Only Sigmund Freud could’ve seen this coming.
Fans of “House of the Dragon” are expressing their disgust after the show aired a scene featuring incest on Sunday. Although “Game of Thrones” and its prequel “HOTD” have always featured family members doing the deed, some viewers say that the most recent instance in Season 2, Episode 5 really went over the line.
During Sunday’s episode, titled “Regent,” Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) is continuing his stay at the haunted castle, Harrenhal. Since Daemon “seized” the castle two episodes prior, he’s been plagued by weird nightmares that have made him question his waking reality. The dreams seem to be spurred, or likely completely controlled, by Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), a mysterious woman who works in the castle whom Daemon has outright called a “witch” but is also intrigued by.
In the episode, Daemon has a trippy sex dream in which he performs cunnilingus on an unknown woman with long silver hair (Emeline Lambert). Throughout the scene, the woman fans Daemon’s ego by telling him how he should have been king rather than his older brother, King Viserys (Paddy Considine).
Since the woman was unfamiliar to the audience but had silver hair like Daemon, many viewers assumed she was also a Targaryen. And considering how much she compared Daemon to Viserys, some people guessed that she was Aemma Arryn (Sian Brooke), Viserys’ wife, who died during childbirth in the pilot episode of “HOTD.”
But when the woman uttered the following line, most people immediately understood who she was:
“If only you were born first …my favorite son.”
That’s right: The woman Daemon was having passionate sex with was his mom, Queen Alyssa, who died when Daemon was a toddler.
People were pretty repulsed by this development.
But considering that Daemon groomed and then later married his niece, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) — and that his “dream” was likely created by the “witch” Alys Rivers and wasn’t a reflection of his true desire to pull an Oedipus — other fans defended the scene.
Hey, honestly, considering the oodles of disturbing scenes that have been featured in both “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragons” — and the franchise’s lore states that the Targaryens once mated with dragons — we’re just happy that Alys Rivers didn’t conjure a dream for Daemon where he was doing it with the severed head of Meleys. OK?!
