I Watch TV: House Of The Dragon

House Of The Dragon

A prequel to A Game Of Thrones. In the prologue King Jaehaerys asks a great council of lords who should be his heir – his granddaughter Rhaenys, child of his (deceased) elder son or his grandson Viserys, child of his (deceased) younger son. Being down with the patriarchy they pick Viserys.

We’re promised a crisis will come, but this is not it.

King Viserys has a daughter, Rhaenyra, and a brother Daemon. Daemon drinks, whores, fights and is arrogant.  Viserys is mostly interested in his model of Old Valyria, likes to seek compromise, so Daemon’s tendency to confront things causes trouble in whatever role he’s given. As a result of the death of Viserys’s wife in childbirth and his son a day later, Daemon and he clash, and he orders Daemon out of the capital, Kings Landing, and invests Rhaenyra as his heir. Daemon plots with Corlys Velaryon, Rhaenys’s husband, who is also the head of the only other dragon-riding Old Valyrian family, and as Lord Of The Tides, the commander of the kingdom’s fleet. Their plot is against the foreign occupation of the Stepstones, the islands that stretch across the Narrow Sea, and so block trade. Viserys does not want a war, but Daemon and Corlys give him one.

Not yet the crisis.

Viserys re-marries, to Alicent the daughter of the Hand Of The King, his chief minister. And has a son (later two sons). Rhaenyra marries Laenor, the son of Corlys and Rhaenys, and also has sons, though as Laenor is gay they’re illegitimate*. This is a problem that re-occurs, but is not yet the crisis. Daemon marries Laena, Laenor’s sister, and they have daughters. The distribution of the limited number of dragons amongst the royal cousins is a matter of dispute, one which causes a split between Alicent and Rhaenys’s children, which Viserys keeps a lid on, avoiding a crisis.

Eventually Viserys dies and there is a crisis.

If this sort of thing – high stakes royal soap opera with occasional battles, dragons, murders and in between plotting, feasting, dancing, tourneys, hunts etc – sounds uninteresting then this probably isn’t for you. Unlike the predecessor series, A Game Of Thrones, this show isn’t a continent-wide thriller with characters and plotlines spinning off in all directions. Hence the new opening credits, which use the same music but do not sweep us all around the world to the various settings, as most of the time it would just sit on Kings Landing. (This is also in contrast to Rings Of Power which has four widely dispersed plotlines for the majority of the first season, an unfair comparison that I am nevertheless making).

Where it concentrates on unity of place and character (almost every character is, or becomes, part of the extended ruling family of the Targeryans) it is scattered in time. Pairs and handfuls of years go by between episodes as the most important events occur over a few weeks, then everyone goes off to plot, or allow children to grow. This is it’s strength, and also a weakness. We place characters within the family and court, find out what their deal is, what their relationships are, then come back to visit them later, find them grown, more enmeshed, more desperate. We also find ourselves moving further from the start, but no closer to the crisis, despite a new generation finding new ways to try and break the increasingly fragile peace.

There are two brothers, who grow apart, because they have a different idea of kingship and duty. There are two friends who grow apart, because of the ambition of their fathers. And from this grows and seethes the crisis that is coming.

When the crisis comes it… doesn’t disappoint. One coup is as farcical as might be hoped. On the other side that scattered, scrambled seizure of power appears to be well planned, with only one mistake, allowing a dragon and rider to escape. They are full of doubt, not sure who will support them, indeed no one is quite sure who they should be supporting. It’s pretty good overall.

Drawing from historical dynastic quarrels**, the roots of the conflict, and how some find themselves on one side or the other are both trivial, personal and contingent and also existential and fundamental. By using the fantasy details sketched by George R R Martin (and then fleshed out in a book, which presumably he developed in tandem with the TV show) they can happily ignore any historical problems, and instead insert more incest and dragons. Not that actual historical dramas care about that kind of thing.

Watch This: Fantasy plotting and dragons and who can ask for more?
Don’t Watch This: Royals and nobles struggling with duty, ambition and family is not for you

* They are, however, of the line of kings as no one disputes they're Rhaenya's children. This is an interesting twist on legitimacy that never gets picked up on.

** Picking even one medieval English war, while ignoring others from here and around the world and history is foolish; still I see echoes of The Anarchy (1138-53) between the daughter and nephew of Henry I