Sour Taste after a Luxurious Meal — House of the Dragon Episode One

I talk about the first episode of the Game of Thrones prequel series: House of the Dragon. Spoilers, obviously.

After the disastrous ending of Game of Thrones and many viewers, including myself, never really wanting to revisit the series, the prequel show House of the Dragon was something that I had no interest in seeing whatsoever. I could look at the wikis and read the books if I had a real itch to scratch when it came to the history of A Song of Ice and Fire, and there’s plenty of material to enjoy. But as more and more details emerged along with a couple of trailers, I got more and more interested. The set design and costumes looked fantastic. It has one of my favourite actors in Rhys Ifans. Ramin Djawadi stays on as the composer. And D&D aren’t involved in any way. By the start of the month, I was incredibly hyped for the series and I wasn’t going to write anything about it until I saw the entirety of the first episode. It was great, until it wasn’t.

Let’s go through the episode and, if I remember, I’ll do this for each episode this season. First of all, we get a narration of how Viserys I gets chosen to be the next king. It’s always a tiring thing to have narration at the beginning of a show when it is purely lore dumping, but it’s done fairly well and is fairly essential to show why some characters are initially at odds with each other and why there is tension between them. However, to counteract that point, the show will be skipping ahead at some point and have other actors play older versions of some of the younger characters. So really, they probably should have just added a couple of extra episodes at the beginning and start with Viserys’ grandfather’s death and the vote they depict at the beginning. It would have removed the unnecessary narration and given us some extra minutes with these characters. Then comes my first problem with this opening episode. Now, you are primarily making this show as another window for the television exclusive viewers to be interested in more A Song of Ice and Fire content, so it makes sense to add a time frame for those viewers to reference to. But, at the same time, the line: “It is now the ninth year of King Viseys I Targaryen’s reign. 172 years before the death of the Mad King, Aerys, and the birth of his daughter, Princess Daenerys Targaryen.” was a bit of a slap in the face, especially once they removed some of the words to then just read: “172 years before Daenerys Targaryen.” as if the audience are that stupid they need to be sat down like four year olds. But oh well, there are people out there that are simply that stupid I guess so it’s a small thing to get worried about.

All of this is pushed aside though as we are introduced to one of our main characters, Rhaenyra Targaryen who is the king’s first born child, as she flies over King’s Landing on her dragon, which nicely links on to the end of the Game of Thrones ending without completely shoving it down our throats. Along with Alicent Hightower, she visits her pregnant mother and talks about how being a woman in Westeros is shit. It’s a fairly mundane point that is obvious if you have watched any Game of Thrones or read any of A Song of Ice and Fire, but I guess it is a fairly important theme of Rhaenyra and her story, as well as the point that there will be new viewers that have no idea about the world except that it’s the thing that was a television show with dragons. We then cut to a small council meeting with the king, played by the wonderful Paddy Considine, supported by the big highpoint of the show, Otto Hightower, Hand of the King played by Rhys Ifans. Ifans does a great Hand of the King that takes elements from Charles Dance’s Tywin Lannister but brings his own flair to the role. If anything the character is more of a Varys or Qyburn type Hand compared to Tywin. After a reference to some of the free cities in Essos, Rhaenyra arrives late to the small council meeting as it is revealed she is the King’s cupbearer. They cross a couple of different topics until they get to the heart of the show: succession. Although Rhaenyra is Viserys’ eldest, her uncle, the King’s brother Daemon Targaryen is the current heir. But the King is confident that his wife is pregnant with a child so moves on as he feels the issue is dealt with. This is another reason why adding a couple of episodes at the beginning of the series I think would have done wonders for the show. It would have been another way to hammer out the theme of succession in the show and give more detail to the reactions of all involved in the succession vote.

Then we move on to a fantastic scene that foreshadows a lot of the show’s future. Rhaenyra goes to the throne room to discover her uncle Daemon sitting on the Iron Throne and they have a conversation before Daemon gives a gift to his niece. Although it’s a fairly short time that Daemon sits on the Iron Throne, there’s a great juxtaposition against the King later on in the episode. Daemon sits lazily, looking comfortable in the chair whereas nearly every scene with Viserys on his throne looks like he is incredibly uncomfortable. Along with a couple of other scenes where he has an infected wound from sitting on the throne and a cut he receives later on when he is in a confrontation with Daemon, it really allows to wrestle with the idea of which of these Targaryens is more deserving of the throne. The softer and timid Viserys or the barbaric and strong Daemon. Then we get a bizarre scene between Alicent and Rhaenyra under a weirwood tree that has somehow found its way into King’s Landing. I wouldn’t have brought up this scene as it doesn’t really contain much within story or character but I have to make the point that the two actors chosen for these two characters are probably the weakest out of the whole cast of the first episode. Luckily, these two will be recast once we skip ahead at some point within the series so, unless the skip is for the next episode, they might be given a chance to redeem themselves. If not, we’ll get a different take on the characters and we can get to that when it comes around. Then we get the aforementioned scene in which Viserys has a wound from the throne that has been infected before he visits his wife having a bath which is primarily to inform the viewer if they did not know before that the pair have been struggling to have children after Rhaenyra, including a child who died soon after birth.

Then we come to the first ‘action’ scene. It can just about be called action but is a great way to express Daemon’s barbarism but effectiveness. He rallies the city watch, a much stronger and ferocious image compared to that of Janos Slynt or even Bronn’s leadership of the watch, and goes about rounding up a number of prisoners to dismemeber depending of what crime they committed as well as Daemon himself beheading a murderer. We then cut to another small council meeting where Daemon has actually attended and explains his reasons for the violence. It continues to push the ideas of each of the characters and isn’t really necessary by itself but the scene is a great chance for Rhys Ifans and Matt Smith, who plays Daemon, to play against each other which results in a fantastic scene and sets up a great rivalry that I hope we get to see for the rest of the season’s episodes. Then, straight after, we get a brief scene in a brothel to show that Daemon does worry about his succession and that he isn’t just high in confidence throughout his whole life. Matt Smith is generally always a fan favourite in the projects he’s involved with and I have no doubt that will continue with his performance as Daemon Targaryen.

Then we get to the tournament which coincides with the King’s wife going into labour. There are various tensions and rivalries flared when different riders ask for the favour of the various ladies of the court. Most of this adds on to the already established tensions and slowly pushes everything forward until the main event where Daemon comes out to choose his opponent. To rub in the salt from the previous argument between Daemon and Otto, the former chooses the latter’s son for his opponent in the tournament. As Daemon unseats Otto’s son from his horse, the King gets called away as his wife’s labour has become problematic. The child is breech and they have failed to turn the child round so it can be safely delivered, which gives the King one of the toughest decisions anyone would have to make. Either he waits, in which case the pair will likely die unless there is some kind of divine intervention. Or he has to choose one of them to die as they save the other. As mentioned earlier, succession is the main theme of this show and it is to little surprise that, in the end, a Targaryen would choose to save the heir that he is certain is a boy, and sacrifice the mother and his wife. TO be fair, Viserys is not the most typical of Targaryens and loves his wife incredibly so that the choice destroys him and he holds her hand as the maesters and the delivery team cut her open to deliver the child as she bleeds to death. The child is indeed a boy and the King names him Baelon. At the same time we see Daemon getting unseated by a dornish man in the jousting tournament. If it hadn’t been for the last season of Game of Thrones, this would most certainly take the award for the most obvious metaphor that bashed us over the head repeatedly. But the visuals are nice and it does get the overall themes of the show well, even if it did make me pause the episode and shout ‘metaphor’ before I unpaused again.

We then learn the newborn has died and they hold a funeral for both people as a dragon burns the bodies. We get another nice scene between Daemon and Rhaenyra. Although I don’t rate the current actor for Rhaenyra, she and Matt Smith have pretty good chemistry and the scenes that focus on the two of them work incredibly well. Then we get an immediate small council meeting where they discuss who is to be the next heir whilst Daemon secretly listens in on the meeting that he has not been called to. Paddy Considine absolutely knocks it out of the park in this scene as he is still reeling from the death of his wife and son with the added load of misery that it was a result of his actions. Some of the small council members mention the idea of having Rhaenyra inherit instead of Daemon as he might make the region incredibly unstable but the King storms out due to the small council’s quickness to jump from mourning to scheming. There’s a brief scene where Otto sends his daughter to go and comfort the King but it is fairly uneventful and the actor portraying Alicent doesn’t really do much. Though to be fair, her arc will accelerate a lot more in the next few episodes, depending on which episodes skip time. Daemon is back in the brothel and after a number of drinks is asked to say a speech now he is the heir again. As he starts his speech, they intercut very nicely with a small council meeting where Otto Hightower is relaying what he heard was said in the speech. He relays that the drinking was much more in celebration of the deaths rather than in mourning, calling the dead son an ‘heir for the day’. Viserys calls his brother to the throne and has had enough and rescinds the title of the city watch commander as well as his inheritance in favour of his daughter as previously suggested. This is another great scene between Paddy Considine and Matt Smith where in all respects Daemon claims to have only cared for the King and believes Otto Hightower to be scheming against him. It’s an interesting dynamic and relationship between the two Targaryens that I hope we get a lot more of before they are all divided up. This is the other scene that I mentioned earlier where the throne cuts the King, again indicating that he is really not suited for the Iron Throne.

Then we come to the last scene in the first episode which is the main reason I decided to write this piece. There is another intercut scene, which in general I am really enjoying, between Viserys talking to Rhaenyra in front of Balerion’s skull and the official announcement of the change of heir in the throne room where the lords have gathered to swear their allegiance. The latter is fantastic and works well but the former, the conversation in front of Balerion’s skull, is plagued by a revelation that some call it well suited for the story. But I absolutely despise it. It claims that every Targaryen monarch has been passed down with the knowledge of the dream of a long winter to come with something that would destroy the living dreamt by Aegon the Conqueror and that a Tragaryen had to be on the Iron Throne. They called it A Song of Ice and Fire. At this point I screamed out a bizarre sound as I realised that I did not mishear and that indeed they had just included the most dumb, bullshit fanfic inclusion of the whole of A Song of Ice and Fire on screen. I don’t understand why this had been put in or why they feel the need to connect this show so much with Game of Thrones but it really took me out of the episode right at the end. I hope this rarely gets brought up for the rest of the season and I can just ignore it in any future rewatches.

And then there was a dragon and the Game of Thrones theme came at the end, so I calmed down a little.

In the end, the episode was actually pretty cool. I’m really interested to see where this goes even though I have read about the events from various wikis. Everything else is great about the show and if more and more shows are created with high quality and George R.R. Martin more involved, like he is in this show, I’m sure we’ll get a good couple of shows at least.

-Boad