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I've spent all week trying to figure out how to write something about last week's House of the Dragon episode. So, am I just gonna make vague hand gestures and post a fan edit that expresses my feelings? Yep. But also, I'm gonna write something, 'cause it's me.
[SPOILERS FOR HOTD UP TO AND INCLUDING EPISODE FOUR]
[TW incest, unhealthy relationships]
Man, so episode four, huh?
I said going into this episode that if the HotD writers could get through this section of the material without fucking up then I'm going to be more inclined to trust them moving forward. Because the subject matter of S1x04 is...extremely delicate, to say the least. Functionally, it's about an adult man seducing his much younger niece (yes, Westeros is a fictional faux-medieval word, so something like age of consent is relative, and the Targs do incest on the reg, but it's still being watched by a 21st century audience). It needed to be handled with the utmost care. And I absolutely would never trust the writing staff on Game of Thrones, for instance, to handle such subject matter with any amount of grace. So, for me, this was the trial by fire. And, boy, the HotD folks came through with flying colors.
Smartly, this episode is directed by a woman, but that wouldn't have been a cure-all if the writing had been poor. Not to keep ragging on GoT, but... Several episodes of S1-S4 of GoT had female directors, but that did little and less to mitigate the misogyny in the writing itself. But the writing for HotD ep 4, King of the Narrow Sea, is just...chef's kiss. Everything from the pacing, the languid sense of inevitability, to the handling of the delicate subject material with grace and care, this episode is extremely impressive.
Because they had every excuse to either overly-romanticize Daemon and Rhaenyra's relationship, or tip over into just being gross about it. Because the source material, Fire and Blood, is a fictional history of House Targaryen "written" by the fictional Archmaester Gyldayn, who is himself an unreliable narrator. The text is deliberately and very purposefully riddled with misogyny, misinformation, obfuscation, misinterpretation, and bias. The events covered in S1x04 have several differing versions from competing sources in the original text, ranging from the tragically romantic to the utterly depraved. The HotD showrunners could easily have leaned one way or the other and been able to use the text as a shield for either.
Instead, King of the Narrow Sea threads the needle between these extremes and gives us something which explains the rumors these events birth, whilst not robbing Rhaenyra of agency or Daemon of culpability. We don't get Rhaenyra in tears professing her love and begging her father to wed her to Daemon, but neither do we get Daemon taking advantage of Rhaenyra purely for sexual gratification and no other reasons. Instead, we get something much messier and more ambiguous.
I've seen a lot of comparisons made between Daemon/Rhaenyra and Heathcliff/Catherine in Wuthering Heights. Usually, comparisons to Wuthering Heights garner eye rolls from me, because they're typically built on fundamental misunderstandings of that text. But this comparison? Yes, solid. Two not-particularly-good people terribly in love with each other, a love which destroys them and corrodes everything around them, sinking into a morass of decay? Plus, healthy helpings of generational trauma heaped on top? Yeah, that sounds about right. (This has also led to a strong hankering to reread Wuthering Heights, even though I DON'T HAVE TIME RIGHT NOW)
Similarly to whenever someone asks me if I think Heathcliff and Catherine are "really in love," I've been asked much the same thing about Daemyra over the last week and just...I fundamentally feel that's the wrong question. We have this wrong idea that if two people are in love then it must follow that the relationship is good and healthy. And that's just...not at all true. Which is exactly why Daemyra is 100% My Shit.
Rhaenyra boldfaced lying through her teeth when confronted by Alicent about her night out with Daemon. Swearing on her mother's memory that he never touched her without so much as a flinch. Not to mention her outrage at being accused of having sex with a man when the audience fully knows she slept with Criston Cole after Daemon left her. But also, fully being able to understand that she has few other options; ruination in her position would be social death on a tremendous scale. Of course, she's going to lie and twist her way out of it, the patriarchy gives her no other realistic options. ("If a were a man, I could bed whomever I wanted. I could father a dozen bastards, and no one in your court would blink an eye.") Daemon not exactly lying to Viserys, but not correcting Viserys' assumption that Daemon deflowered Rhaenyra either. Daemon using that omission of the truth as leverage to try and get what he wants (marrying Rhaenyra).
Two Terrible People In Love will get me every. single. time.
Anyway, there's more to say here, but I've been at this for nearly two hours. Basically: Episode four of House of the Dragon still has me by the throat and it's almost been a whole week.
[SPOILERS FOR HOTD UP TO AND INCLUDING EPISODE FOUR]
[TW incest, unhealthy relationships]
Man, so episode four, huh?
I said going into this episode that if the HotD writers could get through this section of the material without fucking up then I'm going to be more inclined to trust them moving forward. Because the subject matter of S1x04 is...extremely delicate, to say the least. Functionally, it's about an adult man seducing his much younger niece (yes, Westeros is a fictional faux-medieval word, so something like age of consent is relative, and the Targs do incest on the reg, but it's still being watched by a 21st century audience). It needed to be handled with the utmost care. And I absolutely would never trust the writing staff on Game of Thrones, for instance, to handle such subject matter with any amount of grace. So, for me, this was the trial by fire. And, boy, the HotD folks came through with flying colors.
Smartly, this episode is directed by a woman, but that wouldn't have been a cure-all if the writing had been poor. Not to keep ragging on GoT, but... Several episodes of S1-S4 of GoT had female directors, but that did little and less to mitigate the misogyny in the writing itself. But the writing for HotD ep 4, King of the Narrow Sea, is just...chef's kiss. Everything from the pacing, the languid sense of inevitability, to the handling of the delicate subject material with grace and care, this episode is extremely impressive.
Because they had every excuse to either overly-romanticize Daemon and Rhaenyra's relationship, or tip over into just being gross about it. Because the source material, Fire and Blood, is a fictional history of House Targaryen "written" by the fictional Archmaester Gyldayn, who is himself an unreliable narrator. The text is deliberately and very purposefully riddled with misogyny, misinformation, obfuscation, misinterpretation, and bias. The events covered in S1x04 have several differing versions from competing sources in the original text, ranging from the tragically romantic to the utterly depraved. The HotD showrunners could easily have leaned one way or the other and been able to use the text as a shield for either.
Instead, King of the Narrow Sea threads the needle between these extremes and gives us something which explains the rumors these events birth, whilst not robbing Rhaenyra of agency or Daemon of culpability. We don't get Rhaenyra in tears professing her love and begging her father to wed her to Daemon, but neither do we get Daemon taking advantage of Rhaenyra purely for sexual gratification and no other reasons. Instead, we get something much messier and more ambiguous.
I've seen a lot of comparisons made between Daemon/Rhaenyra and Heathcliff/Catherine in Wuthering Heights. Usually, comparisons to Wuthering Heights garner eye rolls from me, because they're typically built on fundamental misunderstandings of that text. But this comparison? Yes, solid. Two not-particularly-good people terribly in love with each other, a love which destroys them and corrodes everything around them, sinking into a morass of decay? Plus, healthy helpings of generational trauma heaped on top? Yeah, that sounds about right. (This has also led to a strong hankering to reread Wuthering Heights, even though I DON'T HAVE TIME RIGHT NOW)
Similarly to whenever someone asks me if I think Heathcliff and Catherine are "really in love," I've been asked much the same thing about Daemyra over the last week and just...I fundamentally feel that's the wrong question. We have this wrong idea that if two people are in love then it must follow that the relationship is good and healthy. And that's just...not at all true. Which is exactly why Daemyra is 100% My Shit.
Rhaenyra boldfaced lying through her teeth when confronted by Alicent about her night out with Daemon. Swearing on her mother's memory that he never touched her without so much as a flinch. Not to mention her outrage at being accused of having sex with a man when the audience fully knows she slept with Criston Cole after Daemon left her. But also, fully being able to understand that she has few other options; ruination in her position would be social death on a tremendous scale. Of course, she's going to lie and twist her way out of it, the patriarchy gives her no other realistic options. ("If a were a man, I could bed whomever I wanted. I could father a dozen bastards, and no one in your court would blink an eye.") Daemon not exactly lying to Viserys, but not correcting Viserys' assumption that Daemon deflowered Rhaenyra either. Daemon using that omission of the truth as leverage to try and get what he wants (marrying Rhaenyra).
Two Terrible People In Love will get me every. single. time.
Anyway, there's more to say here, but I've been at this for nearly two hours. Basically: Episode four of House of the Dragon still has me by the throat and it's almost been a whole week.
