That in the new map of the intro of The House of the Dragon the mighty rivers of blood do not prevent you from seeing the blood geography of the series. The new title credits of The House of the Dragon they do not offer a map to use, although they do go through known territories of Westeros, starting with Valyria, in Essos, starting point of the glory, rise and fall of this family following a dream to unify Westeros (unifying it by conquest) with the objective of making a common front against the White Walkers (it is what the visions that are transmitted from generation to generation have). What the intro of the header captures is the bloodline of the Targaryens from Aegon I, the Conqueror, to the Dance of Dragons, the point towards which the series ends The House of the Dragon. So no, the different families with which the different factions of the Targaryens may or may not form alliances in their fight for the Iron Throne are not represented. Nor is it a geographic map. They refer exclusively to the lineage of the Targaryens. After carefully analyzing the credit titles, we believe that we were able to draw the line that runs through the different crests (we have discussed the dynamic duo that we cover The House of the Dragon about the best noun to define it: herald, family coat of arms, insignia and we stay with blazon) of the Targaryens. A total of 14 crests / heralds / shields / insignia appear and except for two of them, all refer to the Targaryen family, although within the Targaryen family not all follow the bloodline. Shields of gold and silver define the link with the main blood thread of a family especially given to consanguinity (gold, follows the bloodline; silver, moves away or simply is not part of the Targaryens). If you are an expert in the Universe of Song of ice and fire and you have read several times fire and blood We believe that we are not going to tell you anything new. However, we believe that there is an audience that may not have your knowledge. So we are going to try to give the most basic brushstrokes to understand what the introduction of the series wants to tell us; introduction that we are curious to know how it will evolve in the following seasons, since possible spoilers are ventured in the last two heralds. we start And, yes, the Valyrian model of King Viserys’s chambers (Paddy Considine) is a metaphor, like an elephant-metaphor.
The first symbol is of Aegon I the Conqueror, the father of the lamb. It’s in Valyria. He wants to get his family out of Essos. There is a civil war and Aegon travels to the West to unify the Seven Kingdoms under his throne. He takes on the great Houses of Westeros: the Baratheons, the Starks, the Lannisters, the Tyrells, and the Dornishmen (no, not the Martell family). Dorne stands up (Aegon tries to subdue Dorne, but life gives him lemons: he fails and they come to a Kind regards). But back to the blood. The first coat of arms derives, in turn, in two heralds. Aegon has children with his two sisters, who are wives at the time. The bloodline continues with only one of them: Rhaenys. It is with her that he has Aenys I. The second coat of arms is precisely the one that unites Aegon with Rhaenys. It is with her and her son Aenys I that the blood line follows, but first… Aegon has another son with her other sister Visenya (the one who later wields the Black Sister sword that Daemon will end up wielding) . That son is called Maegor. It is the third crest, the one that links Aegon with Visenya and with Maegor.
The four herald is from Aenys, who has three sons, Aegon, Viserys, and Jaehaerys, who will continue her bloodline, but first they will encounter a, um, cough, cough, little mutiny on board. When his brother Aenys dies, Maegor takes advantage and, zasca, usurps the throne from his sober at the stroke of a sword It’s bad, very bad. They nickname him Maegor, the cruel one. His reign, ephemeral, contrasts with that of Aenys I, who is a calm, conciliatory king in Viserys, at least as we have seen him in the first two episodes of the series (which does not mean that he turns the Targaryen family in a much more toxic and dysfunctional family nucleus than the Roy family itself in Succession). Fortunately, Maegor dies under mysterious circumstances and the bloodline reverts to one of Aenys’s sons…basically the one left alive: Jaehaerys, Viserys’s grandfather, his predecessor on the throne. The brothers of Aenys with whom she does not follow the bloodline make up the fifth crest that we see rotate in the intro (this one, I admit, I include it out of the question because if not, frankly, I do not know who it may belong to).
And we come to the sixth and seventh crests, which represent Jaehaerys and his sister Alyssane, yes also daughter of Aenys. Jaehaerys and Alysanne give rise to the most prolific of the blood encounters of this family (also one of the great family chickens of the Targaryens, since nobody wants them to marry, but nobody prevents it either), but what interests us are two of its offspring, Baelon and Alyssa, who are represented, in turn, by the eighth and ninth coats of arms that turn and turn in the increasingly mighty river that runs through the credit titles. The heir was actually Aemon, who marries a Baratheon, but they have no male descendants (he is the father of Rhaenys, the Queen who wasn’t…and should have been). As Aemon dies before succeeding his father, Jaehaerys names his second son Baelon as his heir. The fact is that from the union of his brothers Baelon and Alyssa three sons had come out: Viserys, Daemon and Aerys. The problem? Baelon also dies before his father, so in the end, when Jaehaerys dies, it is his grandson Viserys who ascends the throne. So far, everyone agrees.
The tenth coat of arms refers to the crown of Viserys that joins the symbol of the Arryn family, the eleventh coat of arms of the credit titles. Viserys and Aemma Arryn are joined in holy matrimony in the Sept. From here is where things get complicated on the genealogical map: there are only three shields left and we are already entering the field of possible spoilers. Viserys and Aemma have only one daughter, Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock). Her father wants her to be her successor, but then Aemma dies and Viserys marries Alicent Hightower (the thirteenth crest). And the twelfth? That’s where we enter the realm of spoilers. Viserys and Alicent will have sons, especially one. From that point on there are three claimants to the throne who have Targaryen blood: there is Rhaenyra, there is the eldest of Viserys’s sons with the new Queen, and there is Daemon. But, of course, the fourteenth coat of arms is disconcerting.
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The last herald before seeing the symbol of House Targaryen in flames refers to Rhaenyra and Daemon (Matt Smith). It is the same drawing of the necklace that Daemon gives to his niece in the first episode of the series, in the Iron throne room. The symbol is silver, but it is surrounded by gold… Is it a clue to the future of the series? If so, the direct lineage of Viserys and Jaehaerys would converge with Rhaenyra, Daemon and Viserys’ son with Alicent towards the symbol of the house of Dragons on fire…
What we have not managed to decipher is the symbol of the dragon engraved in the stone above the symbols of the houses of the rest of the families of Westeros. We do not understand why it appears precisely there. Does it refer to the past, to the conquest? How will the resolution of the conflict affect the houses? That the Targaryen family is above the rest?
