Wow, I genuinely cannot believe how I feel about this franchise. Being a Game of Thrones fan is so fascinating. On one hand, you had this show, this masterpiece of television, that captivated an entire country every Sunday night when it aired on HBO.
On the other hand, you have a show that had possibly the biggest historically bad final season and finale in all of television. So unanimously hated by fans, that it seemingly plummeted the years of love, support and popularity it accrued.
Surely, there was no way such a highly ridiculed show, a franchise with an ending that was so disastrous, could make its way back into the homes and on the screens of fans?
#HouseOfTheDragon premiere brought in 10M viewers in the U.S.📺
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) August 22, 2022
The biggest series premiere in HBO history pic.twitter.com/BNUCzmzWVs
You thought wrong! Game of Thrones is alive and well and its name is now House of the Dragon. The prequel show takes place 172 years before Aerys II Targaryen and the birth of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). And yes, it is based on a novel by George R.R. Martin, Fire & Blood. That has to offer a level of comfort to fans, as we all know things only went off the rails *after* the source material of A Song of Ice and Fire ran out.
The debut episode covers a successor dispute with King Viserys. His wife, Aemma, is pregnant and he believes it to be finally be a son (she is pregnant for the seventh time, and the couple’s sole living child is Princess Rhaenyra, the protagonist of the series. Aemma lost an infant child, had two stillborn babies, and miscarried twice). Of course, things don’t go as planned, and King Viserys is forced to choose: keep Aemma, or perform a C-Section and save the baby. He chooses the latter, and the baby turns out to be the boy Viserys wanted. We then cut to a Targaryen funeral, and we see not only Aemma’s body, but also the infants.
The High Court is quick to set up a line of succession, and Prince Daemon is passed over by King Viserys due to his violent actions and tendencies, and because it was reported to the King he used “The Heir for a Day” as a title for his dead nephew. Viserys officially chooses his daughter, Princess Rhaenyra, who will be the next Protector of the Realm.
Safe to say they set us up nice and proper for the coming weeks. It only took a few years and one episode, but I am all the way back in on this franchise.
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