Yahoo News ‘House of the Dragon’ Title Sequence Credits, Explained
The long-awaited second season of House of the Dragon came with a surprise for viewers from the jump — a brand new intro sequence that replaces the artful, if difficult to parse, Season 1 intro. The latest entry into the “unskippable intros featuring the music of composer Ramin Djwadi” club is stacked with incredibly detailed information, lore, and history about House Targaryen, Westeros, and dragons, so let’s get right into explaining the secrets hidden in this unfolding Targaryen tapestry.
The Rise and Fall of Valyria, or How House Targaryen Got Lucky and Survived The Apocalypse
The first image in the “House of the Dragon” Season 2 intro is a cheeky nod to the Season 1 intro, which depicted blood winding through the levels in a scale model of Valyria, the ancestral homeland of the Targaryens and of dragons themselves. The new intro also starts with Valyria, but this time the blood rushing down the tiered walls is only the beginning of the story.
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The next few images summarize the rise and fall of the Valyrian Freehold, which somewhat ironically was built on the backs of slaves and ruled by forty dragon-riding families. These families had hundreds of dragons between them, and they used their power to enslave and conquer millions, represented by the blood and misery depicted on the tapestry.
That misery leads into an image of the Targaryen family leaving Valyria on the advice of Daenys the Dreamer, who woke up one day with a weird vibe and thought that her family should maybe move. They did move, along with a few of their non dragon-riding family friends like House Velaryon, and they settled on Dragonstone, where Rhaenyra and Daemon still live — you can briefly see the outline of their familiar castle on the top left of the screen before the scene moves on.
A few decades after the Targaryens moved to Westeros on her advice, Valyria was destroyed in a cataclysmic, Pompeii-style volcanic explosion appropriately called the Doom of Valyria. The tapestry shows this event in all of its glory, with the volcanoes exploding and dragons falling out of the sky. This event left the Targaryens as the only dragonriders left in the world, because sometimes when you don’t play the game of thrones you win anyway.
The Conquest of Westeros Part 1, or Why It’s Dumb To Bring a Sword to a Dragon Fight
Now the tapestry moves on to the actions of the Targaryens in Westeros. Aegon the Conqueror and his two sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya ride their dragons Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar (hi, Vhagar!) above a fleet of allied ships that have the seahorse sigil of House Velaryon on their sails (hi Velaryons!).
Then comes Aegon’s conquest, depicting how he and his queens subjugated six of the seven kingdoms. Spoiler alert: they did it with fire and blood. The central section shows the ruined shell of Harrenhal, which Aegon burned with Balerion when King Harren the Black refused to surrender the Riverlands. That’s Harren right there in the middle with his axe and a look of deep, painful regret on his embroidered face.
Harren is surrounded by imagery from another of the conquest’s most famous battles, the Field of Fire. In that battle, all three Targaryen dragons destroyed the combined armies of King Loren Lannister and King Mern Gardener — if you look closely, there are little Lannister lions and the hand sigils of House Gardner on the shields of the fallen soldiers, with the chilling detail that though the shields were likely painted Lannister red and Gardner green, the tapestry shows every single one of them as black and burned.
In one of the intro’s many blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments, Queen Rhaenys’ silver dragon Meraxes is shown falling from the sky amongst a ridge of mountains, depicting both of their deaths at the hands of House Uller of Dorne. You can catch this moment for half a second above the smoking ruin of Harrenhall before the intro moves along to the rest of the conquest.
The Conquest of Westeros Part 2, or How Smart People Handle Their Problems
Something about having the Targaryens having the capacity to burn tens of thousands of people influenced the next part of tapestry, in which houses Arryn, Stark, and Tully bow to Aegon and accept him as their king without needing to show off in battle first. An interesting detail here is that the Arryns and Starks both wear crowns, but the Tullys do not — this is because the Arryns and Starks were kings of the North and Vale before they bent the knee, but the Tullys were not a royal house when Aegon granted them the Riverlands.
The Sons of the Dragon, or Who Let A Maniac Design This Castle?
The cute shot of the Red Keep and the growing city of King’s Landing is slightly marred by the appearance of Balerion in the top right corner of the panel. We say marred because it’s not Aegon riding Balerion, it’s his son Maegor. The good news is that Maegor is the Targaryen king who finished the Red Keep, establishing the iconic castle as the royal seat of his house. The bad news is that Maegor was a bloodthirsty tyrant who usurped his brother’s throne, murdered thousands, and finished said Red Keep by building trap doors, tunnels, secret rooms, and all kinds of weird stuff that makes it a dangerous place to live.
The even better news is that the next panel shows Maegor murdered on the Iron Throne. In death he is flanked by one bronze dragon and one silver dragon. These are Vermithor and Silverwing, the mounts of the beloved King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne, who ruled after Maegor. These dragons are still alive at the time of “House of the Dragon” — it was Vermithor to whom Daemon sang that sweet dragon lullaby at the end of Season 1.
Jaehaerys the Conciliator OR Westeros Catches a Break
The quick depiction of Jaehaerys and Alysanne shows the new king wearing a golden crown, which was forged to contrast with the black, ruby-studded crown worn by Aegon the Conqueror and by Maegor. To their left is the seven-pointed star of the Faith of the Seven, indicating their work to unify the crown and the church. On their right is a bag of gold because their reign was prosperous and peaceful and nothing bad ever happened to the Targaryens again. Until the next panel.
The Great Council, OR Seriously? Viserys?
Finally, something “House of the Dragon” fans will recognize without having to be a huge nerd who’s read all of the A Song of Ice and Fire Books, examined every inch of the World of Ice and Fire encyclopedia, read “Fire & Blood” a dozen times and spends their free time listening to Game of Thrones podcasts on fake history and dragonlore will recognize. Ahem.
This is the Great Council of 101, wherein King Jaehaerys (center, on the golden throne) let the men of the realm vote on who should succeed him: The competent, wise, capable, dragon-riding girlboss Rhaenys Targaryen (right, looking awesome in Velaryon blue and Targaryen red) or Viserys (left, with a very pregnant Queen Aemma), who would rather have done literally anything else with his life. We all know who they picked, and we all know how that worked out.
The First Steps of the Dance or “House of the Dragon,” Season 1
This part of the tapestry incorporates several elements of “House of the Dragon” Season 1. Alicent’s posture and green dress invokes her dramatic entrance at Rhaenyra’s wedding, the blood between her and Rhaenyra is a nod to Rhaenyra’s bloody walk across the castle to see Alicent after she gave birth, the whole Targaryen family sitting at a table is reminiscent of Viserys’s final night alive, and the divide between the Targaryen-Targaryens and the Hightower-Targaryens represents…the divide between the Targaryen-Targaryens and the Hightower-Targaryens.
Enter: Alicent’s son Aegon wearing the black crown of Aegon the Conqueror, seated on the Iron Throne with his green cape. Note that the dragon sigil on his chest is gold instead of red, as Aegon’s dragon Sunfyre has golden scales. The green hand below him sends out a flock of ravens, alluding to the first diplomatic steps the Green Council took to shore up support for his coup.
Enter: Rhaenyra wearing the gold crown of King Jaehaerys on the throne at Dragonstone. The black hand below her sends out three dragons: little Arrax, long Caraxes, and just-right Vermax, showing that the Black Council sent its diplomats on dragons.
Surrounding these two are the shields of houses that joined up on each side. It’s difficult to tell exactly which houses they all represent, but the Greens look to have the blue-and white shield of House Tarbeck, the red apple of House Fossoway, the three ravens of House Corbray, the Lannister lion, the tower of the Hightowers, the Baratheon stag, two unclear shields, and the lamb of House Stokeworth. The Blacks have two unclear shields, the Stark wolf, the Arryn falcon, the Velaryon seahorse, the Tully fish, the Frey towers, the Beesbury bees, and the swordfish of House Bar Emmon.
The Real First Step of the Dance OR Snacktime for Vhagar!
Yup, that’s Vhagar biting Arrax to pieces with Prince Aemond on her back and, somewhat mercifully is incorrectly, poor Prince Lucerys “falling off the dragon” to his death. And definitely not also being eaten by Vhagar, which he was.
“House of the Dragon” OR The Title of the Show
And that’s all for the new “House of the Dragon” intro! Considering both the “Game of Thrones” intro and the Season 1 “House of the Dragon” intro both updated to reflect the events that took place over the course of the show, it’s likely that this one will too, so keep an eye on those threads for any new details that may emerge throughout Season 2.
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