Hi, I'm Jason Concepcion, co-host of the official
Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon
and I'm here to break down the extended trailer.
♪ ("GAME OF THRONES" THEME MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
This comes from George R. R. Martin's history
of the Targaryen kings in Westeros,
Fire & Blood.
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
VISERYS TARGARYEN:
And I heard the sound of thundering hooves,
splintering shields and ringing swords.
And I placed my heir upon the Iron Throne.
♪ (MUSIC BUILDS, STOPS) ♪
And all the dragons roared as one.
(DRAGONS ROAR)
That's the voice of King Viserys.
He's talking about a dream he has had to someone.
Um, dreams are very important to the Targaryens.
The only reason that they are not...
ash and rubble like everybody else from Old Valyria
is that they listened to a dream
from one of their ancestors that told them,
"Hey, this entire land is gonna get destroyed,
so you should leave."
And they left, and they remained
the only dragon lords alive in this world.
That last shot was really interesting.
You see King Viserys bleeding a little bit from the Iron Throne.
It's a fucking chair of blades!
But if your subjects see the king bleeding
because he got stuck by the chair,
they're gonna take that as a bad omen,
and they're gonna be like, "Uh-oh,
maybe fate doesn't favor this king that much."
Uh, this is King's Landing in the second century,
after the Targaryen conquest,
so it's gonna be a different King's Landing than you're gonna see--
than you would remember in
There's a lot of buildings that have not been built yet,
there's gonna be certain buildings like the Dragonpit
that are gonna be still in use, obviously,
because this is the height of dragons in Westeros.
♪ (INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
I consider the matter urgent, that of your succession.
The Iron Throne is the most dangerous seat in the realm.
And our line is vulnerable,
too easily ended.
You get a nice idea of the personality of King Viserys.
He really cares about the realm.
He's a good guy. He's a chill guy,
a nice man, a very thoughtful man.
The question is:
Is that the best thing for a kingdom
where you have to regularly pull someone's eyes out?
Maybe, maybe not. We'll see.
SPEAKER:
-SPEAKER 2:
No queen has ever sat the Iron Throne.
That is-- that's Rhaenyra Targaryen.
That's his only surviving natural child.
As they said, a queen has never sat the Iron Throne,
although there have been-- There was an attempt earlier.
It didn't go that well.
And that established the precedent that,
"Oh, we favor the male line over the female line."
And this is gonna be an issue.
The king has an heir, Daemon Targaryen.
I will not be made to choose between my brother and my daughter.
And there again, you get an idea
of what a thoughtful guy King Viserys is.
This is actually a really weird position to be in,
to be like,
"I have to choose between two members of my family?"
You know, other rulers of Westeros would just do it.
They'd just make the decision and not really care about it,
but Viserys is different.
Prince Daemon is the complete opposite of King Viserys.
He is impetuous, he loves adventure,
he's a man of action, he loves to fight,
he loves to be involved in wars,
whereas King Viserys is most definitely not that
because he's got the entire weight of a realm on his shoulders.
(RHYTHMIC BEATS)
This is Ser Criston Cole.
He is from Dorne,
he is a member of the Kingsguard.
They held out for a long time against the Targaryen conquest,
so they were essentially able
to write their own ticket to joining the realm.
They got to maintain a unique amount of autonomy,
with regards to the rest of the kingdoms
that make up the Seven Kingdoms.
And he's gonna be an important confidant to Princess Rhaenyra.
(DRAGON ROARS)
Rhaenyra's succession will be challenged.
Knives will come out.
So that is Alicent Hightower.
She's the daughter of a very powerful member of House Hightower,
Otto Hightower.
He's the Hand of the King.
Alicent, perhaps, might find herself
kind of caught up in the web of Otto's ambitions.
SPEAKER 3:
Your first duty is to pick a new wife.
I have decided to name a new heir.
In King Viserys' hand,
that is Blackfyre, the sword of kings.
Aegon the Conqueror's Valyrian steel sword.
By the time we get to
about 180 years later,
it is lost somewhere in Essos.
I have decided to name a new heir.
I'm your heir.
No, you're not! Or we wouldn't have a show.
SPEAKER 4:
Do you think the realm will ever accept me as their queen?
SPEAKER 5:
RHAENYS TARGARYEN: A woman would not inherit the Iron Throne.
Because that is the order of things.
RHAENYRA TARGARYEN:
There she is an adult, Princess Rhaenyra as an adult.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
SPEAKER 6:
A war somewhere.
Now, Prince Daemon, as we said,
is very much not like his brother.
He loves to travel around and get into a lot of fights,
so this is gonna be one of those.
Which one... remains to be seen.
SPEAKER 6:
This is a cooked egg. This is a cooked dragon egg.
(DRAGON GRUMBLES)
Ooh!
This is Prince Daemon and Caraxes,
his beautiful red dragon Caraxes.
You know, dragons and their riders
have a very intimate, perhaps magical, bond.
Don't be surprised if these dragons have personalities
that can often mirror the personalities
of the people who ride them.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
Targaryens are closer to gods than to men.
The gold cloaks.
In order to kind of keep him out of trouble,
King Viserys and others would just give Daemon jobs.
And one of his kind of most influential jobs
was he was a captain of the gold cloaks.
And fashion forward guy, Prince Daemon,
he was the dude who was like,
"What if we put the gold cloaks on 'em?"
(ALL CHEER)
ALICENT HIGHTOWER:
she could cut off any challenge to her succession.
So that, I believe, is the catspaw blade
from
You will recall,
the assassin sent to kill Bran when he was in a coma
wielded this blade.
This is a Valyrian steel weapon,
one of very, very few of these
that are actually around in the world.
And it kind of gives you an idea
of how advanced the Valyrians were.
They could create metal that was essentially unbreakable,
probably magical, was forged by methods unknown.
So secret, in fact, that when the Targaryens came to Westeros,
they couldn't make more, they didn't know how to do it.
And it's cool to see this here,
the 180-ish years before it would show up in Winterfell
in the hands of the catspaw.
(DRAGON ROARS)
RHAENYRA:
She will block my way.
SPEAKER 7:
And the heartbreaking thing about it too,
is they were friends at one point.
This is a story that's gonna unfold over decades.
So, think about your own life.
You are close with people, and then you fall apart.
There's gonna be a lot of relationships that shift
and change over the course of this series.
SPEAKER 8:
(BATTLE CRIES)
Have you never imaged yourself on the Iron Throne?
That's all I do is imagine myself on the Iron Throne!
That's all anybody does. What are you talking about?
-(DRAGON ROARS) -(HORSE SQUEALS)
Ah! This is the Velaryon family.
Corlys, his son Laenor, Rhaenys, and Laena.
They are also of Valyrian blood.
Came to Westeros a while before the Targaryens ever got there.
Traditionally not dragon riders,
although several members of this family do ride dragons.
Not Corlys, again,
who is famous for being a great captain of ships.
♪ (MUSIC BUILDS) ♪
Where is duty?
Where is sacrifice?
♪ (MUSIC CLIMAXES) ♪
Uh, and this looks bad, right?
It's Princess Rhaenyra and Alicent Hightower
appearing to struggle over a knife of some kind.
I think that encapsulates what our story's gonna be about,
in a lot of ways.
(WHISPERING) Now they see you as you are.
(DRAGON SNARLS)
JASON CONCEPCION:
HBO Max starting at 9.99 a month. It's a good deal.