Gnome of Bowls

 “House of the Dragon,” Season 1

House of the Dragon is a prequel to Game of Thrones. It is impossible not to compare the two. On my first viewing of the former, I was irritated beyond belief. After a second viewing, its strengths are more evident. But so are its weaknesses, especially the main one, its obsession with monarchy.

If you've had to trudge through the many 'queen' series – The Crown, Catherine the Great, Versailles, Reign, Elizabeth, anything with Helen Mirren, even gentry fiction like Downton Abbey or Bridgerton - all come off as aristocratic feminism. Instead of a corporate pant suit they've substituted a frock and gown set in the past and called it 'progressive.' House of the Dragon does the same. It is medieval feminism, with several women contenders for the Iron Throne, as well as a powerful women behind the throne. One is young Rhaenyra, the daughter of Viserys the Peaceful, who is named the Targaryen heir to the Iron Throne by Viserys. Another is the older Rhaenys Velaryon, the 'Queen that Never Was' due to being female. And one is Alicent Hightower, the Queen and power behind Viserys.

Naming a women heir to the throne creates a conflict in a patriarchal system, along with the blonde/white haired Rhaenyra's penchant for siring 'bastards' with brown hair out of wedlock (the 'lock' of a wedding). This becomes the one and only story line. In a way HotD tries to mimic the royal tragedies of Shakespeare and it sometimes succeeds. If your disgust at the pack of vultures, relics and bloody-minded royals who populate both sides of this conflict doesn't overwhelm your pity, you might see their lives as tragedy, not farce.

COMPAIRISON

If you look at this season from other angles, it falls far below Game of Thrones. GoT already had its feminist icons - Daenerys Targaryen and even Hillary Clinton's Cersei Lannister. In HotD, there is no humor, no Tyrion or Bron, not even cheerful cads like Jaime Lannister. There is no anti-Royal faction - no Wildings, no Free Folk, no Jon Snow, no Samwell Tarly, no Hound, no Brotherhood Without Banners. This is telling. It is interior and static, as there is only one setting, Kings Landing, with other castles serving as sets, not really power centers as yet. The variety of kingly pretenders in GoT is absent. The White Walkers and the contest for power among many kingdoms and several lands, along with 'Winter is Coming' gave GoT a rationale above throne-throttling. Here we have a narrow fight among two royal Houses for power. There are several parallels in characters between the two, like the sinister club-foot Lord Larys Strong, running his 'little birds' with swords somewhat like Little Finger, but few beyond that.

There is editing in the two versions I saw – the second non-HBO source edited out some of the scenes of the growing sores on Viserys' body and also removed the white text of 'ten years later' and 'six years later.' Those sores indicated Viserys should have died long ago. This is accompanied by at least 3 disconcerting changes of younger characters for older actors as they age - as nothing happens in these intervening years. This idea of extending the time period gives absolutely no gravitas to the story. It just reminds us of the time scales of corny fairy tales we saw as children.

CLASS and BIRTH

Only one person, a former prostitute, Mysaria, the White Worm living in Fleabottom, protests from a plebian point of view the bloody pit fighting of children tolerated by the royals and the Gold Cloaks. Her quarters are supposedly put to the torch, but I suspect she escapes. Class wise, its like the viewers have not gone beyond mourning the recent passing of the monied monarch Queen Elizabeth II. If HotD is relevant, it reveals that as a social structure we are still retrograde, still living in the past, cheering for one side or another in their see-saw battle of genetic twins. Even the current yearning for a 'strong man' (or woman) is part of this. Yet it is 2022, so this show becomes another symbol of the backward state of culture, of princesses and Burger Kings. War is still acceptable here too, along with this focus on monarchies.

"Women's battlefield" - the Birthing Bed

The most intense part of this series is the birth scenes – two mother's sacrificed for their heirs, which still didn't help, and one baby pulled out dead. The role of giving birth is something constant for each woman aristocrat here. Their 'blood,' their royal line, their name, their children. Each woman is fighting to keep their spawn alive against other mothers. This returns feminism back to saving their children ... which is unavoidable for most mothers, but also a foundational plot line here. This might come as a shock to the post-modernists who relegate the ability to have babies to a textual nugget. But for many women viewers, this might be a key to HotD's emotional impact. Regarding sexuality itself, one sacrifices her sexuality for being Queen and the other engages in a fake marriage to a gay husband, while pursuing her sexuality elsewhere, as does he.  And of course, incest of sorts.

I have not read J.R.R. Martin's Ice and Fire, the book this series is based on, nor do I intend to. So I cannot geek out about comparison's with the original text. Season One ends with war between the Targaryens and Velaryons on the horizon, though neither queen wants war. Part of the reason might be that they were close friends in their youth. We'll see if that plays out, but, like capitalism, war is built into this social system and this drama.

(Reviews like this are why we're not just another Critical Drunk.)

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms: “Game of Thrones,” “The Permanent Guillotine,” “Dune,” “Age of Uprising,” “The Dawn of Everything”(Graeber); “The Age of the Vikings,” “Class – the New Critical Idiom.”

P.S. - John Oliver goes after the English Monarchy:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWterDbJKjY

Communa di Cortona, Italie

Kultur Kommissar  / November 12,2022