A couple weeks back, author George R.R. Martin took aim at House of the Dragon, which is based on his book Fire & Blood, and dinged it for making too many changes. In response, HBO dropped an episode of its official House of the Dragon podcast where showrunner Ryan Condal defended his adaptation choices. He hits on a lot of topics, including the nature of the Song of Ice and Fire prophecy, which holds that a Targaryen must be on the Iron Throne to fight back against an apocalyptic threat that will one day descend out of the far North.
This prophecy was first delivered to Aegon the Conqueror, the man who united the Seven Kingdoms over a century before the events of House of the Dragon, in a dream. It was passed down through the line of Targaryen rulers before being told to Rhaenyra Targaryen, who is now fighting with her half-brother Aegon Targaryen to sit the Iron Throne. Having seen Game of Thrones, we know that neither of these characters are the chosen one that the prophecy hints at; the White Walker apocalypse won't happen until the time of Thrones, but the prophecy has an influence on Rhaenyra's actions anyway. Now that she's told her son Jace, it may influence him too.
"I don't want to say too much on that just yet," Condal qualified. "The seeds have all been planted and we're seeing them get sown and grow into interesting things as we go along. But I think we became really interested in the prophecy, this dream that Aegon the Conqueror had of essentially seeing the long night playing out and how he carried that through his life and then probably passed it on to generations beneath him, and the way that prophecy is often talked about and dramatized in high fantasy stories like this. We know the chosen one trope: Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker. We were really, really intrigued by the idea of knowing that and...having seen the original series that that prophecy not only didn't happen to Aegon the Conqueror, it also doesn't happen to anybody in this timeline and anyone for many decades and centuries to come. But the knowledge of that prophecy and the fact that it's real, how does that impact the characters in our present timeline?"
"And of course, whenever anybody hears a prophecy, particularly somebody who believes themselves to be exceptional by birth or bloodline, they will exploit that and use that as a reason, a manifest destiny for the choices that they're making and the things that they're doing. So if Rhaenyra believes or comes to believe that she is meant to be the one, the chosen one, the one that Viserys dreamed of, and that the reason that Aegon passed the dream down was just so it could get to Rhaenyra, the first female sovereign to sit the Iron Throne. We know that it's not her. But it's really interesting to see how the belief of that can be doubted or committed to or believed in and then wielded throughout the course of her attempt to claim the Iron Throne."
The pros and cons of prophecy
I like the idea of Rhaenyra latching onto this prophecy and using it as justification for her war against Aegon, which we know gets increasingly brutal and pyrrhic. We see how it might negatively affect her in the scene where Jace questions the wisdom of allowing peasants to ride dragons, a decision that may well backfire. "I cannot gainsay that which the gods have laid before me," Rhaenyra tells her son, justifying her decision by referencing her great and noble destiny.
The whole "Red Sowing" episode has some good "Rhaenyra might be taking this prophecy too seriously" moments. When she's trying to recruit peasants to be part of her new Targaryen air force, she basically locks them all in a room with a couple of huge dragons and waits to see if anyone will survive. There's a bit of a mad glint in her eye when Hugh Hammer manages to claim the dragon Vermithor. I like creepy Rhaenyra and hope she shows back up in season 3.
That said, I didn't like how the show had Rhaenyra's husband Daemon Targaryen literally see his own vision of the long night in the season finale; I think the prophecy works better as a narrative device if it's somewhat ambigous. What might have been lost along the line? Did it ever really exist or is Rhaenyra just telling herself it did so she can do what she already wanted to do anyway? Daemon's vision clears up waters I would have preferred remained muddy.
We'll see where all this goes when House of the Dragon season 3 rolls onto our screens, probably sometime in 2026.
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