The way Aemma Arryn (Sian Brooke) gets killed off the show, rather than any tits or dragons, is the most stunning scene in the HBO series House of the Dragon‘s premiere. The Queen of the Seven Kingdoms passes away during childbirth, just like many other women before her, but what makes her death scene so ground-breaking is how House of the Dragon never lets up on the suffering, misery, and savagery of her demise. A significant distinction between House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones is made by this strong decision, which reverberates throughout the first season of the programme.
In House of the Dragon, Paddy Considine portrays the King Viserys (Paddy Considine) succession crisis that led to the collapse of the Targaryen dynasty. When the series begins, the eldest heir of the previous king, Rhaenys (Eve Best), is overlooked in favour of her younger cousin Viserys since she is a woman. By the end of the first episode of House of the Dragon, Viserys makes the audacious choice to designate Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), his sole surviving child, as his heir (even though he has a brother). His tragic loss of his cherished wife, Aemma, during childbirth is the impetus for this choice. If Viserys hadn’t made the difficult decision to permit the maesters to cut Aemma, this tragic death may have been prevented.
In its brutal depiction of this forced birth, House of the Dragon frames King Viserys’ choice as a revolting, nonconsensual act. The maester attempts a crude joke Cesarian section while the scared queen is tied down by many people and cries for them to stop. She adamantly rejects the idea of being sliced open!
The brutal combat between Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) and Criston Cole (Fabian Frankel) on the tournament field is edited in between Aemma’s death and her brutal defeat. (It must be said: from above, the stadium where the tournament is being held resembles disturbingly female genitalia. That is symbolism, you cannot deny it. English was my major.) Aemma bleeds to death, soaking the blankets and ruining everything that has been done. The faint cries of a baby boy are heard, but he passes away the same day. Her devotion resulted in nothing but ashes.
It’s challenging to see this passage, but it’s vital. The majority of our entertainment shies away from depicting the more unpleasant aspects of childbirth, choosing instead to portray it as a joyful miracle. The labour pangs are only shown for a few seconds while the mother shivers and groans; it’s more of an athletic endeavour than a struggle for survival. And when childbirth goes wrong on television, it frequently takes place offscreen or is depicted in the most subdued terms, after a baby has been delivered, and is then presented as a martyrdom act.
Pregnancy and childbirth aren’t nearly as dangerous to life today as they were thousands of years ago thanks to modern medicine. However, it’s still a traumatic, unpleasant, and challenging event. In a subsequent episode, a different character gives birth safely but later struggles with the postpartum period, milk-sore breasts, and the stigma associated with breastfeeding in public. House of the Dragon emphasises how women are not just politically oppressed in this patriarchal environment, but also physically worn down by the demands of childbirth by refusing to romanticise childbirth and its aftereffects.
The death scene of Aemma Arryn not only establishes the tone for House of the Dragon’s innovative approach to the intimate experiences of women, but also demonstrates how certain people are traumatised by this incident. Rhaenyra will argue against the idea that being married to a ruler and having heirs is her main responsibility in the realm in upcoming episodes. You can kind of understand why she would find that idea offensive today! Viserys is a king who will also eventually be unable to decide between his loved ones. He strives to please everyone, which is a surefire way to displease everyone. Viserys will probably be reluctant to make the same choice again after choosing between a woman and a child once, with spectacularly bad outcomes.
The character of Aemma Arryn may have been reduced to a footnote in House of the Dragon. She passes away much earlier than the forthcoming Targaryen civil war’s events, after all. You could say that the only thing that should be said about her birthing death is a casual remark or a close-up picture of a nurse cleaning a dying woman’s brow. Instead, Aemma is presented to us in House of the Dragon as a devoted wife and mother. She is given time and space to process her situation, and there is a moment in which she tells Viserys that she is not capable of becoming pregnant again either mentally or physically or emotionally. Aemma is made to seem like a fully-dimensional figure, and we are drawn to like her. That just intensifies the brutality of her violent demise.
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