I was never the biggest fan of Daenerys Targaryen. While Emilia Clarke was always one of Game of Thrones’ brightest stars, Dany herself always felt disconnected from the heart of the story. Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister, The Long Night, Olenna Tyrell, and many more were the stories I wanted to see in any given episode. Even in Dany’s arc, Missandei and Grey Worm felt like more compelling characters. Of course, by the end, Daenerys did join up with the rest of the cast, but by then Game of Thrones had become a shadow of its former self. House of the Dragon, the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel, reminds us what could have been.
Of all the major houses in Game of Thrones, the Targaryens are the most influential but least populous. Jon spends most of the show going by Snow but being recognised as a Stark, while Viserys dies violently midway through the first season. The Targaryens are represented by Dany alone, rather than the collective might of the Starks, the Lannisters, or the Tyrells. Even the Greyjoys have more numbers. House of the Dragon is supposed to explore the family’s compelling history, but knowing where it all ends, what’s the point?
I know prequels always lead up to events we already know occur, but that’s not quite what I mean. House of the Dragon is set centuries before Dany was even born. There’s plenty of room for all the twists and turns Thrones was known for. But Game of Thrones went from the greatest, most talked about television show on the planet to a footnote. Humans are creatures of immediacy, buoyed by recency bias. Game of Thrones is over, so it ceases to matter. Squid Game is the best TV show that has ever existed, just as The Queen’s Gambit was a year ago. But there’s something remarkable about the way Game of Thrones snuffed itself out so thoroughly.
Game of Thrones’ disaster of an ending was a sum of many failings. Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss seemed keen to move on to other projects, turning down the offer from HBO to negotiate for more episodes and seasons, which would have allowed the ending to move at the same contemplative pace as seasons one to five. The books, originally planned to be written during the show’s run and therefore arrive in tandem with the later seasons, never appeared.
This led to two issues - firstly, Benioff and Weiss were left to follow a rough outline rather than a full novel, and secondly, George R. R. Martin himself had to step away from his work consulting and occasionally writing for the show to concentrate on the books that are still not here. Game of Thrones deviated from A Song of Ice and Fire consistently, even when it was at its peak, ditching arcs like Lady Stoneheart or focusing on characters never offered a narrative POV in the books. Going away from the books was not an issue in itself, but the way the latter series deviated from the books, abandoning intricate, layered plots for quick wrap ups and gotchas, caused huge problems.
Nowhere were these problems more apparent than with Daenerys Targaryen. I am not a Dany defender. I'm not here for 'Dany did nothing wrong'. Dany was the people's queen, yet she was just as ambitious as Cersei, in a new land, believing the throne to be her birthright, and with a history of brutality - however justified you may argue some of it was. She was perfect for the Mad Queen arc. But doing it over the space of three episodes, pitting her in a pointless and trite rivalry with Sansa, and reducing all the characters around her to dopes that behave in ways that serve the plot rather than serve their interests, ruins any effect Dany's descent into her legacy might have had. Our own Cian Maher has argued the prequels need to forget Game of Thrones existed, but I'm not sure I can.
This brings us back to House of the Dragon. The Targaryens are the most fascinating family in Game of Thrones, but all roads lead to Dany. All roads lead to The Bells. All roads lead to Bran becoming King, the North ceding, and Arya killing the Night King. It's just hard to care. The Many Saints of Newark is easy to care about, even so long after The Sopranos ended, because The Sopranos has endured. Game of Thrones, even just a few years on, has not. Maybe House of the Dragon will be fine. Maybe it will be great. But it was commissioned while GoT was the biggest piece of media in the world - it's unclear how it will fare after Thrones' fall from grace.