Category: Game of Thrones

There’s something uniquely satisfying about the opening of a Game of Thrones episode. Before we get into the credits, before we remember where we are in the story and what all the various plot threads are, we usually get a cold open—a scene or sequence that immediately pulls us into the world and often delivers something memorable before the title sequence even rolls. These cold opens were one of the show’s most consistent strengths, and they deserve to be appreciated for what they accomplished: grabbing your attention immediately, setting the tone for the entire episode, and often delivering some of the most compelling dramatic moments the show had to offer.

The cold open as a storytelling device is deceptively simple, but it’s incredibly difficult to execute well. You have maybe five to ten minutes to make an impression before the credits roll. You have to establish location, introduce stakes, and usually tell a complete micro-story, all while introducing the episode’s thematic concerns and emotional baseline. When Game of Thrones got this right, it was magical. When it got it wrong, the entire episode could feel off-balance. Over eight seasons, the show became increasingly sophisticated at using the cold open to shape the viewer’s experience, and understanding why these openings work is key to understanding what made Game of Thrones compelling.

The Original Formula: Setting the Scene

In the earliest seasons, the cold open often served primarily as a world-building tool. The show would open on a location we hadn’t seen before, or on a scene that didn’t involve the main characters, just to establish the physical geography of Westeros and show us the daily texture of life in this world. We’d see what King’s Landing looked like in the morning before the main plot began. We’d see people in the North going about their business. We’d see the small, human moments that gave the world weight and reality.

These early openings were effective because they trusted the audience to stay engaged with pure storytelling and world-building, without the comfort of familiar characters or obvious stakes. The very first scene of the entire series—the prologue with the White Walkers—works this way. We don’t know these characters. We don’t understand what we’re looking at. But the scene’s atmosphere, the design, the performance, and the music make us lean forward in our seats, paying attention. Something bad is coming. We don’t know what, but we know it matters.

This formula wasn’t unique to Game of Thrones, of course. But the show demonstrated a real mastery of pacing in these early openings. The scenes gave us time to settle in, to appreciate details, to let tension build gradually rather than being thrown immediately into the loudest, most obvious dramatic moment. That restraint was actually remarkably effective.

Escalation: The Big Spectacle Opens

As the show progressed, the cold opens started to escalate. By the middle seasons, cold opens weren’t just about setting the scene anymore—they were about delivering shocking moments or major plot developments right at the top of the episode. The opening of Season Three had Robb Stark getting married, which seemed like a normal scene until suddenly it wasn’t, and we realized we were watching the setup for the Red Wedding. The cold open didn’t show us the wedding itself; it showed us the moment before, building tension and dread without explaining why we should feel that way.

This escalation worked because the show had earned our investment in these moments. By the time we got to Season Three, we understood that a seemingly normal scene could become devastating. The show had demonstrated that trust the audience wouldn’t betray us arbitrarily—if we were seeing something that felt ominous, it was probably for a reason.

Some of the most spectacular cold opens came later in the series. The opening of the season premiere after Daenerys had arrived in Westeros—showing her massive army and her approach to Dragonstone—was a cold open that said, “Everything is about to change.” The opening with the Loot Train battle, showing Daenerys and her dragons actually engaging in warfare, was a cold open that demonstrated the stakes of the show had escalated. These weren’t stories; they were moments of spectacle designed to make you sit up and pay attention.

The Master Class: Character-Driven Opens

Some of the most effective cold opens, though, weren’t spectacle. They were character moments that revealed something essential about who people were and what they wanted. The episode that opens with Arya Stark preparing for what she thinks will be her death, steeling herself with a Stark motto and then learning she’s free—that’s a cold open that’s entirely character work, and it’s devastating precisely because it’s so intimate.

The opening with Theon getting his head cut off—not Theon himself, but his betrayal becoming real in a way that seems to take his own story away from him—is a cold open that uses a shocking moment not for its own sake but to tell us something about how this world works and what cruelty looks like. The shock isn’t the point; the character revelation is.

Cersei’s trial and her walk of atonement opening an episode is a cold open that’s entirely focused on one character’s internal experience. We watch her pride break, we watch her humiliation, and we understand that something fundamental has shifted in her. That’s not spectacle; that’s acting, cinematography, and emotional storytelling combining to create something that stays with you.

The Problem Openings: When It Didn’t Work

Of course, not every cold open landed. Some of the later season openings felt more like they were just hurrying to get through setup material so the show could get to the scenes the writers actually cared about. When cold opens stopped being organic moments in the story and started feeling like obligation, they lost their power.

The show also occasionally made the mistake of thinking that shock value alone was enough to make a cold open work. There are a few openings that rely on a sudden revelation or a gruesome image without that revelation or image having earned its emotional weight. Those moments tend to feel exploitative rather than narratively necessary.

There’s also the danger of cold opens that try too hard to be clever or mysterious, that spend the first ten minutes showing us something we don’t understand and then never quite connect it to the rest of the episode in a way that satisfies. The best cold opens are usually the ones where you understand immediately why you’re watching what you’re watching and what it means for the episode to come.

The Architecture of Tension

What unites the best Game of Thrones cold opens is that they understand how to architect tension over the course of a few minutes. They don’t just start at maximum intensity and stay there—they build. They give you moments of calm that make the tense moments work harder. They use music and cinematography to shift your emotional state. They trust silence and stillness to be just as powerful as action.

The opening that cuts between Theon’s torture and the Stark children’s daily life, showing the contrast between his suffering and their ordinary existence, is a master class in this kind of montage work. It’s not spectacular in the traditional sense, but it’s remarkably effective because it’s rhythmic. It builds understanding through repetition and contrast.

The opening that shows various characters reacting to a major event—a death, a betrayal, a revelation—is a cold open structure that the show used effectively several times. By showing multiple perspectives, by giving each character a moment to respond, the show escalated the emotional impact. You see the news hitting one person, and your emotional response amplifies when you see how it hits someone else.

The Final Seasons: Losing the Thread

In the final season, the cold opens felt like they lost some of their purpose. They became more functional—we need to establish where everyone is and what they’re doing—rather than artful. There were still moments, certainly, but the opening of the final season premiere, with its focus on establishing the lineup of characters and showing the military preparations, felt more like exposition than story. It did its job, but it didn’t do more than its job.

This is emblematic of what happened to the show’s pacing in general. As the writers hurried toward the ending, they lost some of the patience that had made the show distinctive in the first place. The cold opens, which had been such an effective tool for making viewers lean in and trust the show, started to feel like boxes being checked.

Why Cold Opens Matter

The cold open might seem like a small thing, a minor element of how an episode is structured. But when you think about what it actually does—immediately establishing the show’s tone, introducing stakes, demonstrating craft and control—you realize it’s actually a barometer for how well the show is functioning overall. The shows with the best cold opens are usually the shows with the best overall control of pacing and audience engagement.

Game of Thrones in its best form understood that television is pacing and tone and rhythm just as much as it is plot and character. The cold open was where the show could demonstrate that it understood those things. A perfectly constructed cold open says, “We know what we’re doing. We know how to tell a story. Sit back and trust us.”

The cold opens that work best are often the ones that seem simple in retrospect. They’re not trying to be clever for the sake of cleverness. They’re not piling on effects or twists. They’re just doing the work of storytelling—establishing a place, introducing a conflict, making you care about what happens next. When Game of Thrones did that work well, everything that followed felt earned and necessary. When it stopped doing that work, the whole episode felt like it was playing catch-up.

The Legacy of the Cold Open

Looking back on Game of Thrones now, the cold opens are some of the most rewatchable moments from the series. They’re the sequences you’d show someone to explain why the show was effective, why people stayed invested, why the craft mattered. They’re moments where the show demonstrated that it understood television as a medium and knew how to use that medium to tell stories effectively.

The best cold opens from Game of Thrones will probably become textbook examples in writing and directing classes—not because they’re the most spectacular moments, but because they’re expertly constructed pieces of storytelling. They open a door, bring you through, and leave you ready for what comes next. They make you feel like you’ve just settled in for a story told by people who know what they’re doing.

That might sound like a small thing to celebrate, but it’s not. In a show as sprawling and complex as Game of Thrones, the ability to grab attention quickly and focus it sharply was one of the show’s greatest assets. The cold opens delivered on that promise, and when the show was working, these five or ten minutes of perfect storytelling set up everything that came after. They’re one of the reasons the first few seasons feel so tight, so controlled, and so utterly rewatchable.

The universe of Star Wars had a problem. After the conclusion of the Skywalker saga, the franchise faced a fundamental question: where do we go from here? How do you follow the enormous scope of the main trilogy without just trying to replicate it? The answer, when it finally arrived in The Mandalorian, was elegant and smart. Go smaller. Focus on individual characters rather than galaxy-spanning conflicts. Tell intimate stories set in the larger universe rather than trying to shake the foundations of that universe.

Now, fast forward to the Game of Thrones universe, which faced a nearly identical problem. House of the Dragon chose to go bigger and grander, diving deep into the Targaryen civil war that’s central to Game of Thrones lore. But A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms made the same choice as The Mandalorian: go smaller. Focus on two characters on a journey. Tell stories about individuals and communities rather than kingdoms at war. Use the larger universe as a backdrop rather than the center of the story.

These two shows—separated by franchise, by genre in many ways, by entirely different production contexts—have discovered the same solution to the central challenge of spinoff storytelling: how to honor and build on a legacy universe without trying to replicate or overshadow what came before. Let’s talk about what they’re both doing right and what their shared approach can tell us about how to make successful spinoffs.

The Problem with Going Big After Success

There’s a natural instinct when a franchise has been wildly successful to think that the path forward is to go bigger. More money, more spectacle, more scope. If the original was epic, the spinoff should be even more epic. This led to some genuinely catastrophic decisions in Star Wars: projects that tried to recapture the magic of the original trilogy by making them even more grandiose, or projects that tried to tell stories that were so huge they collapsed under their own weight.

Game of Thrones itself kind of fell victim to this instinct. The later seasons, increasingly desperate to bring massive storylines to conclusions, became less intimate and more focused on delivering shocking moments and large-scale destruction. It worked sometimes, but there’s a sense that the show forgot what made it special in the first place: its ability to weave together character-driven stories set in a realized world.

Both The Mandalorian and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms recognized that the winning move isn’t to try to match the scope of what came before. It’s to do something different. It’s to recognize that audiences are hungry for something other than just more of the same, and that intimate, character-driven storytelling can be just as compelling as epic narratives. The Mandalorian is successful because it’s willing to be a bounty hunter show first and a Star Wars show second. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is successful because it’s willing to be a road narrative first and a Game of Thrones show second.

Structure: The Episodic Advantage

One of the most interesting similarities between The Mandalorian and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is their shared structural approach: episodic storytelling with overarching character arcs. Both shows follow characters traveling through their respective worlds. Both shows structure their narratives around specific adventures or encounters while maintaining longer-term character development.

The Mandalorian’s first season is explicitly structured around Din Djarin taking bounties and going to different planets to fulfill those bounties. Each episode is relatively self-contained, though there’s ongoing character development and world-building across the season. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms similarly structures its narrative around Dunk and Egg traveling and encountering different situations. Each episode could theoretically stand on its own, but they’re woven together by the characters’ journey and their relationship.

This episodic structure is actually perfect for spinoff storytelling because it allows you to tell multiple stories set in the established universe without needing to connect everything through complex plot mechanics. You’re not trying to solve every mystery or explain every mystery from the original. You’re just showing us how this world works from a different perspective, through different eyes. The structure gives you permission to meander a little, to focus on character moments and world-building without constantly advancing some enormous mythological plot.

There’s also something liberating about episodic structure for the creative team. You’re not locked into a five-season plan where every choice has to serve some predetermined endpoint. You have flexibility to develop characters organically, to let stories breathe, to end a season when you’ve told a good story rather than trying to stretch things out to hit some predetermined beat.

Avoiding the Legacy Burden

Here’s where both of these shows are really clever: they understand that being a spinoff of something beloved can actually be a burden. The weight of canon, the expectations of fans who care deeply about the original, the pressure to somehow tie everything back to what came before—these can be creatively paralyzing. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and The Mandalorian both deal with this by not trying to explain or resolve the mysterious elements that fans are curious about.

The Mandalorian doesn’t try to definitively answer questions about the state of the galaxy after the events of the main saga. It just shows us how the galaxy works now. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms doesn’t try to answer all the questions about what happened during the Targaryen civil war or what the Targaryen dynasty’s future holds. It shows us a snapshot of the world at a specific moment.

This is actually the perfect approach for a legacy universe spinoff. You’re not trying to write the definitive history. You’re not trying to fill in all the gaps that curious fans have identified. You’re just telling a story that happens to be set in this world. This takes an enormous amount of pressure off because you’re allowed to focus on what makes your story good rather than what makes it comprehensive.

Both shows also benefit from having a clear creative vision that’s somewhat independent of the original’s vision. The Mandalorian isn’t pretending to be like the original trilogy. It’s a completely different kind of show—more of a western, more of a buddy comedy in places, with a totally different tone. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms similarly isn’t trying to replicate the tone or scale of Game of Thrones. It’s doing its own thing within the same universe.

Character Focus Over World-Saving Stakes

Both The Mandalorian and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms place an enormous emphasis on character relationships rather than world-shaking conflicts. The Mandalorian is, at its heart, about the relationship between Din and Grogu. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is about the relationship between Dunk and Egg. These relationships are the emotional core of both shows. They’re what we’re actually invested in watching.

This is crucial because it means both shows can sustain interest even when the individual episodes don’t have massive stakes. An episode of The Mandalorian might just be about a prison break that goes wrong or a mission to capture something on a specific planet. An episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms might just be about a tournament or a local problem with a lord. The stakes are real within the context of the story, but they’re not world-ending stakes.

And yet, because we care about the characters involved, we’re genuinely invested in how things turn out. We’re not watching these shows because we need to know what happens to the fate of galaxies or kingdoms. We’re watching because we want to see what happens to Din and Grogu, or to Dunk and Egg. That’s a fundamentally different kind of investment, but it’s no less engaging.

Both shows understand that character moments are often more important than action beats. Both are willing to slow down and have scenes where people just talk, where relationships develop, where we get to know these characters more deeply. These are the scenes that make the exciting moments matter more, because we understand what’s being risked.

Building World Through Detail, Not Exposition

Neither The Mandalorian nor A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms relies on heavy exposition to explain how their worlds work. Instead, both build their worlds through observation and detail. In The Mandalorian, we learn how the galaxy works by watching Din navigate it. We see communities dealing with the aftermath of war. We see different cultures and how they interact. We learn the state of things through action and observation rather than explanation.

Similarly, in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, we learn how Westeros works by watching Dunk navigate it. We see different lords and how they behave. We see communities in different regions. We encounter the reality of feudalism not through lectures but through watching how it functions in actual situations. This creates a much richer sense of world than exposition could ever provide because we’re experiencing the world through the characters’ perspective.

This approach also means that both shows can maintain mystery and uncertainty. They don’t need to explain everything because they’re not trying to provide a comprehensive guide to their universes. They’re just showing us the parts of the world that matter to their specific stories. This is actually perfect for building a sense of a larger world that exists beyond what we see on screen.

The Emotional Payoff of Small Stories

Perhaps the most important similarity between these shows is that they’ve both discovered that small stories can have enormous emotional impact. The Mandalorian’s finale of Season 1 is genuinely moving not because it resolves some cosmic conflict, but because of what it means for Din and Grogu’s relationship. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ emotional moments land hardest when they’re about the relationships between characters rather than about historical events or political maneuvering.

This is actually in direct contrast to a lot of modern television, which assumes that bigger scale automatically creates bigger emotional impact. But that’s not true. The most moving moments in storytelling often come from intimate character work. When you’ve spent time getting to know people, when you understand their hopes and fears and dreams, when you genuinely care about their outcomes, small moments become huge.

Both shows understand this in their bones. They structure their narratives to create space for these emotional moments. They trust that the audience will be moved by watching characters they care about face difficult situations and make hard choices. And they’re right. The response to both shows suggests that audiences are hungry for precisely this kind of storytelling.

When Intimacy Works Better Than Spectacle

There’s something genuinely subversive about The Mandalorian and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms in the current landscape of prestige television. They’re suggesting that intimate storytelling might actually be more compelling than epic spectacle. Not that spectacle is bad, but that you don’t need it to tell a story worth watching. You don’t need the most expensive action sequences or the most impressive visual effects. You need compelling characters and a world worth exploring.

The Mandalorian proved this conclusively—it became one of the most popular Star Wars properties despite (or maybe because of) being much smaller in scope than the main saga. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is proving it again. These shows are telling us something important: audiences want to feel like they’re actually experiencing a world and understanding characters deeply. They want intimate relationships and real stakes for people they care about. They want storytelling that trusts them to be interested in human drama.

Conclusion: The Future of Spinoffs

If there’s a lesson that The Mandalorian and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are both teaching, it’s this: the most successful spinoffs don’t try to be bigger or more important than what came before. They go smaller. They go more intimate. They find a different angle, a different tone, a different kind of story to tell within the same universe. They trust that audiences are hungry for character-driven narratives set in realized worlds, and that we don’t need world-ending stakes to be emotionally invested.

This has implications not just for Star Wars and Game of Thrones, but for how we think about legacy universes more broadly. The instinct to go bigger after massive success is natural, but these shows suggest that the winning move is often to do something different. Find a new perspective. Tell a new kind of story. Use the established universe as a foundation for something that stands on its own terms.

The Mandalorian opened the door for intimate Star Wars storytelling. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is opening a similar door for Game of Thrones. And both shows are teaching the entertainment industry a valuable lesson about what audiences actually want. We want good characters. We want to understand how worlds work through observation and detail. We want stories that trust us to be interested in human drama. We want spinoffs that are confident enough to go smaller rather than bigger, intimate rather than epic. And when done with skill and care, that approach creates some of the most compelling television we’ve seen in years.

There’s been a lot written about George R.R. Martin’s writing style over the years, and most of it focuses on the sprawling complexity of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the moral ambiguity of his characters, the willingness to kill off major characters, and the intricate political maneuvering that defines the series. All of that is true and important. But if you really want to understand what Martin values as a writer—what he cares about beyond the mechanics of plotting and the shock value of unexpected deaths—the Dunk & Egg novellas are where you need to look.

These stories are radically different from the main Game of Thrones series, and they’re different in ways that reveal something genuinely important about Martin’s priorities. Where the main series is sprawling and complex and full of scheming and tragedy, the Dunk & Egg stories are intimate, often surprisingly hopeful, and focused on personal growth and genuine connection between people. They show us a side of Martin that rarely gets to express itself in the main series—a side that cares deeply about honor, that believes in the possibility of good people doing good things, that’s interested in exploring questions about what it means to be decent in an indecent world.

The HBO adaptation of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms hasn’t just brought these stories to a new audience. It’s highlighted the extent to which Martin has compartmentalized his storytelling. These novellas are his “lighter” works, his more hopeful works, his works that genuinely care about whether characters improve as people. And understanding what Martin does with that room to be hopeful tells us a lot about what he actually values as a writer.

The Luxury of Hope

The most immediately striking difference between the Dunk & Egg novellas and the main Game of Thrones series is the presence of genuine hope. Not naive optimism, and not a lack of danger or real stakes, but an actual sense that things could work out okay for decent people. Dunk and Egg face real challenges and real threats, but there’s a sense throughout their story that their decency and their determination might actually lead somewhere good.

This is almost shocking when you come to these stories from the main series. In A Song of Ice and Fire, hope is usually presented as a kind of fatal weakness. Ned Stark’s commitment to honor and justice gets him killed. Characters who care deeply about other people get hurt through that caring. Good intentions lead to catastrophic outcomes. The world of the main series has a deeply cynical bent—it’s not that good people never win, it’s that the rules are fundamentally stacked against them, and survival often requires abandoning the principles that made you a good person in the first place.

The Dunk & Egg stories aren’t like that. Dunk is an honorable person, and his honor doesn’t automatically destroy him. He makes mistakes, sure, and he faces real consequences, but there’s a sense that being a good person is actually valuable, that decency matters. It’s not rewarded automatically or excessively, but it’s not punished as harshly as it is in the main series. The world of Dunk and Egg is still a feudal system that’s fundamentally unjust, but it’s not a world where good intentions are essentially a death sentence.

This suggests that Martin has two different registers as a writer. In the main series, he’s interested in exploring how good people are crushed by systems and circumstances beyond their control. In the Dunk & Egg stories, he’s interested in exploring how good people navigate systems and circumstances, and whether they can improve themselves and others despite those constraints. These aren’t contradictory viewpoints—they’re different angles on similar questions. But the fact that Martin deliberately chose to write some stories in the hopeful register tells us that he values that kind of storytelling, that he finds it creatively satisfying.

Character Development and Personal Growth

Something else that immediately stands out about the Dunk & Egg novellas is how much they care about character development. Dunk changes throughout his journey. He becomes wiser, more self-aware, better at understanding other people. Egg develops from a spoiled royal brat into someone with genuine empathy and a more sophisticated understanding of the world. These are relatively subtle changes—Martin isn’t about obvious transformation arcs—but they’re consistent and meaningful.

The main Game of Thrones series has character development, of course, but it’s often development in the direction of characters becoming harder, colder, more cynical. People lose their innocence. They become willing to do terrible things. They’re shaped by trauma and loss in ways that often make them more ruthless rather than more wise. This is realistic and it’s powerful, but it’s a specific kind of character arc.

The Dunk & Egg novellas show Martin interested in a different kind of arc: characters learning, adapting, and becoming more understanding human beings. Not becoming softer or losing their edges, but becoming more thoughtful and more aware. Dunk learns to read people better. He learns to understand his own limitations. He learns compassion for people very different from himself. These are the kinds of character arcs that the main series rarely allows itself.

This tells us something important about what Martin cares about as a writer. He’s not just interested in exploring how systems crush people. He’s interested in exploring how people grow within systems. He’s interested in the possibility of characters becoming better versions of themselves. This probably sounds obvious, but it’s actually not always clear in the main series, where growth often looks like adaptation to evil rather than movement toward wisdom.

The Power of Genuine Connection

The relationship between Dunk and Egg is the emotional heart of the novellas, and the way Martin handles that relationship tells us a lot about what he values. This is a friendship that crosses enormous social boundaries—between a lowborn commoner and a royal prince. It’s a relationship based on genuine connection and mutual respect, not on power dynamics or calculation.

In the main series, relationships between characters are often tinged with political dimension or twisted by circumstance. Even relationships that seem genuine are frequently complicated by the fact that one person might betray the other for political advantage. The friendship between Tyrion and Jon Snow exists, but it’s peripheral to larger political conflicts. The bonds between characters are constantly tested and often broken by the demands of the political situation.

In the Dunk & Egg stories, the relationship between Dunk and Egg is simple and pure in a way that the main series rarely allows. It’s not without complications—Dunk is frustrated by Egg’s royal assumptions, Egg is frustrated by Dunk’s limitations—but it’s fundamentally about two people caring about each other’s wellbeing. It’s about genuine friendship.

The fact that Martin chose to write these novellas with this kind of uncomplicated emotional core tells us that he values the possibility of genuine human connection. He’s not cynical about friendship or loyalty. He’s willing to write about people who care about each other deeply and whose caring actually makes them better people. In the context of a writer who’s famous for brutal betrayals and the failure of human bonds, this is important. It suggests that Martin doesn’t believe genuine connection is impossible—he’s just interested in exploring what happens when it’s tested.

The Possibility of Redemption

Here’s something that’s much more prominent in the Dunk & Egg novellas than in the main series: the possibility that people can be better than their circumstances suggest they should be. Dunk is a nobody from nowhere, and he could be bitter about that. He could decide that the system is rigged and act accordingly. Instead, he tries to live honorably within that system. People encounter him and see possibility in him, even though his birth suggests he should be limited.

Similarly, various characters in the novellas—some of whom seem like they should be villains—are more complex and more capable of growth than a purely cynical reading would suggest. Lords who are trying to be fair within an unfair system. Knights who are struggling with their own limitations. Even antagonists often have some kind of internal struggle or some sense that they’re trying to do the right thing in a world where doing the right thing is complicated.

This is notably different from the main series, where characters often seem fundamentally defined by their nature in ways that don’t allow for much growth. Some characters are corrupt, and they stay corrupt. Some characters are ruthless, and they become more ruthless. There’s less of a sense that people are constantly struggling to be better or that they’re capable of genuine moral growth.

The Dunk & Egg novellas suggest that Martin is actually interested in redemption narratives and moral growth stories. He’s interested in exploring whether people can do the right thing even when it’s difficult. He’s interested in characters who are trying to be good within systems that don’t always reward goodness. This is a different moral universe than the main series, and it suggests that Martin has more optimism about human nature than the main series sometimes reflects.

The Importance of Duty Done Well

One thing that strikes you when reading the Dunk & Egg novellas is how much Martin respects the simple fulfillment of duty. Dunk takes his responsibilities seriously. He tries to protect people who are weaker than him. He attempts to do his job well even when the job is difficult and poorly compensated. There’s a real admiration in the prose for people who do difficult things for little reward simply because it’s their responsibility.

The main series has duty as a theme—Ned Stark’s entire character is built around duty—but it’s often portrayed as a burden that destroys people. The fulfillment of duty in the main series frequently comes at enormous personal cost and often doesn’t actually result in anything good. Duty becomes something that traps people and limits them.

In the Dunk & Egg novellas, duty is still difficult and still has costs, but there’s a sense that it matters. Doing your job well, helping people when you can, maintaining your honor even when it would be easier not to—these things have value. They might not make you rich or powerful, but they make you a person worth being. This is a fundamentally different moral stance than much of the main series.

The Lighter Touch

Perhaps most importantly, the Dunk & Egg novellas show that Martin has a lighter touch as a writer when he wants to use it. There’s humor in these stories. There’s warmth. There are moments of genuine levity that aren’t undercut by tragedy. The prose is still Martin’s prose—it’s still detailed and specific and grounded—but it’s not carrying the weight of constant doom that the main series does.

This tells us that the grimness and cynicism of the main series aren’t accidents of Martin’s style. They’re deliberate choices about tone and mood. When Martin writes the Dunk & Egg stories, he’s making a different choice. He’s choosing to find humor in situations rather than tragedy. He’s choosing to let characters have moments of happiness without immediately snatching those moments away. He’s choosing a different register of storytelling.

The HBO adaptation of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms carries some of that lighter touch, and it’s refreshing to see. There’s humor, there’s genuine warmth between characters, there are moments where things work out reasonably well. It’s not saccharine or unrealistic, but it has a fundamentally different emotional temperature than Game of Thrones.

Conclusion: Martin’s Secret Optimism

What the Dunk & Egg novellas tell us about George R.R. Martin is that he’s not actually the cynic that the main series sometimes makes him seem. He’s not someone who believes good people are inevitably crushed or that morality is meaningless in a world run by power. Instead, he’s someone who’s interested in exploring multiple perspectives: worlds where good intentions lead to tragedy, but also worlds where good intentions can lead somewhere better.

The novellas are Martin’s opportunity to write the stories he wants to write without the cynicism that defines the main series. They’re where his optimism about human nature gets to express itself. They’re where he can explore the possibility that a lowborn commoner and a royal prince can be genuine friends, that people can grow and improve, that doing your duty well has value even if it doesn’t make you powerful or rich.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms hasn’t just brought the Dunk & Egg novellas to a new audience. It’s highlighted the extent to which these stories represent a different facet of Martin as a writer. They remind us that the author who wrote Game of Thrones is also capable of writing stories about hope, growth, genuine connection, and the possibility that decent people can navigate an indecent world without being destroyed by it. And that actually tells us something important about what Martin really values as a writer. Beneath the cynicism and the political intrigue and the shocking deaths, there’s someone who still believes that honor matters, that friendship is real, and that trying to do the right thing has meaning. The Dunk & Egg novellas are where that belief gets to fully express itself.

There’s something almost Shakespearean about Aemond Targaryen. He’s not the main character—he’s not even supposed to be—and yet he commands your attention every time he’s on screen. In House of the Dragon, he’s simultaneously the villain of his own story and a victim of circumstances beyond his control. He’s a skilled warrior, a devoted dragon rider, and a cold-eyed strategist, yet he’s also deeply wounded in ways that make you want to hate him and sympathize with him in equal measure. That contradiction is what makes Aemond one of the most fascinating characters in the entire series, and possibly the most tragic.

Aemond’s tragedy begins before he’s even born. As the second son of Alicent Hightower, he enters a world where his existence is almost an afterthought. His older brother Aegon II is the heir, positioned from birth to inherit the Iron Throne. Aemond, by contrast, is meant to be the spare—useful as a backup, but never the priority. This particular brand of royal neglect is more subtle than outright abuse, but it cuts deeper because it’s built into the very structure of his family and his world. Everyone around him treats this as normal, which somehow makes it worse.

The Eye, The Insult, and The Beginning of Bitterness

The pivotal moment of Aemond’s childhood arrives when his nephews, Jacaerys and Lucerys Velaryon—Rhaenyra’s children—are visiting King’s Landing with their mother. Young Lucerys, barely more than a child himself, is riding a dragon named Arrax. Aemond wants a dragon of his own and he wants one badly. While the older kids are at Dragonstone, Aemond succeeds where no one else has: he claims the dragon Vhagar, the largest living dragon in all of Westeros and the former mount of Visenya Targaryen herself. It’s an extraordinary achievement for a child. In any other circumstance, it would be celebrated as a triumph of will and boldness.

But when Lucerys finds out, he’s devastated. Arrax was supposed to be his dragon, his special connection to his heritage, his place in the world. The resentment festering between the Targaryen siblings boils over into that famous scene where they physically fight, and Lucerys, in panic and desperation, slashes a blade across Aemond’s face, taking his eye. It’s a moment of childhood violence that will echo across the entire series, shaping everything that comes after.

What makes this moment so crucial is how everyone reacts to it. Aemond loses his eye, a permanent disfigurement that will mark him forever, and the response from the adults around him is… complicated. There’s sympathy, certainly, but also a kind of acceptance that accidents happen, that boys will be boys, that this is just what happens in a royal family. Rhaenyra’s children, by contrast, are the ones who get blamed more severely, the ones whose existence is treated as an insult to the Greens. The eye wound becomes, in Aemond’s mind and in the minds of his family, a permanent debt that Rhaenyra and her children owe him.

The eye becomes Aemond’s obsession. He wears it like a badge of martyrdom, and in many ways, it’s the root of everything he becomes. In that single moment, he transforms from a neglected second son into someone with a cause, a grievance, a reason to matter. The eyepatch becomes his identity.

The Making of a Warrior

What’s remarkable about Aemond’s character arc is that he doesn’t let his disability defeat him. Instead, he channels his pain and rage into becoming an exceptional warrior. He trains obsessively, driven by something deeper than mere ambition. He’s trying to prove something—to his father, to his mother, to himself, to everyone who ever doubted him. By the time we see him as a young man in House of the Dragon, Aemond is one of the most skilled swordsmen in King’s Landing. He rides Vhagar, a dragon older than some kingdoms. He’s intelligent, articulate, and devastatingly charismatic when he wants to be.

But here’s the tragedy: none of it matters in the way he hoped it would. He’s still the second son. He still doesn’t get the throne. He still doesn’t get to matter in the way that matters most. His father died without ever truly valuing him the way he valued Aegon. His mother loves him, but primarily as a tool to secure the succession of her chosen son. Aemond can ride the largest dragon in the world, he can slay his enemies, he can scheme and strategize, but he cannot escape the fundamental injustice of his birth order.

This is where Aemond becomes truly dangerous. Not because he’s evil, but because he’s desperate. He’s spent his entire life being told that he’s not enough, that his older brother matters more, that his existence is secondary. And now, when it might finally be his moment—when chaos is breaking out and the realm is tearing itself apart—he still can’t be the one in charge. Aegon II is king, not him. He has to be the right hand, the loyal brother, the loyal subject. Even when he’s arguably the more capable leader, even when he’s the one with the military skill and the political acumen, he’s still not quite enough.

The Warrior’s Burden

What makes Aemond particularly sympathetic, despite his cruelty and his spite, is that we can see the moment he accepts his limitations and tries to be the brother that Aegon needs. Early in the series, Aemond is arrogant and dismissive of Aegon, treating him with barely concealed contempt for his younger brother’s weakness and lack of discipline. But as the war progresses, Aemond steps into the role of primary military strategist and dragon rider. He’s the one flying Vhagar, the one winning battles, the one actually holding the realm together while his king brother stumbles through the responsibilities of the throne.

There’s something almost tragic about watching Aemond surrender to his fate. He knows what he could be. He knows that in another birth order, in another family, he could have been a great king. But he accepts his role as second-in-command, accepts that he will serve his brother’s vision rather than pursue his own. It’s a form of nobility, in its way, which makes his later actions—the decisions he makes as the war drags on—all the more devastating.

The episode where Aemond commits what amounts to a war crime by incinerating an entire castle full of people shows us the breaking point. He’s been containing his rage, channeling it into duty and service, and it finally explodes. The provocation might be relatively minor—a slight, a insult, a moment of disrespect—but it’s the culmination of a lifetime of accumulated slights and insults. When Aemond snaps, he doesn’t just snap at the immediate situation; he snaps at the entire universe that has denied him his due.

The Complexity of a Second Son’s Rage

What separates Aemond from being a simple villain is that we understand his rage. We might not excuse it, but we understand it. Throughout his life, Aemond has been told that he matters less, that his pain doesn’t count as much, that his achievements will always be secondary to his brother’s birthright. He’s internalized these messages and turned them into something even more dangerous: not self-pity, but a righteous sense of injustice. He doesn’t see himself as a bad person acting badly; he sees himself as someone finally taking what he deserves and punishing those who took it from him first.

The brilliance of House of the Dragon’s portrayal of Aemond is that it shows us how a sympathetic person can become unsympathetic through the accumulation of wounds and the refusal to process them in healthy ways. Aemond never gets the therapy session where he talks about his eye, where he processes the unfairness of his childhood, where he acknowledges that his rage is partially rooted in paternal neglect and sibling rivalry. Instead, he bottles it up, weaponizes it, and eventually unleashes it in ways that are genuinely horrifying.

By the end of Aemond’s arc, he’s a tragic figure in the truest sense. He’s capable of great things, and he’s accomplished great things, but he’s also become the worst parts of himself. He’s a victim who has victimized others. He’s a broken person who has broken others in return. There’s no redemption available to him, not really, because he’s made choices that can’t be unmade. But there’s also deep sadness in seeing what he could have been if his family had simply valued him equally, if he’d been born first, if that eye had never been lost.

Conclusion: The Tragic Depth of a Secondary Character

Aemond Targaryen is the most fascinating character in House of the Dragon because he occupies that rare space where he’s simultaneously pathetic and powerful, sympathetic and culpable, a victim and a villain. He’s not the protagonist of the story, but he’s the emotional center of it in many ways. His tragedy is not the tragedy of great ambitions thwarted by fate—it’s the tragedy of a capable person systematically made to feel insufficient, and his eventual breaking is not surprising so much as inevitable.

What makes him fascinating is that we can see ourselves in him, in some small way. We’ve all felt like the second son at some point, like we weren’t enough, like our achievements didn’t matter as much as someone else’s potential. Aemond takes that universal feeling of inadequacy and turns it into something dark and dangerous, and that’s what makes him compulsively watchable. He’s the character you hate but can’t stop thinking about, the one whose motivations you understand even when you abhor his actions.

In the end, Aemond Targaryen is a masterclass in tragic character writing, a testament to what happens when a system crushes someone gently enough that they don’t realize they’re being crushed until it’s far too late. He’s the most interesting character in House of the Dragon not because he’s the most powerful or the most clever, but because his pain is the most relatable, and his darkness is the most human.

The Game of Thrones fandom was not just big—it was absolutely monumental. At its peak, it was arguably the largest, most passionate, most creative, and most chaotic fanbase on the internet. From the early seasons when people were just discovering the show and racing through the books, to the later seasons when the fandom was actively at war with itself over the direction of the series, Game of Thrones fandom basically invented modern internet culture as we know it. The problem is, it also very clearly demonstrated what happens when a fandom gets too big, too invested, and then feels genuinely betrayed by the creators they’ve been supporting.

The Theory Crafting Era: When the Fandom Was United

In the early seasons of Game of Thrones, the fandom was genuinely united in one major way: everyone was theorizing like crazy. Before the internet age, fans would have had to wait for the next book or season to see what happened next. Game of Thrones fandom didn’t wait. They analyzed every scene, every word of dialogue, every piece of symbolism. They crafted elaborate theories about what was coming next, who would die, who was secretly what, and what the endgame would be.

Reddit became the center of this activity. Massive threads on r/asoiaf (A Song of Ice and Fire) and r/gameofthrones would get thousands of comments debating whether Tyrion was a secret Targaryen, whether Jon Snow’s parents were really who everyone thought they were, whether there were secret Targaryen children scattered across the world. These weren’t casual conversations—these were detailed investigations with evidence cited from books and episodes, with users spending hours analyzing genealogies, heraldry, and magical properties.

The beautiful thing about this era was that it felt like fans were in on something exclusive. The books hadn’t been finished, the show was ahead of the books in some storylines, and everyone was collaborating to piece together where things were heading. There was a genuine sense of community. Fans created intricate wiki pages, made elaborate charts, created art and fiction based on their theories. Some of the most detailed world-building discussions on the internet were happening in Game of Thrones fandom communities.

Part of what made this era so special was that it was collaborative. People weren’t fighting about what was good or bad—they were working together to understand what was. The show was still following the books closely enough that fans trusted that the show was moving toward something meaningful. Even when storylines diverged from the books, fans generally trusted that the show knew what it was doing.

The Meme Era: When Fandom Became Mainstream

As Game of Thrones grew in popularity, it became increasingly meme-able. The show’s iconic moments—from Ned Stark’s death to Tyrion’s trial, from the Red Wedding to Joffrey’s death—became part of broader internet culture. But more than that, the fandom created an absolutely staggering amount of content. Fan art, fan fiction, memes, merchandise, conventions dedicated to the show—Game of Thrones fandom became a machine that was constantly creating and circulating content.

The memes were particularly interesting because they evolved based on what was happening in the show. Early memes played with dramatic moments and character dynamics. As the show went on and started making more controversial decisions, the memes shifted to reflect fandom frustration. “The night is dark and full of terrors” became a ubiquitous phrase. “We don’t kneel” became a rallying cry. “Winter is coming” got applied to everything from weather to dreaded events in viewers’ real lives.

What’s important about the meme era is that it represented peak accessibility of the fandom. You didn’t have to spend hours reading theory threads to be part of Game of Thrones fandom culture—you could just appreciate a good meme and feel like you were part of something massive and shared. This is how Game of Thrones went from being a huge show to being a cultural phenomenon that transcended normal television fandom.

The memes also served an important function: they allowed fans to express criticism and frustration in a humorous way. When the show started making decisions that viewers weren’t sure about, memes became a way to collectively process those feelings without being too serious about it. They were simultaneously celebration and criticism, engagement and commentary.

The Theory War Years: When Fandom Started Fracturing

As the show progressed and started making decisions that diverged more significantly from fan theories, the fandom began to fracture. By Season 5, the show was definitively ahead of the books in some storylines, and it became clear that the show was going to conclude before George R.R. Martin finished the books. This created two major schisms in the fandom: people who thought the show was brilliant and the right adaptation of the source material, and people who thought it was deviating too much.

More importantly, though, it became clear that fan theories about the endgame were probably not going to be right. People had spent years building elaborate theories about secret Targaryens, about magical powers, about epic prophecies coming to fruition. The show started suggesting that some of these theories were wrong, or at least not central to where things were heading. The unified fandom that had been collaboratively theorizing started to splinter into people defending their favorite theories and dismissing ones they didn’t like.

Reddit threads that used to be about collaborative world-building became battlegrounds for fans arguing about what was actually going to happen. The beauty of the theory-crafting era had been that you could believe your theory and someone else could believe theirs, and you’d both be excited to find out who was right. But as the show got closer to its ending, theory disagreements became more heated. People took their theories personally. Your theory became your prediction about what the show should do, and when the show didn’t do it, it felt like a personal rejection.

The Shipping Wars and Character Conflicts

As fandom grew, so did the intensity of shipping wars—the conflicts between fans supporting different romantic relationships. Game of Thrones had multiple potential romantic endgames, and fans aligned themselves fiercely with their preferred ships. Jon and Daenerys? Jon and Sansa? Daenerys and nobody because she’s focused on her throne? These weren’t casual preferences—they were part of deeper theories about character trajectories and the ultimate meaning of the story.

The shipping wars became increasingly toxic in later seasons. People weren’t just preferring one ship over another—they were actively hostile to fans of other ships. Character hate escalated. Fans of one character would attack fans of another character. The unified collaborative spirit of earlier fandom gave way to a more competitive, winner-take-all mentality where your ship winning felt like validation and your ship losing felt like personal rejection.

The Final Seasons: When the Fandom Broke

Everything came to a head in Season 8. By this point, the fandom was no longer united or even friendly. It was a complex ecosystem of people who watched the show for different reasons, shipped different relationships, preferred different characters, and had completely different expectations for how things should end. The show had spent eight seasons building toward something, and almost no matter what that something was, a significant portion of the fandom was going to be disappointed.

What Season 8 actually delivered seemed to disappoint almost everyone simultaneously, just in different ways. People who wanted Daenerys and Jon together were upset. People who wanted Daenerys to claim her throne were devastated. People who wanted complex character arcs felt robbed. People who wanted a more optimistic ending felt betrayed by the bleakness. The show had made promises—implicitly and explicitly—that it failed to deliver on, and the fandom was not going to let that go quietly.

The Petition and the Reckoning

The ultimate symbol of fandom broken trust came with the Change.org petition asking HBO to remake Season 8 with different writers. That petition got over 1.7 million signatures. Think about that for a second: nearly 1.7 million people were so upset with the final season that they formally petitioned for it to be completely redone. This wasn’t just online grumbling—this was organized, collective action expressing fundamental dissatisfaction.

The petition became iconic for what it represented: a moment when a fandom that had been overwhelmingly positive and creative turned into something explicitly antagonistic. It wasn’t that fans didn’t like the show anymore—it’s that fans felt lied to by the creators, and they were going to make that feeling known. The fandom that had created elaborate wiki pages and thousands of fan theories had turned into a force that was actively calling for the show to be unmade.

The Internet Did Change

What’s important about the Game of Thrones fandom arc is not just that it shows what happens when a show disappoints its audience. It shows what happens when fandom gets big enough and organized enough to become a significant cultural force. The Game of Thrones fandom basically defined how modern, mainstream television fandoms work. It showed how to collaborate on theories, how to create shared content, how to organize around a show, and ultimately, how to express collective dissatisfaction.

The fandom didn’t just build internet culture—it revealed how fragile that culture could be. Fan commitment, it turns out, is conditional. It’s based on trust that the creators know what they’re doing and are making decisions in service of the story. When that trust breaks down, the same tools that fans used to celebrate and theorize become tools for criticism and rejection.

The Aftermath

What’s interesting about where the Game of Thrones fandom is now is that it never really recovered. Some fans still engage with the show, rewatching favorites, discussing alternative endings, creating fanfiction about how things should have gone. But the unified, massive fandom that was pushing Game of Thrones to the top of every trending topic is gone. The fandom exists now in fragments, with some people defending the later seasons, some people pretending they don’t exist, and some people still angry about what happened.

The Game of Thrones fandom built the internet’s infrastructure for how television fandoms organize and create. It demonstrated the power of collective fan engagement and the power of collective fan disappointment. It showed that internet fandom had grown from a niche hobby to a genuine cultural force capable of influencing how creators talk about their work and how networks plan their futures. But it also showed the darker side of that power—the way collective enthusiasm can become collective rage, the way creative community can become hostile conflict.

Game of Thrones fandom didn’t break the internet, but it certainly tested its limits and revealed some fundamental truths about how parasocial relationships between fans and creators actually work. It’s a lesson that will probably influence how fandoms develop and how creators approach their audiences for a very long time to come.

One of the most captivating elements of House of the Dragon is the way it treats dragons not as simple weapons or props, but as living, thinking creatures with personalities, temperaments, and relationships with their riders. The show goes deeper than Game of Thrones ever did in exploring the actual mechanics of how dragon bonding works, what makes a successful dragon rider, and why some people can claim dragons while others get roasted for even trying. If you’ve ever wondered why Lucerys can ride Arrax but couldn’t just hop on Vhagar, or why dragons have such fierce loyalty to their particular riders, this is the guide for you.

The Fundamental Rule: Dragons Choose Their Riders

This is perhaps the most important thing to understand about dragon bonding in House of the Dragon: dragons have agency. They’re not magical weapons that anyone can pick up and use. They’re intelligent creatures who form deep, almost spiritual bonds with their riders, and this bond is, fundamentally, the dragon’s choice. A person might try to claim a dragon, they might have the blood of Old Valyria running through their veins, they might be a Targaryen with centuries of dragon-riding history in their family, but if the dragon doesn’t want to bond with them, it’s not happening. The dragon might eat them instead, and that’s just how it goes.

This is why Aemond’s claiming of Vhagar is such a significant moment in the story. Vhagar is the largest living dragon in the world, an ancient beast who has known many riders throughout her long life. She’s not some young, wild dragon who might be desperate to bond with her first rider. She’s ancient, she’s experienced, and she’s seen riders come and go. The fact that she accepts Aemond is actually a mark of something special in him. It suggests that there’s something in Aemond’s nature—his determination, his desperation, his will—that resonates with Vhagar. The dragon sees something in the boy, and she chooses him.

Contrast this with other characters who attempt to claim dragons and fail. Throughout the show, we see several instances of would-be dragon riders approaching dragons they hope to bond with, and the dragons rejecting them. Sometimes this rejection is relatively gentle—the dragon simply ignores them. Other times it’s fatal. The point is always the same: the dragon decides, not the human. This creates a dynamic where dragon riders aren’t heroes who conquered beasts through strength or will; they’re partners in a relationship that the dragon had to agree to first.

The Hatching Bond: The Strongest Connection

The absolute strongest dragon bonds are the ones formed when a dragon hatches. When a young Targaryen, or a member of another dragonlord family, is present at the moment a dragon emerges from its egg, there’s a connection that forms that’s almost impossible to replicate. These dragons and their riders grow up together, they’re imprinted on each other, and their bond is often described as almost telepathic in its intimacy. This is why dragons who hatched with their riders are so extraordinarily protective of them and so devastating when something happens to them.

Think about characters like Daenerys and Drogon from Game of Thrones, or in House of the Dragon, the deep bonds between various young Targaryens and their dragons. These bonds formed at hatching are why some people in the world of Westeros have such casual, easy relationships with their dragons. They didn’t have to persuade the dragon to like them because the dragon has literally never known a world without them. The dragon doesn’t see its rider as a separate being who has to be convinced to cooperate; the rider is simply part of the dragon’s life, as essential as breathing.

This is also why some of the most tragic moments in House of the Dragon hit so hard. When a dragon and its rider have that kind of bond from hatching, an injury to one is felt like a physical wound by the other. The dragons grieve. They rage. They burn things in their sorrow. The vulnerability that comes with such a deep bond is part of what makes these creatures so powerful and so pitiable at the same time.

Claiming a Dragon: The Desperate Path to Bonding

Not everyone has the luxury of having a dragon hatch and imprint on them. Some dragonlord families had to deal with situations where they had more family members than dragons, or where political circumstances meant someone didn’t get the dragon that was “supposed” to be theirs. In those cases, claiming a dragon—approaching one directly and trying to form a bond with it after the fact—is an option, though it’s a risky one.

The process of claiming seems to involve a combination of elements: the potential rider has to have Targaryen blood or at least significant Valyrian heritage, they have to approach the dragon with the right mindset (there’s definitely a spiritual or magical component to this), and they have to be someone the dragon is willing to accept. Age plays a factor too—younger people seem to have more success with claiming wild or riderless dragons than older adults do, perhaps because young dragons respond to youth and potential, or because younger people are more flexible and less set in their ways.

When someone successfully claims a dragon after the fact, it’s typically a more transactional bond than a hatching bond, though it can still be quite strong. The dragon accepts the rider, and the rider accepts the dragon, but there’s less of that primal, intertwined connection that comes from growing up together. This might be why dragons with hatching bonds seem more fiercely protective and more willing to follow their riders into impossible situations. The dragon and rider with a hatching bond might literally die for each other. The dragon and rider with a claimed bond are partners, and partnerships, while strong, sometimes have limits.

The Bloodline Question: Why Targaryen Blood Matters

Throughout the lore and the show, there’s this persistent idea that you need Targaryen blood to ride a dragon. There are hints that the blood of Old Valyria confers some kind of advantage, some magical resonance that allows a person to communicate with or bond with dragons. But House of the Dragon complicates this by showing us that Targaryen blood alone isn’t sufficient. There are characters with Targaryen blood who are terrible with dragons, who get eaten when they try to claim them, who don’t have the temperament for bonding.

It seems that what you actually need is some combination of Valyrian blood and something else—determination, strength of will, perhaps a certain kind of magical affinity that you can’t quite define but you know it when you see it. Aemond has it. Daenerys has it. Even relatively minor Targaryen characters tend to have it if they’re going to be dragon riders. The blood of Valyria seems to be a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.

What makes this interesting from a storytelling perspective is that it allows House of the Dragon to tell stories where blood alone doesn’t determine destiny. A Targaryen can have all the right genes but still fail spectacularly if they don’t have the right temperament. A bastard with a drop of Targaryen blood might theoretically have a better shot than a trueborn child of House Targaryen, if they have the strength of will and the magical resonance that the dragons respond to. It’s a system that rewards individual excellence over pure bloodline, which makes the characters’ choices and actions meaningful in a way pure genetic inheritance wouldn’t.

The Emotional Connection: Understanding Your Dragon

One of the most striking things about how House of the Dragon portrays dragon riding is the emphasis on emotional understanding between rider and dragon. It’s not just about sitting on top of the creature and pulling on its reins. The rider has to understand their dragon, has to recognize the dragon’s moods and desires, has to be the kind of person who can interpret what the dragon wants and work with it rather than against it.

This is where we see some riders excel and others fail. Lucerys with Arrax has a gentle, understanding bond. They communicate, they cooperate, they move together as a unit. Aemond with Vhagar has a bond that’s more about strength of will and mutual respect—he commands Vhagar and she obeys, but there’s also something almost tenderly fierce about their relationship. Other riders might struggle because they don’t understand their dragon, because they try to force the dragon to do something against its nature, or because they’re afraid of the creature they’re riding.

The dragon’s personality is hugely important here. A dragon that’s naturally aggressive and bloodthirsty will be a very different mount than a dragon that’s more reserved and selective about when it engages. A dragon that’s old and experienced will have different needs and behaviors than a young, energetic one. The successful rider is the one who understands their particular dragon, who knows how to communicate with it, who can read its moods and work with them rather than fighting against them.

The Limits of Dragon Riding: What Dragons Won’t Do

Despite all the talk of magic and bonding and the supposedly unbreakable connection between a dragon and its rider, House of the Dragon makes clear that dragons still have limits. A dragon might refuse to go somewhere, might refuse to attack a particular target, might balk at something that feels wrong to it. Dragons have their own opinions, their own desires, their own sense of what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

This creates genuine tension in the show because dragon riders can’t just force their dragons to do whatever they want, no matter how much they command or how strong their bond is. Alicent and others seem to have this fantasy that they can simply order the dragons around like soldiers, that the bonding creates absolute obedience. But the dragons are more complicated than that. A dragon might love its rider and still refuse to commit an atrocity. Or it might commit an atrocity because it wants to, regardless of its rider’s wishes.

This unpredictability is part of what makes dragons such powerful and dangerous weapons. They’re not tools that can be fully controlled. They’re partners who have their own agency, their own limits, their own moral boundaries, even if those boundaries are sometimes crossed. A rider can influence their dragon, can suggest actions, can encourage certain behaviors, but ultimately, the dragon decides what it’s willing to do.

Training and Experience: The Years Between Bonding and Battle

One detail that House of the Dragon emphasizes more than Game of Thrones is the gap between bonding with a dragon and actually being ready to use it in combat. Young dragon riders spend years training, learning how to communicate with their dragons, learning how to fight from dragonback, learning how to understand the creature’s moods and movements. It’s not something you can pick up in a few months of casual practice.

This is why young riders can sometimes seem almost undefeatable—they’ve been training with their dragons since childhood, they’ve spent years practicing maneuvers, they know their dragons better than they know their own bodies. Someone who claims a dragon for the first time as an adult, no matter how Targaryen they are, is going to be at a disadvantage compared to someone who’s been flying their dragon since they were old enough to sit in a saddle.

The training and experience also create a kind of muscle memory, a deep understanding of how a particular dragon responds to certain commands or prompts. A rider with years of experience can do things that a novice rider couldn’t possibly accomplish, not because the experienced rider has some magical gift the novice lacks, but because they understand their dragon so deeply that their movements are almost automatic.

Conclusion: Dragons as Characters, Not Weapons

The genius of how House of the Dragon handles dragon riding is that it treats dragons as characters rather than as weapons or tools. Yes, they’re extraordinarily destructive creatures that can burn down castles and kill armies. But they’re also individuals with personalities, preferences, and the capacity for genuine relationship with their riders. They’re not just mindlessly following orders; they’re choosing to cooperate with someone they’ve bonded with.

This approach makes the dragons feel real in a way that purely mechanical creatures wouldn’t. It makes the bonds between riders and dragons matter emotionally, not just tactically. And it creates real stakes because you’re never quite sure what a dragon is going to do. Will it obey its rider? Will it rebel? Will it do something unexpected? The uncertainty is part of what makes these creatures so fascinating to watch. They’re never quite predictable, even to the people who love them and ride them every day.

Understanding these rules of dragon bonding and riding enhances your appreciation of House of the Dragon immensely. When you see Aemond claiming Vhagar, you understand that he’s achieved something extraordinary. When you see a young rider with their dragon, you understand the years of trust and training behind that partnership. And when you see a dragon do something unexpected, you understand that the dragon is making a choice, not just following programming. The dragons in House of the Dragon are characters, and that’s what makes them so compelling.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Game of Thrones’ universe is the incredible diversity of military forces. You have the traditional knights and armies of Westeros, but you also have forces that come from completely different cultures with completely different approaches to warfare. The Unsullied are eunuch slave soldiers trained from birth in the ways of war. The Dothraki are nomadic horse warriors who scorn both walls and formal military structures. These forces represent different worldviews, different values, and different ways of organizing society. They should have been endlessly fascinating from a narrative and thematic perspective.

The problem is that Game of Thrones basically squandered its opportunity to really explore these armies in meaningful ways. The show brought these forces into Westeros, but then largely reduced them to spectacle and numbers rather than truly examining what their presence would mean for the societies they were entering. More frustratingly, in later seasons, the show seemed almost careless about how it used these armies, in ways that contradicted everything we’d been told about what they were and how they functioned.

The Unsullied: From Terrifying Force to Cannon Fodder

When we first encounter the Unsullied, they’re presented as something genuinely frightening and unique. These are soldiers who were trained from childhood to be perfectly obedient, emotionless killing machines. They’re disciplined in a way that normal soldiers aren’t. They’re worth their weight in gold because they’re the most reliable, most skilled warriors money can buy. Daenerys liberates them by basically telling them they can be free, and her gaining their allegiance becomes one of her most significant power moves.

For a while, the Unsullied actually function narratively as this incredible force. They’re professional soldiers in a world of nobles playing at war. They don’t have the arrogance of knights or the randomness of common soldiers—they’re trained, disciplined, effective. But here’s the problem: as the show goes on, the Unsullied become less and less distinctive. They’re still called the Unsullied, and they’re still supposed to be this elite, professional force, but they’re increasingly just… an army.

When they show up in the final season, particularly in the Battle of the Bastards and the assault on the final episodes, they’ve become indistinguishable from any other army. They die in the same ways, in the same numbers, taking the same losses as any other force. The thing that made them special—their discipline, their training, their professional approach to warfare—doesn’t really seem to matter anymore. They’re just a number on the board, a force that’s useful because they exist and can be deployed.

More frustratingly, by the final season, the Unsullied go from being Daenerys’s most reliable, most loyal force to being weirdly vulnerable to just about everything. Remember how they’re supposed to be incredibly skilled soldiers? In the final season, they’re getting destroyed by soldiers who have never trained a day in their lives. The show seemed to forget what the Unsullied actually were and just treated them as casualties who could be killed in large numbers to show that battles were serious.

The Dothraki: Noble Savages to Mindless Cavalry Charge

The Dothraki are even more problematic, honestly, because the show had to navigate some serious stereotypes and tropes about “noble savages” and “barbaric horse warriors.” The Dothraki have their own culture, their own values, their own way of organizing society. They scorn walls and buildings and formal military structures. They’re warriors, yes, but they’re warriors in a way that’s fundamentally different from the ways of Westeros.

When Daenerys gains the allegiance of the Dothraki, it’s supposed to be a major deal. These are warriors who answer to no one, who reject the formal structures of Westeros. Daenerys becoming their leader is supposed to represent something significant about her ability to inspire loyalty and respect across cultures. But as the show goes on, the Dothraki become increasingly one-dimensional. They’re shown primarily in scenes where they’re either committing atrocities or dying in large numbers.

The final season’s treatment of the Dothraki is basically unforgivable from a character standpoint. In the penultimate episode, they charge directly into darkness and get absolutely slaughtered by something they can’t even see. The Dothraki, who are supposed to be tactical and observant warriors, charge blindly into an enemy force. It’s supposed to show how overwhelming the Night King’s army is, but instead it shows the Dothraki as stupid and expendable. Everything we knew about them—their skill as warriors, their tactical flexibility, their refusal to be bound by traditional rules of warfare—gets thrown out in favor of a moment of spectacle.

Even more frustratingly, the show never really seems to grapple with what it means to have these non-Westerosi forces in Westeros. The cultures clash occasionally, but usually just for a scene or two before things move on. The Dothraki don’t fundamentally change how warfare in Westeros works because the show doesn’t want to spend time exploring that. It’s easier to just have them be occasional additions to Daenerys’s army rather than revolutionary forces that would upend how Westerosi knights fight.

The Thematic Failure

Here’s what really bothers me about how the show handled these armies: they represented an opportunity to explore how different cultures and different values intersect. The Unsullied are the ultimate product of oppression and control, yet they’re portrayed as heroic once they’re fighting for Daenerys. The Dothraki are valorized as warriors but shown as brutal and unsuitable for civilized society. These are actually interesting tensions to explore, but the show mostly ignored them in favor of just having cool-looking armies appear in battles.

The show repeatedly showed that it understood these forces were supposed to be distinctive. It spent time in earlier seasons establishing what the Unsullied were and what the Dothraki were. But as the show went on and seemed increasingly focused on just getting through the plot, these armies became less like distinct cultures and more like interchangeable military units. They served whatever narrative purpose the show needed in that moment, then went back to being mostly absent.

Think about how much interesting material there could have been: the trauma of the Unsullied, formerly slaves, learning to function as free soldiers. The culture clash between Dothraki raiding culture and Westerosi concepts of honor and nobility. The way these different forces would approach siege warfare, or leadership, or concepts of loyalty. The show barely touched any of this. The Unsullied became loyal because Daenerys freed them, and that was largely it. The Dothraki followed Daenerys because she impressed them, and they mostly just appeared when the show wanted an action scene.

Spectacle Over Substance

The real issue is that the show increasingly used these armies as spectacle rather than as meaningful military and cultural forces. They’re cool to watch! Dragons burning Dothraki? Unsullied soldiers moving in formation? These are visually impressive. But visual impressiveness doesn’t substitute for character work and cultural exploration.

By the final season, the show was deploying its armies like a video game. You have X number of Unsullied, Y number of Dothraki, some dragons, and you’re going to use them to solve military problems. The show calculated how many soldiers would make Daenerys seem powerful, and that number got deployed as needed. But there’s no consideration for what these soldiers actually are, what their presence means, or what their cultural values would actually be in these situations.

The show also increasingly ignored the logistical realities of these armies. The Dothraki are nomadic warriors—what are they doing sitting around castles? The Unsullied are highly trained soldiers—why would they be used in ways that contradict their entire identity? The show wanted to have these cool armies available, but didn’t want to do the work of actually integrating them into the narrative in ways that made sense.

What Could Have Been

The best version of Game of Thrones would have gone deeper with these forces. It would have explored what it means to transplant soldiers from one culture into a completely different context. It would have shown how the Unsullied, literally trained to follow orders, would develop their own sense of agency and identity. It would have shown how the Dothraki would approach Westerosi warfare and culture and what conflicts that would create.

The story of Daenerys bringing these forces to Westeros could have been as much about cultural collision and transformation as it was about her claiming her throne. The Unsullied and Dothraki could have been not just military assets, but representatives of a different way of being in the world. Their victories and defeats could have meant something beyond just numbers on a battlefield.

Instead, the show essentially decided that having established these distinct military cultures, it could just treat them as interchangeable units whenever it needed a battle scene. That’s a failure of imagination and character work. It’s one of the show’s clearest examples of not following through on the promise of its own world-building.

The Broader Problem

The problem with Game of Thrones’ armies in later seasons is really part of a broader problem with how the show handled its world-building. The show spent early seasons establishing rules, cultures, and systems. Then, in later seasons, it increasingly seemed to ignore those rules in favor of whatever would move the plot forward most dramatically. The Unsullied and Dothraki are just the most visible example of this. They’re unique, distinctive forces that the show promised us would be important, and then the show basically decided they didn’t have to think too hard about how to use them.

Both of these armies deserved better. They deserved to be treated as more than just visual spectacle and plot conveniences. They deserved to actually function as distinct military and cultural forces within the world. And the show deserved to take the time to explore what their presence in Westeros would actually mean for a society that had never encountered anything like them before. Instead, we got cool-looking scenes of dragons and cavalry charges, and not much else. That’s not a tragedy on the level of some of the show’s other failures, but it’s a missed opportunity all the same.

When Aegon II sits on the Iron Throne, it’s immediately clear that he’s not cut out for the job. He’s weak, he’s indecisive, he’s torn between competing advisors who all want different things, and he seems to constantly retreat into substance abuse and self-medication rather than actually dealing with the monumental responsibilities that come with ruling the Seven Kingdoms during wartime. In almost any other story, this would make him a boring character—a bumbling antagonist with no real agency or compelling motivation. But House of the Dragon takes Aegon II’s fundamental inadequacy as a ruler and makes him into one of the most compelling characters on the show precisely because of his failures. He’s the anti-king, the monarch who represents everything that goes wrong when someone unfit for power gets the crown anyway.

The Weakling King Nobody Wanted

The tragedy of Aegon II’s kingship is that it’s built on something he didn’t even really want. His mother, Alicent, made the decision for him. Otto Hightower pushed it forward for dynastic reasons. His brother Aemond goes along with it because he’s a loyal supporter of the Targaryen line, or perhaps because he hopes he can guide Aegon from behind the throne. But Aegon himself? There’s never a sense that he desperately wanted to be king, that he had some burning ambition that drove him to pursue the crown. He got the crown because he was born male, because his grandfather changed his mind at the last minute, because of a bunch of decisions made by other people that Aegon had no control over.

This is actually what makes him so relatable as a character. A lot of us know what it’s like to be pushed into a role we didn’t ask for, to be told we’re supposed to be something we’re not sure we can be, to feel the weight of expectations that far exceed our actual capabilities. Aegon II is that on a cosmic scale. He’s supposed to be king of the Seven Kingdoms, and he’s fundamentally unsuited for it. He knows it, the people around him know it, and the viewer knows it from the moment he sits on the throne.

What’s brilliant about House of the Dragon’s portrayal is that it doesn’t try to make Aegon II into something he’s not. He doesn’t rise to the occasion. He doesn’t find some hidden reserve of strength and wisdom that allows him to excel despite his apparent weaknesses. Instead, he’s just… a failing king. He makes bad decisions. He listens to the wrong advisors. He relies on substances to get through the day. He does things that seem cruel not because he’s inherently cruel, but because he’s panicking and lashing out at threats he doesn’t fully understand.

The Weight of Expectation vs. The Reality of Capability

One of the central tensions of Aegon II’s character is the gap between what he’s supposed to be and what he actually is. He’s supposed to be a king, a leader, a symbol of Targaryen power and Targaryen rule. He has the blood, he has the crown, he has the throne. But he doesn’t have the temperament, the intelligence, the moral clarity, or the strength of will that a king actually needs to lead a kingdom through a civil war.

We see this most clearly in his decision-making. When faced with difficult choices, Aegon frequently chooses poorly, and not always for reasons that are inherently morally wrong—he just lacks the wisdom or foresight to understand the consequences of his actions. He’s swayed by people around him who have their own agendas. He makes impulsive decisions and then has to live with the fallout. He’s reactive rather than proactive, responding to crises rather than anticipating them.

The most striking thing about Aegon II’s kingship is that it’s probably worse for the realm than Rhaenyra’s would have been, even though Rhaenyra is presented as somewhat incompetent herself. At least Rhaenyra has advisors who are relatively competent and who generally have the kingdom’s interests at heart. Aegon II’s small council is a disaster—Otto Hightower is serving his family’s interests above the realm’s, Alicent is emotionally driven and prone to poor decision-making, and various other members are all pulling in different directions.

The Sympathetic Despot: A Tyrant Who Doesn’t Want to Tyrannize

What makes Aegon II’s character work is that he’s not a scheming despot who actively wants to cause harm. He’s not Joffrey, who was cruel and capricious for the sheer joy of it. Aegon II’s cruelty, such as it is, emerges from weakness and desperation rather than genuine malice. He doesn’t want to be a tyrant, but he also doesn’t have the competence to be a good king, so he ends up trapped somewhere in the middle—making increasingly desperate and harmful decisions as he tries to maintain control of a situation he never wanted and doesn’t understand.

There are moments where you can see Aegon II wanting to do the right thing, wanting to be a good ruler, wanting to live up to the role he’s been placed in. But he keeps failing, keeps falling short, keeps making mistakes. And as the failures accumulate, he becomes more paranoid, more reliant on his inner circle for reassurance, more willing to make harsh decisions just to prove that he’s in control even when he clearly isn’t.

This is actually more interesting, from a character perspective, than if Aegon II were simply a villain. A villain is predictable. A villain wants things. Aegon II wants to not be failing, which is a much more complicated and human motivation. His desperation to not fail becomes almost as destructive as actual malice would be, because it drives him to overreach, to make statements of power that he doesn’t actually possess, to commit acts of violence that he might later regret if he had time for self-reflection.

The Dragon Rider, The King, and The Difference Between Them

Interestingly, Aegon II appears to be a reasonably competent dragon rider, which makes his failure as a king even more pointed. When he’s on his dragon Sunfyre, he has power and agency and a clear role to play in the world. He’s good at that. But when he’s on the throne trying to make decisions about troop movements and diplomacy and governance, he’s lost. The skills that make someone a good dragon rider—physical courage, decisiveness in the moment, the ability to command a powerful creature—don’t translate to being a good king. A king needs to think about consequences beyond the immediate moment, needs to understand politics and economics and human nature, needs to be able to listen to advisors and synthesize their input into coherent policy.

Aegon II can do none of those things particularly well. He can ride a dragon, and that’s what he’s good at. Everything else is a struggle. This creates a tragic dynamic where Aegon II would probably be much happier if he could just be a prince without responsibilities, a dragon rider without the throne. His unhappiness as king is palpable, and part of what makes his character work is that you can see him struggling against a role that doesn’t fit him.

Addiction, Self-Medication, and the Escape from Reality

As Aegon II’s kingship becomes increasingly difficult, he turns more and more to alcohol and other substances to escape the weight of his position. This isn’t presented as a character flaw so much as it is as a symptom of his fundamental unsuitability for the role he’s been forced into. He’s self-medicating because reality is too painful to face without some kind of chemical buffer.

The show handles this with surprising nuance. It doesn’t judge Aegon for his substance use so much as it presents it as a logical consequence of being a weak person placed in an impossible position. If you put someone who isn’t equipped to handle extreme stress into a situation with extreme stress, they’re going to find ways to cope, and not all of those coping mechanisms are healthy. Aegon II’s turn to the bottle isn’t presented as a character choice that he could simply choose to stop; it’s presented as the understandable result of being pushed past his breaking point.

This also serves a narrative function: as Aegon II becomes more impaired, his decision-making becomes more erratic, which drives the plot forward and creates more conflict. But it’s done in a way that makes sense for the character and doesn’t require you to believe that Aegon is somehow secretly cunning or strategic. He’s just a guy who’s in over his head and drowning.

The Problem of Legitimacy and the Weakness of the Crown

Aegon II’s failure as king also raises interesting questions about legitimacy and power in the world of Game of Thrones. He has the crown because a council voted to give it to him, because his grandfather changed his will in a way that’s ambiguous and contestable, because his mother and her allies were willing to seize power. But legitimacy in Westeros isn’t just about who has the strongest claim—it’s also about whether people accept that you have a right to rule.

Aegon II’s weakness as a king undermines his legitimacy in a way that Rhaenyra’s weakness doesn’t undermine hers, or at least not in the same way. Rhaenyra has centuries of precedent behind her claim—she was named heir by the king, she’s the firstborn child of a much more respected king. Aegon II has a council vote and an ambiguous change to a will. And as he proves himself to be a weak and ineffectual king, more and more people start to question whether he really should have the crown at all. His weakness becomes a threat to his own rule.

This is actually historically accurate to how medieval monarchies worked. A king who couldn’t project strength, who couldn’t make decisions, who seemed out of control, would quickly lose support. Lords would start to question his right to rule, would start to look for alternatives, would start to actively work against him. Aegon II’s weakness as a king is directly linked to the erosion of support that allows the war against him to continue so long.

Conclusion: The Interest of Inadequacy

The reason Aegon II is such a fascinating character is precisely because he’s a terrible king. If he were competent, if he were wise, if he could rally the lords and make decisive decisions and keep his small council working together, he’d be a boring protagonist—the rightful king defending his throne against a usurper. But instead he’s a terrified, inadequate man thrust into a role he never wanted, and watching him fail in real time, watching the toll it takes on him, watching the consequences of his failure ripple out across the realm, is endlessly compelling.

Aegon II represents something important about power and privilege: sometimes the people born to lead are the ones least equipped to do it. Sometimes the accident of birth gives you everything except the thing you actually need to succeed. And sometimes the most human response to that situation is not to rise up and prove yourself worthy, but to slowly fall apart under the weight of impossible expectations. That’s what Aegon II does, and that’s what makes him interesting. He’s not a good king, but he’s an honest king, and in his honesty—his inability to fake the competence he doesn’t possess—he becomes one of the most compelling characters in House of the Dragon.

Robert Baratheon is presented in Game of Thrones as a failure. The man won a rebellion that toppled the Mad King, put himself on the Iron Throne, and then basically checked out for fifteen years. By the time the show starts, Robert is overweight, alcoholic, and clearly more interested in hunting, drinking, and philandering than in actually governing the realm. His death in Season 1 comes as a relief to everyone—nobody really expects his death to shake the kingdom, because it’s obvious that Robert has been failing as a king for his entire reign. But what if things had been different? What if Robert Baratheon had actually been competent at his job and cared about doing it well? How different would Westeros look?

The Beginning: A King with Potential

Let’s start with the fact that Robert wasn’t actually destined to be a failure. He was a legitimate war hero who had just defeated one of the most oppressive regimes in Westerosi history. The Mad King had driven the realm into chaos, burned people alive, and created a climate of fear and paranoia. Robert’s rebellion was framed as liberation. He had every opportunity to be seen as a reformer and a hero king.

The early period of Robert’s reign actually had potential. He had Ned Stark as his Hand—a man he clearly trusted and respected. He had capable people around him, or at least, he had people he could have relied on if he’d chosen to. He had a kingdom that was, by post-rebellion standards, relatively stable. Nobody was actively trying to overthrow him at the beginning. The realm was exhausted by war and would have been willing to accept his rule if he’d given them reason to.

But Robert checked out. Instead of using his position as king to build something, he basically used his position as an excuse to avoid responsibility. He went hunting, he drank, he slept with anyone willing. And he married for political reasons—marrying Cersei Lannister to secure the Lannister’s loyalty and their wealth. That marriage was specifically designed to be a political alliance that would strengthen his reign. What if it had worked? What if Robert and Cersei had actually tried to make it a real partnership?

The Lannister Question

If Robert had been a good king, one of the most significant changes would have been in his relationship with Cersei. Instead of checking out of his marriage and going off to hunt and drink, imagine if Robert had actually invested in his role as king and husband. Cersei is ambitious and manipulative, yes, but she’s also desperately unhappy in the show partly because Robert openly despises her and ignores her in favor of his various mistresses and hunting trips.

If Robert had treated Cersei with respect, taken his marriage seriously, and invested in building a partnership with her, things would have been very different. Cersei doesn’t hate Robert primarily for personal reasons—she hates him because he humiliated her by openly taking lovers, by showing no interest in her, by making it clear that his marriage to her was purely political. She hates him for being a bad husband, not for being intrinsically evil. If Robert had been a present, respectful partner, even if he didn’t love her, Cersei would have had no reason to betray him.

This means no affair with Jaime. No bastard children pretending to be legitimate Baratheon heirs. No justification for Cersei to conspire against Robert. The entire political crisis of Season 1 starts because Robert has bastard children with other women that he acknowledges, making it obvious that his legitimate children aren’t actually his. If Robert had kept his affairs discreet or, better yet, refrained from them out of respect for his marriage, then the succession would have looked legitimate to the realm, even if we in the audience might have wondered about the kids’ parentage.

The Stability Effect

Here’s what a competent Robert could have achieved: actual stability. Not total peace—there would still be conflicts, still be power struggles, still be people ambitious for the throne. But Robert could have prevented the specific cascading disasters that plague the realm throughout the series. He could have prevented the War of the Five Kings by not dying at a convenient moment when there was no clear, stable succession. He could have prevented his own descent into debt and desperation.

More importantly, a good king in Westeros would have been able to use his throne to make the realm actually function better. Robert had the opportunity to reform the system. He could have weakened the absolute power of the nobility while strengthening the crown. He could have invested in infrastructure, in agriculture, in building a more stable economy. He could have worked to reduce corruption and bribery. He could have strengthened the Night’s Watch and paid attention to threats beyond the Wall. He had the institutional power to do basically anything he wanted.

The realm was devastated by the Mad King’s reign and the rebellion that followed. There was literally a need for rebuilding and reform. Robert could have positioned himself as the king who fixed what the Mad King broke. Instead, he left the system in place, allowed it to fester with corruption, and basically hoped nobody would try to kill him or take his throne. This is not a governance strategy.

The North and the Starks

One of the interesting dynamics in the show is the relationship between Robert and Ned Stark. They’re friends, they won the rebellion together, but by the time the show starts, they’re living very different lives. Robert is throwing himself into excess while Ned is staying in the North, governing responsibly, and maintaining the old values of the land.

If Robert had actually been a good king, his relationship with Ned would have been a genuine partnership in governing the realm. Ned would have had a Hand’s role that actually mattered, where his counsel was genuinely valued. Robert could have trusted Ned not just as a friend but as a political partner. Instead, Robert treats his role as Hand as this thing that Ned has to do while Robert does the fun part of being king (which, in Robert’s mind, means not having to deal with the boring governance part).

A better Robert might have even listened to Ned’s warnings about threats in the North. He might have actually invested resources into strengthening the Wall and the Night’s Watch. He might have treated the ancient institutions that Ned cares about as actually important, rather than as relics of the past. The relationship could have been deeper and more genuinely equal.

The Tyrion Problem

Here’s something interesting: in a realm where Robert is actually governing and maintaining his marriage to Cersei, Tyrion’s position would be very different. Tyrion is in King’s Landing partly because Cersei feels insecure and threatened in her marriage, and partly because Tywin is trying to position the Lannisters for maximum power and influence. But if Cersei wasn’t driven by desperation and betrayal, and if the king was actually competent and commanding respect, the Lannisters might not have felt the need to make their power play.

This doesn’t mean Tyrion wouldn’t still end up in King’s Landing—his father would likely still position him there for influence. But the political situation would be very different. A competent Robert would have been much harder for Tywin to manipulate. Robert might not have allowed himself to be maneuvered into trusting Littlefinger implicitly. Robert might not have been desperate for money, so Littlefinger’s schemes to put him in debt wouldn’t have worked the same way.

The Broader Implications

When you actually think through how different things would be if Robert had been a good, engaged king, it becomes clear that basically everything that happens in the show flows from his refusal to govern. The War of the Five Kings happens because the realm is unstable and nobody is confident in the succession. Tyrion ends up being central to events partly because nobody else is governing effectively. The Lannisters make their power move partly because they can see that the crown is weak and vulnerable.

A competent Robert creates a very different political landscape. The realm would be more stable, more organized, more capable of resisting external threats. More importantly, Robert would be the king actually making decisions, rather than making way for other people to make decisions in his absence. This doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be conflicts—noble houses would still be ambitious, people would still want power. But the framework would be different.

The Missed Opportunity

What’s tragic about Robert Baratheon as a character is that he had everything he needed to be a great king, and he actively chose not to be. He had the position, the power, the respect of the people, allies in important places. He had just won a war and could have rebuilt the realm in whatever image he wanted. Instead, he abdicated his responsibility and spent his time hunting and drinking.

The show presents Robert as someone who’s good at winning wars but bad at peace. That’s certainly part of it—Robert is a warrior king, and he’s probably not naturally inclined toward the administrative work of governance. But he also never really tries. He delegates everything to Ned and then gets upset when Ned does things in a way that Robert doesn’t like. He surrounds himself with incompetent and corrupt people rather than seeking out the best people for the job.

If Robert had invested just a fraction of the effort into being king that he invested into avoiding the job, he would have been a genuinely great king. He had the personality to command respect, the resources to enforce his will, and the legitimacy to rule. He could have been a reformer. He could have been someone who actually fixed the systemic problems that were destroying the realm. Instead, he ran away from the job and hoped nobody would notice while he hunted and drank.

The Butterfly Effect

The fascinating thing about imagining a competent Robert is understanding how much of the entire plot of Game of Thrones is contingent on him being incompetent. The death of Jon Arryn happens partly because Jon is trying to actually do the Hand’s job and discovers secrets that Cersei doesn’t want discovered. The death of Robert himself happens partly because he’s out hunting, drunk, and not paying attention. The crisis of succession happens because he dies without a clear, stable line of succession that everyone believes in. Almost every major event of the series is somehow connected to Robert’s failure to actually be a king.

In a Westeros where Robert had been competent, engaged, and actually interested in governing, the story would be almost unrecognizably different. The Starks might not have come south. Daenerys might have faced a much stronger, more organized opposition when she eventually tried to claim the throne. The entire political landscape would have been reordered around a functioning central government rather than a power vacuum.

Robert Baratheon is one of the most important characters in Game of Thrones not because he does anything memorable—he doesn’t—but because his failure to govern creates all of the conditions that make the conflict happen. He’s the king that the realm didn’t deserve, not because he was evil or malicious, but because he was absent. He was given an opportunity to be great, and he threw it away in favor of hunting and drinking. That’s the real tragedy of Robert Baratheon: not that he was a bad man, but that he was a man who had everything and chose nothing.

One of the great achievements of House of the Dragon is that it makes both sides of the civil war feel justified in their own eyes and in the eyes of the viewer. You can watch the show and come away thinking Rhaenyra was robbed and deserved the throne, or you can watch it and think the Greens had legitimate reasons to support Aegon’s claim. Both positions are defensible based on what actually happens in the story. Yet in popular discourse about the show, Team Green often gets painted as simply villainous, as if they were obviously wrong and morally bankrupt from the start. This is a disservice to the character work the show does and to the actual complexity of the legal and political arguments that drive the Dance of the Dragons. Let’s steelman the Greens’ case, because honestly, they’re not nearly as wrong as people think.

The Precedent Problem: Why Rhaenyra’s Claim Isn’t as Ironclad as It Seems

The fundamental issue that gives the Greens their opening is this: there is no clear precedent in the history of the Seven Kingdoms for a woman ruling in her own right. Daenerys doesn’t come along for hundreds of years, and by the time she does, she’s claiming thrones that were technically never hers and ruling in a place that isn’t the Seven Kingdoms. So when Viserys names Rhaenyra as his heir, he’s doing something without precedent, something that no king of the Seven Kingdoms has done before. This matters, because medieval and quasi-medieval monarchies rely heavily on precedent.

The Greens’ argument is essentially this: the realm has inherited laws and customs about succession, and those laws and customs strongly favor male heirs. Yes, Viserys named Rhaenyra as his heir, but a king can change his mind. More importantly, many would argue that a king doesn’t have the absolute right to overturn centuries of precedent for personal reasons. If Viserys wanted to break with tradition, he would need a compelling reason that the entire realm could accept, and “I have a daughter I like better than my son” isn’t quite that reason.

When Alicent claims that Viserys changed his mind on his deathbed and wanted Aegon to be king, is she definitely lying? Well, she might be. But there’s also a genuine possibility that Viserys was trying to find a way to break the succession deadlock he’d created. The show leaves this genuinely ambiguous, which is exactly what makes it so interesting. The Greens’ claim isn’t that Viserys definitely wanted Aegon to be king. It’s that the written succession law of the realm says that Aegon, as the male heir, has a legitimate claim, and that if there’s any doubt about what Viserys wanted, the realm’s established laws should take precedence over a deathbed deathbed that may or may not have happened.

This is actually a reasonable legal argument. If you’re a lord of the Seven Kingdoms and you believe that the succession law of the realm says that Aegon should be king, then supporting Aegon doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you someone who believes in the rule of law over the rule of personal preference.

The Stability Argument: Why the Realm Might Actually Be Better Off With Aegon

Here’s something that doesn’t get discussed enough in the Team Rhaenyra vs. Team Green discourse: the Greens have a legitimate argument that their version of the succession would have been more stable for the realm, at least in theory. A male king, even a weak one, is less likely to face challenges to his legitimacy than a female king would be, especially a female king who’s already controversial for other reasons (like being passed over for the throne once, then suddenly claiming it again).

The Greens could argue: yes, Rhaenyra was named heir. But she married Laenor Velaryon, a man with his own claim to House Targaryen through his mother. Her children are his children. Even though we know Laenor is probably not the father of her children, the lords of the realm wouldn’t know that, and it would create questions about the legitimacy of the line. Whereas Aegon, as a full Targaryen trueborn male, doesn’t have any of those complications. His children will be unquestionably legitimate. His line will be unquestionably Targaryen.

From a purely strategic standpoint, if you believe that the stability of the realm matters more than any individual person’s desires, the Greens’ position is defensible. They’re arguing for a king who will face fewer challenges, face fewer questions about legitimacy, face fewer opportunities for lords to rebel. And they’re right that in a medieval-style monarchy, legitimacy matters enormously. A king who’s questioned is a king who’s at risk.

The Personal Betrayal: Why Alicent Isn’t Just Being Crazy

A lot of people interpret Alicent’s decision to support Aegon’s claim as a betrayal based on a misunderstanding of Viserys’s last words. And maybe that’s true. But even if Alicent is completely sincere in her belief that Viserys changed his mind, there’s another layer to her motivation that’s worth examining. Alicent has been promised something her entire life: her son would be king. She married Viserys and had his children with the explicit understanding that her son would inherit the throne. And then Viserys decided to change the rules, to leave her son with nothing, to give everything to his daughter from a previous marriage.

From Alicent’s perspective, this is a betrayal of staggering proportions. She’s spent her entire life as a support system for Viserys. She’s had children with him. She’s bore a son who was supposed to be the future of the realm. And in the end, that all gets taken away because Viserys developed a preference for his daughter. You can argue that Alicent should have just accepted this, should have been gracious about being set aside, should have understood that Viserys has the right to change the succession as he sees fit. But you can also understand why she didn’t. She lost everything, and she wanted to save something for her children.

This isn’t an argument for Alicent’s actions being good or right. It’s an argument for them being understandable. She’s a woman who played by all the rules, who did everything right, and who got punished for it anyway when those rules changed. Is it any wonder that she decided to fight back?

The Problem of a Female King in a Patriarchal World

Let’s be blunt: the Seven Kingdoms is a patriarchal society. It’s not equal. Men hold more power, more prestige, more authority. The great houses are traditionally ruled by men. The history of the realm is the history of men making decisions and women supporting them. This doesn’t make it good, but it’s the world that both Team Green and Team Black are operating in.

The Greens could legitimately argue that putting a woman on the throne isn’t going to work in a world that’s fundamentally hostile to female authority. They could argue that Rhaenyra will face constant challenges to her authority, constant questions about whether she’s capable, constant resistance from lords who believe she shouldn’t be ruling at all. They could argue that Aegon, as a man, will be more readily accepted, will have an easier time commanding authority, will face fewer obstacles.

Is this sexist? Yes, absolutely. But it’s also a realistic assessment of how their patriarchal society functions. And if your goal is the stability and welfare of the realm, then choosing a king who will face fewer obstacles, even if those obstacles are rooted in sexism, could be seen as the pragmatic choice.

This is why the show’s treatment of Rhaenyra and female kingship is so interesting. It shows that yes, the Greens’ warnings about the difficulties of a female ruler do have some basis in reality. Rhaenyra does face constant challenges. She does have to work harder to command authority. She does have some lords who refuse to support her because of her gender. The Greens’ pessimism about her chances isn’t baseless; it’s rooted in how their world actually works.

The Disrespect Issue: Why the Greens Feel Legitimately Insulted

Part of the Greens’ case is also emotional and personal, and it’s worth acknowledging even if you don’t think it’s the most important factor. Rhaenyra, after being passed over for the throne, goes off to Dragonstone, has children with Laenor, builds her own power base, and essentially acts like a pretender to the throne. From the Greens’ perspective, she’s being disrespectful to Aegon, who is the legally crowned king. She’s not content to be a princess. She wants the crown.

The Greens feel like Rhaenyra is being ungrateful and disrespectful by not accepting the result of the council vote. They feel like she’s putting her personal desires above the good of the realm. They feel like she’s willing to tear the kingdom apart just because she didn’t get what she wanted. And these are fair feelings to have, even if we might disagree with how the Greens act on them.

This ties back to the precedent argument. The Greens could say: even if we’re sympathetic to Rhaenyra’s claim, she accepted Aegon as king. The council voted, and she accepted the result. Now she’s changing her mind and starting a war. From the Greens’ perspective, this is disrespectful to the rule of law and to the council’s decision. If they accept that the realm’s laws matter, then they have to support Aegon, even if they might have sympathy for Rhaenyra’s original claim.

The Military Reality: The Greens Had the Stronger Position Initially

Here’s something else that gets overlooked: at the start of the war, Team Green had the stronger military position. They had the throne. They had the capital. They had more of the major houses pledged to them. From a purely strategic standpoint, supporting Aegon was supporting the side that was more likely to win. The Greens weren’t crazy idealists fighting for a hopeless cause; they were supporting what seemed like the obviously stronger position.

This matters because it changes the nature of the Greens’ choice. They’re not fighting for an underdog who they believe in despite the odds. They’re supporting the side that’s already in power and has the advantage. This is actually the more pragmatic choice if you’re a lord trying to figure out which side to join. You join the side that’s more likely to win because that’s the side you want to be on when the war is over. The Greens can legitimately say that they’re supporting the king who’s already on the throne, the king who controls the capital, the king who has the most military support.

Conclusion: The Validity of the Greens’ Position

The point of this exercise isn’t to say that the Greens are actually right, or that they’re good people, or that their actions are justified. The point is that their position in the succession debate is far more defensible than popular discourse often acknowledges. They have legal arguments, they have precedent arguments, they have pragmatic arguments about stability and female rule in a patriarchal society. They’re not simply villains who are obviously wrong; they’re people operating with a different set of priorities and different interpretations of the law.

This is what makes House of the Dragon work so well. Both sides feel like they could be right, depending on which principles you prioritize. If you believe the rule of law matters more than individual preference, Team Green has a point. If you believe that Viserys’s explicit choice to name Rhaenyra as his heir should be respected, then Team Red has a point. If you believe that stability is more important than justice, Team Green’s position is defensible. If you believe that justice is more important than stability, then Team Red’s position is defensible.

The Greens aren’t heroes, but they’re not simply villains either. They’re people with legitimate grievances and defensible positions who make increasingly bad choices in pursuit of those positions. That complexity is what makes them interesting, and it’s also what makes the entire story of House of the Dragon richer and more compelling than it would be if one side was obviously right and the other was obviously wrong.