(Image credit: Theo Whiteman/HBO)
In this hollow spectacle of the horrors of war, there’s no one to root for as the characters “sail toward annihilation.”
“Perhaps we are all corruptible,” Sir Kristen Cole says in the final episode of House of the Dragon, “and that true honor is like a mist that melts in the morning.” It’s a “dark philosophy,” as a concerned fellow knight puts it, but it felt appropriate for a season of TV show focused on showing the human cost of war.
While the marketing campaign for the second prequel series of Game of Thrones urged fans to join either Team Green or Team Black, the show’s opposing factions, the series itself seemed determined to claim no place in either. The finale concluded a season of hopeful bastard dragon riders, firstborn sons, and sacrifices of conviction. The bar for ethical behavior is low in Westeros, and yet few meet it, as they work to destroy each other.
Game of Thrones has a long tradition of terrible characters, but the predecessors had both what we might call “good” guys (Davos Seaworth, Samwell Tarly, Brienne of Tarth) and characters we could love despite their flaws (Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister, The Hound). In House of the Dragon, Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best), the queen who never was and perhaps the easiest character on the show to root for, jumps to her death from a decapitated dragon, making it clear that heroism doesn’t pay here.
Black’s increasingly feisty exiled Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma Darcy) has gone from a woman devastated when her misunderstood words led to the brutal beheading of her child to one who’s comfortable barbecuing dozens of bastard kin in order to find new dragonriders, while Green’s doomed widowed Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) has seen nearly all of her power stripped away by a series of disappointing men (including, unfortunately, several of the men she gave birth to).
Instead, it was the doomed Rhaenys’ words that came to define this second season: “Soon they will not even remember what the war was about in the first place.” Her correct prediction of a self-perpetuating cycle of destruction is both a nod to its source material, Fire and Blood (written as a series of retrospective academic histories that do not always match up) and a sign that, despite ostensibly mirroring its predecessor in terms of who should (and who does) sit on the Iron Throne, the series is actually charting a long, slow, brutal descent into the nihilism of war for war’s sake. Early on, we saw how Riverman used the Targaryen infighting as simply a convenient excuse to escalate an ancient feud, and in the final episode, Kol’s calm acceptance that “we now march towards annihilation.”
More like this:
• ‘House of the Dragon’ review: “It’s pure Game of Thrones”
• The 9 best TV shows to watch in August
• Why you should watch “The Most Cynical Show on TV”
Part of this gloomy outlook comes from the fact that the show is a prequel, a pre-existing book. Whether viewers have read Fire and Blood or not, the events of Game of Thrones tell us that House Targaryen nearly destroyed themselves, and their dragons, in the war. We already know there is no happy ending, and the characters themselves seem to agree. With the grim reality of the Dragon War now revealed, the conflict will be fought by those who enjoy destruction and those who are content to accept it, with Rhaenyra falling somewhere in the middle.
Game of Thrones had characters who only looked out for their own interests, and characters who claimed to be fighting for a greater good. But the overwhelming, malevolent threat of the White Walkers was an indisputable enemy and a call to battle that could not be ignored. In House of the Dragon, a war unfolds, founded on terrible misunderstandings, driven first by a thirst for power, then by retribution and revenge, and fought with weapons of utter destruction.
The analogy of dragons to nuclear war is obvious. In theory, dragons should act as a deterrent through fear, but in reality, the temptation to control them is too strong. The Dance of the Dragons may be a battle of beasts, but it is a failure of humans that it even happens in the first place. And once unleashed, there is no turning back. Aemond has argued that the war would be won “not by dragons alone, but by dragons flying behind the armies of men,” but the show has so far portrayed humans as mere prey. No matter how clever the tactics, ground troops, or impregnable castles, they cannot withstand the power of dragons. We saw it in the final season of Game of Thrones, when Daenerys rained fire on her own capital. And it was made clear in the Battle of Lucrest. The battle disillusioned Kol and became a microcosm of the wider conflict. It was a difficult battle for either side to claim victory. Each lost a dragon, each lost a man, many crushed or burned by their own beasts. And each of them began to understand less and less why they were there.
While various characters vainly claim that peace is their goal, Damon’s final vision of the events of Game of Thrones reminds us that it is not. While this war may seem like the war to end all wars, there is no such thing. Rather, this is just another battle with hundreds of thousands of deaths at stake.
—
If you liked this story, Sign up for the Essential List Newsletter – We’ll send you handpicked features, videos and can’t miss news in your inbox twice a week.
For more culture coverage from the BBC, Facebook, X and Instagram.
;
