Home of the Dragon, episode one recap: Let the mayhem start

What’s the distinction between Rhaenys and Rhaenyra? Will one other lady actually sit on the Iron Throne? What was that important nugget of plot that you just missed initially of the motion? And the way are they holding these wigs clear?

Don’t fear: learn our recap for episode one under. Evidently, spoilers abound.

The inheritor with the hair

Moderately aptly for a present that’s all concerning the line of succession, we begin Home of the Dragon with an heir-naming ceremony.

The present King of the Seven Kingdoms, Jaehaerys I, is getting outdated and he doesn’t have an inheritor. Within the working for his substitute are his two grandchildren, Viserys (Paddy Considine) and Rhaenys (Eve Greatest).

The air is sombre. The digicam filter is darkish. Everyone is carrying wigs of startling platinum white; Paddy Considine’s makes him appear to be a thumb.

To the shock of no one, he’s the one picked to rule after Jaehaerys, making him Viserys I.

In the meantime, Eve Greatest does a superb lemon-faced pout as a lady who’s understandably put-out that she’s been handed over for the kingship by advantage of her gender. Males, eh.

Meet the household

Our first glimpse of the current day (or previous day, relying on which timeline you’re working to) is of the younger Rhaenyra – performed by Milly Alcock – using her dragon Syrax over the skies of King’s Touchdown.

It’s fairly majestic, much more so when the clouds half and we swoop with them across the Excessive Sept and Purple Preserve. We’re again in Westeros, child; let the mayhem start.

This Westeros may be very totally different to the war-ravaged place we’re used to: the lighting is Instagram-filter high quality, the clothes is probably much more opulent and all people appears typically better-fed and happier.

Properly, most individuals do: along with Rhaenyra and her good friend Alicent Hightower, we additionally meet Rhaenyra’s mom, Aemma, who’s closely pregnant and appears like she’s not having fun with it in any respect.

“We have now royal wombs, you and I,” she tells an appalled Rhaenyra. “The childbed is our battlefield.”

“I’d relatively be a knight and experience to battle in glory,” Rhaenyra replies. Can anyone say ‘foreshadowing’?

Roundtable discussions

Politics appears set to be simply as massive a consider Home of the Dragon as Recreation of Thrones – prepare for infinite talky scenes round privy council tables. On this one (the primary of many), Viserys is joined by the Hand of the King (Otto Hightower, performed with a withered form of conceitedness by Rhys Ifans), Lord Corlys Velaryon (Rhaenys’s husband and the richest man in Westeros; performed by Steve Toussaint) and varied different minions.

Viserys is totally anticipating a son, and has organized a knight’s event for the week that Aemma goes into labour to have fun his beginning.

He appears to be counting his chickens relatively, however the remainder of his Privy Council are glad to indulge him and as an alternative spend most of their time griping about cash, the Free Cities being a bit rebellious throughout the ocean in Essos, and about Viserys’ brother Daemon, who has taken cost of the Metropolis Guard and furnished them with some relatively natty-looking gold cloaks with which to mete out justice. He evidently has a aptitude for the dramatic.

Daemon little brother

What would this present be with out its resident psychopath? We meet Daemon (a bewigged Matt Smith) in individual a couple of minutes after the council assembly – he’s the primary individual we see lounging on the Iron Throne. And what a throne it’s: much more brutal and large than its Recreation of Thrones predecessor, with a form of walkway fabricated from swords that any unlucky monarch has to keep away from impaling themselves on when ascending. Metaphor, a lot?

Undeterred by the scandal of being caught together with his bum on the spikiest seat within the realm, Daemon exchanges some high-falutin’ gibberish (aka Valyrian, the Targaryen mom tongue) with Rhaenyra and offers her a present: a necklace fabricated from Valyrian metal, so she will “personal a chunk of our ancestry”.

How candy – much less so within the subsequent scene, the place he’s telling his fancy new Metropolis Guard how he’s remodeled them from “stray canine” to “hounds, primed for the hunt”. Daemon’s hounds then head out into King’s Touchdown to embark on a campaign that sees them clear up the streets by lopping off the appendages of varied criminals (together with one unlucky soul who has a relatively essential piece of his anatomy eliminated on-screen). Reader, I winced.

So does Viserys, who pulls up a smirking Daemon within the debrief to inform him that he’s gone too far. Daemon is Viserys’ inheritor, however as is perhaps obvious by this level, he doesn’t precisely act prefer it, spending his time in brothels in King’s Touchdown to keep away from heading residence to the spouse he can’t stand. Plus, he’s relatively too hot-headed and tyrannical for most individuals’s consolation.

Gore galore

Happily for everyone’s stress ranges, the event lastly begins and, just about concurrently, the much-anticipated royal child decides it’s time to make an entrance.

However whereas the nice and good of King’s Touchdown watch younger knights get their brains bashed out on the battlefield (to Daemon’s horror, he’s roundly defeated within the jousting by full unknown Ser Criston Cole), Aemma’s labour is just not going easily: Viserys visits her bedchamber to be instructed that the child is in breech and that he has to resolve to avoid wasting the kid or doubtlessly lose them each.

What follows is a scene so grim that it doesn’t actually bear committing to print, save to say that the caesarean occurs, principally on-screen, Aemma dies and the child quickly follows.

Viserys, clearly, is traumatised (as are the viewers), and on the funeral that follows, Rhaenyra is given the duty of burning her mom and child brother’s physique with a command to her dragon.

“I’m wondering,” she asks an unusually sad-looking Daemon earlier than she does, “If throughout these few hours my brother lived, my father lastly discovered happiness.”

It’s Succession yet again (however with dragons)

The core focus of Home of the Dragon is the problem of Viserys’ succession, and this turns into acutely obvious within the days after Aemma’s traumatic dying. Quickly, Viserys’ cupboard is hassling him to call an inheritor, whereas delicately suggesting that the unhinged Daemon is perhaps greatest changed by Viserys’ daughter, Rhaenyra.

Evidently, the King is just not greatest happy and storms out.

“I can’t be made to decide on between my brother and my daughter!” he snaps (simply as effectively, since Daemon is listening in behind a secret display screen). Gasps throughout the desk because the Privy Council decide the knowledge of placing a feminine on the Iron Throne.

“No queen has ever sat the Iron Throne,” one blusters. “If order and stability so considerations this council, then maybe we must always not break 100 years of it by naming a feminine inheritor,” one other provides. Plainly they favour stability and a robust authorities with Daemon over chaos with Rhaenyra.

Undeterred by Viserys’ tantrum, the scheming Otto Hightower then suggests to his personal daughter, Alicent, that the king is perhaps in want of a little bit of feminine firm.

“You would possibly put on considered one of your mom’s clothes,” he tells a petrified Alicent as she leaves the room. Thanks dad; nothing just like the strain of making some extra male heirs for the dominion.

Daemon then goes forward and will get himself in bother on the brothel, toasting Viserys’ useless son Baelon to his cronies as “inheritor for a day”. Understandably, Viserys is furious, and what follows is a relatively epic scene the place he successfully banishes Daemon from King’s Touchdown, de-heirs him (if that’s certainly a time period) and tells him to go residence to his spouse. Daemon appears livid, and the percentages on him truly obeying his brother’s orders would appear to be slight, at greatest.

Prophecies and payoffs

The plus aspect of all this drama for Rhaenyra appears to be that her place within the line of succession is confirmed. Viserys calls her into the key shrine/ burial place for Balerion, one of many historical dragons from Aegon’s conquest, to inform her the excellent news.

“You’re the highest of your mom, and I consider, as I do know she did, that you might be an awesome ruling queen,” he tells her. “Daemon was not made to put on the crown, however I consider that you just have been.”

He additionally tells her the nice secret that has been handed down from king to inheritor: that winter is, certainly, coming.

“Aegon foresaw the top of the world of males. It’s to start with a horrible winter, gusting out of the distant north,” he tells her.

“Aegon noticed absolute darkness using on these winds, and no matter dwells inside will destroy the world of the dwelling. When this nice winter comes, Rhaenyra, all of Westeros should stand in opposition to it. And if the world of males is to outlive, a Targaryen should be seated on the Iron Throne, a king or queen sturdy sufficient to unite the realm in opposition to the chilly and the darkish.”

Chills.

Because the sweeping music sounds, we reduce to pictures of the Westerosi lords swearing allegiance to Viserys – and to his new inheritor, Rhaenyra… as Daemon and a pleasant intercourse employee to whom he appears to have taken a shine on the brothel experience off into the sky on dragonback. Mischief will comply with, little question.

Verdict

Sweeping and grandiose, Home of the Dragon kicks off its first season in type. There’s mainly all the things you might ever need from a Recreation of Thrones spin-off on this present: gore, intercourse (however not sexual violence – govt producer Sara Hess has stated explicitly that there will probably be none of that on this present, which can tempt again followers who have been delay by it within the authentic collection), political chit-chat, wildly bold courtiers and dragons. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it surely does the job so effectively, what’s to not love?

It additionally makes a superb fist of maneouvring the items into place for episode two. Now, Rhaenyra is the inheritor to a rustic that may effectively not need a lady seated on the Iron Throne in any respect; Daemon is sort of probably considering revolt and Otto Hightower has his eye on some royal grandchildren. Oh, and Viserys isn’t getting any youthful. Plus, we’ve solely seen two dragons thus far. Roll on episode two…

Home of the Dragon is streaming on NOW and Sky Atlantic