House of the Dragon will have to avoid Game of Thrones’ biggest mistake

After years of anticipation, the hour is finally here: House of the Dragon, HBO’s successor series to its fantasy hit Game of Thrones, is on the air. The run-up to this show has been colossal, with HBO spending a record amount on marketing the series and speculation about whether House of the Dragon can ever live up to Game of Thrones running rampant. It’s far too early to know the answer to that question, but based on the fact that HOTD had the largest premiere in HBO’s history, it’s off to a pretty good start.

In many ways, House of the Dragon feels both more and less like Game of Thrones than expected. It features a large cast of characters with various motives vying for power, which recalls GoT. But it’s a family saga that focuses on the Targaryens, detailing the births, deaths, and marriages that occur over the course of decades. If House of the Dragon is going to set itself apart from Game of Thrones, walking that fine line between paying homage and forging its own path is going to be crucial.

And there’s one particular pitfall that House of the Dragon is going to have be careful to avoid, one that Game of Thrones stepped in big time. We’re going to get into the details below, but first, an obligatory spoiler warning. We will be discussing details from George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, and while we won’t be going into specifics, we’ll be using the broad strokes to draw parallels between House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, especially in regards to two major characters.

The rise and ruin of Daenerys Targaryen

Game of Thrones had a notoriously divisive final season; some people loved it, others had all sorts of issues. We’re not going to rehash those here, or harp on things that have already been discussed at length. But in order to get into the potential pitfall awaiting House of the Dragon, we have to talk about how Game of Thrones did one of its most beloved characters dirty. I’m talking about Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, and all the rest of those titles.

Over the course of the show, viewers followed Dany’s journey from when she was basically sold like cattle to becoming a revered leader and borderline messiah to a mass-murdering psychopath. Or at least, that’s what we should have followed. In reality, the show spent an awful lot of time with Dany’s more sympathetic phases, seeded in some hints that she could do terrible things in the middle, and then had her do a very quick heel turn to Hitler-status evil in the show’s final few episodes.

Were there hints that Daenerys could go that route? Sure, absolutely. She fed people to her dragons, she nailed cruel slavemasters to stakes, etc. But for my money, it wasn’t enough to get us ready for her swift decline in season 8, when she was willing to commit genocide after two of her dragons and some of her closest advisors died, while the rest of the people around her basically decided to be horrible allies and treat her like dirt. How much of the carnage could have been avoided if anyone had actually just sat down with Dany a few times and asked her how she was doing, instead of whispering about how crazy she might be? Or acted even the tiniest bit grateful that she was instrumental in literally saving the world?

Whether you thought the show pulled off Daenerys’ heel turn or not, the fact that it has so divided the fandom says something. Emilia Clarke’s acting was brilliant, but to take what is essentially one of the show’s greatest heroes and turn them into its endgame villain is something that needed to be done with a ton of care and attention to detail, and season 8 came up lacking.

Had the show spent more time really exploring the psychology of Daenerys’ fall instead of just making it happen to get us from point A to B, it’s entirely possible that the ending may have been celebrated rather than derided. It’s far from the only pitfall that Game of Thrones season 8 may have stumbled into, but I think it’s widely considered one of the most egregious.

And I get it. Taking a heroic character and turning them evil by the end is compelling, and a great way to comment on the corrupting nature of power. That is exactly the sort of twist I’d expect of a writer like George R.R. Martin, and it’s exactly the type of thing that made Game of Thrones so good in the first place. If only it hadn’t fumbled the ball so close to the end zone.

That said, Daenerys isn’t the only Targaryen Martin wrote about who was pushed too far by power and politicking.

House of the Dragon could feature a similar heel turn, but better

The new Game of Thrones successor show House of the Dragon begins 172 years before the birth of Daenerys, with her ancestor Rhaenyra Targaryen soaring high on dragonback before she’s ultimately named the first female heir to the Iron Throne. Rhaenyra is a fascinating character, and far less morally grounded than Daenerys. She is raised in court, surrounded by politicians and schemers, and is immersed in the game of thrones from childhood. She doesn’t expect to be named heir, but after she is, she commits to it.

We are not going to get into large spoilers here — you can read Fire & Blood for that — but suffice it to say that Rhaenyra looms large over the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. Just about every character involved in the conflict is painted in shades of gray; Daemon Targaryen often does horrible things, but then allows his loyalty to show through at unexpected moments, for example.

But Rhaenyra is different, because she’s the closest thing this show has to a Daenerys. The show itself makes this comparison during Rhaenyra’s first appearance, when she and her dragon Syrax fly over King’s Landing while a variation of Daenerys Targaryen’s theme music plays. She is the young girl who has a right to the throne, and is reminded that others want to deny her it every step of the way.

But Rhaenyra shows shades of Cersei and other characters in how she navigates court. She can be manipulative when it suits her, and has taken more than a few notes from her temperamental uncle Daemon. By the time the actual Dance of the Dragons war breaks out, Rhaenyra still has the rightful claim to the throne. It’ll be easy to root for her, because we’re going to see others try to rob her of something that we’ve been led to understand is her right from the very beginning of the show.

But during the war? Let’s just say Rhaenyra does some pretty bad stuff. We’re not talking burning King’s Landing to the ground bad, but bad enough that in the conflict’s final stretch it’s hard to really root for her (or anyone, for that matter). House of the Dragon is going to tell the story of how House Targaryen basically tears itself down from the peak of its own power, and many of the characters we’re sympathetic to at this early stage of the show will have a hand in that. Rhaenyra becomes prone to fits of paranoia, sometimes warranted and sometimes not. She becomes so focused on her own ascension that she ignores the needs of those closest to her, and her subjects.

Ultimately, the Dance of the Dragons is a tragedy, with an ending that’s more bitter than sweet. The show is going to have to sell some seriously heavy character developments, on par with Daenerys’ heel turn, if not quite to the same scale.

House of the Dragon is going to have the chance to revisit one of Game of Thrones‘ most controversial themes: that power can corrupt even the most venerable people, and that the belief you are owed power is dangerous in the extreme. Here’s hoping the successor show does a better job with it than the original series.

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