The following article contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon.
As with the first season of Game of Thrones, the death of a long-term monarch looks to be the big inciting incident for House of the Dragon. Unlike his counterpart Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) in the father series, however, whose shock demise came at the tusks of a boar, the expiry of King Viserys (Paddy Considine, a highlight every weekend) has been a slow, agonising burn.
If he's not literally carving himself up on the sharp appendages of the Iron Throne, he's coughing up his guts or being relegated to his arm chair like an infirm old man. Indeed, after the time jump of episode six, “The Princess and the Queen,” the sovereign has never looked worse, the confluence of his advancing years and various ailments rendering him akin to Julian Glover's shrivelled up, wispy-haired, skeletal corpse at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The beleaguered, good-natured king who, really, just wants to have a good time and can't be arsed with the various political qualms that come hand-in-hand with being the most powerful person in the realm, has spent the last handful of episodes doing a lot of dying. It's so close to camp that it's almost comical: what the guy really deserves at this point of his life is a nice retirement in a villa somewhere abroad, basking in the sun, not drowning in the scheming and conniving of his ambitious subjects.
Whatever the case, his death is inevitable. That's when House of the Dragon, officially renewed for a second season back in August, will really kick on, the starting gun for the “dance of the dragons,” the Targaryen civil war mythologised in Game of Thrones between the contesting heirs to Viserys' throne. Whether it'll come at the end of a treacherous dagger — keep an eye on Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), seemingly to be swayed by the whispers of rattish confidente Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), and increasingly tired of her husband's incousiance — or through the natural death that seems divined is up for debate, but it's coming.
The open question, with “The Princess and the Queen” beginning to establish the factional lines that'll emerge as the series goes on — the Greens (no, not based out of Brighton) aligned with the interests of Alicent, and the Blacks behind Rhaenyra — is when said powder keg will blow. A little dramatic intuition would suggest it'll come in the finale, with the chess pieces aligned for explosive warring to begin with season two, but Game of Thrones was never one to avoid a rug pull. Might we see, then, Viserys finally put out of his deathly misery before everyone is ready for war?
Truth be told, there are another four episodes left of what has been a strong spin-off debut — while House of the Dragon was a touch slow out of the gates, its hit a real gallop post-Crab Feeder — and one wonders whether Viserys has it in him to keep dying a death. Let's be honest: at this point, if he was a race horse, we'd be setting up a tent and loading the shotgun; if he was a beloved family pet, we'd be tearfully driving him to the vet for his final trip to doggy Valhalla. There's only so much dying one can do, your big toe dipping in the waters of oblivion, before you have to take a proper dive.
House of the Dragon is streaming on Sky and Now. New episodes air Mondays at 9pm on Sky Atlantic.
