HotD 1x01 – Heirs of the Dragon
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tori_reviewsWell, the thought that trying different days might make a difference in me remembering to post failed, so back to this I guess. Enjoy my random digressions while talking about Westeros.
HotD 1x01 – Heirs of the Dragon
On the whole I would call this…pretty good. Not great though. I’m not 100% sold on this, and I’m not sure how much of that is on this episode and how much is on it as an adaptation. It’s flawed as both, and I think I’m having an issue being forgiving of both at the same time.
As an episode, I can acknowledge that this is a pilot and it is doing some hefty ground work, so it could improve as it settles in. However that doesn’t stop the exposition from often being awkward, the cinematography being overzealous, and the pacing already rushed at times.
As an adaptation…it’s a mixed bag. I won’t deny that it does some things really well; some things it may even improve on. But in a couple ways it’s almost too good, because I still kind of feel like these are historical figures rather than characters who are the ones living it. And then there are the things that bother me.
So I need to do a rant on hair color. I can even forgive giving Aemma the Targaryen blond, I don’t believe her looks were specified in the book, and though fan renderings tended to give her darker Arryn looks, I can see a logic to making her blond. It makes it easy at a glance to realize that she’s closely related to Visaerys and this is more Targ incest gong on without having to spell out that they’re cousins.
But I don’t like making Rhaenys blond. I think Martin eventually made her dark haired for two reasons, only one of which I really hear talked about. That one has to do with Rhaenyra’s children, and never being able to prove who their father was (also I think it might be why Aemma is pictured with darker hair, since the possibility exists in the books that all of Rhaenyra’s children are Daemon’s and they could still get the slightly darker hair from Aemma). I sort of have a mixed opinion on giving a definitive answer to that question for the show, and I’ll have to judge for myself as we get there.
But the reason I hear less of has to do with the ASOIAF plot: because Rhaenys is half Baratheon. And while the ‘seed is strong’ could only refer to it being carried in the Baratheon men and Rhaenys is Baratheon on her mother’s side, this ends up weirdly clashing with paternity reason to make her dark haired. Because if the Targ blond is dominant enough to overcome Baratheon looks, Rhaenyra’s children should look like Targs regardless of who their father is. Especially when they made Aemma blond too (against Arryn darker looks).
This also gives me opinions on race swapping Corlys. The actor seems fine and to have a good handle on the character so far. But Targs have married Velaryans before, and will again, and yet the Targs remain pretty much white until they start marrying Dornish women down the road a ways. In a way, it loops back around to complicating the next generation paternity question, since Jaehaerys seems pretty white for someone with a Velaryon mother himself.
Then again, maybe no one in this show should be basing assumptions on hair color, because I think there was a blond Stark in there and unless that gets some explanation that’s weird.
Okay, having gotten that out of the way I can probably let it simmer until the kids with questionable paternity are actually born before bringing it up again.
How about a few other pedantic bits:
-Are the Targs Kings/Queens of the Rhoynar at this point? I don’t think so, but I could be misremembering what grouping counts as the Rhoynar and it’s not just Dorne, which isn’t part of the Seven Kingdoms yet.
-Unless the writers don’t know that, since they say Criston Cole is Dornish. Yes, people of non-Westerosi backgrounds can be in a tourney like this if they find themselves living in the Seven Kingdoms, but how weird is it supposed to be that a supposed Dornishman is here?
-Similarly, seeing as he’s going to Kings-guard and the Kingmaker…that could be dicey to explain.
-Voice-over Rhaenyra says that Targs had ten adult dragons under their control, which jumped out at me as debatable and even unlikely. At what point is she counting? What counts as fully grown? Are we counting riderless but tamed dragons?
-Early in the episode people act like they don’t know where Daemon is, but…Caraxes is in the dragon pit, right? They may not know where he is in town, but it’s not like he’s completely in the wind.
I had planned on making this a pedantic bit, but it is a larger point. The pedantic bit is how the writing here simplified the Great Council. I can understand that (although I’m not sure Rhaenyra voice-over would), but because the show doesn’t give all context it lacks one thing: how obviously Targaryen succession is whatever they decide it should be. Every king so far makes their own rules for who follows them; either willingly or not. And the reason they had to have the Great Council was that Jaehaerys (in keeping with house precedent) had complicated the line of succession with decrees.
And Viserys will continue that. Any other kingdom in the Seven Kingdoms, Rhaenyra is the heir unless Viserys does end up having a son; and then Aegon becomes the heir the day he’s born (not in Dorne, but as discussed they’re not even in the Seven Kingdoms yet). There could be some gripes since there are different mothers involved, but things likely wouldn’t have gone to all out war. Jaehaerys managed to stave off a succession crisis (admittedly, one he created) for a generation, by giving the lords the illusion of having a say in the succession (it was still ultimately his say to go along with what the Council voted - or as some might theorize, what the maesters say the Council voted for) - but Viserys will not be able to.
Also somewhere between pedantic and a real critique of the episode is the way they handle Daemon and the City Watch. I find that what’s presented doesn’t make a lot of sense. Have the Gold Cloaks just been sitting on their hands waiting to make a grand entrance of police brutality? It makes a lot more sense to me if Daemon had been leading the Watch for a while now and they were an established force; brutal and decisive but were actually somewhat respected by the people of King’s Landing. Which was the impression I got from the book; but there could be a bit of a chicken and egg thing since I could have read in what made sense to me that wasn’t explicit in the story we got.
I’m not sure what to classify my concerns for the characters ages as. Some of those issues come from the show deciding it was okay to recast some of the cast but not all of them. Viserys, Aemma, and Rhaenys all look too old for this early in the story (maybe Corleys too but he is supposed to have had a lot of adventures before this point in the story) and seem more cast for post time skip (which makes sense in Rhaenys case at least since she’ll have more to do post time skip). Daemon is sort of weirdly ageless so I’m more concerned that he won’t age enough over the course of the timeline when he is meant to be an older man (by the standards of Westeros) by the time he dies.
And then there’s Allicent. From this episode, I don’t hate the choice to age her down to be the same age as Rhaenyra (though I do miss her being old enough to have tended to Jaehaerys, which would put a bit of a spin on her going to comfort Viserys as well), but the writers are going to have to tread carefully to make it work as things progress. This runs the danger of events turning characters into puppets playing out history beats rather than seeming like it having events naturally grow out who the characters are. There’s plenty of time to play with to make their later actions seem reasonable even with such a different starting point, but I remain cautious about whether I’ll buy it when we get there.
Now, there is a certain segment of fandom who will say that what I’m about to discuss is not an accident, but I can’t buy fully into that yet. Because it seems to me that Otto…trips over himself and into a mistake here, which ultimately causes the Dance. With one hand he wants to push Daemon away and out of power, leading him to push Rhaenyra as heir; while with the other hand he wants to get his house even closer to power so he presses Alicent to get close to Viserys.
Of course there are a variety of factors even in that. The reason I say Otto tripped up is because it seems like he doesn’t wait to see if his needling about Rhaenyra works before his sends Alicent at Viserys. And yeah, I’m sure that Otto thinks there would be no problem getting Viserys to name a new heir if and when there is a male heir. They also don’t know that Viserys is going to be around for more than 20 more years, as a short view may say that making Rhaenyra a guard against Daemon taking the throne, even if there is a child that could potentially inherit, isn’t a terrible idea.
This ends up making more sense with the characters’ book ages and relationship, where Rhaenyra is a child and Alicent a woman grown. In that circumstance, these dual political moves work in concert, either Alicent provides a male heir that Viserys names as heir, or the Hightowers have a degree of control over heir to the throne Rhaenyra. If Viserys dies while Rhaenyra’s still a child, Alicent and Otto likely end up holding the regency, and either way will likely have a say in who Rhaenyra marries.
But with the show ages and relationship, these moves are at cross purposes. Rhaenyra is older than she is in the books, while Alicent younger, and having Alicent moving in on Viserys puts her at odds with Rhaeynra rather than closer to her. While teenage Rhaenyra may not be considered old enough to rule in her own right, she’s not many years away from it. That’s not a lot of years to produce a male heir and convince Viserys to change his named heir from a nearly grown daughter to an infant. For the same reason, for many years there will be a clear distinction between a grown heir and a very young child in the eyes of lords who may be asked to take side. At this point, there’s very little chance that there will be a regency period even if Viserys did die soon; and even if there was, the antipathy this creates between Rhaenyra and the Hightowers means she will surely turn to say Daemon instead of her step-family. While, if Otto stopped at moving Rhaenyra to inherit, the Hightowers would be positioned to be her closest beneficiaries and advisors; Alicent already her closest friend and Otto as the one person who pushed for Rhaenyra to be made heir. But those options are broken by trying to overplay the game.
I’ve been putting it off, but I guess I have things to say about Aemma’s death. I have a feeling that what I took from those scenes may not be what other people did. But I’m not going to immediately say it wasn’t something we were intended to take from it. The thing is, I don’t blame Viserys for Aemma’s death. We can talk broadly about how her given role was for her to produce an heir; that between her marrying so young and that she kept getting pregnant because she was expected to produce a male heir it factored into events here. And yes, there is a decided patriarchal view on that scene since the maester does frame it as being a choice the father has to make in situations like this. And yes, if we’re considering a maester conspiracy then we don’t know if the options presented were the only ones that were available.
But, the situation as presented is that Aemma is going to die either way and it’s a matter of how far they might go to try and save the baby. In that case, there is no choice to make as far as I’m concerned. It’s not presented as an either-or situation, it’s presented as bad and worse. So people who say that Viserys murdered Aemma or took away her choice I don’t see it. I’m not saying it should be easy to live with and there is blame to be had for ending up in that no win scenario, but it is the clear best of bad options (hell, it seems to be a quicker death than it would have been if they didn’t intervene, though perhaps not a lot less painful).
What I take from that scene, with Viserys not telling Aemma the truth, is that he’s a weak man who wants to avoid upsetting people wherever possible, and in the end that causes pain he might have avoided if he had been more up front. And that’s pretty much in keeping with his role in the story that’s developing, isn’t it? He’s easily convinced by someone else’s diagnosis for what his choices are and led to what is supposedly his best option. And he doesn’t want to be the cause of anyone’s pain so he doesn’t confront them with the harsh truth if he thinks he can avoid it.
It does seem I’ll find things to talk about with this show, if I can keep myself focused enough to stick with it.
HotD 1x01 – Heirs of the Dragon
On the whole I would call this…pretty good. Not great though. I’m not 100% sold on this, and I’m not sure how much of that is on this episode and how much is on it as an adaptation. It’s flawed as both, and I think I’m having an issue being forgiving of both at the same time.
As an episode, I can acknowledge that this is a pilot and it is doing some hefty ground work, so it could improve as it settles in. However that doesn’t stop the exposition from often being awkward, the cinematography being overzealous, and the pacing already rushed at times.
As an adaptation…it’s a mixed bag. I won’t deny that it does some things really well; some things it may even improve on. But in a couple ways it’s almost too good, because I still kind of feel like these are historical figures rather than characters who are the ones living it. And then there are the things that bother me.
So I need to do a rant on hair color. I can even forgive giving Aemma the Targaryen blond, I don’t believe her looks were specified in the book, and though fan renderings tended to give her darker Arryn looks, I can see a logic to making her blond. It makes it easy at a glance to realize that she’s closely related to Visaerys and this is more Targ incest gong on without having to spell out that they’re cousins.
But I don’t like making Rhaenys blond. I think Martin eventually made her dark haired for two reasons, only one of which I really hear talked about. That one has to do with Rhaenyra’s children, and never being able to prove who their father was (also I think it might be why Aemma is pictured with darker hair, since the possibility exists in the books that all of Rhaenyra’s children are Daemon’s and they could still get the slightly darker hair from Aemma). I sort of have a mixed opinion on giving a definitive answer to that question for the show, and I’ll have to judge for myself as we get there.
But the reason I hear less of has to do with the ASOIAF plot: because Rhaenys is half Baratheon. And while the ‘seed is strong’ could only refer to it being carried in the Baratheon men and Rhaenys is Baratheon on her mother’s side, this ends up weirdly clashing with paternity reason to make her dark haired. Because if the Targ blond is dominant enough to overcome Baratheon looks, Rhaenyra’s children should look like Targs regardless of who their father is. Especially when they made Aemma blond too (against Arryn darker looks).
This also gives me opinions on race swapping Corlys. The actor seems fine and to have a good handle on the character so far. But Targs have married Velaryans before, and will again, and yet the Targs remain pretty much white until they start marrying Dornish women down the road a ways. In a way, it loops back around to complicating the next generation paternity question, since Jaehaerys seems pretty white for someone with a Velaryon mother himself.
Then again, maybe no one in this show should be basing assumptions on hair color, because I think there was a blond Stark in there and unless that gets some explanation that’s weird.
Okay, having gotten that out of the way I can probably let it simmer until the kids with questionable paternity are actually born before bringing it up again.
How about a few other pedantic bits:
-Are the Targs Kings/Queens of the Rhoynar at this point? I don’t think so, but I could be misremembering what grouping counts as the Rhoynar and it’s not just Dorne, which isn’t part of the Seven Kingdoms yet.
-Unless the writers don’t know that, since they say Criston Cole is Dornish. Yes, people of non-Westerosi backgrounds can be in a tourney like this if they find themselves living in the Seven Kingdoms, but how weird is it supposed to be that a supposed Dornishman is here?
-Similarly, seeing as he’s going to Kings-guard and the Kingmaker…that could be dicey to explain.
-Voice-over Rhaenyra says that Targs had ten adult dragons under their control, which jumped out at me as debatable and even unlikely. At what point is she counting? What counts as fully grown? Are we counting riderless but tamed dragons?
-Early in the episode people act like they don’t know where Daemon is, but…Caraxes is in the dragon pit, right? They may not know where he is in town, but it’s not like he’s completely in the wind.
I had planned on making this a pedantic bit, but it is a larger point. The pedantic bit is how the writing here simplified the Great Council. I can understand that (although I’m not sure Rhaenyra voice-over would), but because the show doesn’t give all context it lacks one thing: how obviously Targaryen succession is whatever they decide it should be. Every king so far makes their own rules for who follows them; either willingly or not. And the reason they had to have the Great Council was that Jaehaerys (in keeping with house precedent) had complicated the line of succession with decrees.
And Viserys will continue that. Any other kingdom in the Seven Kingdoms, Rhaenyra is the heir unless Viserys does end up having a son; and then Aegon becomes the heir the day he’s born (not in Dorne, but as discussed they’re not even in the Seven Kingdoms yet). There could be some gripes since there are different mothers involved, but things likely wouldn’t have gone to all out war. Jaehaerys managed to stave off a succession crisis (admittedly, one he created) for a generation, by giving the lords the illusion of having a say in the succession (it was still ultimately his say to go along with what the Council voted - or as some might theorize, what the maesters say the Council voted for) - but Viserys will not be able to.
Also somewhere between pedantic and a real critique of the episode is the way they handle Daemon and the City Watch. I find that what’s presented doesn’t make a lot of sense. Have the Gold Cloaks just been sitting on their hands waiting to make a grand entrance of police brutality? It makes a lot more sense to me if Daemon had been leading the Watch for a while now and they were an established force; brutal and decisive but were actually somewhat respected by the people of King’s Landing. Which was the impression I got from the book; but there could be a bit of a chicken and egg thing since I could have read in what made sense to me that wasn’t explicit in the story we got.
I’m not sure what to classify my concerns for the characters ages as. Some of those issues come from the show deciding it was okay to recast some of the cast but not all of them. Viserys, Aemma, and Rhaenys all look too old for this early in the story (maybe Corleys too but he is supposed to have had a lot of adventures before this point in the story) and seem more cast for post time skip (which makes sense in Rhaenys case at least since she’ll have more to do post time skip). Daemon is sort of weirdly ageless so I’m more concerned that he won’t age enough over the course of the timeline when he is meant to be an older man (by the standards of Westeros) by the time he dies.
And then there’s Allicent. From this episode, I don’t hate the choice to age her down to be the same age as Rhaenyra (though I do miss her being old enough to have tended to Jaehaerys, which would put a bit of a spin on her going to comfort Viserys as well), but the writers are going to have to tread carefully to make it work as things progress. This runs the danger of events turning characters into puppets playing out history beats rather than seeming like it having events naturally grow out who the characters are. There’s plenty of time to play with to make their later actions seem reasonable even with such a different starting point, but I remain cautious about whether I’ll buy it when we get there.
Now, there is a certain segment of fandom who will say that what I’m about to discuss is not an accident, but I can’t buy fully into that yet. Because it seems to me that Otto…trips over himself and into a mistake here, which ultimately causes the Dance. With one hand he wants to push Daemon away and out of power, leading him to push Rhaenyra as heir; while with the other hand he wants to get his house even closer to power so he presses Alicent to get close to Viserys.
Of course there are a variety of factors even in that. The reason I say Otto tripped up is because it seems like he doesn’t wait to see if his needling about Rhaenyra works before his sends Alicent at Viserys. And yeah, I’m sure that Otto thinks there would be no problem getting Viserys to name a new heir if and when there is a male heir. They also don’t know that Viserys is going to be around for more than 20 more years, as a short view may say that making Rhaenyra a guard against Daemon taking the throne, even if there is a child that could potentially inherit, isn’t a terrible idea.
This ends up making more sense with the characters’ book ages and relationship, where Rhaenyra is a child and Alicent a woman grown. In that circumstance, these dual political moves work in concert, either Alicent provides a male heir that Viserys names as heir, or the Hightowers have a degree of control over heir to the throne Rhaenyra. If Viserys dies while Rhaenyra’s still a child, Alicent and Otto likely end up holding the regency, and either way will likely have a say in who Rhaenyra marries.
But with the show ages and relationship, these moves are at cross purposes. Rhaenyra is older than she is in the books, while Alicent younger, and having Alicent moving in on Viserys puts her at odds with Rhaeynra rather than closer to her. While teenage Rhaenyra may not be considered old enough to rule in her own right, she’s not many years away from it. That’s not a lot of years to produce a male heir and convince Viserys to change his named heir from a nearly grown daughter to an infant. For the same reason, for many years there will be a clear distinction between a grown heir and a very young child in the eyes of lords who may be asked to take side. At this point, there’s very little chance that there will be a regency period even if Viserys did die soon; and even if there was, the antipathy this creates between Rhaenyra and the Hightowers means she will surely turn to say Daemon instead of her step-family. While, if Otto stopped at moving Rhaenyra to inherit, the Hightowers would be positioned to be her closest beneficiaries and advisors; Alicent already her closest friend and Otto as the one person who pushed for Rhaenyra to be made heir. But those options are broken by trying to overplay the game.
I’ve been putting it off, but I guess I have things to say about Aemma’s death. I have a feeling that what I took from those scenes may not be what other people did. But I’m not going to immediately say it wasn’t something we were intended to take from it. The thing is, I don’t blame Viserys for Aemma’s death. We can talk broadly about how her given role was for her to produce an heir; that between her marrying so young and that she kept getting pregnant because she was expected to produce a male heir it factored into events here. And yes, there is a decided patriarchal view on that scene since the maester does frame it as being a choice the father has to make in situations like this. And yes, if we’re considering a maester conspiracy then we don’t know if the options presented were the only ones that were available.
But, the situation as presented is that Aemma is going to die either way and it’s a matter of how far they might go to try and save the baby. In that case, there is no choice to make as far as I’m concerned. It’s not presented as an either-or situation, it’s presented as bad and worse. So people who say that Viserys murdered Aemma or took away her choice I don’t see it. I’m not saying it should be easy to live with and there is blame to be had for ending up in that no win scenario, but it is the clear best of bad options (hell, it seems to be a quicker death than it would have been if they didn’t intervene, though perhaps not a lot less painful).
What I take from that scene, with Viserys not telling Aemma the truth, is that he’s a weak man who wants to avoid upsetting people wherever possible, and in the end that causes pain he might have avoided if he had been more up front. And that’s pretty much in keeping with his role in the story that’s developing, isn’t it? He’s easily convinced by someone else’s diagnosis for what his choices are and led to what is supposedly his best option. And he doesn’t want to be the cause of anyone’s pain so he doesn’t confront them with the harsh truth if he thinks he can avoid it.
It does seem I’ll find things to talk about with this show, if I can keep myself focused enough to stick with it.
