not what happened, and there’s almost no interpretation where that makes sense.
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And I admire you consistency. It was a rough, violent world they’re portraying, but yes sometimes it veers into torture porn or violence just to shock.
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I guess the only thing I’d, well maybe not “defend” them on, but can see from a point of view that they didn’t consider this sexual violence. Birth and sex are intertwined, but no one would consider a C-section sexual. Inhuman with no modern medicine, and a violation without consent, absolutely. But I think there were saying they were going to tone down the sexual violence against women, not all violence. Because that would make the world very unrealistic, and make for some lousy plot armor for female characters.
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But I can see why it bothered you. I think it was meant to bother everyone. I guess the question I can’t answer is “did it portray the actions simply from the male point of view, and how it affected them, or from the female’s perspective, and how it was to her?” And did they glorify it or terrify us with it? I could see answers either way that I could accept because it’s a lot of personal feelings and interpretation. In this case both can be valid. (Unlike the “it was to save them both;” because no, show runners, that ain’t what happened.)
Yeah I think you’re pretty much spot on in those last two paragraphs. They probably didn’t consider it sexual violence (and now reflecting I’m not even sure that I do). It was still a violation of her that I just found uncomfortable to watch, but I see how I misinterpreted the producers.
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Your thoughts also have me reflecting on why I found it uncomfortable: because I felt like it glorified her “battle” without her consent. It was juxtaposed with a battle where both jousters chose to participate in the tournament, but she didn’t have the same agency as they did. And it could’ve been a scene portraying her warrior strength in choosing to be torn in half to save the baby. Instead her husband made the choice and she’s just an object lying there. It’s probably realistic for medieval times and I can’t say it’s out of place but I certainly didn’t enjoy watching it. It also makes me like the King much less than I think the show wants me to.
I don’t think you misinterpreted the producers; I think the producers have different interpretations on a couple of things, and are playing fast and loose with the facts on other things (the after show for sure).
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I think you make a great point about it. They make the point that birthing is the woman’s battlefield, but she can’t be the “hero” of it if her agency is taken away. It made for a false comparison. Of course, both visual scenes reflect the needless brutality of men. I’ve seen them claim in other interviews post show that they’re going to show birth in many different forms, and reflect different aspects of it. We’ll see if that was just more talk or not.
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I think it was realistic in that regular childbirth was really a crapshoot for the mother in the day even in the best of circumstances. But I don’t know that the show made you like the King any less than you are supposed to. I don’t think he’s supposed to be an effective King, husband, or father. The catch of it is his brother is right. He is a weak king who is taken advantage of. The only thing that makes him a better King than his brother is that he’s not a psychopath. Faint praise indeed. And I think to illustrate the daughter might be a better leader than either her father or uncle. How much of a chance to prove that may depend on how closely they follow the established history or not. But that’s way down the line in any case.
Then you weren’t paying attention. The maestet telks the king it’s either the mother’s life OR both the baby and mother’s lives.
So I went back and checked. And technically you’re right. He says he can save the baby or risk losing them both. What he actually says is “leave it to the gods.” Not that they will for sure both die (or even one). So the quandary is save the baby or lose them both. Which he does anyway.
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Though if you’re going to be rude about it to other people, it’s “Maester.” And “tells.” And, probably, “Northern.”
I gave it a “D”. Writing and acting were pretty good but come on it’s 2022…. how is having a show packed with this many white people still even an acceptable thing?
Because sometimes casting choices are done for practical reasons (i.e. revenue, cater to the majority viewership). And besides, a number of the black actors cast in the show have not made their appearance yet. Google the show and it shows there a number of black actors and it does not look like a complete whitewash.
Industry-wide racial diversity across the entire tv landscape is an important goal, particularly in acting roles of various prominence for non-white actors. But from that, it doesn’t follow that every show should be obliged to check particular racial diversity boxes.
I do not mind the killing and blood letting. I do mind the incest. I do not want to see any of that crap. Disgusting.
Incest is a Game of Thrones staple. It wouldn’t feel the same without it. Plus the Targaryens were known for being an incestuous family if I recall correctly. I already felt a vibe between the uncle and the king’s daughter.
Absolutely the Targaryens were an incestuous family in an effort to keep the royal bloodline pure. It was also the reason why so many members of the family eventually went insane — the interbreeding. Disgusting by our standards for sure, but historically something that was done even in our history and also seen as a means of keeping the bloodlines “pure” .. a true Game of Thrones staple.
Apparently, King Viserys’ parents were siblings. And his deceased wife Aemma was his first cousin.
Was I the only one who, when it got near the end, thought ‘oh for the love of Pete, I do *not* need to hear about how Winter is Coming’
Does this mean we’re going to get two articles per week from Kimberly Root on the show? Because sign me up for that! Also nice coming from someone who isn’t here to just rag on the last season of the previous show. From the initial viewing numbers sounds like there are a lot who haven’t shown off ever watching again either.