r/HouseOfTheDragon

I’d love to get a glimpse of some of the cast

No idea if they’re doing tickets or anything

Just watched Son for a Son and I’m wondering how 2 dudes managed to sneak into Halanas room and escape. Wouldn’t there be guards posted up at the door? Especially with the threat of war looming.

I get that they could have entered from those tunnels, but it definitely seemed like they just wandered in.

While promoting Supergirl, Milly also addresses the fans who have pit her portrayal of Rhaenyra against Emma’s and I’m very glad she has spoken up about it because it’s been a very toxic point of contention in this fandom for a very long time.

People need to remember that these two are PEOPLE who are both playing a role and were directed to portray her in different stages of life by showrunners and the many different directors they got. They are both Rhaenyra and many in the fandom need to remember that.

How far into Aegon III story do you think the show will go? In the book, HOTD just kind of led into it.

I love Emma D’Arcy so much. Their performance in House of the Dragon is my absolute favorite of the entire cast. However, I can’t help but feel like the fact that they present kind of masculine (Sorry if this is offensive) affects the onscreen portrayal of Rhaenyra.

In the lore, Rhaenyra is supposed to be very feminine, dripping in gems and jewelry with no desire to be a sword fighter or to be a man. I can’t shake the feeling that part of the reason her characterization shifted is because of how people view Emma D’Arcy outside of the show.

It’s especially noticeable in fandom spaces. I read a lot of Rhaenicent fanfiction (crucify me) and I hate how she is constantly portrayed as masculine, butch or wanting to be a man. It even bleeds into fics pairing her with Daemon which totally overrides her canonical femininity.

This is such a non issue but I just wish she was portrayed differently.

TL;DR, Making the Velaryons black changes the story around the parentage of Rhaenyra's kids. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it makes the context (and her character) feel very different. I'm trying to decide if it makes things more or less interesting.

Caveat 1: I think it was a really good idea to cast the Velaryons as black, in terms of giving the family their own strong visual identity and making the story easier to follow. Last thing we needed was another entire family of identical blondes with identical names. I don't know if there are still people complaining that it's woke but if there are, those are not people I take seriously on a fundamental human level.

Caveat 2: I'm in the process of rewatching season 1, which I'm liking quite a bit, same as the first time. I didn't love season 2 on a first watch and I'm interested to see how that goes when I can move right into season 3. Obviously things get a bit messy but I don't recall every nuance.

In the books, Laenor Velaryon looks like a white Targaryen. So when Luke, Jace, and Joffrey are born with black hair it raises a lot of eyebrows, but in that context it seems to be in the realm of suspicious but believable. Rhaenyra's grandfather on her mother's side was an Arryn. So it's weird but I imagine it being divisive rather than a flat-out condemnation for the kids not not look like Targaryens.

In the show, since Laenor is black and Rhaenyra is blonde, it is incredibly obvious to anyone who looks that Luke, Jace, and Joffrey are not Laenor's children. Nerdy genetics of the universe aside, VIEWERS can tell. The fact that both parents have distinct and different looks, and the kids don't look like EITHER of them, is impossible to ignore. And this changes the context around the "rumors" of their parentage and Rhaenyra's entitlement throughout the whole thing. (As well as Viserys' blindness to the matter).

On one hand I find this less interesting, because the controversy isn't subtle. There's no ambiguity (and the show also dispenses with this completely in terms of its depiction of Harwin). It also makes Rhaenyra and Viserys seem obstinate in a way that makes them much less likeable. Stubbornness is not appealing when the truth is so obvious. Like how are they even pretending.

On the other hand, the lack of narrative complexity in this regard might be making the story MORE interesting. I sort of like Rhaenyra's "fuck you" approach to the situation and Visery's total unwillingness to acknowledge what's before him because it amplifies the conflict with Allicent. It makes even more sense to me how she would become unstable, in this adaptation. The show is better in some ways when Rhaenyra is a less sympathetic protagonist, and I think the audacity to say "anyone who questions my son's legitimacy is committing treason" is amazing (if not a hard line to walk when she's hoping to claim the throne with popular support).

At the end of the day I think the issue is that the race of the kids bolsters the conflict and makes Rhaenyra come across as less sympathetic in a way that WOULD be interested if the show didn't seem so dedicated to making her the unquestioned hero of the story in all other respects. Like if the story really was a question about who's in the right or wrong, this could be fascinating. But this all kind of goes out the window in season 2. So it seems like just another point to the idea that the show is about how Rhaenyra is a tragic hero...which I have never loved. So I'm back to being unsure if the change makes things more interesting or less.

Thoughts?

As we all know, most people think of Viserys as a bad King for his horrible succession and the war that led to the eventual destruction of House Targaryen, but if the Dance hadn't happened or been crushed quickly by Rhaenyra, how would history look on him? Would he have been seen as a good King and the second in line of a golden age of Kings? Or would he be seen as a weak King who the next in line would need to fix his messes?