House of the Dragon' was inspired by the chaos of the Middle Ages, a world without law and order

LONDON - Aug. 4, 2024 - PRLog -- By: David Routt, University of Richmond, So Seductive Kiss Fans Entertainment Company

Students in my medieval history courses often wonder whether historical reality can be gleaned from medieval cinematic fantasy.

I tell them that fantasy does not aspire to historical verisimilitude. But it can reflect medieval conflicts, values and norms.

The first season of HBO's "House of the Dragon" exemplified this. Its narrative, as noted by co-creator George R. R. Martin, drew inspiration from England's Anarchy, a 12th-century civil war sparked by King Henry I's effort to make his daughter, the Empress Matilda, a ruling queen. King Viserys of Martin's fictional Westeros does the same with his daughter Rhaenyra. This fantasy evoked the vagaries of hereditary succession and the misogyny characteristic of the Middle Ages.

The new season offers a more colorful medieval palette. Its themes of internecine strife, justice and the power of everyday people have broad – indeed, universal – resonance.

'A sin begets a sin begets a sin'
One conflict encapsulates the factional violence in fictional Westeros.

The feud between the Brackens and Blackwoods, two noble families, is a storyline in both seasons.

During Princess Rhaenyra's tour to find a husband in Season One, one of her suitors, a member of the Blackwood family, slays a heckler in her presence who happens to be a Bracken.

It represents the newest broadside in an escalating cycle of retribution, with the dispute's origins long purged from memory. As one character observes, the spark igniting the Bracken-Blackwood feud "is lost in time. A sin begets a sin begets a sin."

No slight is deemed too trivial in the age-old hostility between these two families: At one point, the Blackwoods accuse the Brackens of moving a boundary stone to purloin grazing land, and this accusation somehow reaches King Viserys' ears, who dismisses it as a local problem.

In Season Two, bands of Bracken and Blackwood youths meet in the disputed pasture. Hotheaded invective follows: A Bracken calls a Blackwood a "babe-killer" and "kin-slayer." A battle ensues, resulting in a pasture littered with Bracken and Blackwood corpses, the Blackwood patriarch dead, too.

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