Welcome to theHouse of the Dragon!
As such, a voiceover at the beginning of the premiere helps us get our bearings.
They bicker, sure, but they remain close.
Milly Alcock.Ollie Upton/HBO
Rhaenyra’s mother, Aemma, is pregnant.
This is good news for Viserys, who needs a male heir of his own.
She fears the same could happen again.
Matt Smith in ‘House of the Dragon’.Ollie Upton/HBO
“I’m sorry if I’ve failed you,” she tells her husband.
Rhaenyra, too, hopes it’s a boy, or so she says.
She believes it’s the only thing that will make her father happy.
Still, we know she’s not interested in playing the traditional roles of the Westerosi woman.
Alicent is annoyed at Rhaenyra’s ambivalence about the throne.
Besides, there’s others who desire the throne more than her.
Daemon believes he’ll be next in line for the throne if Aemma’s child isn’t a boy.
He would like that.
“You’re a pack of hounds!”
he tells the bloodthirsty troops before siccing them loose on the thoroughfare for some gory eye-for-an-eye justice.
Thieves lose their hands, rapists lose their balls, and killers lose their heads.
It’s brutal stuff.
During their argument, he takes shots at Hightower, with whom there is no love lost.
Aemma, we learn, is going into labor in concert with the tournament.
Rhaenyra remains charmed by him, though it’s Alicent for whom he asks favor.
Rhaenyra, meanwhile, bestows her favor on a handsome Dornishman, Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel).
Soon, Cole and Daemon square off.
Daemon scores an early strike, but it’s Cole who wins the joust.
Regardless, Daemon refuses Cole’s hand after defeat.
Meanwhile, Aemma’s labor is going as badly as she’d feared.
To do so, however, would mean cutting it out and inflicting tremendous amounts of pain on Aemma.
Viserys, desperate for an heir, doesn’t struggle long before asking them to cut out the baby.
Aemma’s suffering was in vain.
The question of an heir surfaces after Aemma and the child’s funeral.
A seafarer, he is also known as the Sea Snake and the Lord of the Tides.
Hightower, meanwhile, works to sabotage Daemon’s chances.
When confronted, Daemon can only say that we all “mourn in our own way.”
Viserys declares he won’t be naming Daemon as his heir, ordering him to return to the Vale.
It’s Rhaenyra he chooses.
“I have wasted the years since you were born hoping for a son,” he tells her.
Something tells me he’ll be back before long.
