House of the Dragon and the corrosive power of happenstance

The first season of House of the Dragon wrapped on HBO in October, and it was, by pretty much any metric you wanna use, a success. The ratings were strong, the fan response was good, and critics enjoyed it. The show gave off a Game of Thrones vibe without feeling like a carbon copy. People fell in love with the new cast. It was good, full-stop.

Although I’d argue that it fell short of being great. There were a few too many hiccups, a few too many head-scratching gaps, a few too many missed opportunities for me to hail it as the perfect return to form I wanted it to be, as much as I enjoyed it. Hopefully, those issues will be smoothed out for season 2, which will probably arrive sometime in 2024.

Either that, or they’ll fester and rear their heads all over the place when the series returns. But what issues am I talking about exactly? Let’s get specific.

The time the Green Council installed the wrong king by accident

The first half of House of the Dragon season 1 introduced the characters and familiarized us with their conflicts. We meet the waffling king Viserys Targaryen, his hotheaded brother Daemon, his headstrong daughter Rhaenyra, and others. There are spikes in action here and there, but the story really gets rolling in the final couple of episodes, when King Viserys dies and there’s a conflict over who should take his place.

This is where the show should properly lift off, where the writers can take the characters they’ve crafted over the past several episodes and have them get their hands dirty. But instead, they lose their nerve, and introduce an unwelcome guest: happenstance. To put it simply, in the final few episodes of House of the Dragon, an upsettingly large number of important events seem to happen not because the characters make them happen, but more or less by accident.

It starts in Episode 9, “The Green Council,” when Viserys’ small council meets to decide what to do now that he’s dead. When he was alive, Viserys made it clear that he wanted his daughter Rhaenyra to inherit the throne, but none of the people here have any intention of letting that happen; they intend to seat Aegon Targaryen, the king’s eldest son by his wife Alicent Hightower, instead.

In George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, everyone in the room offers their rationales for why this is a good idea. Otto Hightower fears what will happen if Daemon Targaryen is too close to the throne; someone fears that war will break out if they crown a woman when a male heir exists; Jasper Wylde argues that, according to the law, a male inherits before a woman; and Criston Cole is adamant that they must not seat a bastard on the Iron Throne, which would occur if Rhaenyra’s eldest son Jacaerys ever succeeded her. The loyal Master of Coin Lyman Beesbury, aghast, hears all this and names the lot of them traitors who are going against the king’s well-known intentions. Criston Cole kills Lyman right then and there. There are no more objections after that.

This is a terrific stretch of the book, but the show — which for most of the season is fairly faithful to Fire & Blood — makes the curious choice to pull back on it. In the TV version, no one articulates any of the rationales outlined above. Instead, the only justification for going against Viserys’ will comes from Alicent Hightower, who misinterpreted her husband’s rambling, drug-addled final words to mean that he wanted to seat Aegon on the throne rather than Rhaenyra. The other people on the council are revealed to have been plotting to seat Aegon on the throne ahead of time, so we don’t hear their reasons. Lyman still calls them all out for being traitors, but Criston’s murder of him comes off less like an attempt to quiet a dissenting voice and more like an accident; he shoves a little too hard when pushing the elderly Master of Coin back into his seat, where he smashes his head onto one of those little marble things they use to take roll call.

These changes are very odd to me. In the book, Alicent and Criston both make active choices to supplant Viserys’ will. We may not like what they do, but they’re making decisions and pushing the plot forward, which helps define their characters and generates excitement. On the show, they make mistakes, which is less dramatically satisfying.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the writers made these changes so as not to risk the characters becoming unlikeable. In particular, they seem to want us to sympathize with Alicent. But if that is their aim, this seems to be the wrong way to go about it. Daemon Targaryen grooms his niece, murders his first wife, and strangles his second, and yet he has become a clear fan favorite. He may be a rat bastard, but he’s a compelling rat bastard, and the show has allowed him enough moments of humanity that plenty of people sympathize with him anyway. I’d have preferred that the show take this route with Alicent and Criston: allow them to make questionable decisions, and leave it to the audience to decide if we like them or not. As it stands, if feels like the show is pulling its punches, which isn’t satisfying to watch as a fan at home.

The time Aemond Targaryen accidentally started a war

Happenstance visits again an episode later, in the season 1 finale, “The Black Queen.” Young Lucerys Velaryon has ridden his dragon Arrax to the castle of Storm’s End, the home base of House Baratheon. He is there to entreat Lord Borros Baratheon to help his mother’s cause, but finds him unreceptive. Worse, Aemond Targaryen, Alicent’s second son, is already there. Borros has thrown his lot in with the greens.

There’s been bad blood between Aemond and Lucerys for years, ever since Luke slashed out Aemond’s eye when they were kids. Aemond wants Luke to cut out his own eye now in repayment, but Lord Borros forbids any violence under his roof. Luke mounts Arrax and starts to fly home to Dragonstone, but Aemond follows on his much older, much larger, much stronger dragon Vhagar. After Aemond harasses his nephew through the skies for a while, the young dragon Arrax gets spooked and breaths fire on Vhagar, who becomes angry and gives chase. Vhagar chomps both Lucerys and Arrax to death in one bite, over Aemond’s objections.

In Fire & Blood, we’re only told that Aemond kills his nephew, we presume intentionally. The show introduces the wrinkle that Aemond didn’t mean to do this, but that Vhagar took it upon herself to kill this meddlesome pair even though Aemond tried to stop her.

Once again, the show is taking what was an affirmative choice in the book — Aemond kills Lucerys — and turns it into a mistake: Aemond couldn’t control his dragon. However, it doesn’t bother me as much here as in “The Green Council,” for a few reasons. For one, even if Aemond didn’t intend to kill Luke at first, he’s not blameless. He still tried to get Luke to cut out his own eye and then mounted his enormous, ornery dragon to chase his nephew down. Maybe Aemond just wanted to scare Luke, but he should have known something like this could happen. You play with fire and you get burned. (“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye” is also an appropriate aphorism here.)

Second, what happens here is consistent with the themes the show has been working with since the beginning. In the very first episode, King Viserys tells his daughter:

"The idea that we control the dragons is an illusion. They’re a power man should never have trifled with. One that brought Valyria its doom. If we don’t mind our own histories, it will do the same to us."

Viserys has respect for the power of the dragons; he sees them as fierce beasts better not trifled with. Aemond, as well as a lot of the other Targaryens, believe that they have power over the dragons. It’s a delusion of grandeur that will ultimately bring the family low. I expect to see this theme echo throughout the series.

The time House of the Dragon let the characters control their own stories

But I hope the writers don’t express that theme over and over by taking decisions out of the hands of our characters. If it happens too much, it starts feeling like the show isn’t really about the characters at all, which is should be. Characters don’t have to be likable, but they do have to push the plot forward. That’s exciting. If the writers pull their punches, we’ll feel it…or rather, we won’t feel much of anything, which is not what anybody wants out of a drama.

It’ll take care and balance. As I outlined above, I like the additions to the Aemond-Lucerys scene, at least in isolation. The worst thing about them is that they come after a couple of other big turns in the plot that are also powered by happenstance. Aemond losing control of a blood-thirsty Vhagar by itself could be a poignant moment, but coming after Alicent fights to put her son on the throne due to a misunderstanding and Criston murders a man by accident, it starts to look sloppy.

My hope is that this train of misunderstandings will only be on the track for a short time. When House of the Dragon returns for a second season, I want to see characters making terrible decisions, facing the consequences, and only staring at the futility of their own choices when the story truly calls for it.

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