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00:00♪♪
00:01Duty is sacrifice.
00:05It eclipses all things, even blood.
00:11In the making of season one,
00:12we knew half that season is a prologue
00:14and half of it is the first act of this war.
00:16To have season one land the way it did
00:18with a rabid audience,
00:20fans of George and his books the way I am,
00:23we were excited to get into it
00:24because this is the juicy part of the drama.
00:28♪♪
00:32The North owes a great duty to the Seven Kingdoms,
00:36one older than any oath.
00:38Winterfell is the one place, the one corner of this world
00:41where news of Luke's death has not yet reached,
00:44and it is this hearkening back to a simpler time.
00:48I wanted to go to a place where we could experience that,
00:51if only briefly, and the North just felt
00:54completely the right way to go.
00:56Ryan, when we did speak, it really, really helped me out
00:58because we would have conversations
01:01about how important these negotiations are for Team Black
01:04and the difference it makes in the war.
01:07War is coming to the whole of the realm, my lord.
01:11We cannot wage it without the support of the North.
01:13Well, it was all about history.
01:14There were pledges that were made back in the day,
01:17and Jace is sent to remind Craig and Stark of those pledges.
01:22If your Greybeards can fight, the Queen will have them.
01:25They will fight hard, like Northerners.
01:30Rhaenyra heard the news that Luke has died
01:33on a mission that she sent him on,
01:34so there's guilt involved,
01:36and she's a mother who's lost a son
01:39and has to go through a certain necessary grieving process
01:42that Daemon, her husband,
01:44can't really appreciate or understand.
01:46She goes and tries to make peace with Luke's demise,
01:49but she cannot settle on it because it is unsettled business
01:51until part of Aryx washes ashore.
01:54Going in search of evidence
01:57is fundamentally important to her.
02:00I guess one of the sort of maddest things about death
02:04is that it seems sort of impossible,
02:06especially because really the overriding feeling often
02:08is you just sit with the absence,
02:10and so anything that has like a tangibility about it,
02:13I think is vitally important.
02:15Her son's cloak, the wing of his dragon,
02:18I think it's devastating,
02:20but I think it galvanizes a vengeful feeling,
02:24one that maybe she hasn't paid so much mind to previously.
02:32I think that Rhaenys is probably one of the few people
02:34that Daemon knows he can't mess with,
02:36although I suspect probably wants to.
02:40We're going to King's Landing.
02:41To what end?
02:42Killing Vhagar.
02:44When those two meet, it's kind of like a panther
02:47meets a kind of electric eel.
02:50Really dangerous combination.
02:53He's essentially ready to go to war and get payback.
02:57It was nice to throw those characters
02:58into conflict with one another.
03:00I think you can tell from even her demeanor
03:03the way Rhaenys thinks of Daemon.
03:05Daemon believes that he's, of course,
03:07completely in the right
03:08and has the power to order Rhaenys around.
03:10Fly with me.
03:13It is a command.
03:14Would that you were the king.
03:17Where is Jaehaerys?
03:18What do you need of him?
03:20Taken him to the small council.
03:22He'll be king one day.
03:23He must begin his instruction.
03:24But if he does not want to be king,
03:28where is he?
03:29One of the things I loved about Game of Thrones
03:31was character humor.
03:32And, you know, we can spend a lot of time
03:33being dour in this world,
03:35and it's so important to have humor.
03:36And when I first saw what Tom Glynn Kearney
03:38was doing with Aegon,
03:39I thought, he's finding humor
03:40where I didn't know it existed.
03:41And it's painful, a guy who's way in over his head,
03:44who really wants to do well,
03:45but just can't make a right move,
03:47no matter what he does.
03:50Aegon the Magnanimous.
03:52Hail King Aegon.
03:55The Magnanimous?
03:58I think Aegon is the kind of father
04:00that encourages bad behavior
04:02because he finds it funny.
04:03He loves his kids.
04:04I have no doubt about that.
04:06He loves his kids dearly.
04:07But he's not one to discipline them.
04:10If anything, he's, you know,
04:11having competitions with his children
04:13to see who can be the most rebellious.
04:15And Aegon often wins.
04:17Would someone please?
04:18Is the heir to the throne bothering you, Tyland?
04:21We see him come into a small council meeting
04:22with Jaehaerys, and, you know,
04:25he's spurring him on.
04:26He's wanting him to be more of a rebel,
04:30more of a nuisance, just like his old man.
04:33I think he wants a ride.
04:35Your grace.
04:36A ride?
04:37A pony ride.
04:38Wouldn't that be fun, Jaehaerys?
04:39Should the master of coin be your royal steed?
04:43It's meant to be a moment of fun, a bit.
04:44And yes, look, Aegon brings his four-year-old to work.
04:48But I think on a perhaps nuanced character level,
04:50this is the thing that Viserys never did for Aegon.
04:52And Aegon did not study at the feet of his father.
04:54His father had his male heir and then essentially said,
04:57well, that box is ticked.
04:58He was ill.
04:59I think he enjoyed having a son,
05:00but didn't put in the work the way he did with Rhaenyra
05:03when he was a younger man.
05:04And I think Aegon resents that
05:06and feels that part of the reason
05:07that he's not seen as being suited
05:09for the crown or the throne
05:12is because he didn't get that training from his father.
05:14So now he's going to make up for that tenfold with Jaehaerys.
05:21Alicent's been in a marriage that was loving,
05:23but not exactly romantic or physical for quite some time.
05:27Cole has got a lot of issues.
05:29One thing I love about the character
05:30is that he is a knight in shining armor
05:32and sort of classically handsome
05:33and probably the most messed up person
05:35in the story in many ways.
05:37You know, clinging to notions of purity and duty
05:39and just flagrantly breaking them left and right.
05:41So there's a lot of complex things driving the moves
05:44the closer and closer between Alicent and Cole.
05:46And it takes a leap forward,
05:47but nothing is simple with them.
05:49So for every leap forward, there's a pushback.
05:51We cannot.
05:53Again.
05:54There's a lot of wonderful tension there.
05:56I mean, I think there's love,
05:57but there's a lot of mess too.
05:59I think there's love, but there's a lot of mess too.
06:00I think there's love, but there's a lot of mess too.
06:02I think ultimately they're two very lost people
06:05in a pretty unforgiving world.
06:09And I think there's always been,
06:12you know, since the very first episode,
06:13Alicent had her eye on Kristen Cole
06:16and then she was a young lady
06:18and now she's the queen of the seven kingdoms.
06:22It's paramount that she keeps it a secret
06:24because not only would her respect
06:27completely disintegrate, but her stay in the castle
06:32and Aegon is so unpredictable,
06:34who knows what he would do if he found out
06:36that his mother was having sex
06:38with his commander of the Kingsguard.
06:41I mean, not only is it an embarrassment,
06:42it would bring deep, deep shame.
06:50I want Aemond Targaryen.
06:54Rhaenyra has literally one line in the first episode.
06:56And the one line she says,
06:58Daemon takes as a pulling the trigger.
07:00In our first episode, we see him unleash something
07:03that is sort of famous in the lore of House of the Dragon,
07:06a nasty event that he triggers.
07:08When Rhaenyra declares that she wants Aemond,
07:12I think it's an admission of a possibly shameful desire.
07:17And I think that admission is made directly to Daemon.
07:20I think it's also an admission of their similarity.
07:23She sort of discloses another way
07:26in which they actually share a darkness.
07:30I want Aemond Targaryen becomes the battle cry
07:33that then resonates across the entire season
07:35because that is the next domino to fall
07:38in this back and forth that sets in motion
07:40a horrible attack and counterattack that continues,
07:43and the atrocities grow worse and worse as they go.
07:46In our story, it's Mizaria who has got her tentacles
07:49into every part of King's Landing,
07:50is able to provide connections for Daemon to exact revenge.
07:55I think it really is a big deal for the fans
07:56because it keeps getting referred to.
07:57And I don't know the character's actual names.
08:00They're forever in lore as blood and cheese.
08:02Who the fuck is she?
08:04She's the queen, she is.
08:06A son for a son, he said.
08:08The boldest thing that I think we did there
08:09was decide to give the last 10 minutes of the episode
08:12over to these two characters that we had never met before
08:15and rely on them to take us through the end of the story
08:18and to see, hopefully, as they go deeper and deeper
08:21into the Red Keep and as we're spending
08:22more and more screen time on them
08:23that something horrible is going to happen in there.
08:26And knowing that you're watching Game of Thrones
08:28and you don't know what is going to come before you
08:30from where and seeing that play out,
08:32hopefully, is the fun and the horror
08:34for the audience that's yet to come.
08:36♪♪
08:39Whoo!