By Michael Idato
“We’re representing a world that is in the books that is brutal and strange”: Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen in House of the Dragon.Credit:HBO/Ollie Upton
House of the Dragon, set almost 200 years before the events of George R. R. Martin’s sweeping magnum opus Game of Thrones, opens with an ominous promise: the only thing that could tear down the House of the Dragon … is the House of the Dragon itself.
It is a political prophecy writ large from the annals of the history of Westeros where, for 73 episodes across eight seasons, the rival royal houses vied for power over the Iron Throne. The new series, based on Martin’s fictional history book Fire & Blood, is the story of just one of those royal houses: the white-haired Targaryens, the so-called “House of the Dragon”.
As the series opens, we find a house divided and a kingdom in chaos. The power of the benevolent King Viserys (Paddy Considine) is waning, despite the power and prestige bestowed by the family’s stable of dragons. In Game of Thrones they were an ancient myth on the precipice of re-emergence; in House of the Dragon they are at their scaly, fire-breathing height.
But in the shadow of the Iron Throne stands Viserys’ younger brother Prince Daemon (Doctor Who star Matt Smith), heir presumptive to the crown and champing at the bit for a slice of royal power. Beside him, Viserys’ daughter, Princess Rhaenyra (Australian actress Milly Alcock, then Emma D’Arcy), a controversial candidate to become the realm’s first queen regnant.
We’re representing a world that is in the books that is brutal and strange, and it’s a different time and a different place.
Meanwhile, behind the throne is the scheming consigliere Ser Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), a sort of Grima Wormtongue to the Viserys’ well-meaning but misled King Theoden, who schemes to discredit Daemon’s growing power and advance the political potential of his own daughter, Lady Alicent (Emily Carey, later Olivia Cooke).
Somewhere in all of this is both a fictional fantastical tale, a sort of Dallas meets Dungeons & Dragons, with a made-up history lesson thrown in for good measure. But the show’s star, Matt Smith, is hesitant to draw too many parallels from the annals of modern political history, even though many a political dynasty has been undone, as the Targaryens are about to be, by their own hand.
“It depends on your perspective, personally,” Smith says. “Lots of people will read into it and make sort of political comparisons, like any good story. If you can apply it to a modern context, great. If it reflects modern society, great, but ultimately it is a work of fiction.
“We’re representing a world that is in the books that is brutal and strange, and it’s a different time and a different place. So for me, this is always a sort of fictional story. I’ve no great sort of political leanings in it at all.”
And, he adds, by way of a footnote, few modern dynasties own their own stable of dragons. Which is probably what, in the end, is going to ruin them, Smith says. “[The Targaryens] are sitting on the atomic bomb, aren’t they?”
Co-creator and producer Ryan J. Condal believes the show’s strength lies in intimacy, despite the scale of its storytelling. “It all takes place, essentially, under one roof,” Condal says. “And eventually, over time, those people grow up and go on to have families, but all of the characters in the story, it all starts in the Red Keep in King’s Landing.
Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys Velaryon, Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon, Paddy Considine as King Viserys I Targaryen, Rhys Ifans as Ser Otto Hightower in House of the Dragon.Credit:HBO/Ollie Upton
“Game of Thrones was about different houses being in conflict with [one] another: the Starks had honour, and they felt like the Lannisters had no honour, had betrayed Robert Baratheon and were putting forward illegitimate heirs for the throne, whereas this is really a Greek tragedy,” Condal says.
“I think what resonates for me with our modern life is this idea of something being taken apart from within, and we live in a really divided time right now. Everybody has always looked to us, the US, to be the shining city on the hill. And so many of our problems are self-inflicted wounds.”
HBO has produced 10 one-hour episodes of House of the Dragon, filmed across most of 2021 in locations as varied as Croatia, the UK, Spain and California. As with Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon is striking for the lushness and vivid detail of its setting, and for the scale of its storytelling.
Despite the fact that a [second] book hasn’t been written, George has written a lot of that stuff down and just nobody has seen it yet.
The series benefits from having Martin not just as the author of the text of the book on which it is based, but as a co-creator, with Condal, working on the episode scripts. (Contrast that with the long-suffering fans of Game of Thrones, who are still waiting for Martin to bang out the final novel of the book series on which the television series was based.)
“We are hoping to give people what they want, but not in the way they’re expecting,” says co-producer and director Miguel Sapochnik. “And if we even get halfway close to doing that, I’ll pat Ryan on the back and he’ll pat me on the back. [Game of Thrones] is not an easy act to follow.
Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower and Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower in House of the Dragon.Credit:HBO/Binge/Foxtel
“We’re lucky to be in this position right now, we have an inbuilt audience for at least the first episode, so I think the main thing to do is enjoy it, [and] know that it doesn’t last,” Sapochnik says. “I think we both feel quite proud of the show that we’ve made. It feels like we’ve done an honest job at our first season.”
Advantageously, the book Fire & Blood is not written as a narrative drama but rather a historical text, which gives the television series more flexibility to navigate its own course, compared to, say, Game of Thrones, which had to contend with producing a series for television and navigating the sensibilities of diehard book fans.
“There’s so much material in this first volume that there are really plenty of other places to go with the story of the House of the Dragon,” Condal says. “You can go back to the conquest, you can go back to Old Valyria when the Targaryens first left. There are a lot of stories to tell. I think there are fascinating stories to tell in the future as well.
Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon and Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys Velaryon.Credit:HBO/Ollie Upton
“Despite the fact that a [second] book hasn’t been written, George has written a lot of that stuff down and just nobody has seen it yet. And he has it up in his head in terms of where the rest of the Targaryen history goes. It’s a very well-defined thing, in his mind at least.”
Though the mosaic of relationships in the show, as with Game of Thrones, is too elusive to map clearly at this stage, the first episode does set up a friendship – or rivalry? – between Prince Daemon Targaryen and Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), the pair facing off in a spectacular jousting scene.
Fabien Frankel and Matt Smith do battle in House of the Dragon.Credit:HBO/Ollie Upton
Aside from the obvious phallic imagery of two armoured men trying to puncture one another with huge lances – “Makes it sound more erotic. Maybe it was erotic?” quipped Frankel to me on the show’s press day. Shot back Smith, with a laugh: “We all sort of thought that” – the sequence is stunning. The equal for brilliant gore, even, of John Boorman’s bloody Le Morte d’Arthur adaptation, Excalibur.
“There’s a strange sort of connection between these characters, I think, which I think will sort of keep going throughout the next few seasons, if they make it,” says Smith.
In the sense that the series is based in part on published literature, the destinies of some characters are out there for those willing to go looking, Smith says. “It’s all in there in the literature, if you want to go and find it,” he says. “But without giving too much away, I think this is a relationship that will continue to bubble for a long time to come.
“We’re sort of connected quite intimately to a lot of the same people. And their temperaments are both quite volatile, so when you put them in a room together, they’ve always got an eye on one another,” Smith says. “Luckily, so have Fabian and I, so it sort of plays well into that.”
As for winning what looks like another violently unpredictable game of thrones? Daemon would not be a great king, concedes Smith.
“I think it would be a pretty chaotic empire, but boy, it would be fun,” Smith says. “Heads would roll. Only his brother and Rhaenyra would get away with murder, for the rest, I think, everything is up for grabs. It would be pretty lawless, but who knows? I think it would be a chaotic empire, certainly. Great fun though.”
House of the Dragon streams on Binge and Foxtel from Monday, August 22.
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