House of the Dragon Co-Creator Talks the Series’ ‘Generational Conflict’

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House of the Dragon Co-Creator Talks the Series’ ‘Generational Conflict’

House of the Dragon co-creator Ryan Condal spoke about how the HBO series revolves around generational conflict.

How does House of the Dragon present generational conflict?

At Deadline’s Contenders event, Condal delved into the process of showing that such a conflict started with Viserys’s generation, who passed it on to the next generation.

“The trick was really to show this generational conflict that began with Viserys’s generation,” Condal explained. “Viserys and his hand Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) passed it down to their children, Rhaenyra and Alicent, who were young women and used as pawns in the game of thrones. And then as they grew up and became adults and had children of their own, and this bitter rivalry and grasp for power gets passed on to their children. So it’s a three-generational story and we needed to get through that in the course of one season.”

Based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon chronicles the rise and the downfall of the Targaryens, the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria. It takes place 200 years before the events of the award-winning series adaptation of Game of Thrones, which aired its final episode in 2019.

The first season was led by Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, and Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. It also featured Rhys Ifans, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Sonoya Mizuno, Milly Alcock, Emily Carey, Graham McTavish, Ryan Corr, Jefferson Hall, David Horovitch, Matthew Needham, Bill Patterson, Gavin Spokes, Wil Johnson, John Macmillan, Savannah Steyn, and Theo Nate.