"House of the Dragon" is a welcome return to Westeros

This article contains spoilers for the first season of House of the Dragon.

“Men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascend the Iron Throne.”

As I noted in December in my 2022 Star Wars Roundup post, I’ve never written about television extensively for this blog before. While I’ve always had the desire to talk about and participate in the discussion surrounding TV more, I carelessly make good on that promise. The reality is that I just don’t have enough time to watch every acclaimed television series on the air, which makes it difficult to be fully present in the discourse. For every Barry or Atlanta or What We Do in the Shadows that I do watch, I neglect a White Lotus or a Severance or a Ted Lasso. So, by in large, I tend to stay away from talking about TV. So when a show came recently across the radar that gave me an inescapable, unquenchable need to write about it, I paid attention. That show, of course, is HBO’s House of the Dragon.

House of the Dragon’s first season, which came to a close last October, completely enthralled me over its run. The series is an independent prequel to the mega-hit fantasy epic Game of Thrones and, like its predecessor, is based on the literary work of writer George R.R. Martin. The show begins about 200 years prior to the start of Game of Thrones during the height of the Targaryen dynasty when dragons ruled the skies of Westeros. Unlike Thrones, which was based on Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the series is adapted from the fictional histories documented in the book Fire & Blood. The first season of House of the Dragon crams about 20-ish years of history, family drama, and political scheming into ten hour-long episodes of television setting the stage for the ferocious civil war, the Dance of the Dragons.

I was enchanted by House of the Dragon from the very first episode thanks to its complicated characters and rich lore. The show always found fascinating ways to complicate its story and pull more out of its characters and world. It’s in equal measure shocking and carefully constructed. It is a fantastic companion and expansion to the world of Game of Thrones while never feeling encumbered by the legacy of the previous show. House of the Dragon is an exciting return to the pomp and grandeur of Westeros and makes the internal machinations of the fictional continent the highlight of any Sunday night.

Here be dragons . . . 

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Playing the Game of Thrones

After The Lord of the Rings trilogy made fantasy cool again in the early 2000s, many of the most popular fantasy book series were being snatched up by movie studios to get in on the success of Middle-Earth. One series that was frequently sought out but never successfully adapted was Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Studios came to Martin with ideas for films, which Martin rejected over and over again because he knew that any film adaptation would need to trim the intense worldbuilding from his stories into something easily digestible in 2 hours.

In stepped two wannabe television writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss who approached Martin with a plan to turn A Song of Ice and Fire into a television series. It would require a budget and a scope never before seen on TV, but Martin admired their tenacity and vision. He gave them his blessing and the two approached HBO with their terribly risky, but incredibly exciting pitch.

When Game of Thrones first appeared on television in early 2011, it was a massive risk on the part of HBO. At the time, high fantasy had never really been done in live-action television before and certainly not within high-class, high-budget primetime slots. But Game of Thrones wasn’t like your other fantasy adventure stories. There was, in fact, very little adventure to it. It was a mature, sophisticated, violent, adult-oriented series that went out of its way to avoid the conventions of the genre. The conflicts were not between the forces of good and evil, but between intertwined familial clans who all wanted a chance to sit on the Iron Throne.

The series became a massive success with each successive season becoming more viewed and more discussed than the one before. As the “golden age” of primetime television was starting to come into its own, HBO’s genre drama was a kick of energy to the medium that proudly declared that TV could be just as ambitious as movies. The show became notorious for the high-stakes nature of its story, in which any character, no matter how important, could die at any moment. Audiences became obsessed with the intricate plotting and unforgettable characters.

But by the end of its eighth and final season, Game of Thrones fell out of favour with its fans. Seasons seven and eight were not nearly as well received as the rest of the show had been with criticism levied towards their rushed pacing and condensed episode counts. Martin himself advocated that the show should have taken somewhere between 10 - 12 seasons to properly tell its story, but it instead ended on a whimper of a finale. The specific criticisms of the final season are too lengthy and complicated to be included here, but suffice it to say, Game of Thrones’ ending put a poor taste in the mouths of many audience members and members of its own cast. 

Press surrounding House of the Dragon was filled with doubts about the show. The series would be the first appearance of Westeros since the ending of Thrones in 2019 and many, myself included, were not particularly enthused. After all, our last outing ended so miserably, so why should this show be any different? Thankfully, with a new creative team at the helm and a renewed sense of vigour, House of the Dragon roars with potential and a brilliant first season.

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The Year 110AC

House of the Dragon begins about 200 years before Game of Thrones when the ancestors of Daenerys Targaryen were still the top dogs in the realm. The Targaryen family, along with the Velaryon family, are the two surviving bloodlines from the legendary city of Valyria. One hundred years before House of the Dragon, King Aegon Targaryen invaded Westeros with his dragons and conquered the realm, uniting the Seven Kingdoms under the power of the Iron Throne.

The series introduces us to King Viserys I, the fifth Targaryen king and played by Paddy Considine, and builds its drama around the question of who will be his heir. At the start of the show, Viserys and his wife Aemma have only had one child, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, and many other stillborn children and miscarriages. At the start of the first episode, “The Heirs of the Dragon,” Queen Aemma is pregnant again with what many hope to be a son, giving Viserys a trueborn heir. But things end in tragedy when Aemma and her child die in childbirth, something Viserys never forgives himself for. After Aemma’s funeral, Viserys makes the shocking move to name Rhaenyra as his heir, the first female heir to the Iron Throne, setting the stage for the disaster to come.

Over its first season, the show introduces us to its many players. First is Rhaenyra, the new heir to the realm who struggles to balance her roles as both a woman in a deeply patriarchal society and as the heir to the throne. There’s Daemon Targaryen, Viserys’ cunning younger brother and former heir apparent. There is also Alicent Hightower, Rhaenyra’s childhood best friend, daughter of the king’s closest advisor, Otto Hightower, and Viserys’ future second wife. Lastly, there is the Velaryon family of Driftmark, the other surviving Valyrian family line in Westeros. House Velaryon is headed by patriarch Corlys “the Seasnake” Velaryon alongside his wife Rhaenys Targaryen and his children Laenor and Laena. In the second half of the season, we are introduced to the children of Rhaenyra, Alicent, Laenor, and Laena who all add their own unique elements to the story.

Considine gives perhaps the season’s best performance as Viserys Targaryen. Considine makes Viserys into this tragic, King Lear-esque character. Viserys was not the previous king’s son and instead inherited the throne by accident by being his closest living male relative. Viserys is a man of peace who only wants to see his family get along, despite that becoming an ever-increasing impossibility. He is a good man who wants to be a good king, but the violent delights of his family make peace a fantasy. It’s the frustration and desperation that Considine brings to the role that makes him such a compelling character. He is a man plagued by anguish and heartache, and his deep-seated regret is felt so palpably over the entire series.

At the start of the first episode, “The Heirs of the Dragon,” Queen Aemma is pregnant again with what many hope to be a son, giving Viserys a trueborn heir. But things end in tragedy when Aemma and her child die in childbirth, something Viserys never forgives himself for. After Aemma’s funeral, Viserys makes the shocking move to name Rhaenyra as his heir, the first female heir to the Iron Throne, setting the stage for the disaster to come. Because, in the words of Rhaenys, “Men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascend the Iron Throne.”

That is proven true time and time again. The lords of the realm are divided over their allegiance to King Viserys and their hatred for a woman to ascend the throne. Many of the powerful men in Westeros use their best schemes to push their families into higher stations of power by exploiting Rhaenyra’s identity as a woman. By the end of the season, the Great Houses have split their allegiances between Rhaenyra and her half-brother Aegon — Rhaenyra’s side becomes known as the “Blacks” and Aegon’s side becomes known as the “Greens” — over who is the more worthy successor all because of Rhaenyra’s gender. 

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Women in Power

Perhaps House of the Dragon’s most interesting point of discussion is around the role of women in Westeros. Westerosi culture enforces very strict gender roles onto its people, attitudes reflective of those found in medieval Europe, and much of House of the Dragon’s story tackles those roles head-on. The three most important women in the show are Princess Rhaenyra, Queen Alicent, and Princess Rhaenys and Westerosi society’s perceptions of women are all explored through them.

The show’s central relationship dynamic, I believe, is the collapse of the friendship between Rhaenyra and Alicent. This is one notable aspect in which Fire & Blood and House of the Dragon seriously differ. Their friendship is a new element added for the show, which makes their eventual division all the more tragic. When we first meet Rhaenyra and Alicent, played by Milly Alcock and Emily Carey respectively, we realize that their relationship is one forged out of necessity. They are their only peers in the whole Red Keep, the royal palace in the capital city of King’s Landing. The two, despite how they might be used by their fathers to secure political alliances, will always have each other, and so became quite close.

As soon as Rhaenyra is named heir and Alicent is later married off to Rhaenyra’s father, that equilibrium begins to shift. Rhaenyra is willing to challenge the expectations for her as a woman because she has her destiny as the future monarch behind her. But Alicent is still a slave, a thing in the world of men. And so her resentment for Rhaenyra grows. Rhaenyra gets to spend months, years even hunting for her perfect husband amongst the lord of the realm while Alicent was sold into a loveless marriage for the sake of her father’s ego. Rhaenyra forgets Alicent’s struggle and Alicent becomes resentful of Rhaenyra towards it. Rhaenyra flaunts her autonomy and privilege, while Alicent’s body is sold for the sake of men, to further the bloodline of men, to produce a male child.

When we meet the adult versions of Rhaenyra and Alicent, played by Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke respectively, in the second half of the season, these two women have forged these bitter points of tension between them. They have only grown to hate each other. Rhaenyra, now with the glory of childhood behind her, has to deal with the very implications of her status as the future queen. Alicent has just been pushed further into a subservient role in the castle. And so, she begins to carve out her own sphere of influence where she can — including, after Viserys’ death, making the false claim that her late husband desired her son Aegon to be ruler after him. If she cannot rule, she will at least control the rulers after her.

D’Arcy and Cooke’s performances are one of the parts that makes me the most excited for the future of House of the Dragon. Cooke is a ferocious, intense presence on screen. Her portrayal of Alicent is a desperate, clever woman. Despite the pompous nature of her station, Alicent is forced into some deeply uncomfortable situations by the men in her life. She claims what little power she has all the while losing her autonomy. D’Arcy’s Rheanyra is much more mature and resolved than Alcock’s. D’Arcy’s performance is an unforgettable whirlwind. From their monologues to their more intimate scenes, D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra is rich and layered.

Rhaenys, played by Eve Best, is a fascinating figure. She exists somewhere in the tension between Rhaenyra and Alicent, serving as an elder foil to them both. In the series prologue, we learn that Rhaenys was Viserys’ chief rival to the Iron Throne. By blood, she had more of a claim than Viserys because she was the niece of the then-king Jaehaerys and his closest living descendant. She was rejected by the men who would decide upon the heir because of her gender. So now, Rhaenys is placed in the tension between Alicent. She must either accept the heir of the man who replaced her or embrace the tyrannical system that once hurt her. Is Rhaenys willing to embrace the changing world or does she keep what limited power she has?

House of the Dragon is deeply empathetic towards its female protagonists. While Game of Thrones is often critiqued for its often objectifying and limited portrayal of women, House of the Dragon works as a counterbalance. While Rhaenyra, Alicent, and Rhaenys are victims of a patriarchal world, the show gives them each autonomy and a clear, distinct identity separate from the men who rule the world. The first season is told distinctly from Rhaenyra and Alicent’s points of view giving the viewer an unmistakable sense of empathy for the two. This makes their fallout over the 20 years that the first season depicts all the more tragic.

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20 Years in 10 Hours

One of the most notable elements in the storytelling of House of the Dragon’s first season is that it covers a vast swath of time in very few episodes, something that has become a point of contention amongst viewers. Time jumps from anywhere between six months to ten years happen regularly between episodes. It is on very few occasions that the events of one episode will directly follow another. Because of this, the show regularly recasts its younger characters as they grow up. Alcock portrays Rhaenyra in the first five episodes before D’Arcy takes over for the second half of the season. Similarly, Carey portrays the younger Alicent in the first five episodes before Cooke assumes duties in episodes six through ten. Some characters, like Laenor and Laena, are recast as many as three times, while the series’ more senior figures, like Viserys, Daemon, Rhaenys, and Corlys maintain the same actor throughout.

Striving to accurately and fully depict 20 years of history in one ten-episode season sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. And it might be easy for people to point a finger a House of the Dragon and make the claim that the show feels rushed. And there are moments in the first season in which the show does feel primarily concerned with relaying information rather than establishing its characters. But by the time we reach “The Black Queen,” the season’s final episode, leaves off, it becomes abundantly clear that the entire first season is just setting the table for the rest of the show.

So then this storytelling mechanic is a much-needed inclusion. If House of the Dragon is to tell the Dance of the Dragons right, it needs to establish who these people are and why they so ferociously hate each other so much. While the series’ weakest moments are when it sacrifices its characters for the sake of the plot, the speed is certainly necessary because the show turns its attention to what is to come.

The show breaks its “expositionary” first season into two clear chunks with two distinct points of narrative focus. The first half, episodes one through five, is all about introducing us to Viserys, Rhaenyra, Alicent, Otto, and Daemon, the five central characters of the first season. It focuses on exploring their psychologies and motivations and making sure that the audience has a fully-formed image of who these characters are. The first half ends with the wedding between Rhaenyra and Laenor.

The second half, episodes six through ten and set ten years later, introduces us to the rest of the cast: the children of Rhaenyra and Alicent. This younger generation of Velaryons and Targaryens is far more bloodthirsty than their parents. They lack none of the emotional attachment that their mothers once had and have instead turned into a ravenous brood of dogs, especially on the side of the Greens. The final three episodes are where the series’ story really clicks into place. The younger cast members are not afraid to leave their mark on the series, especially having been introduced so late. Tom Glynn-Carney is fantastic as the cowardly Prince Aegon, Rhaenyra’s younger half-brother and supposed king of the realm. Ewan Mitchell arrives with a flourish of grandeur as Prince Aemond. On the side of the Blacks, Harry Collett and Elliot Grihault make an excellent addition as the princes Jacaerys and Lucerys Velaryon respectively, a pair of particularly “strong” brothers.

Now, I can sense that some of the unadjusted need clarification on the similar-sounding names. To be clear, Rhaenyra, Rhaenys, Rhaena, Baela, Aemma, Laena, Laenor, Vaemond, Aemond, Daemon, Aegon, the other Aegon, Viserys, Jaehaerys, Jacaerys, Lucerys, Arryk, and Erryk are all separate characters. It is imperative when watching or reading about House of the Dragon that all of these characters are clear.

Despite the promise of chaos and carnage as the Dance of the Dragons to come, the first season of House of the Dragon remains relatively bloodless. While the show certainly dabbles in warfare and violence, not much of it happens on screen. In the third episode, “Second of His Name,” we see glimpses of Daemon’s war in the Stepstones and there’s a pretty vicious decapitation in episode eight, the first season plays into a long stewing internal conflict making the war coming all the more terrible.

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And so the Dance Begins

But House of the Dragon has only just begun. While the first season captured about twenty years of history, the rest of the series will only span about three years depicting the terrible Dance of the Dragons that will see Queen Rhaenyra and her half-brother King Aegon II go to war for the Iron Throne. By the season finale, the entire point of the first season snaps into place. In this intricate, intimate view of the Targaryen family, we come to better understand the conflict to come, all with stronger emotional investment in the characters.

It’s hard not to be thoroughly impressed with House of the Dragon’s first season. House of the Dragon is an exciting return to Westeros that continues to expand upon the world in an organic, rich way. It succeeds where the early seasons of Thrones succeed in that offers a diverse array of exciting, thoughtful characters and a complicated slow-burn narrative. The worldbuilding and thematic content are incredibly interesting. The future of the series remains as exciting as ever.