House of The Dragon creators have defended their decision to include *that* graphic birthing scene in the pilot.
Note: This article contains spoilers for Episode 1 of House of The Dragon.
With House of The Dragon being a sequel to Game of Thrones, some level of violence and gore was to be expected. Many, however, had not expected it come right out of the gate – or in the shocking way it did.
In what was truly a jarring and gory sequence of events, the pilot of one of HBO’s most anticipated shows depicted King Viserys’ wife Queen Aemma Targaryen struggling in childbirth. She’s unable to push the baby out, her life hanging in the balance. Chillingly, the Grand Maester informs Viserys that both his queen and his heir might die, lest they cut the baby out of her womb.
Despite knowing that the procedure would definitely claim his wife’s life, Viserys consents. As Aemma realises what is going to happen, multiple people pin her down as she screams in pain – the scene cuts to show her abdomen being sliced open. Predictably, she dies from blood loss. Ironically, her baby – the one Viserys had so cruelly sacrificed his wife for – also dies within hours of her.
While Twitter objected to the graphic nature and the callousness displayed – with some even warning people ahead of time – creators Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal have defended their decision to keep the scene in.
According to Sapochnik, they tested the scene out by showing cuts to multiple women, all of whom they say claimed that the scene was not ‘too violent.’
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Sapochnik and Condal hadn’t intended for the scene to be political, but they did acknowledge the implications of the scene in the modern context.
“We shouldn’t be shying away from this thing that’s happened because it’s raising a point that seems to hit a real trigger for women, which is this idea of choice,” Sapochnik told Insider.
“She doesn’t get to choose. She’s effectively murdered by her husband. And that is a good indication of the state of play in this world that we’re inhabiting.” he added.
One of their goals was to keep the scene ‘horribly real’, which they say was achieved by drawing parallels with a battlefield.
“The birthing bed is almost a battlefield,” Sapochnik said, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
“We felt that was an interesting way to explore the fact that for a woman in medieval times, giving birth was violence. It’s as dangerous as it gets. You have a 50/50 chance of making it. Many women didn’t. If given the choice, the father would choose the child over the mother as a cesarean would kill you.” he added.
He continued: “It was an extremely violent part of life. We have a number of births in the show and basically decided to give them different themes and explore them from different perspectives the same way I did for a bunch of battles on Thrones, where each time I tried to put a different spin on each so it wasn’t just doing the same thing, as I don’t think putting a bunch of violence onscreen for the sake of violence does any good in the world.”
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Watch the trailer for House of The Dragon:
