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If the goal, instead, is to enlighten-to awaken audiences to the cruelties women faced in real-life medieval times and draw parallels to our current age-then it might’ve helped to get to know these women and their relationships with one another on a deeper level. Just as with Game of Thrones’ wrenching depictions of assault and misogyny, I found myself watching the atrocities laid upon women of House of the Dragon and wondering whom this was all meant to entertain. (In the latter case, I can assure you the results are just as visceral as any rape scene.) And don’t even get me started on what happened to Margaery Tyrell.Īs director Miguel Sapochnik previously indicated, sexual violence doesn’t seem to play as large a role in House of the Dragon-at least, as long as you don’t count marrying teenage girls off to men the same age as their fathers or sacrificing pregnant women in favor of their unborn children. Sansa at least became Queen of the North, but only after she endured enough on-screen torture to qualify as a martyr-and even then, she lost out on the Iron Throne to her utterly forgettable younger brother. Dany pivoted to genocidal wrath in Season 7, so Jon Snow euthanized her with his sword. Cersei, the only woman to sit on the Iron Throne in Westeros’s history, met her end alongside her brother not long after she took power. It remains a given that neither of them, regardless of their approach, will ever hold real power.Ĭonsider the fates of women who dared to seize power for themselves in Game of Thrones. Back then, we had Arya the spunky “strong female character” and Sansa, the girly whiner now, we have Rhaenyra, the heedless disruptor, and Alicent, the pragmatist. Alas, no dice.Īt its most reductive, House of the Dragon throws its female characters into neat archetypes much like early seasons of Game of Thrones did.

Case in point: If you’re going to have a teen’s best friend in a relationship with her father, you’d think we might see the girls talk about that awkwardness in depth at least once. Time jump after time jump hurls us through snapshot-like stages of Rhaenyra and Alicent’s foundering friendship, but it’s often impossible to tell how they moved from one dynamic to the next.

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Like its predecessor, this series grounds its dramatic stakes in the deadly political games at hand-often at the expense of its characters’ emotional development. Martin books it is based on.Īs interested as House of the Dragon might want to seem in portraying how Westeros treats its women, its steadfast refusal to explore the contours of Rhaenyra and Alicent’s fractured relationship speaks volumes. Warning: Some spoilers ahead from the premiere of House of the Dragon and the George R.R. Successionmight have become HBO’s poster child for family dysfunction, but lest we forget, even the Roys have nothing on the ruling families of the Seven Kingdoms. (Does anyone in Westeros have an even somewhat normal family tree?) Specifically, we’re here to explore a civil war-the poetically named Dance of the Dragons-sown by the usual Westerosi blend of oppression, betrayal, and inflamed egos.

House of the Dragon, which premiered its 10-episode debut season Sunday, takes place 172 years before Daenerys Targaryen’s birth and explores her family’s sordid history. and yet its prequel series, House of the Dragon, misses no opportunity to remind us just how much everything sucks for women in this world. Did you know that for centuries in Westeros, no woman was ever allowed to sit on the Iron Throne? This should come as no surprise to anyone who hacked it through even one of Game of Thrones’ seven seasons.

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