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Over its seven seasons, Game of Thrones had serious sprawl to keep track of, as more families, more alliances, and more grudges arose to shape the ever-changing politics of Westeros. House of the Dragon is comparatively petite, even quaint, with its more narrow focus on Targaryen infighting. But the first season aired on HBO nearly two years ago, and packed more than 20 years of narrative into ten episodes. There are a lot of relationships to remember, all of them informing an extended family conflict that’s much more complex than a simple Team Green–Team Black dichotomy would suggest.
For example, did you forget that Daemon Targaryen had other wives before Rhaenyra, and other kids besides his silver-haired infant sons? Or how Larys Strong forced Queen Alicent Hightower to show him her feet? Or when Princess Rhaenys basically told all the younger women on this show that they simply are not at her level of self-assurance or dragon-riding? (Facts.) If so, here is a refresher on the spousal, parental, sexual, and competitive bonds that it will benefit you to remember before season two begins on June 16.
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Viserys and Otto’s close friendship
Yes, Otto Hightower engineered the marriage between his teenage daughter, Alicent, and King Viserys, whom he served as Hand for many years. And also yes, Otto had a long-running plan in place to steal the crown for his grandson Aegon and kill Princess Rhaenyra, Viserys’s first-born daughter and his named heir. Otto is scummy in his single-minded pursuit of power! But you don’t work with someone for decades without getting close to them, and Otto’s ambition isn’t exactly at odds with whatever affection he felt for Viserys. Modern-day pundits will tell you Viserys was an ineffective leader, and that his peaceful reign was the result of him ignoring problems brewing across the kingdom. But Viserys was pragmatic and even-keeled in a way that Aegon certainly isn’t, and as much as Otto didn’t respect the king trying to upend centuries of patriarchal rule through Rhaenyra, he did think he had relatable qualities and a core understanding of what his role entailed. Maybe Viserys wasn’t the strongest ruler, but he also wasn’t a maniac. Otto might find himself longing for that normalcy as time goes on.
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Aegon and Aemond’s shared loathing
To be fair, none of Alicent and Viserys’s children have close relationships with each other. Aegon and Aemond have long been weirded out by Helaena’s affection for creepy-crawly things and her ominous musings. The often-drunk Aegon and Helaena are married, per Targaryen tradition, but don’t spend any time together. Their other sibling Daeron is off-screen in Oldtown. But Aegon the heir and Aemond the spare have a specifically antagonistic relationship that boils over in penultimate episode “The Green Council,” when it’s revealed that Aemond resents Aegon for treating his birthright like a burden. Aemond spent his adolescent years training with the vicious Criston Cole, winning a dragon of his own, and becoming a feared warrior, while Aegon spent his raping a serving girl, fathering out-of-wedlock children around King’s Landing, and visiting the most grotesque brothels in town. Whether the two can put aside their differences to support Team Green is a big question, as is Aemond’s role in the war after his dragon Vhagar escalated the conflict by ripping apart Rhaenyra’s son (and Aemond’s own nephew) Lucerys and his dragon, Arrax.
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Erryk and Arryk’s twin divergence
For another example of broken brotherhood, consider twins Erryk and Arryk Cargyll, who both serve in the Kingsguard under Aegon. The joke is that no one can tell them apart — until “The Green Council,” when Otto sends the brothers to find Aegon in Flea Bottom and the two disagree on whether Aegon is fit to rule. As they travel through the pits where children are forced to fight and see the white-blonde toddlers Aegon has left behind, Erryk grows more disgusted with the man he’s sworn to protect, and decides to break his Kingsguard oath. Arryk justifies Aegon’s behavior by saying that “it’s for the Hand to find wisdom” and for the Kingsguard only to serve, but Erryk can’t stand for that, and leaves Arryk, the Kingsguard, and King’s Landing behind. Oh, and on his way out he steals a crown for Rhaenyra and sets Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys free for good measure; if Rhaenys and Meleys had attacked during Aegon’s coronation, Erryk would have had a lot of Team Green blood on his hands. Next time you see either twin and still need help telling them apart, remember A is for Arryk is for Aegon, and E is for Erryk and for ex-Kingsguard.
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Criston and Rhaenyra’s failed romance
Cole is so hot and so incel-y, and it’s helpful to remember that he got that way (well, the latter, at least) after sleeping with Rhaenyra, suggesting that they run away together, and getting thoroughly rejected. This is a real Michael Ginsberg–Don Draper situation, where Rhaenyra doesn’t seem to think about Criston at all after he broke his Kingsguard vows to have sex with her, and Criston is still obsessively complaining about Rhaenyra to Alicent, her former best friend. This man has an enormous chip on his shoulder and there’s no way it doesn’t matter down the line. (Recall that he almost did attack Rhaenyra on Alicent’s behalf after Aemond lost an eye in “Driftmark.”)
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Larys Strong’s commitment to chaos Alicent
He burned his whole family alive (including his brother Harwin, who actually fathered Rhaenyra’s sons Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey) to curry favor with Queen Alicent, and only gives her information that he’s gathered through his spy network when she shows him her feet. This man is a menace.
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Daemon’s absentee parenting of Baela and Rhaena
Daemon and Rhaenyra are the closest thing this series has to a doomed romance: He’s the bad boy who caught his niece’s eye, she’s the heiress who just wants to find love and trust. What gets a bit overshadowed, though, is that the two got together after Daemon’s second wife, Laena Velaryon, died in childbirth (more specifically: ordered her dragon Vhagar to incinerate her), and that she and Daemon had two teen daughters, Baela and Rhaena, whom he basically stops raising after their mother dies. The Velaryon and Targaryens unite another generation by betrothing Baela and Rhaena to their stepbrothers Luc and Jace, but Daemon is such a nonentity in his daughters’ lives — not helping them grieve, not giving them instruction, not doing much of anything — that they turn to Rhaenyra and their maternal grandparents Corlys and Rhaenys for guidance and love. Not the best bridges for Daemon to burn.
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Corlys and Rhaenys’s strained marriage
For most of the first season, Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen actually have the best marriage on the show. He is still bitter, on her behalf, that she was passed over for the crown in favor of Viserys, but the two of them seem to share a similar vision for House Velaryon and how to maintain its wealth and power as war approaches. But after their son Laenor (seemingly) dies, Corlys the Sea Snake rushes into naval battle to drown his grief, and when he returns after years away, he and Rhaenys no longer seem in total lockstep. (It doesn’t help that Corlys’s brother Vaemond tries to get Driftmark declared as his own, which he’s right about since Rhaenyra’s three eldest sons aren’t biologically Laenor’s, but Vaemond does so by attacking Rhaenys, which is not cool.) Corlys and Rhaenys are both declared for Team Black, but they have valid grudges against Rhaenyra and Daemon (they blame him for Laena’s death; they believe the two killed Laenor; they all watched Daemon murder Vaemond in public) and sometimes-contradictory opinions on how to navigate the future of their house that might add further angst to their marriage. It’s worth paying attention to whether they — and Baela and Rhaena, whom they helped raise — stay loyal to Rhaenyra as she tries to achieve what Rhaenys could not.
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Princess Rhaenys’s lack of fucks to give
A meta element of the first season of House of the Dragon is how much it attempts to be herstory, not history; after Game of Thrones was criticized for its treatment of female characters, House of the Dragon centered Alicent and Rhaenyra, their friendship, and their contradictory feelings about each other. The series tries to engage with how these women are viewed by the men around them to make points about sexism and the patriarchy, but sometimes all that effort just results in a deluge of bloody labor-and-delivery scenes. As the Queen Who Never Was, Rhaenys is a fascinating figure because she exists outside of Rhaenyra and Alicent’s relationship, and because her brand of Strong Female Character is so different from theirs. She’s older than them both, not really friends with either, and a warrior and dragonrider who has proven her strength over and over again. She can’t be manipulated by Alicent, whom Rhaenys openly mocks to her face, and she’ll never authentically respect Rhaenyra, upon whom Viserys bestowed the crown he arguably stole from Rhaenys. All of her choices feel independent and uninterested in pleasing either woman, which is a fun wrinkle for House of the Dragon’s “choose a side” marketing approach, and possibly the most feminist thing about it.
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Mysaria’s trust issues
Sonoya Mizuno’s Mysaria was probably House of the Dragon’s most confusing initial attempt at female empowerment, with much of her character development happening off-screen. A former sex worker who aligns with Daemon and agrees to be his second wife, Mysaria abandons him when she realizes he lied about her being pregnant with his child in a scheme to steal a dragon egg. She eventually rises through the ranks in Flea Bottom to become a well-connected spymaster nicknamed the White Worm, a champion for the kingdom’s working class and a cynical operator, or so we’re told. But she erred in trusting that Otto Hightower would hold to their agreement about greater protections for children living in the slums in exchange for missing heir apparent Aegon. You just handed over all your leverage, ma’am! It doesn’t pay to have ethics in this world, and at the end of the first season it seemed like Mysaria may have learned that the hard way at the behest of Larys. But this season’s marketing materials suggest Mysaria is not only alive, she’s re-aligned with Team Black, seemingly having realized that the Targaryens — whom she once believed in enough to agree to marry Daemon — are the more reliable alliance. At least more reliable than whatever accent Mizuno was trying out.
