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When House of the Dragon premiered its first ever episode, it didn't have the title sequence with its iconic graphics that its predecessor, Game of Thrones, was known for. Instead, it was revealed in the second episode.
With the season two premiere, the production team delivered in the first episode. While most shows have intros that are usually skipped, this shouldn't be one of them. Aside from the epic sounds that's become composer Ramin Djwadi's trademark, the graphics are jam-packed with details, lore and history of House Targaryen, Valyria, Westeros and, of course, dragons. All that in a stunning tapestry with moving embroidery.
So why a tapestry? It's a callback to season one, episode seven, when the Targaryen dreamer Helaena (Phia Saban) said, “Hand turns loom; spool of green, spool of black; dragons of flesh weaving dragons of thread.”
She's foreshadowing the Dance of the Dragons (the Targaryen civil war fought over the rightful succession to the Iron throne) as well as her own prophecies. However, the spools and looms also plays up the idea that the story of the Targaryens, House of the Dragon, will one day be on actual tapestries and part of the history of Westeros.
In season one, the intro showed blood winding through King Viserys' (Paddy Considine) scale model of Valyria, the Targaryens' ancestral home and the dragons' as well. The second season's begins the same way, this time the blood is depicted as threads rushing down the walls.
The camera zooms into the rise and fall of the Valyrian Freehold, built by slaves and ruled by 40 families who are dragonriders. They had hundreds of dragons, using their might to conquer and enslave millions. This is represented by the blood coursing through the tapestry.
The Doom of Valyria
This leads into another zoom of the image of the Targaryens leaving Valyria after Daenys the Dreamer told them about her prophetic dreams. They left their homeland, together with other families such as House Velaryon. They ended up settling on Dragonstone, now Daemon (Matt Smith) and Rhaenyra's (Emma D'Arcy) seat. You can catch a glimpse of the castle's outline on the top left of the screen.
Decades into settling in Westeros, Valyria is destroyed due to the cascading and cataclysmic eruptions of volcanoes, now called the Doom of Valyria. The tapestry shows the volcanoes exploding with the dragons falling from the sky. This devastation meant that the Targaryens were one of the very few dragonriders in the world.
The tapestry then depicts another significant even in the dragonriding house's history: that of Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya, along with their dragons Balerion the Dread, Meraxes and Vhagar (who is now ridden by Prince Aemond, played Ewan Mitchell in the show), respectively. The threaded fabric portrays the trio above a fleet of ships marked with the sigil of House Velaryon.
The camera then zooms into Aegon's conquest, portraying how he and his queens conquered six out of the seven kingdoms, done through fire and blood. The center of the tapestry shows the ruins of Harrenhal, burned by Balerion on Aegon's orders when King Harren the Black refused to bend the knee and surrender Riverlands. Harren is embroidered in the middle, showing his axe and the pain marked on his face.
The Field of Fire
In another section, threads mark one of the Conquest's most famous battles, the Field of Fire. All three Targaryen dragons decimated the armies of King Loren Lannister and King Mern Gardener. If you pause at the right moment and zoom in, tiny Lannister lions and the hands of House Gardener can be seen on the fallen soldiers' shields. They're all black and burned due to dragonfire, but they would have all been red and gold and green at the start.
In one of the blink-and-you-miss it moments, you can also see Queen Rhaenys' Meraxes, the silver dragon, falling from the sky with a ridge of mountains as the backdrop, portraying their deaths dealt by Dorne's House Uller. You'll see this image above Harrenhall's smoking ruins.
While Dorne essentially repelled the Targaryens, the rest of Westeros were unable to. In the face of both the dragons' size and literal fire power, the Great Houses bent their knees to Aegon one by one. This is all depicted with the kneeling figures complete with their colors and sigils, House Arryn's blue and white falcon and moon, House Stark's black and white direwolf and House Tully's silver, orange and blue trout.
The Great Houses of House of the Dragon
We've already seen House Stark in House of the Dragon's first episode. We most likely will see the Arryns, who control the Vale, and Tullys who control the all-important Riverrun. If you're new to the series and these names are familiar, that's because the Starks are the ones with the motto, Winter is Coming, which is also said by Cregan Stark, this time period's Lord of the North; in Game of Thrones, we met Lysa Arryn whose son was Lord of the Vale; and Tully was Caitlyn Stark's and Lysa's family.
One thing to note about the embroidered people representing Houses Arryn, Stark and Tully if you're like me and paused at the right moment (after several tries) and physically went near the screen just to see: the Arryns and Starks both wear crowns. Before Aegon's Conquest, both were royal Houses. The heads of the houses were referred to as the Kings of the Vale and Kings of the North. The Tullys, however, were not. After Aegon conquered Westeros, he rewarded them by raising the Tullys as Lords Paramount of the Trident.
We then veer off the shot of the Red Keep and the burgeoning city of King's Landing. That is Balerion you see in the top right corner, but it's Maegor who's riding him, Aegon's son. He was the one who finished the construction of the Red Keep, but that's about the only good thing Westerosi historians can say about him. He was a tyrant who usurped his brother's throne and made the castle a veritable death trap.
The reign of Maegor the Cruel
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But then karma is alive and well even in the fictional world that is the House of the Dragon because the next panel shows us Maegor's death right on the Iron Throne. He died an ignominous death: impaled through the neck by one of the swords on the throne and his wrists cut. George R.R. Martin's Fire and Blood, on which the show is based, hasn't made it clear whether the OG Mad King died by his own hand (or by accident) or assassinated.
Flanking Maegor on the throne are the bronze dragon Vermithor and Silverwing, mounted by the most beloved Targaryen rulers King Jahaerys and Queen Alysanne, who succeeded Maegor. Both dragons are still alive in House of the Dragon. At the end of season one, Vermithor is the one to whom Daemon sang a lullaby. Silverwing is yet to be seen in this current season.
King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne
Trying to undo Maegor's tyranny, the tapestry then zooms to Jaehaerys and Alysanne's reign. The king wears a golden crown, sharply contrasting that of his uncle and grandsire's black and ruby. If you zoom in to their left, you can see the Faith of the Seven's seven-pointed star. This signifies their effort in unifying the crown and the church. To their right is a bag of gold, signifying their reign as one of prosperity and peace.
Jaehaerys I was the longest ruling Targaryen monarch in their history, known as the Conciliator. So much so that the tapestry depicts the Great Council of 101, which we saw in season one, when Jaehaerys allowed the men of the realm to vote on the throne's succession. They had a choice between the older, wiser and more capable Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) who is in Velaryon blue and Targaryen red or Viserys, depicted with a pregnant Aemma (Sîan Brooke), who is a man.
We then move on to several scenes that we already saw in the first season: Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and her green dress at Rhaenyra's wedding, the streak of blood is for the scene when Rhaenyra, who had just given birth, had to walk across the castle to present her son to the queen; and the Targaryens sitting a table, divided by the now established Team Green and Team Black factions.
Speaking of: We see Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) wearing his namesakes' black crown on the Iron Throne and his green cape. His dragon sigil is gold for his dragon Sunfyre's golden scales. The green hand threaded sends ravens as Team Green tries to rally their allies.
We then have Team Black's Rhaenyra wearing her grandsire's golden crown at Dragonstone. The black hand send three dragons, Arrax (RIP, whose rider Lucerys, played by Elliot Grihault, perished last season), Caraxes (Damon's mount) and Vermax (Jacaerys', played by Harry Collett), on their diplomatic missions.
Make your choice: Team Black or Team Green
Surrounding the warring queens are the Great Houses they're allied. For Team Green, they may have the silver and blue of House Tarbeck, House Fossoway's red apple, the bleeding hearts in the claws of the three black ravens of House Corbray, the Lannister gold lion, the watchtower and green flames of the Hightowers, the stag of House Baratheon, the white lamb with the golden cup from House Stokeworth and two shields that I just can't make out.
On Team Black's side, they have to shields I can't identify, the Stark direwolf, the falcon of the Arryns, the seahorse of the Velaryons, the fish of the Tullys, House Frey's grey stone towers, the honeycombs of Beesbury and House Bar Emmon's swordfish.
And before the graphics that bear House of the Dragon come on screen, we're given the visual of the tragic death of Prince Lucerys, depicted on the tapestry as having fallen of his dragon. Not exactly what happened, but I guess this art takes its liberties as well?
The tapestry is far from done. We don't know exactly how many seasons the show will have, but the embroiderers have their hands full.
