House Of The Dragon Episode 1 has just released
on HBO Max, and we get quite a solid first episode to this Game of Thrones prequel.
From the next heir of the iron throne, to a
potential Targaryen civil war and the preserving of knowledge surrounding a far future of winter,
it seems like we're going to be getting a bloody, yet compelling take on the inner
struggles of the seven kingdom's most powerful house.
In this spoiler review and explained analysis, I'm going to be giving you my breakdown of
House of The Dragon episode 1, entitled The Heirs Of The Dragon, alongside discussing
my general thoughts towards it.
But before I get into it, if you want to see more videos on Season 1 of House Of The Dragon,
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But without further a do, lets dive into my review and explained video for House Of The
Dragon Episode 1.
So in House of the Dragon, while we may be familiar with all the Houses and Westeros
as a whole, it's clear that George R.R.
Martin has created centuries of political conflict, brutality,
and incestual bloodlines that we've just scratched the surface of.
And at the beginning of this first episode, we're given a voiceover and text to help us
allign with the story of this prequel.
We learn that the kingdom was at it's highest power under King Jaehaerys I, with Peace having
been kept for many decades, and any army that tried to seize power, would
be crippled by the might of the Targaryens and their 10 grown dragons.
But as time passed, the king was in ill health and needed an heir to the throne.
With both of his sons dying and their being no heirs, the king brought upon
the Great Council of Harrenhal, and in the end, only two were considered.
Rhaenys Targaryen, the eldest of the two who had the strongest blood
claim and someone who instantly reminds us of Daenarys.
And the second was Viserys Targaryen, who we now know to be on the throne with an eerie
reflection of those previous events repeating themselves.
The Council ruled that the throne and kingdom could not go to a woman, nor through her sons,
so they gave it to Viserys and he became the King of Westeros.
And it's quite clear early on that while Game Of Thrones
was setup with the warring Starks, Baratheons, Lannisters, and Targaryens, House of the Dragon
is focussing on really building out a single house in the early landscape of an
upcoming civil war, around 200 years prior to the events of Game of Thrones.
There's the father and daughter duo of Otto and Alicent
Hightower, council member Lord Velaryon, Ser Criston Cole, Prince Daemon Targaryen, and
his lover Mysaria.
We get each character's anxieties and goals established in a much more intimate
way, and it helps to reminds us that this brutal civil war is all leading back to the
Iron Throne.
So with the foundations set, let's get into the events of this episode and where it
leaves us going into next week.
So the story begins on Viserys' 9th year on the throne, which is 170 years before the
death of the Mad King and the eventual birth of Daenerys Targaryen.
We meet someone who reminds us of Daenerys with Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen,
daughter of Viserys, who rides her dragon, Syrax.
Her best friend is Alicent Hightower, who is the mentioned daughter of Otto Hightower,
the hand of the king, and they make for quite the interesting duo that we're yet to see
much more of.
They remain close and Rhaenyra is definetely the more out going type, yet not
wanting the throne she had the best claim for.
Her mother, Aemma, is pregnant and with Viserys needing a male heir, he's hopeful that it
will be.
It's something that reminds us of the tragic story of Jon Snow, with the score even
touching on the prince that was promised theme, but we know from an early conversation between
Viserys and Aemma that this is going to be even more tragic this time.
Viserys had dreams about it being a boy, but Aemma foresees a doomed pregnancy, especially
after the 5 births she's had in the past, with two of them being
miscarriages, two being stillbirths, and one being an early death.
She fears that history could repeat and the recent history of Jaehaerys I, not getting
a son on the throne, could continue it's doom here.
Rhaenyra Targaryen also hopes it's a boy, because she thinks it will make her father
happy.
But like Daenerys, it seems that she's not interested in being the traditional woman
in Westoros, because when her mother explains
that the pain of childbirth is how they serve the realm, Rhaenyra says that she'd rather
fight on the battlefield.
The good thing about this is that we're getting this development right
from the start of the show and we are going into the complications she feels towards being
on the throne.
It's not something with little development andit has the potential to be
fleshed out and deconstructed.
I just hope it evolves in a unique way with her character and doesn't remind us too much
of Daenerys.
We'll have to see, but I do prefer that this context
has been layed from the beginning and it'll hopefully avoid us seeing a repeat of Game
of Thrones Season 8 with daenerys.
But anyway, we soon learn that Alicent Hightower is quite frustrated
towards Rhaenyra's mixed feelings of the throne, especially with their being other candidates
who desire it too.
Her Uncle Daemon, played by Matt Smith, is one of them.
And when he and Rhaenyra meet in the Throne Room there's quite the interesting interaction
that shows the difference between Daemon in power and the
current king.
Daemon seems comfortable on the throne, whereas Viserys has multiple wounds from it, showing
a sort of discomfort in that position.
He wants a son to be his heir, but there is complications with putting Daemon in that
seat, no matter how comfortable he looks.
Daemon believes that he'll be next in line if Aemma's baby isn't a boy, and he is not
trusted by many because of his brutal tendencies.
And speaking of those tendencies, as commander of the City Watch and believing that his brother
is too soft, Daemon and his guards go crazy in
King's Landing, brutally killing people who've commited crimes.
We see thieves lose their hands, rapists lose their genitals, and murderers being beheaded.
It's all horrible stuff and it reminds us of the mindset that Rmasey Bolton,
Jofreyy or even Jamie Lannister would align with in those earlier seasons of Thrones.
It will interesting to see how he does develop and
whether he'll get more brutal or really change as a character through his experiences, like
we saw with Jamie in the parent show.
But so far I'm really liking this character and the
performance that Matt Smith brings to him, because while he's quite evil, he also could
take a fascinating turn.
It's this brutal move on Kings Landing that makes Viserys call him in for an argument
of sorts.
In their meeting, Daemon reveals that he hates his own wife, Lady Rhea Royce, who is
the heir the Vale of Arryn, he badmouths Otto Hightower and he prefers to stay close to
the Targaryen family at King's Landing.
And when he returns to his partner Mysaria, she tries
to help him in his moments of anger.
He wants the throne but many of the council can't trust him with his current actions.
And this is where we come to the final act, with Daemon taking
part in a jousting tournament, held to celebrate Viserys soon to be born son.
Daemon challenges Hightower's son, and their battle ends with the prince tripping his horse.
Rhaenyra seems quite impressed by his ways, but it's Alicent
that he gets favor from, creating a more complex landscape with his hatred for her father,
Otto.
And Rhaenyra ends up giving her favor to the dornishman, Ser Criston Cole.
And that's where Cole and Daemon form a battle that follows this.
Although Daemon strikes early, it's eventually Cole who ends up winning the joust.
Daemon is furious and demands a sword battle with Cole, and while he starts strong, Cole
ends up winning in that fight with Daemon yeilding.
He refuses to take Cole's hand in defeat and while all of this went down, the episode was
cuts with the gruesome scene of Aemma's foreshadowed labor.
Of course, she said before that her childbirth wasn't going to be pleasant, but we didn't
expect it to be this brutal.
The maester tells Viserys, who arives there while this is ongoing,
that she's going to die and he has the chance to save the child.
But in doing this it would mean cutting it out and causing extreme pain for Aemma in
her last few moments alive.
Viserys is obviously desperate for an heir, and it's
not long before he goes ahead with this procedure.
We get a horifying sequence and one that results in Viserys holding his born son that will
soon also be dead.
So Aemma suffered and it resulted in no heir to the throne.
And that question is brought up immediatelly after the funeral of Aemma and her child,
with the council debating over Daemon and Rhaenyra, with the
later being known to many as the Queen Who Never Was.
She was also looked down at because again, they didn't want a woman sitting on the iron
throne, and it was the original reason why Viserys got it even though he was younger.
Viserys remains with the idea of Rhaenys not sitting on the throne and this makes her husband
Corlys Velaryon upset.
We're yet to here more from this character but in the story he does go on to play a more
important role.
But on the other side of things, Otto Hightower tries to highlight that he doesn't want Daemon
taking the throne.
He tells Viserys that Daemon was just celebrating the death of his son,
whom he called The Heir For a Day.
In turn, Viserys contronts him, calling him weak and says that we won't be making him
his heir.
He demands he return to the Vale and it's Rhaenyra
targaryen that he chooses instead.
And when they meet, he tells her that he's wasted years hoping for a son and that she
should the important thing that every Targaryen leader must know.
And that is that Aegon I didn’t come to Westeros to just conquer it but to save the
world.
Every new Targaryen ruler receives the information that The Long Night is coming and when it
does a Targaryen must be on the throne to defend.
What we do know is that this information must be lost by the time Daenerys is born, so we're
going to find out what happened in the lead up to all of that.
But this episode eventually ends with Daemon leaving on his dragon, with us suspecting
that he'll be back at some point, and also with the realm bowing to the new heir
Rhaenyra Targaryen.
It's going to be interesting to see how all of these family dynamics pan out, but so far,
we've got a first episode that underlines the conflict, complexities and
brutality of this old era in Westeros.
So what did I think of this first episode.
Well, there was always going to be the question of, how do you go about this prequel show,
after the dissapointment of the final season of Game
of Thrones?
I think the answer is clear in that you go back to what was more interesting.
Yes you have to have the scale and bloodshed that comes along with House Targaryen, but
episode 1 is also smaller in the sense that it aims
in heavily on Westeros's most broken family.
It's clear that George Martin, Michel Shapochnik and everyone involved has thought a lot about
how they would make this prequel series work and the first episode is both an anlaysis
of what came before and a response to the parent show.
Yet I think they've found a way, so far, to bring what everyone wanted, a brutal yet intruiging
take on one family's civil war.
They've got more time to focus on the inner battles of the targaryens and really flesh
it out in compelling ways.
But so far so good, and I hope they keep on this path as the season progresses.
In particular, I really liked Matt Smith's Daemon Targaryen, who seems to be an
amalgamation of all of the charismatic villains we've seen in this world before.
The question is, how does he evolve as the episodes go on.
Does he become as brutally horrible as someone like Ramsey Bolton or does he evolve into
a Jamie Lannister of the Targaryen house.
As someone who hasn't read the books that this prequel is based on, I'm intrigued to
see how his character will play out.
The only 2 nitpicks I have after this first episode when it comes to figures in this world
is that there currently seems to be no character with the charm of
someone like a Tyrion for instance.
With Game Of Thrones, I think it created a more likeable aspect within all the brutality
and backstabbing that takes centre stage.
But in saying that, with more screentime, any of these characters
might build out into something that brings a sense of charm with it.
Same can be applied to Rhaenyra Targaryen, who might be this series
version of a corrected Daenerys.
I just hope she doesn't turn out to be just a reflection of what came before.
But that's just me looking ahead and it's difficult to guess where
characters like this might go.
It's clear that House of the Dragon has set itself a difficult challenge when it comes
to it's central players and I am very intrigued to see how it all
plays out in the next few episodes.
But that was my spoiler review and explained analysis for House Of The Dragon Episode 1.
I'm giving it a rating of 8.5 out of 10.
I will be doing a video every week on the show, so stay
tuned to my channel each week for breakdowns and reviews on the Game of Thrones spin-off.
But to those who have already seen the episode, what are your thoughts on all the events that
went down and what do you think will happen in Episode 2?
Let me know down below in the comments section.
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