House of the Dragon is the Game of Thrones prequel series based on George RR Martin’s novel from 2018 Fire and Blood; we have a new teaser for this 10-episode series coming in spring 2022 on HBO Max. And boy, oh boy! It’s great to be back talking about the thrones. I was most excited for Fire and Blood because it is a great story and based on everything I’ve seen so far about the series.
The story will start 100+ years ago and will follow the lives of Daenerys Targaryen’s ancestors. So basically, long before Jon Snow, the Lannisters, and Robert Baratheon existed. The trailer is short, but it shows more than what meets the eye.
The production designed to cast is going to be fantastic! I’m going to react to this teaser and do my best to explain all the characters; how they’re related to each other and what the story is going to be all about, how this all connects to what we know from the Song of Ice and Fire timeline, so let’s take a look!
I love that they’re going with an older design of the throne. Are they just pretending like the new throne didn’t happen, and they’re doing a redesign or are they saying like it changed? I have so many questions. And so many ideas. I’m super excited about this.
Okay, so just to give an overview of the characters and how they’re related. We got King Viserys, the first Targaryen; he’s one of the Viserys that Daenerys brother was named after. He’s technically Daenerys’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. I think it’s eight grades, basically 10 generations previous.
King Viserys is married to Allison Hightower, who ends up leading one faction of the dance of the dragons. That’s the Targaryen civil war, and this series is going to show the events leading up to the rivals. To that faction, there’s his firstborn child, or near a Targaryen and her incestuous relationship with Matt Smith playing Daemon Targaryen, who is the same as his younger brother, technically, Daenerys is Dunkel linear and later goes on to lead off the faction called the blacks.
So, we got the greens versus the blacks, but for hooking up with Daemon Rainier, her first husband was this other family that we see in this house, Valyria; they lead an island called Drift Mark that’s just to the southwest of Dragon stone, the seat of the House Targaryen their sigil is the Seahorse. They’re led by Lord Corliss Valyria. Known as the Sea snake. He’s one of the best Seafarers of Westeros.
His son is Lenore Velaryon *Spoiler warning* does end up dying early, which allows Rainer to remarry Daemon and then everyone else kind of revolves around this central cast. What we see here looks like we see Daemon and dragon stone burying a torch going down through the tunnels. Daemon and Rhaenyra are looking out on the water from the coast of Dragon stone.
We get this awesome shot of the skull of Valeria in the back dread with all these candles in front of them like a vigil. I love that we see Valyria in this way because remember in the Game of Thrones timeline after Robert Baratheon sacked the Iron Throne, all of these skulls were previously just kept in the red key put on display as a show of power to anyone who might greet the Targaryen King on the throne.
But Robert Baratheon, in hating the Targaryens, moved all of the dragon skulls out of the Red Keep and put them beneath it in the dungeons, which is what we saw in an episode of Game of Thrones. In the trailer, they have all the skulls surrounded by candles as if they’re kind of these religious icons that the Targaryen still have this immense respect for.
But it’s also almost like a stupid magic trick like they put these candles in front of them is a way of showing us these things can still breathe buyer generations after this the dragons would go extinct, and the skeletons and skulls and displays would really be all they have. There’s a close-up shot of someone wearing the hand of the Kingpin.
This is actually Otto Hightower, who is Allison’s father, he ends up being a political rival to Matt Smith as Prince Daemon, and we see briefly the King who he serves.
King Viserys is the first, he’s got his Targaryen ring, and he’s holding the specific sword. This is an important sword called the Blackfire. This is the original Valyrian steel sword of House Targaryen that belonged to Aegon the Conqueror, who created this whole dynasty and this sword was passed down to each King thereafter, but up until what was called the Blackfire Rebellion, which would be about 60 years after these events when the sword was lost.
And again, this guy is married to Alison Hightower, Otto’s daughter. Together they have a bunch of kids, the eldest of which is Aegon, the second Targaryen, whom in this dance of dragons Civil War, the greens want to carry on the line of succession.
A lot of this drama came from the fact when Rhaenyra was passed over due to the paternalistic laws of succession and the way this all works, and we’re going to be jumping around to different times of Rhaenyra’s life, including seeing her as a younger woman, and we’re going to learn that she has a relationship with Sir Harold Westerling.
He’s a member of the King’s guard who was tasked with watching over and protecting her. I love all these shots of the candles being blown out as a way of showing that the power of House Targaryen is really starting to wane.
This is really the beginning of the end of the family. Up until this point, their rule was unquestioned. But this is the first time that families started to turn against each other, which led to the dance of dragons and then a whole bunch of Blackfire rebellions in the generations. After that, the power of the family eroded generation after generation until Robert Baratheon was able to sack it. Of course, you remember, he was only able to do that because the Lannisters turned against them.
Last-minute, we get a quick shot of this melee between these awesomely armoured soldiers. This one must be Daemon Targaryen because you can tell from the sword that he’s holding. This is the dark sister, and it previously belonged to his father, Balon Targaryen; it is the first time we’ve seen Targaryen armour in live-action like this.
They have this awesome dragon winged helmet armour in this style. It was described when Rhaegar Targaryen fought Robert Baratheon, but here they have this almost Spartan style armour. It’s an interesting way of showing how all of this is taking place 200 years earlier before the events that we saw, so it makes sense that this would be more of a Roman aesthetic as opposed to the later medieval styles that we saw in Game of Thrones.
We see Lord Corliss in the House of Lerion, greeting them at this banquet. The reason they have this blond hair is they have Targaryen blood they are kind of related to the Targaryen’s themselves. You can see in the background of this banquet that’s the Iron Throne there with the Sigils of House Targaryen on the left House of Lerion on the right, that’s a Seahorse item.
This is a wedding banquet celebrating the marriage of Renera, the daughter of Laynor Valerion. So, we’re going to talk about this dark-haired woman; this is Messeria, who’s a woman from Essos who became Daemon’s basically mistress of whispers, most trusted ally, kind of like what Varys was for a lot of the monarchs and then my favourite shot from this trailer we see Alice at Hightower.
She’s with red hair, and she’s wearing green so, she leads the greens faction of the Civil War. She’s carrying this dagger, and you should recognize this dagger; it’s the same Valyrian steel dagger that we saw throughout Game of Thrones.
First is the cat’s paw weapon that was used to attack Bran in Winterfell, that we later learned his whole backstory with Little Finger and with Tyrion. It’s basically what Little Finger used to frame Tyrion, but really it was Joffrey who ordered that hit, and of course, it’s later given by Bran to Aria. Aria used it to execute Little Finger and then of course to kill the Night King but here they’re saying this dagger was the same one that was part of this very interesting conflict between the families.
So, basically, the backstory here is Allison had a few kids, one of whom was a 10-year-old named Eamonn. And when Lenore died, his father, King Viserys, told him that he could get a dragon egg because he’s the only one of his siblings who didn’t have his own dragon yet.
He snuck near the dragon that was caught by his three-year-old nephew Joffrey, who was part of the Valerians. He pushed Joffrey into dragon poop, hijacked the dragon, and went on a joy ride. Of course, this led to the fight with Joffrey, his older brothers, and Eamonn, who basically insulted them by calling them, bastards.
Then Joplin’s older brother Lucerus was pissed off and used a dagger to cut out his right eye. At that, Eamonn’s mother, Alison, gets angry and demands Lucerus to lose an eye as penance. In the end, it’s revealed that Eamonn called them bastards, a huge insult to the family, basically calling them illegitimate.
But King Viserys prevented his wife Allison from taking this penance; it’s very similar theoretically, at least to the events in the Riverlands in the Game of Thrones series. The fight between Joffrey and Aria that later led to the Direwolf death spat among children represents this broader hatred between the sides of the families.
The fact that they’re using the same dagger as seen in Game of Thrones, it’s just kind of an interesting take. They’re basically making this one dagger seem like a cursed weapon that has been responsible for so much bloodshed and the unraveling of the political power of Westeros.
However, the beautiful irony is that later it’s the same weapon that saves Westeros Against the Night King. One of the reasons I’m most excited for it, they have a vocal version of the fire in blood House Targaryen theme music.