House of the Dragon Premiere Review: Wrong Lessons From Thrones?

House of the Dragon premiere recap: “The Heir of the Dragon”

The story opens 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen. An opening narration explains that House Targaryen has ruled for a century and commands ten adult dragons. King Jaeharys has sat on the throne for sixty years of peace, but both of his sons are dead and the line of succession is in doubt. A Grand Council is called to choose between his daughter, Princess Rhaenys, and his nephew, Viserys. The council chooses Viserys, because he is a man.

Nine years later, Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) soars over King’s Landing on a golden dragon named Syrax. HBO still has the effects budget to deliver dragons, and plenty of them. She hurries to see her mother, Queen Aemma, who is heavily pregnant and hoping to give the king a male heir. Rhaenyra would rather be a knight and ride dragons than bear children, and her mother tells her the childbed is a woman’s battlefield. The line is foreshadowing, and the show does not hide it.

King Viserys (Paddy Considine) is holding an Heir’s Tournament, certain his son will arrive during it. There is already an heir, his brother Daemon (Matt Smith), who skips council meetings and is first seen lounging on the Iron Throne, playing the cool uncle to his niece. Daemon commands the City Watch, the Gold Cloaks, and they are plainly loyal to him.

Daemon, the Watch and the Street of Silk

Before the tournament, Daemon leads the Watch on a sweep of King’s Landing criminals. It is a brutal sequence of graphic, eye-for-an-eye punishments, with thieves losing their hands and murderers killed. The justice system amounts to a guard pointing and shouting a charge, followed by the sentence. The council is shocked by the violence, but the king reluctantly backs his brother.

Afterward, Daemon goes to the brothel on the Street of Silk, a stop that has been part of the franchise from the start. His favorite worker, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), sees that he is stressed and suggests adding a girl with platinum hair, which plainly points toward his niece. It is another piece of foreshadowing the series wants noticed.

The tournament and the birth

At the tournament, Daemon fights dirty, even tripping a horse with his lance. His black armor with a dragon-winged helmet looks great and will be popular with cosplayers. He meets his match in Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), the common-born son of the steward to the Lord of Blackhaven, who beats him in the joust and the trial at arms and forces him to yield. Rhaenyra gives Cole her favor, which does not take an oracle to read.

In the meantime, Queen Aemma goes into labor with a breech baby. The Grand Maester tells the king he faces an impossible choice, between the mother and the child. After a moment, Viserys chooses the baby. The scene that follows, in which the maesters cut open Aemma while she is conscious, is among the hardest things the show has put on television, and it ends with both mother and child dead. Aemma and the infant share a funeral pyre, and Rhaenyra, choked with rage and grief, can barely say the command that sets Syrax to light it.

Otto, Alicent and the new heir

The King’s Hand, Lord Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), has his own plans. He sends his daughter Alicent (Emily Carey), who is Rhaenyra’s best friend, to comfort the grieving king in his bedchamber. He also makes sure the king hears about Daemon’s party at a brothel, where Daemon called the dead child “heir for a day.” Viserys banishes his brother to the Vale of Arryn, where his wife’s lands lie, and names Rhaenyra as his heir. As the lords pledge to her, the king tells her the secret passed to every Targaryen ruler: Aegon’s dream of an endless winter, which he called the song of ice and fire. The Game of Thrones theme swells as she accepts the role.

House of the Dragon premiere review: the wrong lessons?

There is a lot to like. The pieces are in play: Rhaenyra is the heir against the council’s wishes, Dorne is flirting with the Targaryens, Daemon is on the move and the threat of winter is in the air. Ifans and Alcock stand out in a strong cast, and Smith looks like he will be a fun villain, even if he twirls the mustache a bit early. The foreshadowing is heavy-handed, though, and the first hour announces its themes in capital letters.

The foreshadowing deserves its own list. Aemma tells her husband that after five miscarriages, stillbirths and infant deaths in a decade, this is her last pregnancy. Viserys has a seeping wound on his back that the maesters cannot treat. Daemon looks at his niece in a way the brothel scene makes uncomfortably clear. Otto Hightower pushes his daughter toward a grieving king, which sets up a future in which Rhaenyra’s best friend may become her stepmother. Each of these threads will matter, and the premiere points at all of them with a flashlight.

There are quieter pleasures. The friendship between Rhaenyra and Alicent has a warmth that the surrounding politics make precarious. Viserys spends his spare time carving a model of King’s Landing, a detail that tells the audience more about the man than a speech would. The best line is Rhaenyra’s solemn declaration that she never jests about cake.

The larger worry is about tone. Game of Thrones was criticized for graphic physical and sexual violence, and for the scenes of exposition delivered during sex. This premiere doubles down on both. There are castrations, face-pulping at the tournament and a childbirth that no viewer will forget. The brothel returns in a premiere that could have used its time on court politics. Mature themes do not have to mean brutality, and the best parts of the old show were the scheming and the machinations.

So the question the premiere raises is whether it will find those parts. If the early pieces pay off next week, the cruelty may settle into a supporting role. If they do not, ten episodes of castrations and cesarean sections will be hard to sit through. It is good to be back in Westeros, but the first hour earns a cautious verdict, not a cheer.

Sources

• House of the Dragon, Wikipedia — cast, premiere date and source material