House of the Dragon is based on the book, Fire & Blood by George RR Martin. It is set 172 years prior to the events of the original show and follows the Targaryens rule in Westeros.
House of the Dragon, the much-awaited prequel series to Game Of Thrones, released with full fanfare on Disney Plus Hotstar on August 22. It upheld the tradition of sex, gore and violence that the original show was known for. However, one particular scene left fans rather disturbed. The scene in question, shows Viserys I (Paddy Considine) in a dilemma as the queen Aemma Arryn (Sian Brooke) is in the midst of a complicated childbirth, where only the child or mother can survive. Desperate for an heir, he agrees for a brutal caesarean operation. It’s a gory and bloody scene as the queen shrieks, interspersed with another scene of celebration at the jousting tournament.
Miguel Sapochnik, the show’s director, defended the scene. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, he said, “Aemma says, ‘The child bed is our battlefield.’ We felt that was an interesting way to explore the fact that for a woman in medieval times, giving birth was violence. It’s as dangerous as it gets. You have a 50/50 chance of making it. Many women didn’t. If given the choice, the father would choose the child over the mother as a cesarean would kill you. It was an extremely violent part of life.”
Miguel, who is also responsible for several acclaimed episodes from Game of Thrones, said that the violence in the scene was necessary and not gratuitous. He said, “We have a number of births in the show and basically decided to give them different themes and explore them from different perspectives the same way I did for a bunch of battles on Thrones, where each time I tried to put a different spin on each so it wasn’t just doing the same thing, as I don’t think putting a bunch of violence onscreen for the sake of violence does any good in the world.”
House of the Dragon is based on the book, Fire & Blood by George RR Martin. It is set 172 years prior to the events of the original show and follows the Targaryens rule in Westeros.
