A beginner’s guide to the who-what-when-where-why of it all.
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“House Targaryen’s words are fire and blood, and they should be what House of the Dragon delivers in this Game of Thrones prequel about the silver-haired royals who ruled Westeros for centuries, emerged victorious from myriad wars, and quite often married one another. Blood, the series has, in graphic and gory bursts and splatters. Fire, though, is harder to conjure.”
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Seven kingdoms, one Iron Throne, and a whole lot of people with odd names to keep track of: It’s the Game of Thrones formula, and House of the Dragon is following suit. The good news is that Dragon features way fewer houses to keep track of; it tells the tale of a budding conflict and eventual civil war within the ruling family of House Targaryen. The bad news is that everyone is someone else’s aunt or uncle or brother or cousin or spouse — often more than one at once — and most of them share the same surname. It’s a lot for even a maester to keep track of.
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While House of the Dragon’s focus on Targaryen infighting is comparatively petite, even quaint, compared with its predecessor’s sprawl, the first season aired on HBO nearly two years ago and packed more than 20 years of narrative into ten episodes. There are a lot of relationships to remember, all of them informing an extended-family conflict that’s much more complex than a simple Team Green–Team Black dichotomy would suggest.
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From middle-earth to Westeros, dragons are no joke. That’s what makes the prospect of a full-scale Targaryen civil war in season two so frightening — not just to the defenseless small folk but to the wiser members of the opposing Team Black and Team Green themselves. It also makes the question of who controls which dragons as crucial to the conflict as sizing up your enemy’s nuclear stockpile. A dragon’s size, age, temperament, temperature, combat experience, rider, and perhaps even their relationships with other dragons all play a part in determining their effectiveness in battle.
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For any viewers who thought House of the Dragon lacked action in its first season, rest assured: There’s potential for battle after battle that could blow Blackwater, Hardhome, and the Long Night out of the water — plus enough character deaths to make Game of Thrones seem downright merciful. George R.R. Martin has said it will take four ten-episode seasons to tell the full story of the Dance of the Dragons, and while Warner Bros. may not have committed to a 40-episode run yet, we’ll assume GRRM is right.
