House of the Dragon

When is episode 1 of House of the Dragon Season 1 airing? Where can you watch this fantasy drama? Here's everything we know:

House of the Dragon is available to watch on the HBO channel and HBO Max. House of the Dragon is the long-awaited prequel to Game of Thrones, taking place 200 years before the War of the Five Kings. What do you hope to see as the series progresses?

Which characters matter? Which Houses are a factor? Why are their names so hard to spell? We have viewers of the 'Game of Thrones' prequel covered.

The influential family is a key ally of House Targaryen, so their prosperity — and family trees — are intertwined. The Hightowers are known for their wealth and are affiliated with the Tyrells, a house “Game of Thrones” fans are likely more familiar with. A close friend of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Ser Otto Hightower’s daughter, Alicent grew up in the Red Keep. King Jaehaerys Targaryen’s grandchild who, as his oldest living descendant, had a claim to the Iron Throne. A formidable warrior, Prince Daemon serves as the commander of the City Watch of King’s Landing. The clan of dragon-riders became the first ruling house of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros thanks to a successful conquest led by King Aegon Targaryen; the family ruled over Westeros for almost 300 years.

"House of the Dragon" is set decades before the events of "Game of Thrones" but fans may be thinking of entering George R. R. Martin's world for the first ...

In short, it is not necessary to have seen Game of Thrones to watch House of the Dragon because it is a prequel. House of the Dragon premieres on Sunday, August 21 at 9 p.m. [Game of Thrones](https://www.newsweek.com/game-thrones-creator-george-r-r-martin-kept-out-loop-later-seasons-1732837) directly affect the spin-off; it is the other way around. Martin's books, or Game of Thrones. [House of the Dragon](https://www.newsweek.com/house-dragon-game-thrones-prequel-targaryen-hbo-1589162) explores the beginnings of the bloody civil war that broke out between the Targaryen family during their reign over Westeros. R.

The “Game of Thrones” spinoff tries to recapture the magic through nostalgic detail, family fights, and grisly scenes of childbirth.

Rhaenyra’s voice-over tells us that the old king knew that “the only thing that could tear down the House of the Dragon was itself.” Ain’t that the truth, king. Like the infamous final season of “Thrones,” “Dragon” doesn’t always make the most of its story’s assets. There’s funny dialogue, but mostly of the unintentional variety: “Laughing with your whores and your lickspittles!” the king yells to a relative, in a rage. Will “House of the Dragon” have us obsessing about the Crabfeeder? “Game of Thrones,” for all its flaws, was a Sunday-night treasure for a reason: its wild inventiveness and beauty, its overstuffed intrigue and action, its humor, its characters. (Did they always sound so Wookiee-like?) And it’s hard not to love a show in which hundreds of flickering votive candles surround not rose petals and a proposal but a dragon skull the size of a Humvee. The Daemon-Rhaenyra dynamic, and Daemon’s flaxen wig and eyes narrowed in constant scheming, recalls the Targaryens we know best: Daenerys and her brother, also named Viserys, whose death in “Thrones” involved our rejoicing while he encountered a faceful of molten gold. “Dragon” swiftly provides some of the old “Thrones” pleasures. Inside the palace, Rhaenyra and her friend Alicent Hightower visit the hugely pregnant queen (“This discomfort is how we serve the realm,” she says, proud and grim), and then Rhaenyra zips off to a meeting of the king and his advisers, where, as she pours water for them, undercover-Arya style, she listens to the proceedings: reports that begin “We’ve all been poring over the moon charts”; a discussion of a pirate-punishing madman called the Crabfeeder. Martin’s “ [Fire and Blood](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593598008),” tells the story of House Targaryen in an era well before our old friends showed up—a hundred and seventy-two years before the death of the Mad King, the opening titles inform us, and the birth of his daughter Daenerys Targaryen. Like Rhaenyra, he’s a dragon rider—not just anybody can pilot those things—and, also like her, he’s a possible contender for the Iron Throne. The show opens not with a grim ice-monster sequence, as “Thrones” did—hat tip to that—but with the announcement, in a grand hall, of Prince Viserys (Paddy Considine) as the next king.

Ahead of the premiere of the Game of Thrones prequel House of Dragon, Deadline reports the series has notched HBO's biggest marketing spending spree ever.

We can really move the needle and I can’t wait to see what we will do on future campaigns when we harness the full reach and unique opportunities we bring to the table.” And we’ve done all of this in just a few short months, clearly showing what we can accomplish when our networks, streaming platforms, digital and social channels, all work collectively in support of one shared priority. Ahead of the premiere of the

In a reminder that dragons aren't the whole show, this "Game of Thrones" prequel takes a while to find its momentum. By Melanie McFarland ...

She's learning the price of capability and lessons about what it means to be a Targaryen, and a woman, from noble sources and unseemly ones. In the past, the Night King is a shadow and a myth, and the Lannisters are a family of try-hards. But if its early episodes indicate the tone Condal and his co-showrunner and director Miguel Sapochnik are going for, [they seem to have dialed that back](https://www.salon.com/2022/08/18/house-of-the-dragon-will-not-depict-violence_partner/). Alicent accepts her duty without fuss, following the steps set for her by a father that assures her that if she obeys the men in her life, she'll be rewarded with an elevated status. The difference is that Rhaenyra may never see a battlefield – although that's not a certainty – and Alicent definitely won't. Considine is a wonderful actor, but Viserys' duty fatigue is wearying, and everyone else in his court holds their emotions too close to the vest to add much spice. Her point of view informs the more balanced way the writers present women in a society programmed to write them off. Rhaenyra is younger when we first meet her (and played by Milly Alcock), with a slight build and quietude that belie a ferocious worthiness to rule. Martin](https://www.salon.com/2022/05/08/george-rr-martin-the-winds-of-winter-may-be-the-longest-bookin-the-series_partner/)'s Westeros sagas held off introducing its dragons until the last moment of the first season. Popular thinking may suppose that we could do without everything else but those fire-breathing terrors, but " [House of the Dragon](https://www.salon.com/2022/03/30/of-the-dragon-game-of-thrones-hbo/)" tests that theory. Since "House of the Dragon" is set 172 years before the Mad King's overthrow and the birth of Daenerys, sightings are far more common; when one screeches over King's Landing in the opening episode, the commonfolk barely blink. His cousin Rhaenys (Eve Best) was passed over by the old king despite being well-liked and married to Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), head of the wealthiest house in Westeros.

Join House Perk as we raise our banner to celebrate the premiere of House of the Dragon. Streaming tonight at 9PM on @HBOMax.

[@hbomax]. [August 21, 2022] [@HBOMax]. Thus, they’ve enlisted the shows under the WBD purview to create banners for their “houses” to help drive awareness of tonight’s debut. [House of the Dragon](https://deadline.com/tag/house-of-the-dragon/) bows tonight on the cable channel and its streaming companion, [HBO Max](https://deadline.com/tag/hbo-max/). But even with a purported [$100 million marketing campaign](https://deadline.com/2022/08/house-of-the-dragon-hbo-biggest-marketing-campaign-1235096571/) behind tonight’s launch of the Game of Thrones prequel, the Warner Bros.

Milly Alcock as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, a highlight of House of the Dragon's opening episodes. HBO. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. The opening ...

As the first episode of House of the Dragons finished, I asked myself whether it was as captivating as Game of Thrones' first. Even after six episodes of the show, House of the Dragon's scope is still mysterious. But the shining star of House of the Dragon's opening episodes is surely Milly Alcock as Rhaenyra. In contrast, House of the Dragon is all about the internecine conflict generated by different Targaryens all laying claim to the same Iron Throne. Much of Game of Thrones centered on the combative houses of Westeros vying to become the dominant clan. Perhaps more importantly, House of the Dragon will give lapsed Game of Thrones fans reason to love again.

The 'Game of Thrones' prequel 'House of the Dragon' premiered on HBO Max with some hiccups for some subscribers reporting the site crashed.

Please try closing the app and restarting to see if this helps. House of the Dragon is based on George R.R. We’re aware of a small portion of users attempting to connect via Fire TV devices that are having issues and are in the process of resolving for those impacted users.” [HBO Max](https://deadline.com/tag/hbo-max/) support team would later acknowledge issues of the site crashing and replied to a user saying: “We’re aware some users may be encountering issues at the moment. However, the @HBOMaxHelp Twitter account was experiencing a lot of traffic as subscribers tried to stream House of Dragon. As the first episode was launched online, some users reported the app crashing which prompted them to seek help.

"House of the Dragon" will introduce "Game of Thrones" fans to a different generation of the Targaryen dynasty, ones that were plunged into a bloody civil ...

House of the Dragon premieres on Sunday, August 21 at 9 p.m. She married Corlys Velaryon, also known as the Sea Snake, and had two children, Laena and Laenor, the latter of whom went on to wed Rhaenyra. His son Maekar I became king later, then Aegon V, followed by Jaehaerys II, and finally Daenerys' father, Aerys II. Princess Rhaenys, known as the Queen Who Never Was, was the daughter of King Jaehaerys I's eldest son Aemon. Viserys I had Rhaenyra by his first wife, Aemma Arryn. Targaryen Family Tree: Who Are the Major Players in 'House of the Dragon'?

Here's where King Viserys and Princess Rhaenyra fit into the Targaryen timeline and when House of the Dragon is set in relation to Game of Thrones.

In particular, the series will follow events detailed in the latter half of Martin’s book, which includes the civil war “ [Dance of the Dragons](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Dance_of_the_Dragons).” The war is a war of succession involving Princess Rhaenyra. Martin’s Fire and Blood (2018), which outlines the history of House Targaryen. The events of House of Dragon take place in AC, though some characters will speak of BC times, including events like the Doom of Valyria, a Pompeii-like event that almost killed all the dragons. The series is The Westeros timeline is broken into two periods—Before Conquest (BC) and After Conquest (AC). [Game of Thrones](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a40323737/game-of-thrones-sequel-series-jon-snow/) left King’s Landing in a smoldering heap of rubble and seared flesh.

We recap the debut episode of the Game of Thrones prequel, in which tragedy strikes the Seven Kingdoms, and a new heir is named for the Iron Throne ... for ...

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George R.R. Martin and Ryan J. Condal know it's horrific and disturbing. Here's why they say it was necessary.

It’s kicked off by him believing that he’s going to have a new male son after trying for years and years, and stillbirths and miscarriages, and all the hell that [his wife Queen Aemma] has been through as a mother. “A lot of people had things to say about the birth of Baelon, Prince Baelon,” Those two sentence have been expanded into a forced C-section, with Aemma screaming in anguish as she is held down and cut open by doctors and midwives who hope to save the breech baby even at the expense of her life. The death of the baby, and of the king's wife, Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke), during the botched birth, creates a void that other family members rush to fill, brandishing swords and fire-breathing monsters to gain the upper hand. [Fire & Blood](https://georgerrmartin.com/grrm_book/fire-and-blood/), which inspired the Game of Thrones prequel. The House of the Dragon pilot’s graphic birth scene caused a visceral response even at the show's gala premiere.

Martin's Fire & Blood. The 700-page saga chronicles the history of House Targaryen — or as the TV series goes on to explain, 172 years before the death of the ...

No such words were spoken — at least, we don’t hear them — but it’s enough to convince Viserys to give up any hope of his brother taking over the realm. We also meet the other main character in the saga — Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), Viserys’ brother-cum-city watch commander who seems to enjoy watching his soldiers castrate and behead criminals on the streets of King’s Landing. The 700-page saga chronicles the history of House Targaryen — or as the TV series goes on to explain, 172 years before the death of the Mad King and the birth of Daenerys Targaryen (played in GOT by [Emilia Clarke](https://deadline.com/tag/emilia-clarke/)). Waiting for her on solid ground is Ser Harrold Westerling (Outlander‘s Graham McTavish) — who seems like HOTD’s version of GOT’s Jorah Mormont — and the beguiling Alicent (Emily Carey), a Rhaenyra confidante who walks arm-in-arm with her bestie while helping her study history under a weirwood tree. He manufactures a scandal by alleging how Daemon referred to the king’s son as “heir for a day” in a so-called celebration at a local pleasure house. For a second, it seemed as if we were treated to Dany’s ghost in the premiere.

We wanted it to be difficult to watch”: Co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik and actor Sian Brooke break down the series premiere's most brutal sequence.

Taken together, “the scene is meant to be a distillation of the experience of men and the experience of women during this time.” The director had two midwives on set during filming “to talk us through the reality of a Caesarean without anesthesia or modern instruments and medicine,” he said. Prior to filming, the actors also had a day-long rehearsal to make sure they were comfortable working with the prosthetics and other special effects that made the labor so viscerally lifelike. “It is the story’s inciting incident and needed to be strong and unflinching.” King Viserys and the Grand Maester never think to consult her, and so she is powerless over a decision about her own body.” Wade in June, “It feels more timely and impactful than ever,” said Sapochnik. And then within that, you’ve got this woman who’s at the mercy of a man’s decision.” Confused, then terrified, Aemma is pinned to the bed by a team of midwives as the Grand Maester makes an incision to her abdomen and removes the infant. The Grand Maester (David Horovitch) explains the predicament to Viserys: “During a difficult birth, it sometimes becomes necessary for the father to make an impossible choice: to sacrifice one, or to lose them both.” [the long-awaited spinoff “House of the Dragon”](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-08-19/house-of-the-dragon-review-hbo-game-of-thrones) opens with a death — two, actually — as memorable as they are poignant. The theme of this birth scene was ‘torture,’” co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik wrote in an email to The Times. “Each birth in this show has a theme, just as the battles I’ve filmed in the past have a central concept.

In the lavish Game of Thrones prequel, no one is immune to the toxic dynamics of the Targaryen family.

The dynamic between the adult Daemon and the 15-year-old Rhaenyra is immediately, grotesquely charged; they converse, intimately, in High Valyrian, and he looks at her with the loaded interest of a cat eyeing a bird. That seems to mean that, at least in the first six episodes made available to critics, virtually every plotline and motivation feels the same, and there may be no heroes, ultimately, to root for. By the end of the first episode, the grieving Viserys is also being comforted by Rhaenyra’s best friend, the teenaged Lady Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey), who has been compelled by her morose father (Rhys Ifans) to attend to the monarch despite her obvious reservations. On House of the Dragon, no primary relationship seems to be truly insulated from erotic desire, which is itself inextricable from the quest for power. An acknowledgment of the physically brutal and life-threatening reality of bearing children!) The show, based on a prequel history of the Targaryen family (which George R. It was present—most centrally in the sexual relationship between Jaime and Cersei Lannister, which Cersei justified by invoking the Targaryen tradition of marrying brothers and sisters—but not predominant until the final season, when Jon Snow and his aunt Daenerys made unfortunately literal the union of ice and fire. Or I will be”), and issue savage clapbacks (“And how have you served the realm, Lady Redwyne? Female characters school one another on patriarchal constraints (“Men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascend to the Iron Throne”), affirm their authority (“I am the crown, Ser Criston. What was striking was the bifurcated way the person described the show’s framing for a post-#MeToo moment: conceding that there was “way less sex” in House of the Dragon than there could be in the good old tits-and-trebuchets days of yore, but also boasting that producers had cleverly adapted to the times by replacing sexual violence with barbaric renderings of childbirth. Martin published as Fire & Blood in 2018), begins 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Stormborn, the platinum-haired dragon queen in Thrones, and is in large part about the obstacles that stand in the way of women achieving and exerting power. But it also seems to strain at times with the possibly cynical effort of countering Game of Thrones’s Such “discomfort,” she explains, “is how [women] serve the realm.”) Think about this statement for a moment—that sexual violence is so fundamental to a franchise’s ethos that it has to be replaced with some other portrayal of primal female pain and suffering lest viewers lose interest—and your head might spin.

Sunday's long-awaited premiere aimed to create investment in a new royal power struggle while assuring viewers that this was still “Game of Thrones.”

[an interview](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/arts/television/house-of-the-dragon-ryan-condal-miguel-sapochnik.html)before the season, Sapochnik discussed the importance of making the dragons feel like real, organic parts of the world. “And the day grows ugly …” Rhaenys deadpanned as the crowd delighted in the brutality, which was one way to put it. That poor mid-coital couple frozen on the floor of the brothel. The scene was a somber counterpoint to the chaos and violent agony that had come before it, and Sapochnik wisely let the quietness build. But based on his unhealing lesions and their evidence that the throne doesn’t like him — as well as the fact that this is a succession story, and that monarchs need to die for games of thrones to go on — he seems unlikely to occupy it for long. Sapochnik, the director of “Thrones” spectacles like Martin](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/arts/television/george-rr-martin-house-of-the-dragon.html), the “Thrones” godhead, wanted to go with all along, which is what we got on Sunday, complete with the more hulking Iron Throne. Second: The patriarchal leaders of the realm will resist attempts to put a woman on the Iron Throne. [HBO’s efforts](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/arts/television/house-of-the-dragon-hbo-got.html), after the polarizing end of its biggest-ever hit, to keep the “Thrones” loot train going. “The childbed is our battlefield,” she said, and we saw how that turned out. (Though I admit that even in a more pensive register, the “duh-nuh-NUH-nuh” motif is very satisfying.) But it is fundamentally still the same ugly chair inspiring the same ugly feelings — anxiety, envy, power-lust, a willingness to betray friends and relatives.