House of the Dragon: HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff is a guilty pleasure, but it’s less offensive than the original

Game of Thrones’ understanding of gender politics was, and remains, deeply flawed. In its over-eagerness to showcase ‘strong female characters’, it consistently reduced them to problematic versions of male fantasies — brutalised, scheming, morally corrupt people who only had the illusion of freedom. The strings, ultimately, were still being pulled by the men.

In Game of Thrones, women could hold positions of power, but only as a reward for surviving horrific abuse at the hands of ghastly men first. We forget how badly the show tortured Daenerys Targaryen over the years, before continuing to do so thematically with that asinine final season. Of course, the show seemed to say that power in the hands of a woman would be no different than power in the hands of men; it corrupts absolutely, and without prejudice. In Game of Thrones, women could be sexually adventurous, but not without being judged for it. And in the end, the show suggested women could ascend thrones, but only after losing every last sliver of their humanity in the process. The leaflike Sansa Stark, after weathering the storm for years, was turned into a frigid shadow of her former self.

But what does it mean to retroactively transform the patriarchal world of Game of Thrones into a feminist one? Sure, King Viserys can announce that his daughter Rhaenyra Targaryen is the true heir to the Iron Throne — a gesture that reeks of pandering on the show as well as outside it — but she is still mostly a commodity, dangled before possible husbands like some political pawn, or reduced to a farm animal whose only job is to birth more farm animals. But it is only after House of the Dragon gets all the posturing out of its system — such as completely removing gratuitous nudity — that it actually examines what having two female protagonists means on a story level.

What distinguishes House of the Dragon from its descendant is that even though the show is set in a patriarchal world, unlike Game of Thrones, it doesn’t have a patriarchal mindset. As Phoebe Waller-Bridge succinctly said when she was brought on board to add a feminist voice to No Time to Die, James Bond doesn’t have to treat women properly, but the film must.

We watch this theory unfold in the season finale, when Rhaenyra is urged by her male advisors, including her hot-blooded husband Daemon, to wage war against her bestie-turned-adversary Alicent. Swayed by superstition, she dismisses Daemon’s rational reminder that they needn’t be worried; they have dragon firepower in their arsenal. “When dragons flew to war, everything burned. I do not wish to rule over a kingdom of ash and bones,” she says, as the show calls attention to just how far it has deviated from GoT’s masculine ‘burn-them-all’ mentality.

We saw this also when Rhaenyra genuinely considered Otto Hightower’s diplomatic proposal in episode nine, and when Rhaenys decided to flee King’s Landing on dragonback after having witnessed Aegon’s coronation. She made the conscious choice to not launch an assault against Alicent, and made do merely with intimidation tactics. It is a sign of just how conditioned we have become to certain masculine story beats that Rhaenys’ bloodless escape was perceived as anticlimactic.

We must also remember that both Rhaenyra and Alicent, whose interpersonal dynamic was apparently invented for the show, aren’t the sort who’d choose violence. Both are motivated by the words of one man — Viserys — but their instinct, always, is to resolve conflicts peacefully first.

Of course, certain changes are impossible. Women in the show are still perceived as baby-making machines whose only purpose is to further royal bloodlines. I joked on several occasions that they could’ve thrown Sima Taparia into House of the Dragon and nobody would’ve blinked, such is the show’s obsession with matchmaking and ‘swayamvars’.

The bloodiest battles in House of the Dragon all concern women, but they are fought not on vast plains of land with massive armies, or in the air with dragons; they unfold in bedrooms, on beds soaked crimson during childbirth. These scenes are brutal, even by the already heightened standards of George RR Martin’s universe. And I’m not sure if we should appreciate the show for portraying visceral reality without, so to speak, pushing the viewer outside the ICU, or wag a finger in its face for essentially replacing one form of physical torture against women with another.

But House of the Dragon is, in many ways, a more challenging show than Game of Thrones, not least of which is its absolute refusal to present us with straightforward heroes to root for. There is no Ned Stark stand-in here, although there are versions of Dario Naharis and Petyr Baelish. In fact, the character that everybody has decided to stan, King Viserys, might have bucked tradition to name a female heir and rejected the idea of marrying a 12-year-old, but he did marry a 15-year-old instead, and essentially sacrificed his wife on the 50-50 chance that she provides him with a male successor. The importance of bloodlines is foreshadowed before every episode, in a lavish opening credits sequence that shows rivers of blood streaming between the kingdoms of Valyria.

It is encouraging, however, to see audiences embrace Paddy Considine’s vulnerable interpretation of a character that would normally be associated with a certain kind of masculinity.

Like a well-meaning father, Viserys is disgusted when he hears murmurs about his brother Daemon and Rhaenyra having fooled around one night, but not because they are uncle and niece. He’s mostly concerned about the wayward Daemon being a bad influence in the princess’ life. And as strange as it may seem, it’s endearing to observe, much like watching Daemon’s scandalous relationship with Rhaenyra evolve into a rather healthy marriage. All things considered. Unlike Game of Thrones, a show in which incest felt icky every time it was brought up, House of the Dragon treats this thorny idea with the matter-of-factness of Otto Hightower whispering Iago-like instructions to Alicent. It is a reflection of how desensitised we have become to grossness, and how successful House of the Dragon is in establishing its warped internal logic, that the show feels the need to jolt us out of our stupor by suggesting, if only for a moment, that a baby girl be married to her baby brother.

Skullduggery and scandal made Game of Thrones perhaps the most expensive guilty pleasure ever produced. But House of the Dragon, despite similar trashiness, at least doesn’t make you judge yourself for enjoying it.