*Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first episode of House of The Dragon as well as references to birth trauma and baby loss.
Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin has defended the horrifying childbirth scene from the opening episode of House of The Dragon.
Viewers have already been left ‘traumatised’ by the moment in question, which shows Queen Aemma (sian Brooke) going into labour but her baby is breach.
Her husband, King Viserys Targaryen I (Paddy Considine), who is adamant the baby will be a boy and subsequently heir to his throne, in turn, is confronted with the decision to either leave the fate of both his unborn child and wife to chance or slice open Aemma’s stomach so they can deliver the baby, knowing that she will bleed to death.
The scene, which has been compared to the notoriously merciless ‘Red Wedding’ in Game of Thrones, then shows Aemma pinned down while Viserys tells her he lover her, before she spots the Maester coming closer with a knife.
Unaware of what’s been decided, she pleads for answers to no avail before she’s cut open and the baby is pulled from her womb while she bleeds out and dies with her husband clenching on to her lifeless hand.
It’s quite the start for the Game of Thrones prequel which has already alarmed viewers.
Martin has responded to a suggestion the scene is ‘gratuitous’, insisting the world alone ‘annoys the hell out of’ him.
‘That [scene] is so powerful. Paddy performs that heartbreak and the difficulty is on his face. The terror on his wife’s face, they’re both so powerful. Yeah, I think that was certainly the right way to go,’ he told Variety.
House of The Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal insisted the graphic birth was ‘not meant to be gratuitous’.
‘It’s meant to show there’s a heavy theme in this particular period,’ he added.
‘In Fire and Blood, there’s a lot of very difficult births. It was something we wanted to carry over the season. There’s this whole idea in Game of Thrones, or in the Middle Ages, or in historical age like this, that the men marched off to the battlefield and the women’s battlefield happened in the child bed.
‘That was a very dangerous place to be. All of the complications that people go through in modern birth that are now fixed by science and medicine and surgery were not really possible back then.
‘Any slight complication, anything could lead to very tragic consequences for the child and the mother.’
Aemaa’s death was just one of the many shocking moments from episode one, while fans have largely praised the introduction to House of the Dragon which comes as a huge relief following the backlash to the Game of Thrones finale.
House of The Dragon is available to stream on NOW.
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