This recap of House of the Dragon's premiere episode includes spoilers for ... well, for House of the Dragon's premiere episode. That's quite a great deal what a recap is. Proceed accordingly.
And we're back. All of us — HBO, the Seven Kingdoms, you, and me of course, the guy who recapped Game of Thrones for NPR lo those a few years ago. We're all of us here, back on our dragonscat.
I've written a pair handy primers to help us all get in the right headspace, but essentially: Forget what you know, you won't need it much. House of the Dragon opens about 200 years earlier than the activities of Game of Thrones. The now 100-year-old Targaryen Dynasty is at its height, as the royal family holds the reins to ten full-grown dragons.
We open at Harrenhal, the vast ruined castle that got famously dracarysed by Aegon the Conqueror, founding father of the Targaryen Dynasty, a century earlier than. We're witnessing the Great Council of 101 AC, where the heir of the Iron Throne will be decided.
In this corner: Rhaenys Targaryen, the king's granddaughter (she's standing beside her husband Corlys Velaryon, aka the Sea Snake — we'll be seeing a lot more of him).
In that corner: the king's grandson Viserys Targaryen, status beside his wife Aemma Arryn, who is pregnant with their daughter, Rhaenyra Targaryen. (I know, I know — we're not even two mins in and already there's a Rhaenys and a Rhaenyra to contend with. Not to say the fact that most of the characters are sporting the same long, plantinum-blonde wig. Welcome to the Targaryen Dynasty. Edgar Winter is coming.)
The Great Council chooses Viserys, despite the fact that Rhaenys is older, due to the fact the patriarchy is not anything if not utterly predictable.
Featuring a dragon-drop interface
Opening credits! Which expressly do not send us swooping over a map of Westeros to visit clockwork versions of the various locales that will figure in this week's episode. Instead, we just zoom into the three-headed dragon sigil of House Targaryen.
Take that a sign that House of the Dragon's chief conflict won't manifest, as GoT's did, as a sprawling worldwide clash concerning numerous far-flung Houses and kingdoms. Here, the battle lines will in large part be drawn within a single family, in just a few acquainted locations. No map necessary.
We get a dragon's-eye view of King's Landing, which is asking a bit more exactly rendered these days. We may be 172 years in the past, but the servers in HBO's VFX branch have had four years of updates since GoT ended, and it shows.
That giant domed building dominating the skyline? That's not the Great Sept of Baelor, which won't be built for years. That's the Dragonpit, where reside the royal family's dragons.
We meet teenaged Rhaenyra and her friend Alicent Hightower, daughter of Otto Hightower, who's the Hand of the King. They walk through the same courtyard in the Red Keep that Cersei will turn into a giant Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? board, centuries later.
The show puts more of its chess pieces on the board: Queen Aemma is pregnant again, and offers the headstrong Rhaenyra a few truly terrible "lie back and think of Westeros" motherly advice. Corlys Velaryon (told you!) warns that some of the Free Cities have formed an alliance called the Triarchy, and their admiral — one Craghas Drahar, aka Crabfeeder — is brutally ridding the Stepstones (a string of islands between Westeros and Essos) of pirates. Put a pin in that; it'll come back.
Enter: Daemon Targaryen, the King's cheeky — well, cheekbony, anyway — younger brother. He's sitting on the Iron Throne, which looks much more jagged and threatening than we remember. I mean, the tetanus risk alone.
Daemon and Rhaenyra evince an easy familiarity with each other. We're meant to pick up on something else between them too — and if that squicks you out, hoo boy, are you looking the incorrect show, about the wrong family. He gives her a gift, an amulet of quite rare Valyrian steel — the same thing his sword, Dark Sister, is made of.