Hope is Not a Strategy | Anatomy of a Civil War in House of the Dragon Season One (2022)

House of the Dragon Season one is one of the most beautiful productions in entertainment history: sets, designs, and wardrobe, armour, and arms are incredible feats of craftsmanship. The show introduces some fantastic characters with great rapport and excellent dialogue.

When at its peak, the show is a 10/10, with one of the best performances of our time period, with Paddy Considine as Viserys, and some of the most impressive work an actor has done with dialogue in Rhys Ifans as Otto. Milly Alcock as Rhaenyra, Matt Smith as Daemon, Emily Carey and Olivia Cooke as Alicent, Ewan Mitchell as Aemond, and Matthew Needham as Larys all give fantastic performances.

Unfortunately, numerous aspects drag it down. Much has been said on the difficulties of adapting the source material, and again, the showrunners, writers and directors did an astounding job in that respect. Unfortunately, as the story calls for some serious time-jumps, while characters switch actors or not on a whim, with inconsistent performances, disrupting immersion. That is by far the season’s weakest point. This comes in direct contrast to Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, where you remain completely absorbed in the world and story.

The Politics of Dragons: Where True Power Lies

The first season of HotD puts the pieces in place in the lead up to the legendary civil war known as the Dance of Dragons.

First, it sets up the factions, splitting the factions, then the operating forces that will determine its outcome and aftermath.

Armies and Great Houses notwithstanding, power in Westerose is predominantly determined by control of the navy and — you guessed it — dragons.

It may be, as Viseryse says, an illusion that a rider controls the dragon, but those who burn are not convinced by the argument. And ships burn as well.

Now, the Blacks (Rhaenyra’s side) have secured the navy with the two-generation marriage pact to the Velaryons. The Greens (Alicent’s side) will have to turn to the free cities to procure a comparable force.

The dragons are where power is truly in flux. They differ greatly in size and experience, and the same can be said for their riders or potential riders. They can obviously and quite easily burn and drown ships. They also die. Getting new dragons and new dragonriders is very complicated, but it makes a huge difference in the balance of power.

Whenever a side gains or loses a dragon and or a rider, the balance is tipped.

In season one, the great balance of power shifts after Laena, Vhagar’s rider, dies, and Aemond steps in to claim the biggest and oldest dragon. They also immediately see Laenor, an accomplished dragon rider, fake his death and depart Westoros, leaving his dragon unclaimed. The Blacks lose two dragons and a rider, the Greens gain the oldest and most powerful dragon, and a new rider. Which then leaves the open question: where will the allegiance of Raenyse, rider of Maelyse, lie?

Character Drama

The chessboard of dragons, riders, and navies is a fascinating topic in its own right, and HotD still remains (for the most part) an excellent political drama. If you’re into that stuff. Which I am.

We will not be diving into that very interesting topic this time.

Instead, I would like to take a look into the makings of the essential story of the show, the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of Dragons. At its core, it is a conflict of succession for the throne. But what is particularly interesting, and forms the base for the intensely dramatic narrative, is how the different players on the opposing teams react and shape the escalation to full-blown war.

Beyond a certain point, war may be postponed for a time, but it is ultimately unavoidable. The threshold of no return may be a matter of conjecture. Every character might have their own interpretation of when and what that was for them.

We will be focusing on four: the King, the Heiress, the Queen Consort, and the Hand.

Viserys the Indecisive

Viserys, king of Westerose, is having a rough time.

His conflict-avoidant temperament ironically creates a lot of conflict, as he refuses to manage most competing interests with any resolve. He refuses to rule*.

His inaction fractures his Small Council and specifically jeopardizes allyship with the navy commander (Corlys Velaryon), who owns half the ships in the fleet, compromising military supremacy. And weakness, real or perceived, attracts provocation. It emboldens.

But Viserys has other troubles, yes, way beyond that. The highly anticipated birth of the child he believes will be his son and heir ends in tragedy for both child and mother. His only daughter is a spunky, unruly, undisciplined teenager who is about to get herself in a whole lot of trouble. And his beloved younger brother, whom he named as heir until a son is born to him, is a disrespectful menace to the realm.

Oh, and he is also literally falling apart due to a mysterious illness. It isn’t helped by the fact that his witch of a Maester can’t cure an itchy asshole, much less magical, slow-spreading gangrene!

When he was named king, he only had a daughter. He, therefore, names his brother heir to the throne until such a time as a son is born to him.

His wife dies during childbirth, after multiple stillbirths (a recurring theme in season one).

When his brother, in his usual manner, goes too far in provoking him on that account, Viserys strips him of the title and instead names his daughter, Rhaenyra, heir to the Iron Throne, despite all warnings of the inherent danger of the precedent being taken as a sign of weakness.

Viserys is a terrible strategist. Not only has he acted on a whim, despite young Rhaenyra showing some actual promise as a potential leader who has the strength of will her father does not possess (demonstrated perfectly by her confrontation with Daemon on Dragonstone), but he hasn’t even given thought to her marriage, which is an obvious political imperative.

He then further caves to her strength of will and allows her to choose her match, despite her clearly underestimating the importance of solidifying alliances for the sake of modern feminism. Not only does his lack of command further his weakness as a king and put his lineage in a precarious position, but it is also an even more perplexing decision considering the fate of all humanity rests upon his family’s shoulders.

In the end, it amounts to nothing either way, as she refuses every single suitor.

Still, Viserys avoids making a plan to ensure the line of succession and secure for his daughter the necessary allies, which is just the way he handles things.

His weakness isn’t just avoiding conflict, sometimes with no apparent reasoning, like in the Stepstones (sure, war has a cost, and having your sovereignty trampled on has a greater one, potentially!), it is that he is either reactive, often when his emotions compromise his judgement, or, as is more often the case, completely passive.

That leaves him completely open to manipulation.

Viserys is indecisive and a procrastinator. He is also a rather lovely person, but he doesn’t intentionally shape the destiny of his reign or his family, and in his attempt to offend no one, he ends up disappointing everybody.

In true fashion, he ignores the buildup of friction between his second wife and his daughter, just as he ignores his grandchildren’s parentage. He probably dies thinking the family has reconciled.

He comes nowhere near entertaining the possibility of hostilities evolving into war.

Is it possible that war could have been avoided if Viserys forced himself to become more resolute in affirming Raenyra as heir whenever it was contested? We will never know, because that is not who he is.

It’s a tough little pickle he’s in/created/allowed to have happened.

The Realm’s Delight, Rhaenyra Targaryen

At the time that Viserys’s only daughter, the heir to the throne, procrastinates on marriage and refrains from securing the succession, he allows himself to be pressured to remarry (because it is orchestrated with just enough finesse to make him think it is his own decision). Which isn’t technically a bad idea, as again, marriage is a powerful tool to forge alliances and to secure succession. After all, if Raenyra has no children, who will be heir to the throne in the event of her death?

Her own stubbornness in this regard had to at least subconsciously affect the king, sowing the seeds of her own eventual undoing. Perhaps she could have married sooner, in exchange for her father not remarrying, making for a cleaner succession. There are other ways the king can receive…comfort. Three mistresses and six grandchildren, perhaps?

Instead, he marries his daughter’s best/only friend. What a fantastic way to sow division. Clearly, their relationship could not survive it.

And then add a trueborn son into the mix.

And then add obviously bastard children on the other side.

And what do you get?

Ultimately, Raenyra has to marry her gay cousin in order to placate his father, Corlys, for the king spurning marriage to his daughter, Laena (an actual child at the time). If anything aided in her decision to produce bastard children…

Coerce a rebel and find out.

She’s also a horny teenager (is there another kind?).

The princess resents her station, and not completely without cause. Her core duty/ worth will be measured as a political bargaining chip for an alliance solidified by a marriage pact. Her role is to make babies for a new generation of eligible marriage pacts, both male and female. One might even view that as contributing to civilizational continuity, perhaps not the peak form of self-actualization a teenager who aspires to eat nothing but cake would hope for.

In Raenyra’s case in particular, the prospect is further marred by her mother’s tragic pregnancies, with multiple stillbirths, miscarriages, and eventual death in childbirth. Not a unique experience, as the show is apt to remind us, but it can certainly act as somewhat of a turn-off.

Rhaenyra does eventually go on to have five children, but her station also changes significantly. As heiress to the throne, the requirement to have a successor of her own supersedes the fear or resentment.

Or perhaps the resentment is what influences her to have her three eldest with a man who is indisputably not her husband.

Whatever her intentions are, it is a dangerous game she is playing, one that puts not only the succession itself in a precarious position, but also puts an immense burden on her children.

Were there no question of the legitimacy of the boys’ parentage, there would still be the question of whether the princess supersedes the king’s eldest son for succession, which predates Aegon’s birth, to the basic fact that it is the King’s duty to produce male heirs. He may have remarried for comfort or companionship, but the desired outcome is obvious to all, not the least to Rhaenyra herself.

Much like Viserys, she has no plan, no strategy other than guilt-tripping her father. Worse than that, she escalates by endangering her position with indiscreet behaviour — cavorting with her uncle Daemon in a brothel — putting undue pressure on the king, who already has a hard enough job defending his unprecedented decision, let alone the unavoidable strain to his relationship with his brother, Rhaenyra’s unbelievable naivete in allowing Daemon to drag her down notwithstanding. Clearly, the previous heir to the throne has no selfish interest compromising Rhaenyra’s reputation…

Viseryse pretends he believes Rhaenyra was falsely accused, despite not only the confrontation with his brother indicating the contrary, but ultimately sending his daughter an abortion concoction. Which was probably a good idea, but it still adds to family fragmentation, by making it clear he doesn’t believe her…

Rhaenyra’s relationship with Alicent was always strained by her immodest and flaunting behaviour, due to Alicent’s projection and resentment (a pattern to recur in the relationship between Aegon and Aemond later on), but the fracture exploded with her childhood BFF marrying her father, inadvertently reshaping their dynamics forever. All this before she bears the king a son, compromising Raenyra’s claim.

Raenyra makes no contingency for Aegon’s birth. At first, she just assumes she will be supplanted and is content with being petulant and passive-aggressive. Once the king reaffirms her position and the Lords of the Kingdom swear fealty to her, she assumes that makes her succession secure. To the degree she doesn’t even think she needs legitimate sons, as questioning their parentage amounts to treason.

We know from the time Viserys declared Raenyra his heir there were muted (and not quite so muted) voices of resentment and dissent. We even hear it amongst the smallfolk of Flea Bottom.

Then everything ramps up as soon as a son is born.

Viserys still declares for Rhaenyra, his only act of conviction, so no one else can act in opposition without sedition and treachery. So people bide their time. His death is certainly looming. They don’t expect to wait long. They need to act in the shadows if they want to get ahead of it. But they are taking a risk.

Once Rhaenyra gets to the point of having bastard after bastard, she’s really playing with fire.

Can a dragon truly not be burnt by it?

Raenyra’s main character flaw is entitlement. She does not foresee the war, and therefore makes no plans in advance of it (though I don’t believe Daemon would have been this naive). Once the Greens crown Aegon in front of the smallfolk, she has no choice but to respond. But she tries to postpone it as long as possible, taking after her father, until her son becomes dragon-snack. Then, she reacts out of vengeance.

Otto Hightower, Hand of the King

Otto is the grand architect behind the scenes. He takes advantage of the King’s grief over his wife’s death and his daughter’s subjugation to his will to have his grandson on the Iron Throne.

We do not get a clear perception of his motivation. It is claimed he is vying for power as a second son who stands to inherit nothing. But could it be that he genuinely believes it is in the Realm’s interest that the king is distracted from his grief, and that he actually has a son to inherit the kingdom despite himself, because the realm will never accept a woman as ruler of the Seven Kingdoms?

We never see Otto trying to take power directly into his hands. Everybody in the small council is trying to outmaneuver each other, but not all of them demonstrate clear self-interest.

Even once Viserys confronts Otto about the conflict of interest regarding the heir to the throne and dismisses him, he still acknowledges his faithful service in the past, and the implication is that he has done so for a very long time. What would have changed for Otto?

Clearly, sending Alicent to the King’s chamber is manipulative, let alone unethical, but was he truly for his own benefit?

When he reemerges as Hand of the King upon the death of his replacement (with no explanation as to why Viserys would take him back), he is clearly ready for the vicious game of thrones he knows full well is about to occur. He is clearly geared for doing horrible things, and salutes his daughter for showing some promise to be capable of the same.

No one is denying that he is a terrible person. At this point, his motivation is for his progeny to rule, but he has already made the point as well that the choice is now between taking the crown or being eventually eliminated by Rhaenyra to secure her claim.

Otto’s willingness to do whatever ugliness it takes is a beneficial mentorship to Alicent, who still wants to think of herself as just and morally superior at this stage. It does not last.

Otto represents the side of the kingdom that understands having a woman take the throne will divide the kingdom, even if succession is not contested. It might be held together with power, but at what cost?

Once his plan takes root, he is committed to usurping the throne for his descendants. He knows that it requires either total submission or annihilation of the Blacks. When they offer them terms of surrender, what is most apparent is the last piece, that the youngest of Raenyra and Daemon will become hostages, thereby giving them ultimate reason to push back. Daemon doesn’t wait for the Queen’s approval to give his reply, but he does (reluctantly) sheathe his sword when commanded. But the fuse is lit.

Queen Alicent Hightower: Hiding Behind the Shield of Virtue

Alicent is still clinging to the last bits of her naivete when her father presses her to confront the truth that her son is a threat to Rhaenyra’s claim. Otto, of course, takes no personal accountability for having trapped his daughter in this predicament, and his king; yet he rebukes her for undercutting the credibility of his accusations against the princess, as if it wasn’t his overstepping that alerted the king to the conflict of interest that got him sacked as Hand.

Though the release of her father from his duties finally convinces Alicent of the threat her children pose to Rhaenyra’s reign.

Rhaenyra then provides the Greens with some more free ammunition by giving birth to three bastards who bear no resemblance to her husband. Alicent pretends it is an issue of virtue. She’s certainly had her issues with Rhaenyra acting as though she can be above discretion, while she does not have that luxury, but she is way beyond such things now. She has become a tyrant who plays power games with a mother who has just given birth.

As both Alicent and Rhaenyra are clearly in the wrong on different occasions (Alicent being the only psychopath of the two notwithstanding), you’re not rooting for either of them. Raenyra’s insistence on playing the victim with her deliberate indiscretions because she thinks everyone owes her willful blindness, because that is what her father, the king, practices, is as irksome as Alicent’s condescending fake piousness. Not quite the same as being evil, though.

Alicent is playing the same dangerous game her father was playing with his accusations against the princess, but lucky for her, the queen has a little more leeway than the Hand, and the king is older now, and sicker, and just wants to be a grandfather. He wants everybody to get along and willfully ignores the conflict of interest regarding succession.

You might wonder about Raenyra’s obliviousness to the evolving intimate relationship between her dad and her best friend, and of Alicent’s supposed virtue, hiding it from her best friend.

But Alicent’s mask begins to fall off as she begins to appreciate the danger Rhaenyra’s claim poses to her children. Though, you wouldn’t begrudge a mother protecting her children (even if they are psychopaths). She wants to put a child’s eye out for simply acting in self-defense, steals a blade off the king, and attacks the heir to the throne. All that after forcing a mother to climb an insane flight of stairs immediately after popping out a baby, as a power move. The dutiful, innocent and righteous little lady of the court is long gone. There is far more of her father in her now, perhaps a little bit of Larys Strong as well; she’s just not quite as committed.

Alicent always resented Rhaenyra and becomes incredibly catty as soon as she has some power over her. But she insists on ignoring, again, in true Viserys form, the danger to her children for Rhaenyra to cement her claim. Until she doesn’t.

She learns, much to her own discomfort, that she is progressively more comfortable with committing atrocities to protect or avenge her children.

But she also genuinely regrets Luke’s murder by her son, and sincerely tries to avoid harming Raenyra (you know, apart from stealing her throne).

By the time the king dies, she is rendered completely irrelevant in the progression of the war, as the council has already been conspiring to usurp the throne. She tries to gain a little leverage, but it doesn’t really change things much.

Outro

By the end of the season, war is inevitable. There is no going back. Perhaps there never was. Like in most instances, we are like frogs slowly boiling, not realizing we’re in hot water until it is far too late.

Though it is worth mentioning that in Fire and Blood, Viserys’ own claim to the throne was contested by his cousin, Rhaenys**. Daemon Targaryen (then 20 years old) on the one side and Corlys Velaryon on the other, amassed men-at-arms to their cause. But in this case, the realm did not devolve into war.

*Now reconcile that with the man, who at 16 years old, walked into the dragon pit, and claimed Belarion, the Black Dread, the oldest, biggest, and fiercest of all the dragons in Westerose…

**The candidate with the most support after Viseryse was ultimately her seven-year-old son, Laenor.