We all remember how much fun we had and how much we enjoyed the eight seasons of Game of Thrones, a rough and tough story that at times did not hesitate to show us situations of violence that were especially unpleasant for the viewer. Although in The House of the Dragon, it seems that things are going to change.
The series will set limits
The House of the Dragon marks the return of the Game of Thrones universe devised by George RR Martin in his book Blood and Fire and tells us about the events that occurred in Westeros 300 years before what we saw in the original HBO series. In this way, the story will focus on the Targaryens, you know, the ancestors of Daenerys, the famous “Mother of Dragons” and that as the seasons went by, she took on an increasingly relevant role.
Well, in that journey of the role played by Emilia Clarke there was a detail that did not go unnoticed by the viewers, and that was taken as a much-needed license to understand the character’s motivations, and that is the sexual and physical violence to which she was subjected. subjected and that, in some way, conditioned the decisions that he would later make. Especially when that pain was inflicted by those he considered enemies of his dynasty.
Well, in The House of the Dragon all that suffering that we could see explicitly in Game of Thrones through the experiences of Daenerys and other female characters is going to end, since neither sexual nor physical violence against women will be shown in the new series that premieres HBO Max on August 21.
You won’t see it but you’ll feel it
It has been the scriptwriter and executive producer of the series for HBO, Sara Hess, who has clarified this decision in an interview with Vanity Fair. In it she confirms that in La Casa del Dragón «we do not represent sexual violence . We left her off screen. Instead, we show the consequences and the impact on the victim and [in this case] the perpetrator’s mother.”
It is clear that there are going to be comparisons with Game of Thrones in terms of this crudeness, which is why Sara Hess says she is “extremely proud” of having made this decision and of having chosen to focus “violence against women as something inherent to a patriarchal system” that is constantly perceived within the story offered by La Casa del Dragón.
There are “many historical or factual series that idealize powerful men in sexual or marital relationships with women who were not, in fact, of consenting age. Even if they were willing to do it. We cannot ignore the fact that our female protagonists in the first part of The House of the Dragon are coercedand manipulated to accept the will of those same men. This does not necessarily make them rapists or abusers, as they are usually well-intentioned adults who cannot see that what they are doing is traumatic and repressive.” This is due, according to the screenwriter, to the fact that «the system in which they live has normalized it. It’s less obvious than rape, but just as painful. […] In general, depicting sexual violence like in Game of Thrones is complicated.”
And you, do you agree with the screenwriter of The House of the Dragon ?