[COLUMN] In House of the Dragon, Power Resides in Structures, Not in People (Patreon)

NOTE: This piece contains spoilers through to the fourth episode of the second season of House of the Dragon.

It is, perhaps, obvious to state that both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are stories about power: political power, social power, military power. These shows explore the myriad expressions of power, and its interplay with various facets of society.

However, power can be a tricky thing to understand and to define. What exactly is power? In the second season premiere of Game of Thrones, Petyr Baelish (Aidan Gillen) boasts that “knowledge is power.” Queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) responds by ordering her guards to seize him and cut his throat, rescinding her order at the very last moment. Cersei offers Baelish some hard-earned wisdom: “Power is power.”

Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon unfold against the backdrop of a feudalist society. The continent of Westeros invests absolute power in the holder of the Iron Throne who rules as “Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, King of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Realm.” In House of the Dragon, House Targaryen controls the Iron Throne, even as a civil war brews between two rival factions within the royal family. The Targaryens conquered Westeros, using their dragons.

In the world of House of the Dragon, dragons are weapons of mass destruction, capable of untold devastation. Author George R.R. Martin has described them as “the nuclear deterrent.” Indeed, the only reason that Westeros submits to rule by foreign invaders is the existential threat posed by the dragons. However, while the dragons provide the basis for their authority over the region, House of Dragon suggests that House Targaryen doesn’t necessarily control the dragons.

In the first episode of House of the Dragon, King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) explains the complicated relationship between the royal family and their dragons to his daughter, Princess Rhaenyra (Millie Alcock). “Everyone says Targaryens are closer to gods than to men, but they say that because of our dragons,” he acknowledges. “Without them, we’re just like everyone else. The idea that we control the dragons is an illusion. They’re a power man should never have trifled with.”

This idea is literalized over the course of the first season. Viserys’ son Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) is bullied as a child because he has no dragon to call his own. Prideful and stubborn, he claims the ancient Vhagar as his mount. Vhagar is old and massive, a survivor of the Targaryen conquest of Westeros. She grants Aemond prestige and power. However, it remains debatable how much control Aemond can assert over the beast.

The first season climaxes with a confrontation between Aemond and his nephew Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) in the clouds over Storm’s End. Years earlier, Lucerys had taken Aemond’s eye out during a childhood skirmish. Aemond clearly hopes to repay his younger relative. The two duel atop their dragons. However, in the heat of the moment, Aemond loses control of Vhagar. The older dragon attacks mercilessly, sending Lucerys plummeting to his death.

Of course, Aemond is responsible for this death. Death seems like the most likely outcome of aerial combat involving dragons. However, it is very clear that Aemond is not in charge. “No, Vhagar!” Aemond screams, panicked. “No! Serve me, Vhagar! No!” Vhagar does not heed her master. This is the moment that seems to make the destructive civil war between the two factions within House Targaryen inevitable, and it happens because a beast refused to heed its master’s call.

The second season of House of the Dragon has built on this by illustrating just how beholden the royal family is to forces outside of their control, such as their own subjects. Jaehaerys (Jude Rock), the young son of King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) and heir to the kingdom, is decapitated by two anonymous peasants (Sam C. Wilson and Mark Stobbart). Lord Corly Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) is saved from death when he is pulled from the water by commoner Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim).

In the wake of Jaehaerys’ death, his parents discover that they hold very little power over their own narratives. His mother, Queen Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban), is forced to perform her grief publicly for the peasantry as a strategic gambit to secure her husband’s claim to power. “The people share our grief, they draw closer to us,” explains Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke). “I don’t want them closer,” Helena responds. “I don’t know them.” Alicent presses, “Sometimes we have to pretend.”

For his part, Aegon fumes against his own perceived impotence. “I will not be seen as weak!” he rages against his key advisor, Lord Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans). Otto simply states the facts, “You’re already seen as weak, Aegon.” Aegon finds himself marginalized within his own power structures. When his advisors ignore him, he complains to his mother Alicent, “They don’t care what I think.” Alicent witheringly replies, “What thoughts would you have?”

Aegon holds the throne, but he has no real power. “You have no idea the sacrifices that were made to put you on that throne,” Alicent warns her son. “What would you have me do, mother?” Aegon snaps back. Alicent offers some very simple advice, “Do simply what is needed of you: nothing.” In keeping with the show’s central metaphor of the dragons as literal expression of the idea of power, the fourth episode of the second season ends with Aegon crushed beneath his own dragon.

Indeed, the second season of House of the Dragon goes so far as to suggest that even the relationship between rulers and their land is not a simple hierarchy. Frustrated and impotent, Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) storms off to claim the burnt-out ruins of Harrenhal for himself. However, the castle seems to have a strange influence on him. He is haunted by dreams of Rhaenyra’s younger self, his wife and his niece. He imagines the Iron Throne talking to him.

“Sleep can be thin in this place,” explains Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), who works in the castle’s kitchen. “Harrenhal’s been cursed since its  first stone was laid.” The castle was seemingly built with “Hart trees imbued with the spirits of those who lived long before he came.” Those spirits seem to call out to those who reside within the walls of the castle. The land seems to speak directly to those who would claim to rule over it. It is not a particularly subtle metaphor.

As such, there is a real ambiguity within House of Dragon as to how much agency the characters actually exert within the narrative. How much choice do they actually have? How much control can they truly claim? There is a recurring sense in House of the Dragon that civil war between the two factions is inevitable, and an expression of something more than the personal egos or desires of the people who are ostensibly in charge.

King Viserys oversaw an era of relative peace and prosperity, but the show repeatedly suggested that violence was always simmering just beneath the tranquil surface, ready to spill over. Rhaenyra’s search for a suitor is interrupted by a sword fight between Willem Blackwood (Alfie Todd) and Jerrel Bracken (Gabriel Scott). Rhaenyra’s wedding reception culminates in the death of Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod) at the hands of Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel).

The show suggests something is building in the collective unconsciousness of Westeros, perhaps the inevitable byproduct of a feudal system built on inequality and oppression. That repressed urge seems eager to find expression through war. A fairly banal disagreement about boundary walls between two minor families in the Riverlands quickly escalates, resulting in massive casualties on both sides. Those are Houses Blackwood and Bracken, continuing Willem and Jerrel’s feud.

“The Blackwoods and the Brackens have feuded for centuries,” explains Lord Jasper Wylde (Paul Kennedy) of the skirmish. “This is nothing more than an excuse for them to indulge their ancient grudges. It’s no true war.” Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale) assures Daemon that “Houses Blackwood and Bracken have long detested one another.” When Daemon asks why, Strong answers, “The answer to that is lost in time. Sin begets sin begets sin.” It feels inevitable.

Of course, this time House Blackwood and House Bracken can cloak themselves in the colors of the two factions claiming the Iron Throne. In practice, this is largely irrelevant. Daemon has to be reminded that House Blackwood declared for his side. “Who could remember?” Daemon sighs. The actual politics of this feud are irrelevant. There’s no clean cause-and-effect. There is no central ideology driving these factions into battle. There is just an urge to spill blood.

“Soon they will not even remember what it was that began the war in the first place,” Princess Rhaenys (Eve Best) laments. Rhaenyra (now played by Emma D’Arcy) insists the war is over the usurpation of the throne, Rhaenys replies, “That is one answer. Or was it when the child was beheaded? Or when Aemond killed Luke? Or when Luke took Aemond’s eye? We teeter now at the point where none of it will matter. When the desire to kill and burn takes hold, and reason is forgotten.”

Indeed, much has been made of the fact that the characters in House of the Dragon are similar and interchangeable. The show features two sets of identical twins; Jason and Tyland Lannister (both Jefferson Hall) along with Arryk (Luke Tittensor) and Erryk (Elliott Tittensor) Cargyll. The majority of the Targaryen characters are physically similar: pale skinned with platinum hair. Many have similar names: Rhaenys and Rhaenyra, Aemond and Daemon. There are multiple Viseryses and Jaehaeryses.

However, this is largely the point. There is no functional difference between the two factions. Even without getting into the fact that Game of Thrones revealed that the Targaryens would be ousted by Robert’s Rebellion, there is a nihilism to the brutality in House of the Dragon. Even the banners – dark green and black – are hard to distinguish from one another. All the horror and the violence that flows from this family feud is both inevitable and completely pointless.

This is a very interesting way of looking at power and violence. In some ways, it is a common theme in contemporary pop culture. Much of Dune: Part Two is built around the idea that ostensibly powerful figures like Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) or Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) are powerless as larger forces move around them. Alex Garland’s Civil War is deliberately vague on the specifics of its central conflict, instead presenting it as an inevitable outcome of a fractured nation.

Maybe Cersei was right. Power is power. That means that it doesn’t reside in individuals or families, in ladies or lords. Instead, it exists as a primal force independent of them, in systems and structures. In this way, perhaps power can be manipulated, and it is possible for shrewd actors to take advantage of it. However, it cannot be controlled. That is an illusion and lie. No matter who emerges triumphant at the end of House of the Dragon, even kings and queens are beholden to the tides and the whims of power.