House of the Dragon: 1.02 - The Rogue Prince

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Rhaenyra oversteps at the Small Council. Viserys is urged to secure the succession through marriage. Daemon announces his intentions.

IMDB score: 8.9/10 Runtime: ~50 min

 

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I haven't read the reviews, not even glanced them, but seeing the general audience loving the series it's more positive than in the AMZ LOTR ... thingie. I'm lost for words on their product, but not for this. And it amazes me that the HBO learned. They actually listen to GRRM, and they are actually consulting him in the production of this series rather than them fabricating something of their own. But he isn't actually writing any of it, as far as I know.

So, if the series has George's blessing, it should be good enough as a canon for all of us. Including the purists. That's all I'm saying, and I think it's somewhat reflected in the ratings.

I also like that the series has a new intro with the classical GoT music. It is part of the hook that draws so many into these stories. You could almost argue that it's like a good cover. In the intro, it seems to be about the houses and the legend of ice and fire. But it's all set in the cave, with various clues or rather references into the story, including the first trip and the rise of the dragons.

Maybe the problem is that I'm not a GoT geek, and therefore I cannot decipher their hidden meanings, but we certainly know that there are so much in the intro that's not just mere symbolism.

Pirates or dragons? To my eye, by the amount of the damage, I suspected dragon's rather than the mystical pirates. According to the Small Council, it was a whole fleet, with a lot of them getting fed for some reason alive to the crabs. Even though what they prefer are the dead. It's what they use in the baits as well. The dead things, just because they prefer the smell of rotting flesh.

Lord Corly's wanted to do an invasion, to the Step Stones to end the pirace menace, just because he had lost four ships even though the shot shows more than four hulls. I don't think he had seen the damage himself, but rather got a response through Raven's that winded up his temper. The Old King claimed that he wasn't "prepared to start a war with the Free Cities."

Like a wise old king, The Old King wanted to convey his message through diplomacy and not via war or unleashing his fleet of dragons. I imagine that dragon hunters are the biggest threat after various flying projectiles that the defenders might lob in the air. After all, we all know how Dany was able to utilize Drogon at the end of the game. It's funny how Young Queen Rhae were in it from the beginning, again without seeing with her own eyes the intel.

"It would be a show of force," Rhae claimed.

The Old King didn't warm up to the idea. I suspect he has seen his share of warfare throughout the years, and sending the Princess into the battle wasn't the move he wanted to make. Later in the day Lord Corlys apologised for his behaviour and suggested that, "the eyes of the enemy were fixed on the Red Keep." Even though the evidence suggested otherwise.

They might have made a strike, that can be considered as open hostilities. Then Corly's opened the can of worms, by suggesting that the tie between the families were the solution. "Wed our daughter, Laena. Unite the two great surviving Valyrian houses. With the Targaryen dragons and the Velaryon fleet bound in blood, you can show the realm..."

Why he apologized, when he didn't really mean it? The problems of the King's...

I was glad that the Hand understood it. The old man problem of having a young wife, when the Old King isn't a sugar daddy. The Grand Maester was all for it. He wasn't even thinking about abdication, while the Hand hinted towards it. Why Lord Corly's couldn't take the Crown's money instead of suggesting a marriage to a child?

It really pissed me off when it suggested that the Great Houses had only one course of action, through marriage, and male heir, instead of accepting abdication. Why is it such a taboo?

The Royal Guard selection. On the table are the house symbols, which you also see in the intro. I suspect that there are a hundred more, but only those houses that had made into the selection made it to the table. I also love her dress. And I absolutely loved that she chose the one with the combat experience over the master's choices. The Hand brought in the reason of the Crown and it's allies to strategically selected houses.

"The men are tourney champions," Rhae reasoned. "My father should be defended by someone with real combat experience. Should he not?"

The Hand didn't argue. How could he have? Ser Criston wasn't his choice.

"The Valyrian capital was built into a volcano, much like DragonStone," The Old King claimed. "And the Dragon Lords, the highest of the nobility, lived here, at the volcanic face, closest to the source of the magic and power. And this was the Anogrion. Where the bloodmages worked their craft."

In his wisdom, the Old King admitted that he wasn't able to handle his daughter, age of 15. And he would rather be facing a drake in a battle than handle the angst. Even though it was suggested to him to give Rhae a space and apply time. He was even scared of asking after her, even though we saw that she was absolutely fine on handling the business, despite six months of grief. It's what the Queen Elisabeth has done for so long time. Crying, while keeping the face on public.

I loved that there were crickets chirping in the background, when the Old King finally opened up about his feelings to Rhae. Six months to confess his love, instead of being open about it from the beginning. But he wasn't able to just shut his mouth and listen.

The Hand, Ser Criston, Ser Harod and twenty brave souls at the DragonStone vs

The Cruel prince, the Egg and the soon-to-be wife. Man, I giggled when the Prince juggled with the Egg, horrifying the Hand and his men. Man, I knew that he wasn't going to listen to the Hand and his demands, despite what was said.

The Prince's Dragon was listening to every word. So I was glad that Rhae turned up as a backup with her golden one. Only then, the boy was protecting the Egg. At least he listened to Rhae's reasoning at the end, and yielded the Egg. Wifey wasn't happy about it. None of it.

Then again, the Old King wasn't happy about it either, but he accepted it. All he wanted was that Rhae made it to the Iron Throne. So the choice of marrying into the High Tower was the move he needed to make all along.

It wasn't too big of a guess that Lord Corly's went with his problems to the Cruel Prince. Bloody traitor.

 

[REBerg]

I also like that the series has a new intro with the classical GoT music. It is part of the hook that draws so many into these stories

Absolutely! What were they thinking?
That introductory blood flow symbolizes the exponential increase in fan heartbeats with the launch of the new series. Plus, how dare they have started without the GOT opening theme music?
What's it going to take for Viserys to realize that Rhaenyra, despite her age and gender, has him strategically outgunned? Her courage and analytical ability would better serve the realm than his experience and caution. He can maintain the patriarchal illusion while taking her counsel seriously behind the scenes.
Speaking of being taken seriously, Viserys should either lose that Monty Python mustache or bleach it to match his trademark Targaryen locks.

 

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Given its title, it should come as no surprise that HBO’s new Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, is going to have a lot of goddamn dragons. Seventeen, in fact. All owned, flown, and maintained by House Targaryen, and each with their own personality quirks, character design, and George R.R. Martin-created name.

In the 11 years since Thrones first hit HBO, CGI technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, and House of the Dragon was able to give life to its beasts like never before. WIRED talked to Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, the series’ showrunners, about what’s new this time around.

This conversation contains spoilers and has been edited for clarity and length.

Poop and Flies: How New CGI Brought Reality to the Beasts in 'House of the Dragon'

There are 17 dragons in HBO's new Game of Thrones prequel, each with its own quirks and intricacies.

www.wired.co.uk

There are a lot of dragons in the new show, and a poorly realized dragon can really take you out of a scene. How did you realize these very non-real creatures?

Sapochnik: Everything’s a work in progress because you keep working on it until they take it away from you. A lot of what makes it feel real is usually the last 5 percent of the work that you do, which is often the most time-consuming and most expensive.

With our dragons, you can get the animation, the things that they touch, and how they interact with the real objects, like the ground they stepped on and left footprints. Those kinds of things, you can get that right. You can hide problems with smoke and atmosphere and stuff like that. But what you want are details that you wouldn’t otherwise notice and would in any normal situation be considered a luxury that you don’t have time for.

For example, there are flies on the dragons. That’s what we’ve been focusing on because these are smelly, big creatures, and smelly, big creatures usually attract flies. By having flies, and seeing those little darting shapes that are going around the dragons, it gives you a sense that there’s something more real about this dragon than meets the eye. That’s really what we’ve been trying to do, like, how can we get details that will become more than the sum of their parts? How can we effectively find a way to make these things feel real?

Ryan, do these new dragons have more distinct characteristics? Are they more pet-like? How are they different?

Ryan Condal: I think we tried to imbue them all with a distinct sense of personality and place within the story, because dragons are a fact of life in this world. They’ve existed for centuries. They’re different ages and sizes and shapes and silhouettes and colors. It was really important to George [R.R. Martin] that we did that, because he envisioned his dragons being very colorful, like bearded dragons and the very colorful lizards that you can see in our biosphere.

The biggest dragon is so big that her horns have started to fall off. She looks old, and she has evidence of former saddles on her because people had to re-saddle her as she grew and grew. Some of the old saddles, they just put a new saddle on top of the old.

Other dragons are young and juvenile and still learning the world. They’re more curious, like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Daemon’s dragon is very cantankerous and twitchy and never stops moving, kind of like his rider.

So I think certainly with the dragons that we spend the most time with, we tried to imbue personalities into them that either match the riders or are set in opposition to their riders. In the end, hopefully, our dragons will be as recognizable as human characters in the show. You’ll be able to identify them from a distance based on their color or their silhouette. When you have a bunch of them in the same scene together, you want to very quickly be able to say, “That’s Caraxes, that’s Vhagar, and that’s Seasmoke.”

 

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The title sequence for House of the Dragon depicts the Targaryen family tree, starting with the doom of Valyria and Aegon the Conqueror. As the opening progresses, a deep red liquid flows between symbols that represent subsequent members of the Targaryen family. Since the Targaryen words are “Fire and Blood,” and so much of the series is focused on the importance of legacy, bloodlines, succession, and family ties, it’s not surprising that the opening shows literal blood flowing through its artwork. It also foreshadows the bloody civil war that will eventually lead to the downfall of the Targaryen dynasty.

Did House of the Dragon Break a Big Spinoff Rule With Its Opening Theme?

The title sequence for HBO's House of the Dragon has an unexpected opening theme that Game of Thrones fans will recognize.

www.denofgeek.com

 

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What's it going to take for Viserys to realize that Rhaenyra, despite her age and gender, has him strategically outgunned? Her courage and analytical ability would better serve the realm than his experience and caution. He can maintain the patriarchal illusion while taking her counsel seriously behind the scenes.

I strongly feel that the show is moving towards, as I hinted about the Young Queen in my piece. It's just I really don't know if it's going to happen, or if there is a twist, because there always those in George's plays. It feels more that we are driving towards a civil war, because the Cruel Prince cannot handle being demoted from the Throne and Corly's that he cannot be the Deal Maker.

I honestly thought that Corly's was going to give the child to the Prince and align or doom himself on that side of the House of the Dragon. I also suspect that Ser Cristos is going to clash with the Prince sooner than later, and for his chances to survive he needs a dragon.

The dragonriders are something that we haven't seen, but we know now that there's a whole fleet of them. Ready to burn crispy any opposers. Could the chisel faced Cristos get his own ride, because the Queen wishes it?

What I'd love them to show is the wyverns and hydras as different species of dragons. Although I'm not sure if GRRMs world has them?

 

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The dragonriders are something that we haven't seen, but we know now that there's a whole fleet of them. Ready to burn crispy any opposers

I thought dragon possession was the key to Targaryen control of the Iron Thone. How is it crab-feeding pirates feel they can attack any part of the Seven Kingdoms with impunity?

 

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How is it crab-feeding pirates feel they can attack any part of the Seven Kingdoms with impunity?

Because they know something and that freedom allows them to behave badly.

 

[J-WO]

Dragonstone looked beautiful. In fact the whole episode had tremendous cinematography.

 

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I just noticed it, but why is that none of the men at the Dragonstone's narrow bridge carried pikes or polearms? They were all armed with swords, while if they'd have clashed, pikeman would have been a winner. My understanding is that the long sword would be a bit useless in the close quarters match that the clash between the Hand and Cruel Prince's forces, or am I wrong?

I know the dragon would have won the whole thing, but if he was taken out from the equation...

 

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I know the dragon would have won the whole thing, but if he was taken out from the equation...

I wondered if the dragons would have thrown flames at each other or just barbecued the humans.

 

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I wondered if the dragons would have thrown flames at each other or just barbecued the humans.

Probably both, and there would've been a lot of hissing, snarling and tail whipping. It's just we've never seen them slashing angrily with their tails.

 

[svalbard]

A much better episode. I have read Fire and Blood and the The Dance of the Dragons takes up about half that book. The series will cover a period of about 28 years leading up to the civil war. So S1 is really one big set up.

Loved the scene at Dragonstone and the look on Daemon's face when Rhaenyra turned up with her dragon.

Corlis overplayed his hand in offering his daughter.

There are no nice characters here and there will be none in the future. It will be interesting who on these boards will end being a 'black' or a 'green'.

 

[Dave]

A much better episode.

I agree. I had to watch another episode, but I wasn't sure at all about all the being given to the first episode. This had none of the "Gore" and "Sex" but it did have a story I could get a hold on. It did have "Dragon" action, and these Dragons are going to be important!

I thought dragon possession was the key to Targaryen control of the Iron Thone. How is it crab-feeding pirates feel they can attack any part of the Seven Kingdoms with impunity?

I didn't understand why Dragon-riders couldn't be sent as Rhae suggested? Is it because they are female, and in this misogynistic world that is a taboo? Obviously, this attitude is a long-arc theme which it going to be reversed by the series end. {edit: Apparently not as Viserys himself is a dragonrider.)

Those crabs seemed to be acting with some kind of "intelligence". Maybe they are controlled by 'magical forces'? A spell cast could cause some kind of environmental degeneration?

There are no nice characters here and there will be none in the future.

I still don't like any, but I can at least sympathise with Princess Rhae. She is swimming in a sea of fools.

"The men are tourney champions," Rhae reasoned. "My father should be defended by someone with real combat experience. Should he not?"

The Hand didn't argue. How could he have? Ser Criston wasn't his choice.

Hmm! In real life, that scene wouldn't happen. The applicants were vetted first by the Hand, so why introduce a choice that he wasn't happy with? Rhae would have instead been presented with five choices that were all very similar, and any of them would have been acceptable to him.

I would have believed it more, if she had told him that none of the candidates were acceptable and that he go and find five more. Then she picked Ser Criston.

I just noticed it, but why is that none of the men at the Dragonstone's narrow bridge carried pikes or polearms? They were all armed with swords, while if they'd have clashed, pikeman would have been a winner. My understanding is that the long sword would be a bit useless in the close quarters match that the clash between the Hand and Cruel Prince's forces, or am I wrong?

I know the dragon would have won the whole thing, but if he was taken out from the equation.

I agree, but for some reason they hadn't thought about Dragons or that they would actually have to fight. For some reason, they thought he would simply come to his senses, give back the egg, and say sorry. If Rhae hadn't turned up then it would have been a bloodbath. I expect the Dragon would have just sat and watched.

King Viserys is portrayed as particularly dim. He is constantly behind the curve. He walks into problems. He is set up. He upsets his allies and angers his enemies. How could he still be there? I can tell that Alicent Hightower is going to be a problem as easily as anyone else can.

 

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King Viserys is portrayed as particularly dim. He is constantly behind the curve. He walks into problems. He is set up. He upsets his allies and angers his enemies. How could he still be there?

Is it him, or is there something that we don't know about going on? I suspect some people in the Small Council are playing him, and his play back was to marry to Hightower. I don't think he even knows whose behind things.

Thing is, he has been on the Throne forever, without being able to produce a "male" heir. That's what they keep barking about, when I think that the Old King is ready to be a tourist and enjoy his life, in which way he can. Shagging isn't one of his things. I get that because I lost Viv and I haven't honestly looked for another woman, but the Seven Kingdom are expecting some sort of status quo. It's just ain't happing. Which is also strange, because if he would have balls, he would set the rules, and the rest can forget 'bout it.

 

[svalbard]

No he loves Alicent and she him to a certain extent.