Hello again! Continuing my last post, today we’re going to focus more on the characters of  ‘Fire and Blood’. Now, there are way too many characters in this book and even if we only focus on those involved in ‘House of the Dragon’ there would be at least twenty characters to analyze and this would become a Game of Thrones blog. To avoid that, I’ll be talking about whom I consider the most important characters; Rhaenyra and Alicent.

Rahenyra is a very interesting character to me. Her father, Viserys, constantly and very openly wishes to have a son so they can inherit the throne; Rhaenyra is never truly considered. That is until her mother and Viserys’ wife, Aemma, dies in childbirth when he sacrifices her in the hopes of saving the baby and having a son; the baby ends up dying shortly after. After this tragedy, Viserys decides to name Rhaenyra heir against tradition as she is a woman. Even though her duty increases tenfold, she never sacrifices her freedom which becomes very clear when she has children who very obviously are not her husband’s.

Alicent is a sort of parallel version of Rhaenyra. She is the only daughter of Otto Hightower, the hand of the King (Being the hand of the king is like being an advisor). The Hightowers are an incredibly religious family, they control the epicenter of the Faith of the Seven (Like Christianity but Game of Thrones version) in Westeros; Oldtown. Because she is his only daughter, Alicent always had an incredible responsibility to her father, just like Rhaenyra had to Viserys. But instead of wanting his daughter to be content in her life like the king, Otto seeks to use Alicent to fulfill his own ambition; He arranges her marriage to Viserys, he pushes her to train Aegon to be king, he decides the marriage between Aegon and Helaena (Alicent’s children) and he attempts to dismiss Rhaenyra’s own son as heir.

In the show, Alicent and Rhaenyra are childhood friends with a very close bond. Rhaenyra relies on Alicent for support when her mother dies and Alicent relies on Rhaenyra to escape her overbearing father. In the book, they are further apart in age and never really have a close relationship but I think this change for the show really helps the audience empathize with both sides of the conflict and maximizes the impact of their future rivalry.

Their falling out in the show occurs after Rhaenyra is seen with her uncle (I know, gross.) engaging in ‘improper activities’ and Otto has to tell King Viserys. Alicent confronts Rhaenyra who vehemently denies it (Even though it did happen) and Alicent confesses that Otto knows of it. Rhaenyra convinces her father that the accusations are made up by Otto to dismiss her as heir in favor of his grandson, Viserys believes her and exiles Otto from the capital. Alicent never forgives Rhaenyra for it and becomes fearful she might try to banish her children once they become a threat to her reign.

Their past relationship and consequent falling out is the primary reason why a war of succession is fought; Alicent resents the freedom Rhaenyra had and stops trusting she would not harm her children once queen, and at the same time Rhaenyra recognizes the danger of Otto’s control and Alicents own ambition against herself and her children. More than just hatred and disagreements, it’s the consequence of the love that Rhaenyra and Alicent once had for each other.

We’re back! With the new semester, I thought it was time to give this blog a little bit of a fresh start. One of my new year’s resolutions for 2023 was to broaden my literary horizons so I’ve decided to begin by reading a genre that I was extremely reluctant to; fantasy. Because I obviously could not make this any easier for myself, I began with one of the most divisive books that I could find in the reading community; George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones prequel ‘Fire & Blood’.

I think that by now ‘Game of Thrones’ is a household name. Everyone knows what it is, whether you love it or want to behead the showrunner’s heads. For most of my life, I had refused to even entertain the possibility of coming near the books or the show itself as the genre never really appealed to me; I always considered fantasy books to be too unrealistic for me to really immerse myself in the story. But when I saw the trailer for what claimed to be the prequel of Game of Thrones (‘House of the Dragon’) I decided to finally give fantasy a chance. This quickly became my favorite show and led me down a rabbit hole until I finally decided to read ‘Fire and Blood’.

This book details the story of a family,  the Targaryens, which basically rule the world where Game of Thrones is set; Westeros; for over three-hundred years. Because the book expands over centuries there are multiple stories but my favorite was the one on which ‘House of the Dragon’ is based. This is the one about a civil war called ‘The Dance of the Dragons’.

It all starts because one of the Targaryen kings, Viserys, doesn’t have any male children so after much turmoil he decides to name his only daughter, Rhaenyra, heir to the throne (This is a huge deal because of misogyny and whatnot). Nevertheless, years later he does have a son with a woman named Alicent Hightower. In the show, she and Rhaenyra were very close friends which makes this all the more awful but in the book, they are never really close. Even though Rhaenyra is the official heir, Alicent and her father plan to actually make her half-brother, Aegon, the heir once Viserys dies. It all gets more complicated when Rhaenyra has kids which are rumored to be bastards (Because they don’t look like either her or her husband) so her claim to the throne is even more endangered.

Once Viserys finally dies, both Rhaenyra and Aegon crown themselves as Queen and King respectively which divides the kingdoms into the ‘Greens’ and the ‘Blacks’. The ‘Greens’, because House Hightower’s color is green, support Aegon and the ‘Blacks’, because the Targaryens often wear black and red, support Rhaenyra.

This leads to a civil war in which basically everyone involved ends up dead; some of the only survivors are Aegon’s daughter, Jaehaera, and Rhaenyra’s son, Aegon. They marry each other to finally end the war (Yes, they are cousins).

I think the main reason why I liked this book so much was that although the story is fantastical in nature, it treats itself as though it was a historical account. The events and the people mirror human history (Minus the dragons); You have ambitious monarchs who ruin their kingdoms, peaceful kings and queens, civil wars, religious wars, conquests, defeats, etc. It feels as though you are reading a history book for class and suddenly you realize none of it is actually real.

Because this is such a large book, my next blog post will be a deeper dive into the characters themselves and how their own beliefs and ambitions drive the plot forward. In the meantime, I really recommend reading this book or any of the other installments of the Game of Thrones story but if you don’t feel like reading over eight-hundred pages ‘House of the Dragon’ is an awesome show to check out.