House of the Dragon premiere review: Men making decisions about women

House of The Dragon It opens with the scene of contestable succession. In the year 101 AC, 182 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, King Jaehaerys I calls the lords of Westeros to King’s Landing to witness him officially announce his successor. His son and brother both died leaving behind a dynasty devoid of an important male heir. And rather than appoint the obvious next in line — his granddaughter Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best), only child of the king’s oldest child — as queen, Jaehaerys chooses the son of his second son, Viserys (Paddy Considine), to rule. It’s a decision that sets the tone for not only the premiere episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones Prequel is for the destiny of the whole Targaryen dynasty.

Dubbed “The Queen who Never Was,” Rhaenys accepts her fate gracefully enough. We meet three additional women, whose existences have been defined according to their relationship with men. Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock, in this first episode) is the king’s oldest — and, for the moment, only — child, who’s always felt as if she disappointed her father simply by being born female. The courtly life is not what she enjoys and she dreams of riding her dragon to victory in battle. That doesn’t matter, however, because power is very gendered in Westeros.

As Rhaenyra’s mother, Lady Aemma Arryn (Sian Brooke) tells Rhaenyra early on in the episode, “the childbed is our battlefield.” Aemma’s — and therefore her daughter’s — power lies in her capacity to get pregnant and bear a male heir. It doesn’t matter what else. But, as Aemma tells her husband shortly before she goes to labor, “this will be the last one.” She’s suffered through multiple stillbirths and miscarriages, and her body can’t take any more pregnancies. As a result, she is no longer of any value to the world. This can be seen in the most bloody scene of an entire episode.

Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO

While Aemma attempts to deliver a baby who’s breeched (i.e., is turned with the feet downward instead of the head, a common and dangerous complication), the maester pulls the king aside and tells him it’s time to “make an impossible choice.” Who will live, and who will die? What’s more important: The potential of a baby boy, or the real, adult woman screaming in pain mere feet away? Aemma’s opinion is not sought by anyone.

In fact, she’s surprised and terrified when her husband kneels down beside her, strokes her hair and tells her not to be afraid, and nods to the maester to begin cutting. Aemma will die as the maester performs a medieval Cesarean section on her, slicing directly into her stomach with only as much anesthesia as he could administer “without hurting the child.” (One assumes that Aemma was not consulted on this point, either.) Viserys’ face falls with relief when the maester tells him the child is a boy. The sacrifice was worth it — at least, until the boy dies as well.

Director Miguel Sapochnik begins with a closeup of blood dripping from the maester’s hands, ramping up the gore as he cuts back and forth between the violence of Aemma’s murder-by-surgery and the bloodshed of the tournament happening outside the castle walls — a tourney put on, ironically enough, in the baby boy’s honor. Once the nightmarish act is complete, Sapochnik pulls back for an overhead shot of Aemma’s mutilated body splayed on sheets dark with blood, like a tableau from a horror movie. Sapochnik said that the gendered juxtaposition between jousting and childbirth, complete with its roaring machismo and phallic lances was deliberate. The Hollywood Reporter, “In medieval times, giving birth was violence. It’s as dangerous as it gets […]The show has a variety of births. We decided to explore these themes from various perspectives, much like I explored a series of battles. Thrones.”

You can find the House of The Dragon premiere, women are the unwilling foot soldiers being sent out on the front lines of men’s battles. Later in the episode, Viserys’ decision to make Rhaenyra his heir is motivated more by his anger towards his brother Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) than his faith in Rhaenyra’s abilities. And Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) has obvious ulterior motives for sending his daughter Alicent (Olivia Cooke) to the grieving king’s bedside to “comfort” him. (A marriage between Alicent and Viserys would be quite advantageous indeed — for her father.) Both men are putting their reputations and feelings above their daughters’ happiness and safety, because they both see these girls as property that they can do with what they will.

Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO

This fantasy scenario may be fictional, but the idea of women being property of their men, who decide whether these women live and die, is very real in modern times. And it’s not a relic of the medieval era, either: It’s a question that’s become terrifyingly tangible in the U.S. in recent months, where the repeal of Roe V. WadeA group of lawmakers decided that the chance that their fetus would outlive them was a priority and has resulted in pregnant women being denied lifesaving medical treatment. And it’s long been a reality in countries around the world where abortion has never been accessible.

As these real-life examples show, House of the Dragon It shows what happens when women become incubators or vessels. This is Westeros’ norm, which was founded on the same misogynist medieval Europe. These are the creatives who created them. Game of Thrones This has been an issue for many years. They insist on historical accuracy, but not in things like the existence and history of dragons. Hollywood Reporter Interview: Sapochnik said that House of the Dragon doesn’t “shy away” from depicting violence against women.

Its creative team says House of the Dragon — which, as Roxane Gay already pointed out on Twitter, has two male showrunners, and is based on books written by a man — differs from Game of Thrones because it’s coming from a “female perspective.” It seems, in this first episode, that means we’re being set up for a series about soft power, about the behind-the-scenes influence of mothers, daughters, and mistresses on the men who actually get to sit on the Iron Throne. With this in mind: House of the DragonYou may also be going in a similar direction. Game of ThronesThe show breaks down the female characters and builds them up again later. And the way that disempowerment — and, presumably, eventual re-empowerment — plays out will say a lot about what the men behind this show think that women’s relationships, ambitions, and inner lives are all about.