‘House of the Dragon’ Character Dynamics Explained by Main Actors and Showrunners
House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones spin-off series at HBO, is featured on the cover issue of Empire Magazine‘s latest installment.
For the piece, the magazine had the chance to speak to some of the main actors and the two showrunners and also revealed two brand-new images from the series, including a brand-new look at Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen. Smith teased that Daemon is here to mess things up:
“Daemon is there to cause chaos and piss people off because, simply, it entertains him.”
He is the brother of King Viserys (Paddy Considine), and he is fighting with Viserys’ Hand, Otto Hightower, for the King’s attention:
“[Daemon] and Otto loathe one another. They’re winding each other up, needling one another. And in the middle of it is Paddy, who plays Viserys. They’re both vying for his attention and his love.”
Otto Hightower is played by Rhys Ifans, who had this to say about the character:
“[Otto is] a high-flying political creature, a black belt in statecraft, a pragmatist and a manipulator. [Daemon is] the king’s kryptonite. [He is] volatile, violent and impulsive. Any influence he has on the king is detrimental to the status quo.”
Speaking to Empire, co-showrunner Ryan Condal explained how House of the Dragon will dive deeper into one of the most controversial episodes in Game of Thrones — The Bells, from season 8, where Daenerys flipped and sent her dragons to attack King’s Landing after the city had surrendered. Condal said:
“Daenerys resurrected this idea that, when you’re the only person in the world with nuclear weapons, you can either be a force for peace, or you can be a tyrant. The line between those two things is very thin. That’s definitely something this show will explore.”
Co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik also explained how the idea of having the show centered around the two main female characters came from his wife, Alexis Raben, who is also a development executive at his production company. He said:
“One day, she said, ‘This would be much more interesting if it was about the two main female characters, rather than the male characters.’ ‘If you really focused in on the patriarchy’s perception of women, and the fact that they’d rather destroy themselves than see a woman on the throne.’ That wasn’t a perspective I have ever told before. I think it made this show feel more contemporary too.”
These two women are Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, King Viserys’ daughter, and Alicent Hightower, Otto’s daughter. Despite being the best of friends growing up, the show will depict how the two grow apart from each other as their political ideologies don’t exactly match up once they enter adulthood:
“We said, ‘What if Alicent is like “Women for Trump,” and Rhaenyra’s like punk rock?’”
Emma D’Arcy, who plays the older version of Rhaenyra, explained the dynamics between the two:
“They grow up in the same backyard, which happens to be the royal court. But Alicent is better at conforming to the requirements of court manoeuvres, and Rhaenyra is humming with the fire of old Targaryenism. It’s like an ally that lives inside her, and she has to learn when to dampen that fire and when to trust it. She’s surrounded by a trail of ashes.”
On a different note, Sapochnik also explained the use of dragons in the show. When coming up with new designs for them, he says, they tried not to repeat Drogon’s look, but they always circled back at him:
“I’ve got a book which has hundreds of [concept] designs. The first thing you want is not to do Drogon. So I came up with a whole theory about how there were three different kinds of dragons, based on their different skulls. We came up with all kinds of stuff. But in the end, we ended up back at Drogon. There’s something about Drogon. It’s like the Millennium Falcon. It hit something.”
He added that every dragon has a different character trait that distinguishes him from the rest:
“Each new dragon has its own personality. That’s what’s going on now in our last part of the animation – we’re applying personal character traits to each of the dragons. One of them’s got a [bad] leg. Another one’s much more like an eagle, because she’s kind of neurotic. And another one’s like a curmudgeonly old granny.”
House of the Dragon will have its series debut on August 21 on HBO. If you want to know more about the show, make sure to check out our breakdown of the main characters in the show, here.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
