House of the Dragon vs. Modern Audiences

Not too long ago, I binge-watched HBO’s House of the Drag­on (hence­forth HOTD), a pre­quel spin­off of its acclaimed tele­vi­sion series, Game of Thrones (hence­forth GOT), itself an inter­pre­ta­tion of George R. R. Mar­t­in’s A Song of Ice and Fire (hence­forth ASOIAF) book series. HOTD fol­lows a spe­cif­ic epoch pre­dat­ing the events of GOT by almost 200 years — that is, it is based large­ly off the events of a civ­il war referred to as the Dance of Drag­ons — the details of which are cap­tured in the fic­tion­al his­to­ry also authored by Mar­tin, Fire and Blood. Fire and Blood is pre­sent­ed as a neu­tral trea­tise, a fic­tion­al piece of non­fic­tion, that is canon­i­cal­ly intend­ed to depict the rival Black and Green fac­tions as equal­ly lik­able — or, such as it were, as equal­ly unlikable.

As much as I thor­ough­ly enjoyed HOTD, I per­son­al­ly find that the show did not retain the mea­sured impar­tial­i­ty of the source mate­r­i­al; rather, I can’t help but feel that the series strong­ly favors the Black fac­tion, so much so that its fig­ure­head, Rhaenyra, is effec­tive­ly the show’s pro­tag­o­nist. Though I find this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion a bit dis­ap­point­ing giv­en the unique­ly neu­tral fram­ing of Fire and Blood, I posit that there are sev­er­al rea­sons for it, namely:

• The struc­ture and pur­pose of sto­ry­telling, specif­i­cal­ly its need for a protagonist; 
• The ten­sion between a mod­ern audi­ence and prop­a­ga­tion of a dat­ed form of pri­mo­gen­i­ture; and
• The asym­me­try between the lead­ers of the Black and Green factions.

I will explore each in turn. As this post is large­ly a reflec­tion of my thoughts on the series, please note that it will con­tain unmarked spoil­ers. 

The Art of Storytelling

Fire and Blood, the book off of which HOTD is based, is a piece of fic­tion that reads as if it were a piece of non­fic­tion. It is framed as a sup­pos­ed­ly neu­tral his­tor­i­cal account of the his­to­ry of the Tar­garyen dynasty, cob­bled togeth­er by numer­ous pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary sources of vary­ing degrees of reli­a­bil­i­ty (as, indeed, are many of our own world’s his­tor­i­cal accounts). Because Fire and Blood isn’t pre­sent­ed as a piece of prose, it has the abil­i­ty to be unique­ly neu­tral in a way that nov­els — which by virtue of what they are, often require some sort of pro­tag­o­nist, if only for the pur­pose of nar­ra­tive fram­ing — sim­ply cannot. 

HOTD, how­ev­er, is a piece of fic­tion that presents itself as a sto­ry to its audi­ence; it isn’t pack­aged, say, as a doc­u­men­tary, the rough tele­vi­sion equiv­a­lent of a work of non­fic­tion. Because it is pre­sent­ed as a sto­ry, HOTD is bound by the norms and cus­toms that dic­tate what gen­er­al­ly makes good sto­ry­telling. Chief among these is the need for a pro­tag­o­nist, or a char­ac­ter through whom the audi­ence expe­ri­ences the sto­ry, and in whom they are meant to become invested.

The Need for a (Sympathetic) Protagonist

It is dif­fi­cult to tell any sort of sto­ry with­out a main char­ac­ter. That isn’t to say that it’s impos­si­ble, but I am an avid read­er myself, and have yet to encounter a work of fic­tion com­plete­ly devoid of char­ac­ters. Char­ac­ters, par­tic­u­lar­ly main char­ac­ters, serve crit­i­cal roles in any plot — they may func­tion as a nar­ra­tor, through whom the sto­ry is told; they may serve as a fig­ure with whom the audi­ence is meant to empathize; or per­haps they may act as an avatar of sorts, through whom the read­er or view­er escapes their own real­i­ty and ful­ly immers­es them­selves into that of the fic­tion. But I find their most impor­tant func­tion to be a com­bi­na­tion of the above — name­ly, the main char­ac­ter serves as an ori­en­ta­tion device for read­ers. To that end, the main char­ac­ter at a min­i­mum acts as a frame of ref­er­ence for the audi­ence: we are implic­it­ly encour­aged to per­ceive the fic­tion­al uni­verse as they do, and it is gen­er­al­ly eas­i­er to do so if the pro­tag­o­nist is a sym­pa­thet­ic, lik­able person.

That said, we as the audi­ence are not con­strained by the pro­tag­o­nist’s per­cep­tion, which is to say that we are not com­pelled to align our view­points with those of the pro­tag­o­nist. We are free to dis­agree with their deci­sions, thoughts, actions, etc., and indeed, there are such things as unre­li­able and unlik­able nar­ra­tors (Gone Girl by Gillian Fly­nn and A Sep­a­rate Peace by John Knowles, respec­tive­ly, are good exam­ples of each).

Nonethe­less, choos­ing a pro­tag­o­nist mir­rors cast­ing the lead in, say, a stage pro­duc­tion; the showrun­ner will still ide­al­ly want to pick some­one who is good at what they do, who can per­form com­pelling­ly and evoke strong feel­ings (pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive) in the audi­ence. While pow­er­ful sto­ries with dis­taste­ful lead char­ac­ters do exist, such works gen­er­al­ly adopt a somber, taut mood that seems ill-suit­ed for HOTD; and even in such cas­es, the pro­tag­o­nist is rarely com­plete­ly devoid of any redeem­ing qual­i­ties what­so­ev­er. It remains ide­al, I con­tend, to pick a pro­tag­o­nist with whom audi­ences can read­i­ly empathize and around whom they can ral­ly; fic­tion is, after all, gen­er­al­ly a form of escapism, and I would imag­ine that most peo­ple would pre­fer to escape into some­one lik­able, who at least has the poten­tial to arouse their sympathy.

If there is any doubt that HBO chose to embrace Rhaenyra as the series pro­tag­o­nist, look no fur­ther than HOTD pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al, which promi­nent­ly fea­tures Rhaenyra.

Patrilineal Primogeniture vs. Modern Sensibilities 

HOTD takes place in what might best be described as medieval times and, as in our own world, that par­tic­u­lar era was not espe­cial­ly kind to women or those of less-than-noble birth. Indeed, the civ­il war that HOTD fol­lows comes about when Rhaenyra, a woman and the leader of the Blacks, is named her father’s heir in con­tra­ven­tion of the long-held prece­dent that the king’s eldest son inher­its his titles and posi­tion; her reign is thus chal­lenged by her half-broth­er Aegon, the old­est son of the late king, and those that sup­port patri­lin­eal pri­mo­gen­i­ture as a con­tin­ued basis for inher­i­tance, col­lec­tive­ly the Greens.

The audi­ence to which HOTD caters, how­ev­er, mer­ci­ful­ly belongs to a much dif­fer­ent time peri­od; and accord­ing­ly, view­ers inevitably bring their mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties with them when they watch the show. We are for­tu­nate to live in a cen­tu­ry where­in it is gen­er­al­ly rec­og­nized that:

• Sex should not be an imped­i­ment to inher­i­tance, sta­tus, or position;
• The cir­cum­stances of one’s birth should not define their capac­i­ty to rise; and 
• Soci­ety large­ly ben­e­fits when posi­tions of pow­er and influ­ence are assigned based on mer­it and capa­bil­i­ty rather than con­nec­tions, famil­ial or otherwise.

That being said, it is dif­fi­cult if not impos­si­ble for mod­ern audi­ences to instinc­tive­ly sym­pa­thize with Rhaenyra, whose claim to the throne is being dis­put­ed sole­ly on the grounds that she is a woman and thus too fee­ble to inher­it. We as a mod­ern audi­ence imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize the injus­tice being dealt Rhaenyra, and are all too ready to ral­ly behind her. This already reflex­ive deci­sion is made even eas­i­er by the fact that Rhaenyra is por­trayed as a lev­el­head­ed, pru­dent woman, whose great com­pas­sion still man­ages to have cer­tain con­tem­po­rary heat to it. Even her few flaws are essen­tial­ly spun as qual­i­ties — her reluc­tance to mar­ry for duty is framed as her being spir­it­ed and rebel­lious; her resent­ful inse­cu­ri­ty about her place in the suc­ces­sion is framed more as a crit­i­cism of the patri­archy, and is fur­ther worked to human­ize Rhaenyra by demon­strat­ing that she is not as con­fi­dent, bor­der­line cocky, as she some­times seems. 

Mean­while, Aegon is por­trayed as almost com­i­cal­ly devoid of any redeem­ing qual­i­ties — he is fla­grant­ly super­cil­ious, lech­er­ous, hedo­nis­tic, and cru­el; in fact, his debut scene as an adult sees him sex­u­al­ly vio­lat­ing a ser­vant, some­thing dif­fi­cult if not impos­si­ble to come back from in the court of pub­lic opin­ion. As if that isn’t enough, it is lat­er revealed that Aegon enjoys watch­ing chil­dren fight to the death, and has fathered numer­ous bas­tards, some of whom par­tic­i­pate in these death match­es. The only moment in which Aegon elic­its any sym­pa­thy might be when he abrupt­ly asks his moth­er whether she loves him en route to his coro­na­tion, sug­gest­ing that he has nev­er received any such affir­ma­tion from his par­ents; and this line was appar­ent­ly impro­vised by the actor (Tom Glynn-Carney).

Giv­en that mod­ern audi­ences are already inclined to side with Rhaenyra, showrun­ners began the series fac­ing an uphill bat­tle in por­tray­ing the Greens as sym­pa­thet­ic. But it almost seems as if they decid­ed not to even try, at least regard­ing Aegon him­self; and giv­en that it is Aegon who is dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to Rhaenyra with respect to who should sit the Iron Throne, I find this more than a lit­tle frustrating. 

An Attempt at Equitableness 

Now, it is impor­tant to note that believ­ing that the showrun­ners have cho­sen to por­tray Rhaenyra as the series pro­tag­o­nist, and Aegon as the one-dimen­sion­al antag­o­nist, is not incon­sis­tent with rec­og­niz­ing that they have also made a great many adap­ta­tion­al changes in favor of the Greens. Indeed, showrun­ners made sub­stan­tive changes mov­ing from the source mate­r­i­al to the screen that por­tray the Greens in a much kinder light. Per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant changes are as follows:

• The child­hood friend­ship between Ali­cent and Rhaenyra was fab­ri­cat­ed for the pur­pos­es of HOTD. Crit­i­cal­ly, the showrun­ners’ deci­sion to focus on the rela­tion­ship between Ali­cent and Rhaenyra has the effect of ele­vat­ing Ali­cent, rather than Aegon, as the emblem­at­ic leader of the Green faction.
• Ali­cen­t’s moti­va­tion to push Aegon onto the throne is root­ed in fear, not ambi­tion. While Ali­cent is still just a young woman her­self, her father Otto impress­es upon her the idea that if Rhaenyra is allowed to inher­it the throne, she will have no choice but to exe­cute Ali­cen­t’s chil­dren to per­fect her claim and silence dis­sent. When the time ulti­mate­ly does come, she is again only per­suad­ed to advance Aegon’s claim when she mis­in­ter­prets Vis­erys’s last words as a dying wish that Aegon be named his heir instead of Rhaenyra.
• Aegon’s most heinous qual­i­ties are toned down or removed entire­ly, most notably his record of sex­u­al­ly exploit­ing young chil­dren. Grant­ed, in Fire and Blood, the alle­ga­tions of Aegon’s sex­u­al deviance stem from an unre­li­able source that is par­tial to Rhaenyra; but the showrun­ners’ deci­sion to omit any ref­er­ences to it is arguably one that ben­e­fits Aegon’s char­ac­ter — or at least, saves it from cross­ing the point of no return in the court of pub­lic opinion.
• Aemond’s killing Lucerys Valery­on is por­trayed as an acci­dent, instead of the inten­tion­al act of mur­der it seems to be in the source mate­r­i­al. In Fire and Blood, Aemond delib­er­ate­ly hunts Lucerys down atop his drag­on, Vha­gar, and derives great pride in his new­found sta­tus as a kinslay­er. Con­verse­ly, in HOTD, Aemond los­es con­trol of Vha­gar, who kills Lucerys of her own voli­tion; per­haps more impor­tant­ly, Aemond is vis­i­bly hor­ri­fied upon real­iz­ing what he has done.

Of the fore­go­ing cre­ative changes, the showrun­ners’ deci­sion to dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand upon Ali­cen­t’s char­ac­ter is both the most sub­stan­tive, and the one that most read­i­ly lends itself to fur­ther discussion.

The Elevation of Alicent

The ele­va­tion of Ali­cent, effec­tive­ly, to the role of sec­ondary pro­tag­o­nist is a change that I per­son­al­ly like, but it does cre­ate a bit of an asym­me­try between the fac­tion lead­ers — Rhaenyra is the leader of the Blacks; while in the source mate­r­i­al, Aegon is the leader of the Greens. At the very least, it is clear in Fire and Blood that it is Aegon who is dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to Rhaenyra, rather than Alicent. 

The showrun­ners’ deci­sion to cen­ter the Green fac­tion around Ali­cent as its matri­arch, rather than around Aegon as its can­di­date for the throne, was like­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to improve the Greens’ image. The Greens, after all, sym­bol­ize male pri­mo­gen­i­ture and by effect male suprema­cy; while the Blacks sym­bol­ize — at least at a very basic lev­el — gen­der equal­i­ty. Thus, the cre­ative deci­sion to focus HOTD on Ali­cent, a woman, instead of Aegon, was prob­a­bly intend­ed at least in part to make the Green fac­tion a lit­tle more sym­pa­thet­ic to mod­ern audiences.

It is tempt­ing, then, to equate Ali­cent with Rhaenyra, inso­far as they both appear to be the lead­ers of their respec­tive fac­tions; but I per­son­al­ly find that to be a flawed com­par­i­son. Because no mat­ter how sym­pa­thet­ic, com­plex, or com­pas­sion­ate showrun­ners make Ali­cent her­self out to be, her cause is inex­tri­ca­bly tied to that of Aegon, a licen­tious degen­er­ate who has been giv­en no redeem­ing qual­i­ties with which to win any good­will from audi­ences. Ali­cent her­self could be a ver­i­ta­ble saint; but so long as she is cham­pi­oning the claim of her moral­ly bank­rupt son, it is dif­fi­cult if not impos­si­ble to divorce her from the deprav­i­ty that he rep­re­sents. Their caus­es are linked, such that one can­not sup­port Ali­cent with­out also sup­port­ing the debauch­ery and sav­agery of which Aegon is emblematic.

Accord­ing­ly, the showrun­ners’ best efforts to intro­duce depth and com­plex­i­ty to Ali­cen­t’s char­ac­ter — and thus, to the Green cause — are ulti­mate­ly inef­fec­tu­al; and this will hold true as long as they insist on por­tray­ing Aegon as being almost com­i­cal­ly devoid of  any pos­i­tive attrib­ut­es whatsoever.

A Product of Its Time?

Giv­en our mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties, is it even pos­si­ble to write HOTD such that view­ers could sym­pa­thize with the Green fac­tion? It is dif­fi­cult to say. Aegon and the Greens rep­re­sent the cel­e­bra­tion of agnat­ic pri­mo­gen­i­ture, itself inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the (hope­ful­ly out­dat­ed) idea of inher­ent male suprema­cy; con­verse­ly, Rhaenyra and the Blacks rep­re­sent the cel­e­bra­tion of gen­der equal­i­ty, and to some extent, mer­i­toc­ra­cy. In the court of (mod­ern) pub­lic opin­ion, it is hard­ly an even play­ing field.

Cer­tain­ly, the showrun­ners (and the Greens) had the cards stacked against them in depict­ing the Green fac­tion so as to elic­it view­er good­will. Indeed, their deci­sion to cen­ter the Green fac­tion around Ali­cent rather than Aegon may have been cal­cu­lat­ed to do so. But its effi­ca­cy is com­plete­ly under­mined by showrun­ners’ car­i­ca­tur­is­tic por­tray­al of Aegon as a self-indul­gent, unscrupu­lous youth — giv­en that it is his claim that Ali­cent is advanc­ing, how­ev­er vir­tu­ous she her­self may be. Still, the legit­i­ma­cy of Aegon’s claim as com­pared to Rhaenyra’s would have been a thorny issue, even if Aegon was por­trayed as being wise and benev­o­lent (look no fur­ther than Vis­erys’s advance­ment over that of his cousin Rhaenys). Maybe, then, it was always a fore­gone con­clu­sion that view­ers would over­whelm­ing­ly side with the Blacks, as polls have shown them to do.

Whether the Greens can ever win the hearts of mod­ern audi­ences is a ques­tion to which I, cer­tain­ly, don’t have the answer. Per­haps Sea­son 2 will tell.

The con­tent of this post con­sti­tutes an expres­sion pure­ly of my per­son­al opin­ion and con­jec­ture, and accord­ing­ly, is intend­ed only to enter­tain rather than to inform or instruct. If you see any errors, please *****@*******ol.me”>let me know.

Pho­tog­ra­phy by Ryan Chang