It’s fair to say that the first two episodes of House of the Dragon did an excellent job setting the scene for the conflict that lies ahead. Everyone’s motives have been defined, lines are clear in the sand, proposals have been made, noses have been taken out of joint, stakes have been outlined.
HBO already has a hugely successful show called Succession, but this Targaryen family drama — set 200 years before the events filmed in Game of Thrones — promises to make it look like a small family brawl over the fate of the corner store.
King Viserys (Paddy Considine) succession plan put the cat among pigeons in King’s Landing. The king, having lost his wife and newborn son in childbirth, chose a new, controversial Joe – his daughter Rainera (Emma Darcy). This was not pleased with King Damon’s brother (Matt Smith), who has now been banished from the king’s court and has taken his dragon and gone elsewhere.
In Episode 2 we find out that he has resided at his family’s ancestral home in Dragonstone, which you’ll remember from the last seasons of GoT as important. Not only that, he plundered a dragon egg and the king wasn’t too upset about it. His new heir, swoops on a dragon of her own to retrieve the precious egg from her rogue uncle.
Meanwhile, her father has to choose a new wife and procreate in order to create a new heir and possibly replace those blondes’ husband. He upset one of the world’s richest homes by rejecting their 12-year-old daughter. OK. Instead, he chooses the hand of the king’s daughter who is also of suspicious age and best of Rinera’s companions. Fabulous.