SPOILER WARNING: We will briefly mention the key plot points of the first two episodes of House of the Dragon in this article.
The second episode of game of thrones prequel series House of the Dragon featured our first look at the show’s much-anticipated title sequence, given how iconic the original series’ intro was.
To jog your memory: every episode of thrones it began with a bird’s-eye view of a map, showing the continents of Ponent and Essos. The camera zoomed in on a bunch of different locations: Winterfell, Riverrun, etc., telling us where the events of the episode would take place. Each location also carried a house stamp to remind viewers who was in control.
All of this was quite helpful, given the sprawling nature of the story.
House of the Dragon the intro sequence recycles composer Ramin Djawadi’s famous one game of thrones issue, disappointingly, for those of us who were hoping for another hit from him, but he ditches the map in favor of something more cryptic.
Luckily, you have my nerdy ass to explain what’s going on.
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The titular house of the dragon is, of course, House Targaryen, whose infighting is the subject of the show. Instead of cycling through locations, the intro sequence shows us people; it is a representation of the royal lineage.
Each member of the Targaryen line is represented by a gear, and you’ll notice that some of the gears feature crowns. They represent the kings.
Blood flows between the gears, showing marriages and descent in the same way that lines in a normal family tree do. The gears that fill with blood as he passes by represent dead characters.
We’ll see in the coming weeks if the intro changes, adding gears for new additions to the tree and filling the gears of dead characters with blood, or if it remains static. The version of episode two represents the family tree as it stands after the premiere.
Now, as I see it, this is the perfect excuse to explain some background on Targaryen history, which will give you more context for the events of the series. So I’ll go through the intro and tell you who the most important gears represent.
The introduction opens with the starting point of the royal line, Aegon Targaryen, who conquered Westeros and united its once disparate kingdoms under his rule. This conquest happened just over a century earlier House of the Dragon it begins
The image of Aegon’s gear seems to show a mysterious event called the Doom of Valyria, a natural disaster that wiped out most of the world’s dragonriding families.
Only the Targaryens escaped that fate. One of them, known in history as Daenys the Dreamer, had seen Doom coming in a prophetic dream, prompting his family to flee Valyria before its destruction.
Aegon’s gear is connected to that of his two female sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys (the Targaryens are big fans of incest).
He had a son with each queen, and both boys became kings. However, Visenya’s son Maegor produced no heirs. This means it’s a dead end in the family tree, which explains why it doesn’t appear in the introduction.
Instead, the bloodline continues through Aenys Targaryen, the son Aegon had with Rhaenys. I think the correct pronunciation of his name is “aynees”, although you are free to go the rougher route if you so choose.
Some quick background on Aegon’s two sons. Aenys and Maegor were polar opposites. The first was gentle and indecisive, the second a merciless and brutal warrior.
Aenys sat on the throne first, though he was unsuited to it and completely out of touch with his subjects. In a particularly stupid move, he announced that his son and daughter would marry, angering the dominant religion of Westeros and sparking a rebellion.
(The faith had taken Aegon the Conqueror’s two incestuous marriages quietly, as he had little choice in the matter. Aenys did not have his father’s authority.)
Aenys died in the middle of the uprising, essentially of stress. Not a good way to go.
Technically, the crown should have passed to his son, but Maegor took it instead. His short reign was brutal and bloody, which earned him the nickname Maegor the Cruel; already mentioned once. HotD as an example not to be echoed.
When Maegor died, impaled on the Iron Throne, the rightful Targaryen heir was Aenys’ third son, Jaehaerys.
In typical Targaryen fashion, Jaehaerys married his sister Alysanne. This time there was no rebellion, and the pair continued to rule together for decades, overseeing a period of peace and prosperity.
They had a prodigious number of children, as shown by the different bloodlines in the introduction, but these children met tragic ends. The first scene of HotD explains the resulting succession crisis, with the high lords of Westeros choosing which of Jaehaerys’ grandchildren should become their heir.
They settled with Prince Viserys, going by his older cousin, Princess Rhaenys, based on her gender.
Viserys is the first character not to be filled with blood as he is still alive at this point. The same cannot be said for his wife, Queen Aemma, who died in such a gruesome manner in the series premiere.
Notice an additional stream of blood coming out of Viserys’ gear. Presumably this is a reference to the events of episode two, in which he seeks a second wife.
Finally, we have a uniquely designed gear that represents Viserys’ only daughter, Rhaenyra, who was formally named his heir at the end of the first episode.
You can tell it’s her because the symbol matches the design of the necklace she received from her uncle, Prince Daemon.
At various points in the second half of the intro, other gears are visible in the far background. These could represent Daemon and his wife Rhea, or perhaps Rhaenys, her husband Corlys Velaryon and their children.
I’m not sure enough to offer a guess either way; perhaps it will become clearer in future iterations of the sequence.