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[COLUMN] House of the Dragon Has Picked Its Side | by Darren Mooney
🕑 Added 2024-08-05 14:00:13 +0000 UTC
One of the most striking things about the work of fantasy novelist G.R.R. Martin’s epic Song of Ice and Fire saga is its emphasis on subjectivity. Martin wrote the books that formed the spine of the television series Game of Thrones in the third person, but structured these novels so that each chapter was told from the point of view of a particular character. There was no sense of objective truth, instead a set of competing perspectives upon it.
Martin carried that approach over to some of his other writing about the fantasy world of Westeros. Fire and Blood, Martin’s account of the rise and fall of the Targaryen Dynasty, was not a compilation of objectively verifiable facts. It was treated as an in-universe history, compiled from a variety of sources about these royal dragon-riders, and which was shaped by the biases of its fictional author, Archmaester Gyldayn, compiled from records of figures like Munkun, Eustace and Mushroom.
“My model for this was the four-volume history of the Plantagenets that Thomas B Costain wrote in the ’50s,” explains Martin of Fire and Blood. “It’s old‑fashioned history: he’s not interested in analysing socioeconomic trends or cultural shifts so much as the wars and the assignations and the murders and the plots and the betrayals, all the juicy stuff. Costain did a wonderful job on the Plantagenets so I tried to do that for the Targaryens.”
As such, Fire and Blood encourages an active reader, willing to engage directly with the text and even challenge it on occasion. In some ways, this reflects the broader philosophy of Martin’s work in the Song of Ice and Fire series, which is largely about exploring and deconstructing myths of power and authority. Just as Martin asks his readers to question what a “good” king or queen might be, he also invites the reader to question the very narrative itself.
The book is written with a very clear point of view on the historical record, and so the recounting of events is shaded. As Lukas Shayo notes, “Anyone reading the book should look for signs of Gyldayn's bias.” When Fire and Blood was adapted into the television series House of the Dragon, Zach Kram observed that “[o]ne of the joys of Dragon for a book reader is tracking the ‘objective’ history of the Dance of the Dragons, as compared to the biased accounts collected in Fire and Blood.”
By and large, over its first two seasons, House of the Dragon has rejected the subjectivity woven into Fire and Blood. “As fun as that Rashomon style of storytelling is, we kind of left that to the book, and decided to, instead, try to define what we thought the objective truth of this actual history was, as we saw it,” argued showrunner Ryan Condal. “Certain historians are right, and certain historians are wrong.” The show positions itself as an “objective” account of the events in Fire and Blood.
On a certain level, this makes sense. It is part of the medium. Audiences are conditioned to treat images as inherently more objective than prose. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” to quote the cliché. There is a sense that, if an image exists, the audience is capable of viewing it as an object of itself and forming their own opinion, rather than filtering it through the perspective of a traditional author. This is one reason why deepfakes present such a serious threat in the modern world.
Of course, this is an illusion. Images are tools in the construction of narrative, just like words and sounds. Images can be manipulated or framed to suggest a particular bias. Details can be omitted or emphasized to play on audience expectations. Film and television are just as skillful at manipulating their audiences as books, as demonstrated by the preponderance of “twist endings” and “subverted expectations”, which play on the audience’s assumptions about the narrative on screen.
Still, House of the Dragon presents itself as a more “objective” document of the fictional history of Westeros than Fire and Ice. As such, it’s interesting to wonder what that objective version of history looks like. House of the Dragon and Fire and Blood offer an account of the Dance of Dragons, the brutal civil war within House Targaryen, which led to the death of the ruling family’s dragons and which paved the way for their eventual collapse in the decades leading up to Game of Thrones.
This is a story about the folly of royalty, the games played by those who hold power and the price paid by those who serve them. It explores the horrific cost of what is effectively a family squabble between an extremely wealthy and privileged class that have access to the fantasy equivalent of nuclear weapons. It is, like Game of Thrones, a story about “the world and its inhabitants get shaped by the fickle emotions of the powerful” and that “there are no good kings and queens.”
However, there is something just a little bit cynical about House of the Dragon. Despite the show’s claims of objectivity, it’s possible to sense a finger on the proverbial scales. The civil war in House of the Dragon is fought between two factions, the Greens and the Blacks. As much as this is a story about the pointlessness of war and futility of this sort of violence over a throne the family is destined to lose anyway, it is clear that the showrunners have their own favorites.
Throughout House of the Dragon, the Greens are consistently portrayed as some combination of stupid, selfish and monstrous. The show very firmly believes that the Blacks are correct, siding squarely with Queen Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) claim on the Iron Throne. In fact, the Greens’ entire claim on the Throne is based on a miscommunication between the dying King Viserys (Paddy Considine) and his wife Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), effectively “sitcom writing.”
The Greens have consistently been portrayed as barbarous and monstrous. One of the first season’s character-defining beats for Alicent’s eldest son, the future King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), revealed that he had raped one of his maids (Maddie Evans). Aegon is weak and ineffective, unable to rule and unwilling to accept the guidance of those who know better. Still, Aegon is a saint compared to his brother Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), who is – in Aegon’s own words – a “fucking mad cunt.”
Aemond is a monster. In the heat of battle, he conspires to murder Aegon, scarring and deforming his elder brother while allowing himself to be named Prince Regent. He eagerly participates in wartime atrocities, often motivated by nothing more than pettiness. Thwarted in a confrontation with Rhaenyra’s forces, Aemond acts out his frustration by turning his dragon on the community of Sharp Point, burning the civilian settlement “down to its stones.”
The Greens have no care or compassion for the “small folk”, the subjects of the crown. When a ratcatcher murders Aegon’s son Jaehaerys (Jude Rock), Aegon reacts by ordering the execution of every ratcatcher in King’s Landing. The Greens starve the citizens of King’s Landing to hold on to power. When Rhaenyra starts recruiting dragon riders from the bastard Targaryens of King’s Landing, Aemond responds by ordering a blockade, effectively starving his own city.
There is a bleak nihilism to the Greens, but it fits comfortably within Game of Thrones’ understanding of royalty and power. “Perhaps all men are corrupt,” explains Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), Alicent’s brother, Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox) replies, “That is a bleak philosophy.” Cole admits, “I have no philosophy.” Having witnessed the horror of dragons firsthand, Cole understands how meaningless this all is.
However, House of the Dragon allows the Blacks to maintain some sense of propriety and dignity. This is perhaps most obvious in how the show has sanded the edges off Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), Rhaenyra’s uncle and husband. Daemon has become an unlikely fan favorite character, enthusiastically, with co-showrunner Sarah Hess admitting, “He’s become Internet Boyfriend in a way that baffles me.”
Daemon is awful. However, the show keeps a distance from his truly horrid decisions so the audience can retain sympathy for him. In the first episode, for example, Daemon is reported to have mocked the death of his brother Viserys’ young son, “Heir for a Day.” However, the series declines to show Daemon making the joke on screen. Similarly, while Daemon sends the assassins into the Red Keep leading to Jaehaerys’ death, he orders them to kill Aemond. They simply act on their own initiative.
When Rhaenyra – who is horrified at Jaehaerys’ assassination – confronts Daemon, her husband protests, “I was clear in my instructions: Aemond, the brother of Aegon the Usurper. I cannot be responsible.” He made a bad hiring decision, but he did not order the murder of an innocent child. Indeed, Daemon ultimately proves himself loyal to Rhaenyra. In the second season finale, after claiming Harrenhal for himself, Daemon bends his knee to Rhaenyra, accepting her authority.
Similarly, House of the Dragon has been structured in such a way as to avoid implicating Rhaenyra in anything too monstrous. This is obvious in some of the adaptational changes. In Fire and Blood, Rhaenyra and Daemon conspire to murder Rhaenyra’s first husband, Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate), to pave the way for their own union. In House of the Dragon, the pair enact a much more elaborate – and riskier – plan to fake his death so he can flee to Essos with his lover Qarl Correy (Arty Froushan).
Of course, this was perhaps a pragmatic choice on the part of the production team, to avoid allegations of “burying [their] gays.” Still, it’s a point that serves to distinguish the Greens and the Blacks. Ser Criston Cole has no such compunctions about a possible hate crime, having beaten Laenor’s former lover Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod) to death at Rhaenyra and Laenor’s wedding. It’s very clear who the audience is supposed to have sympathy for, and who they aren’t.
Rhaenyra spends most of the second season feeling very bad about all the murder and war crimes that she will inevitably have to commit in order to claim the Iron Throne as her own, restraining the worst impulses of her advisers and standing in contrast to Aemond’s barbarity. She sends food to the starving citizens of King’s Landing, a savvy political move that is still designed to demonstrate her inherent humanity.
Of course, Rhaenyra has chosen to challenge Aegon’s ascent. She could just as easily flee into exile, retire peacefully on some foreign continent. However, House of the Dragon has made it clear that Rhaenyra has been chosen by fate, adding a prophecy to the story that compels Rhaenyra to claim the throne. Of course, that prophecy ends with her descendent Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) burning King’s Landing to become Queen of the Ashes, but House of the Dragon glosses over this.
It’s possible that House of the Dragon is setting up a major twist that will reveal Rhaenyra to be as monstrous as her enemies and to confront the audience directly with Daemon’s brutality. However, watching the second season, it feels very much like House of the Dragon has become as subjective a work as its source material, embedding the audience with Rhaenyra. It can’t help but feel like the writers are terrified of the sort of reaction Daenerys’ turn generated at the end of Game of Thrones.
However it plays out, for the moment House of the Dragon has bet big on Black.
Comments
Ben L
The funny thing is that they haven't actually made the Blacks that much better morally, they just try to ignore the bad things they do. Sure Rhaenyra didn't have Laenor killed, but her plan required the death of an innocent man to serve as the body double, a fact which is never remarked upon. Rhaenys probably killed at least a hundred when she burst through the floor of the Dragonpit, yet no one even mentions it (which is especially odd, since Otto seemed to care quite a bit about the value of propaganda this season). I have a feeling that Rhaenyra getting nearly all of the dragonseeds killed will likewise go unremaked upon. And of course, her sending food to King's Landing is especially rich because *she's the one who was blockading it in the first place*.
Darren Mooney
Thank you for the kind words. Smith is fascinating. I wrote about him back at The Escapist, and how it's so fascinating that - in hindsight - the Eleventh Doctor is Smith playing *against* type.
Pēteris Krišjānis
I have zero rat backsides to give about GoT universe (I think their obsession with sociopathy is just too heavy swing in one direction). But I always enjoy your writing so this felt very insightful 😅 Also those series have taken very interesting angle due of performances, especially Matt Smith, as it does not have to stick to story so much.
May Contain Fox-Like Substance
The same thing that made the Witcher Netflix series—a showrunner thinking they know better for the source material than the creator of that beloved source material did—such a disaster is going to doom House of the Dragon. We'll be talking about the ending for years...the same way people still talk about the ending of "Game of Thrones". And if the sarcasm wasn't obvious, that's not a good thing. This will not end well.
