You're welcome.

I know many of you have traveled long leads to be at these games, but I promise you will not be disappointed. When I look at the fine nights in these lists, I see a group without equal in our histories. And this great day has been made more auspicious by the news that I am happy to share. Queen Emma has begun her labors. May the luck of the seven shine upon all combatants.

Don't worry about her. She's going to be fine.

Childbirth in the Middle Ages is great.

There's never been any issues. Welcome to the official Game of Thrones podcast, House of the Dragon. I'm Jason Concepcion.

And I'm Greta Johnson. Season 2 of House of the Dragon is just around the corner, and we are spending these weeks getting ready for the premiere on June 16th.

Today, we're doing a deep dive into the world of Westeros. What What would it really be like to live there? What inspired its culture and its leaders? And why is everybody so desperate to rule this place?

These are all very good questions. And luckily, today, we are going to be joined by a very special guest who actually consulted on House of the Dragons Season 2 in order to help bring an authentic Old World grit to the screen. Medieval historian Dr. Charles Farris.

But first, let's take the Express Dragon to Westris.

Here is the hard truth which no one else has the heart to tell you.

Men would sooner put the round to the torch and see a woman ascend the Iron Throne. Okay, so Westeros is obviously a very brutal world based on medieval Europe, which in many ways, certainly from my extremely layperson's knowledge of it, was also quite brutal.

Here's the question. If you had to pick one technological advancement that would make living in Westeros easier for you, what would it be? Oh, my God. What would it be? There are so many.

Some modern medicine. I'm not talking like MRIs and stuff. I have seasonal allergies and I'm an asthmatic. So if I could get my asthma inhaler, I think that would make me feel a lot more confident about living in this world. It seems like it's got a lot of pollen and things like that in it.

Yeah, that's a good call. I would go glasses, which is to your point, too, around the medical stuff. Great one. Right?

Yeah, actually great one. I don't know, though.

Flushing toilets are also pretty great.

They don't know what they're missing. The folks in Westeros.

That's very true. So obviously, Westeros is not a real place. But George R. R. Martin, we know, of course, is a huge history buff. And he did take inspiration from real history when he was creating this world that we're seeing in House of the Dragon. I want to listen to a clip, Jason. This is actually of you talking with him at San Diego Comicon from a couple of years ago. And this was a panel that you moderated right before season one of House of the Dragon came out.

I asked George and showrunner Ryan Condal and the others on the panel, what is it about Westeros that makes them so anti-having a queen?

My books are fantasies, obviously, but I do follow history a lot. I get inspiration from history, and then I take elements from history and I turn it up to 11 obligatory spinal type reference or to 111. Game of Thrones, as many people observe, was based very loosely on the Wars of the Roses. This show was based on an earlier period of English history called The Anarchy. I pilfered freely from real history. When Henry I, the King of England, when his only Any legitimate son drowned while trying to cross the English channel, he was left with only one legitimate child, which was his daughter Matilda. He named her his heir, and he made all the lords of the Kingdoms, where they're fealty to her. Then some years later, he died, and most of the lords of the Kingdom forgot about that. The author said, No, it doesn't apply. That was the inspiration there. I don't think Westeros is more anti-woman or more misogynistic than real life and what we call history.

How did that answer strike you?

It makes total sense. I mean, I think we always knew that George was a huge nerd, and we love that. It's so much fun even just to hear his voice because it's like, Oh, there's George. There he is. I'm not surprised that it's based on history, and I'm excited to dive in on that with you a little bit in this episode today. Cannot wait. If you don't know much about the English anarchy stuff that George was talking about here, don't worry, you are not alone. We are going to learn much more about that period of history and how the House of the Dragon team melded fantasy and real-world history next with medieval historian Dr. Charles Farris. Charles, thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of your podcast, so thank you. It's really exciting to be here.

That's super sweet.

That's so nice.

How did you get this gig on House of the Dragon?

Oh, well, yeah, very exciting. I was just sent an invitation. I've done a little bit of consulting before, but I didn't really know what I was going to be consulting on exactly. I was sent a little bit of script, which was very exciting, but I didn't know about the questions, and I turned up one day and met a load of the directors, and we just chatted medieval for the afternoon, which is basically what I like doing for fun anyway, but don't normally get to do with really important directors. So pretty exciting stuff.

The term medieval history, what does it mean Well, if you had 10 historians here, they would all argue about when exactly medieval was.

But to break it down into the most simple terms is medieval or the Middle Ages, as it's also known, literally means the middle period. We're talking the period of time between the ancient world and the modern world. If you want dates, again, historians are going to argue about that all day, but roughly from the period about 500 with the fall of the Western Roman Empire up until about 1500 with the Reformation in Europe. That's a European definition, but that's my specialty, so that's what I'm going to talk about today.

Charles, what do you think is behind our continuing fascination with this period of time?

I think it's one of those things because it's really familiar to everyone in some ways. You say medieval to someone, and they probably think castles and banquets and great halls and things. They might have some places in mind. But at the same time, it's also really mysterious. It feels a long time ago. A lot of the customs seem really mysterious. So it's the familiar mixed with the complete unknowing, I think, which makes it really exciting.

Well, I think it's such an interesting time, too, because in so many ways, they knew so little, right? I I think in terms of scientific developments or even understanding, is Earth the center of the universe? There were so many questions that were still questions, even.

Yeah, definitely still questions. If I had some academic historians here with me, they would say, Like, ideas of the dark ages are completely wrong. This is a very advanced society, and in many ways that is true. But as you say, their understanding of science was very much still evolving. They were very much looking to the ancient world and to the east in many ways to try and understand their texts and learn more about history and science and all these things. But they were also very much guided by the church and their teachings, too. We talk about the Renaissance. There were lots of Renaissance in the 12th century, in the 14th century, in the 15th This is a time when everyone's very curious, but there's a lot of uncertainty in the world as well.

I think that also allows for some really interesting elements, like believing in things like dragons and fairies.

Absolutely. I mean, this is a time when stories are very popular, and they're listening to stories and hageography. The Lives of Saints are very interesting, and people are talking about dragons and things in there. People were told that there were strange places in the world where you could go, where strange creatures lived, and strange things would happen. In some ways, it was a very small world for many people, but also one that was looking outwards and slightly scared of what was around the corner. Yeah, a lot of uncertainty, but a lot of mythology as well.

George R. Martin has said, I take elements from history and turn that up to 11. Are those elements obvious to you? Do you see a certain scene or a passage or a collection of episodes and say, Oh, I know where that's coming from?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, there's definitely lots of inspiration. There's lots of texture from the medieval world, for sure. I listened on your podcast when you interviewed him and he was talking about how he's really interested in history, reads a lot of history, reads a lot of public history, popular history. You can tell that with the way he writes. He's very much inspired by the medieval world, and Game of Thrones was inspired by the Wars of the Roses. This one is very much inspired by a period of history called the Anarchy, and you can tell that. I see things, and I think, oh, I wonder if that is what a tournament would have looked It's like, Oh, that's an interesting detail. But what's wonderful about it is because it's not historic fiction, it's not set in a specific time, it's inspired by. As you say, he does it up to 11, and we get to enjoy that without worrying too much about whether the historical detail is absolutely accurate, which is what normally upsets historians. Well, hopefully they don't have to worry too much in this sense.

Yeah. Are you able to just enjoy it, or do you sometimes get stressed out about potential anachronisms? Or is it just like, well, it's a fantasy world anyway, so it's fine?

One One of the great things about Game of Thrones is while it's inspired by the medieval world, but it's also a fantasy, and you can see that engaging with lots of those sorts of ideas. He's not the first to do it, of course. Lord of the Rings and J. R. Tolkien, he was a medievalist himself, a great expert on medieval literature, and he took inspiration, too. But I think also what makes it so believable and what all these great world-building exercises when they're successful, it's when they really tap into human emotions, too. He plays on our own fears and ambitions and desires and anxieties in a way that takes this completely alien fancy world where dragons exist, but also makes it very human because you think, well, what would I do in that situation?

So what is it like? What is an average consulting workday for Charles look like on House of the Dragon?

Yeah. Well, as I said, I didn't really know what to expect. This is the largest thing I've consulted on, which might not surprise you because it's pretty big. Then I suddenly introduced to all these amazing directors who were really interested in the medieval period. We had lots of discussions about everything from what a battle would feel like, what were the aspects of seages, what might a medieval town have felt like, the materiality of a medieval palace. I've worked a lot with medieval royal accounts. That was really fun to get to explore that. Lots of conversations about that and some specific ones. Did they smoke? I was like, No, they didn't smoke at this point.

But lots of interesting texture, which they were clearly trying bring into their work, not only would I try and answer their specific questions, and sometimes the answer is, We just don't know.

The sources only tell us so much. That's the job of the historian to gather together lots of different evidence. So I'd give an interpretation. But I would also send them the sources that we work with, like little clips from Chronicle accounts, which they could read about the way they were writing about the past then and different types of medieval life. I mean, one of the really fun ones that I sent them was something called fit Stephens Chronicle of London, which is a 12th century description of what medieval London was like. I'm talking from London today. It's amazing. It's an amazing source because it basically describes what it's like going to London. It starts off with, well, they've got these big castles and they've got these huge cathedrals and all the people of this, but then it starts to talk about what they do for fun, what they do on the weekend, what the kids are like, how the kids get in lots of arguments and fights and have debates on the weekend, where you go in London for great food and stuff like that, which sounds so modern. It sounds like a modern travel guide.

And yet this was written in the 12th century by a clerk who worked for Thomas Beckett. So pretty fun. And I don't think they were expecting that level of detail when I sent it to them. That's amazing.

I love that so much. So what was your familiarity with Westeros before you started actually consulting on House of the Dragon?

Well, as I said, I was going there very much as a medieval historian, not as a text checker. And I've seen the Game of Thrones, obviously, and really enjoyed them. And I had seen the first House of the Dragon series as well, but I hadn't read the book at that point that it's based on, which I now know is written like a history. It's pieced together with lots of different fragments from historians. And reading that's really interesting as a historian myself because you're just like, oh, these chroniclers are writing this and this and all these different narratives, all these different people writing this account of history. And I think you even commented on this podcast about how they don't often agree, and this is clearly a specific version of history, and it's probably not necessarily right either. And that's a really familiar thing that historians do on a day to day. Can I trust this? Should I trust this? What are they trying to sell me here? That was my familiarity. I knew the world, as it were, but I wasn't familiar with this pre-history, really, at all by that point. But I was familiar with the Anarchy, though, which, as I said, is an inspiration for these stories.

Tell us about the Anarchy.

Well, a lot of this is going to sound quite familiar having watched the first season. The Anarchy is set Just before and just following the death of King Henry I of England. What happens is it starts with a shipwreck. During that shipwreck, William, the son of Henry I, dies along with lots and lots of other noble sons. But he is the heir of Henry I of England, which suddenly means that he doesn't have a male heir. He had a lot of sons, actually. He had a lot of illegitimate children, but not legitimate male heirs, and that was a problem for him. He instantly married, tries to have more sons unsuccessful. But he calls back his daughter, a lady called Emperies Matilde, sometimes Emperies Maud, brings her back to England. She's called Emperies because she was married to Henry II, the Emperor, King of the Romans. He says that that is his heir, and he makes all his nobles swear to it.

That does ring a bell.

Absolutely. This might not surprise you either. Not everyone thinks this is a great This idea, like women are generally not considered fit to rule. They're considered to be impulsive. Queens are really important. They have a really important and valuable role at court, but they're not monarchs ruling in their own right. Then Henry also makes a mistake because if he really wants Matilda to be his heir, what he should have done is done everything possible to make her powerful. He should have given her loads of lands in England and in Normandy because, of course, he's got a dual realm at this point and should have made her completely He's completely strong with lots of castles and lots of people. That would have helped her enforce her rule. But he doesn't do that. I think he's probably always hedging his bets that he might have another son and maybe he doesn't want to make his daughter too powerful just in case. So he dies, and Matilda is in Aquitaine at the time. She's married a chap called Jeffrey. He's the Duke of Aquitaine. They're down in France, on the southwest Coast of France. When Henry dies, they don't find out quickly enough, basically.

What happens is there's a chap called It's her cousin who is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. We're getting Egan, the Conqueror vibes here. He zips across the channel, seizes the Royal Treasury in Winchester, proclaims himself as king. Everyone goes, Oh, well, that's a great idea. He's a descendant of the Conqueror. He's male. He's also incredibly rich. He's very charismatic. He's really nice and likable. Like, generally people think he's a nice guy. The Pope basically sanctions it as well, which is really important. So he becomes king, and there's not a lot Matilda can do about it to begin with. Perhaps that would be the end of the story. But Stephen, because he is, as I said, a bit of a nice guy, he's not a great king.

This sounds familiar as well.

He's a great night. He's very energetic. He's really amiable. Everyone likes him. And so what he does is he starts being really generous, which is a part of kinship. And he gives lots of people earldoms, gives them these titles. But basically, by trying to please everyone, he pleases nobody in the end. And suddenly, war breaks out all over the place. People are spotting division and weakness at this point. And so what happens is Matilda decides to come to England to press her claim. She, and this is important, manages an alliance with her stepbrother, Robert, because, of course, as I said, Henry I had lots of illegitimate sons. And Stephen, good warrior, goes down, catches up with them, and takes her prisoner. And so this really should be the end of the story. What he should do, this is what a sensible medieval king would do, although it's not very pleasant, it's probably murder. Murder everybody who protected her in the castle.

Sure, of course.

Lock her up forever, and that would be the end of it. But he's supposedly takes some bad advice. It might be because of his chivalric nature. He decides to let her go, and then it all starts to go wrong. And basically, you then have decades of warfare. There's lots of different battles. Some go one way, some go the other. All the nobles are enjoying the chaos and starting to press their own claims for various things. There's castles popping up absolutely everywhere because everyone's like, Oh, there's a war. I need to secure my claim. I'm going to build a castle. There's also interesting, lots of religious houses being built. And some people interpret this because there's a lot of sinning going on and they've got to stop worrying about the heaven. I'm going to build a castle, I'm going to kill lots of people, and I'm going to sponsor a religious house as well so I can go to heaven at the end of it. And then basically what happens After many, many battles, many, many people have died. The people of England have really suffered because they're not just having battles, they're also destroying each other's lands because that's the way you run warfare in those days.

You destroy the fields, you destroy the towns, you cut out their It's a lot of economic base. There's people literally starving to death during this period, the common people. At this point, Henry, who's the son of Matilda, because they're still not keen on having a queen, he turns up, and they agree that he is going to be Stephen's heir and Stephen dies the next year, and he becomes King Henry II. That's the ruling dynasty for several hundred years. Sorry, I said I'd be quick. That wasn't very quick.

No, that was great. You did a great job with that. Charles, Obviously, the story of the Anarchy is super complicated, but it does seem very clear that Matilda's story is running parallel with Reniera's. Yes. How does the show deviate from the real history?

Well, obviously, Reniera has actual male siblings to contend with, whereas Matilda doesn't. She ends up getting replaced by her cousin, who's a descendant of William the Conqueror by his mother, but not even a brother. I think Reniera's job is that much harder In the medieval world, she really would have had an uphill struggle unless her father had done everything possible to secure her position. Maybe that's similar to the show. She's named as Eir by her father in the show, but does he do everything possible to secure her reign? Does he start making her the most powerful Lord in Westeros? Does he start removing all her enemies one at a time and giving all their lands to her? No, he doesn't do that. And arguably because he's slightly hedging his bets because he's got some sons waiting in the wing and he doesn't know how it's going to pan out. Maybe he just doesn't have the energy. He looks pretty tired a lot of the time, doesn't he? So maybe he just doesn't have the energy for that. There are parallels, but there are differences, and I think her in her as a task is even harder.

Right. It It's really interesting to hear you also talk about Steven being such a nice guy and how that wasn't necessarily the best thing for a king at that point. I feel like that's something that Jason and I talked a lot about over the course of season one of House of the Dragon, because Viseris really embodies a lot of that, too. That question of what is it actually to be a good king in this time? I'm curious what your thoughts are about that.

I mean, it's a really, really difficult job. It's not a job that most people can pull off. You have to be a great warrior, first foremost. That way, medieval societies divided into those that work, those that pray, those that fight. You're the head of the people that fight. You need to protect everyone. If you're not, if your borders are getting attacked, if you're not protecting people's lands and their money, people are going to complain pretty quickly. So number one, I think you need to be a really strong night. You need everyone to be really scared of you all the time. They say a medieval king needs to be like a roaring lion. Everybody around you should be slightly afraid of you. And Stephen was pretty affable. People thought he always treated people like equals, and you don't really need that. On top of that, you need to be really organized. You need a good administration. You need to know who owes you money. And a lot of those kings were like, they got a lot of things written down, so they kept really good records. Like Stephen's finances, Royal finances, should I say, went completely to pot during He was even trained, partly because they were at war, but also because he wasn't administratively able or didn't hire the right people for the right jobs.

You need to be wealthy. You need to please everyone to an extent. You need to keep people on good terms. Your family, you need to keep on good terms. The nobility, you need to keep on good terms. You need to choose good advisors, and that's obviously a big theme of the show. Like, who are your advisors? Who are you listening to? And you need to be generous, but not too generous. You don't want to give too much away. But at the same time, and this is the other thing that a good king needs to be, he needs to be completely ruthless as well. A good king, and this is a theme that we sometimes have in Westeros, obviously, a good king needs to let people take the fall for him. If he makes a bad decision, that's fine. Here's this person that I know people don't like too much, but hasn't really done anything wrong. I'm just going to let him take the blame. If he goes to his death, well, I'm really sorry about that, but you've done your king a good service. You need to be that level of ruthless. Let people take the fall for you, which, again, is pretty hard.

Sorry, I almost forgot. You need to keep the church on side as well because they're incredibly important, too.

There's, of course, a clear divide in the show between the lives of the noble houses and the great lords and rulers and the common folk. There's a really interesting scene from season one in which we see Reniera and Damon sneak out to watch a play, some entertainment for the common people. Let's actually play that clip.

To which air might that chair bear? Who will it be? The brother, the daughter, or the little princeling of three. Runeera, the realm's delight. A girl so young and so slight, loved by all of her people. But would she make a powerful queen, or would she be feeble? For Egon, the babe prince, might belong for a claim. He has two things Rhaunera cannot: a conqueror's name and a cock. Lies. Slander.

They are just, if you will, but many of the small folk are like to believe that as a male, Egon should be the heir. Their wants are of no consequence. They're of great consequence if you expect to rule them one day.

Couple of things there. One, to the extent that we know, how critical What could popular entertainment of the day be of their rulers? And secondarily, was this actually a thing that rulers of that time cared a lot about? Was what the people thought? To what extent did they take public opinion into their formulations?

I'm going to take the second question first, if you don't mind about like, did they care? And they had to, to an extent. Basically, to really simplify the medieval world, you've got people who fight and You've got people who pray and you've got people who pray, and you got people who work. And for medieval society to be successful, all those people need to do their part. And so if the monarch is not being seen to doing their part as the head of the people who fight, they're not protecting their people, they're not caring about the dynasty, they're not securing their future, then they do have a problem because that will trickle down through society. To an extent, they really do need to care. This idea about how accurate is this portrayal? Well, theater was incredibly popular in different forms throughout the medieval period. It's a really interesting topic. They had lots of religious plays. This is obviously not an example of that. They had things called mummings or disguising, where people were doing masked theater. At court, there would have been storytellers, jugglers, musicians. So entertainment is a big part of life. Now, whether it would be that super-contemporary, out-white, satirical criticism, I don't know.

I'm a little bit skeptical, especially in a capital like this, because on the one hand, the penalties would probably be pretty severe. But also on a pragmatic level, these entertainers, they're reliant on sponsorship and patronage, and ideally, they want to end up at the court performing there. And that's not going to happen if they're known for being really subversive. The clip that we've just heard clearly is not ambiguous. I think these people would be very brave to do something that bold because they're clearly making their feelings known. If it were known that they'd done this, I imagine they could be in an awful lot of trouble.

Yeah, slander.

And not getting the gig as well.

Right.

The battles that would take place during the anarchy, how big would the armies be? Where would the soldiers come from? How would they unfold? How bloody were they?

They were pretty horrendous. You can imagine the noise would have been pretty horrendous. These are people clad in mail and later in the medieval period, like plate arm as well. There would have been trumpets and drums and all these things that we associate with medieval battles, but they would have been attacking each other with swords and spears and shields and axes still at this point as well. So pretty terrifying, pretty bloody. As I said, the rules of battle meant that if you're a noble, you had a fairly reasonable chance of surviving that battle because of your armor and your training and your weaponry and your entourage. If you were poor, much less so. Incredibly bloody. Some of them are quite small battles, skirmishes, really. Later in the Hundred Years War, you do have thousands of people meeting on the battlefield. But a lot of the earlier battles were a little bit smaller. But terrifying is the answer. Pretty horrendous. If things went wrong, there wasn't a lot of medicine to look after you afterwards. Also, we know from like, archeology that a lot of these people, especially during the Hundred Years War, they were fighting multiple battles as well.

So there were skeletons found on the battlefields, like Taueton during the as well, where you could see that they'd had several wounds and they'd healed at some point. So these people are fighting multiple battles as well, which is pretty scary. But also these battle would have been absolutely terrifying for the local population as well. They're having their fields burnt, their houses burnt. And afterwards, they're dealing with absolute devastation. And all these armies are sucking up all the food in the environment as well. So very bad for the poor fighting the battle, very bad for all the people that lived anywhere near the battle as well, and pretty scary for anyone involved, really.

That sounds horrifying.

Yeah, absolutely horrifying.

Well, it's wild even thinking about the jousting tournament we see in season one of House of the Dragon, because even that is like, yes, it's fun and ornate, but it's also pretty gruesome.

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a pretty scary scene, isn't it? When they start with the joust. Jousts were pretty scary. Jousts are incredibly popular from the like, we get lots of references from the 12th century onwards. They happened a lot in France. And there's a sense that they came to England because there was a sense that French knights were better on their horses. They were better. And probably the reason for that was because they were having these tournaments when they were practicing. That's one theory of how jousting evolved in England. But jousting, as you see, it looks pretty scary. But believe it or not, it actually gets safer as the years go on. So in the 13th century, they have something called the Mele, which is basically just a fight. I turn up with 50 men, you turn up with 50 men, and we're going to try not to kill each other, but people are going to die, especially the poorer people. That's what a tournament or a Mele would look like in the 13th century. And popes tried to ban this. They were like, This is terrible. Kings didn't like it either because it gave nobles an excuse to meet up.

And you don't really want your angry, violent nobles to be meeting up without So it's very much frowned on. But then through history, it's always dangerous. But it starts to become a bit more formulaic, a little bit safer. They start to introduce safety measures, like when they're jousting against each other, they introduce the tilt. That's that wooden barrier down the middle. They didn't used to have that. So horses used to routinely crash into each other and they would die. But when they introduce that, that's a little bit safer. They also have something called Fighting at the Barriers, I think it's called, where literally we fight over a fence. We're wearing armor. I've got an ax, you've got an ax. We hit each other over in the over a fence, and whoever falls down first loses. But that's still safer than a Mele, where you're on a battlefield, there's horses charging around the place, you're in a muddy field and everything's going wrong. Also, you start to get things like the music and the pageantry and the entertainments associated with it. The heraldry, of course, as well. But it's always dangerous. Famously, King Henry II of France, he dies from an infection after a battle.

Basically, a lance splinters and goes into his eye. He's not instantly, but he dies shortly after it from an infection. That's the king of France. It's still dangerous, even when they start to make things a bit safer.

You're not making it sound good, Charles.

But as I said, They also loved it. There was a lot of romance around this, a lot of ideas of chivalry. People like William Marshall made their name from fighting these tournaments, and everyone knew that he was great because of it. So there are advantages. Also, while you say this isn't great, medieval nobles love fighting. That's their natural state. Sure. That's a generalization. Obviously, a lot of them didn't. But generally, these are people who love fighting. They wanted an excuse. If there hadn't been a war for a while, they were looking for one. And so an excuse to go and practice how good they are at riding and killing people is great for them, some of them, anyway. Okay. As I said, a generalization. Fair enough.

Well, Charles, thank you so much for joining. This has been a really fascinating conversation.

Yes, thank you. You're very welcome. And thanks very much for having here.

I want to get Charles on text and just be able to group chat with him while watching every single episode. What a fascinating guy.

It's funny. I normally hate a group chat, but I feel like that would be perfect for it because, yeah, he's so charming and hilarious also, and such good insights, too.

I wanted it to go on and on.

Totally. So one thing that Charles said that really stuck with me was how there are only a few set rules that people in the medieval world could have. Remember this? He says people who fight, and then you have people who pray, and then you have people who work. I wonder, does that feel reflective of Wastros to you, too?

To an extent, there's another group, the people who do science and take down history, the maesters and stuff. I think in the real world, that would have been a job done by scribes working for the people who pray, to use his term. But basically, yeah, that feels like the groupings. Either you're working in the fields, you're working a Lord's Farms, Their job is to fight when called upon. Then you have the various religions, namely the seven. Then you have the maesters who are basically praying and or doing scholarly work. Yeah, it feels like George really based that delineation on history.

Maybe we should expand it out and have it be people who fight, people who read books, and people who work. What do you think?

Yeah, that sounds great to me. Which of those people would you want to be?

I mean, I think that's super obvious. I'm for sure going all in on the books, like a thousand %. I mean, same for you, right?

A hundred million thousand %. What would it take to get me there? Get me to the book place because I don't want to do any of the other stuff. And by the way, the book place doesn't look that much better either, but at least I'm not doing back-breaking labor or- Right. Risking getting my head cut off.

Yes. Especially for us on the nerdy end of the spectrum. It's a pretty obvious choice for sure. But here's a question. Sure. If you had to pick any character from either Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon to be, who would you choose?

Oh, gosh. I think Samuel Tarly had a nice run and found his calling, which I don't think is a thing that you can really hope for in this world. He's a bookish gentleman. Of course, his family sent him away legitimately because he wasn't military enough. He wasn't enough of a courageous killer. So was given the choice of either being murdered and having his death framed as a hunting accident or going off and taking the Black. Then from there, though, that didn't quite suit him. He did manage to find his way to the Citadel, the Maesters, and I think that fit him quite well. What about you?

Sam Tarly is a really good one. I think I always really admired, especially from Game of Thrones, your Aria Stark. But really unpacking that and thinking about child murderous, generational trauma, there's a lot to unpack there that I would not sign up for. So, yeah, I don't know. The more I think about it, the more I think I really would just choose none. Septa, let's do that.

Carina, what do you find appealing about potentially being the Septa?

I think part of it actually comes from having read a book a couple of years ago called Matrix by Lauren Groff, which is a novel that takes place, I think, a little earlier. I think it's in the thousands. It's Eleanor of Aquitaine time, and it's from the point of view of this woman who essentially is unfit to marry, and so she gets sent to a convent. And turns out there's a lot of lesbians there, and they just get to read books and grow stuff. It sounds pretty great. Yeah, it sounds pretty great. To to opt out, especially of all that marriage stuff, and just go live your life pretty separate from all of the nonsense politics and stuff was just like, Oh, that's actually magical. That is largely what is influencing my decision on that one.

Scepta sounds great. Now, let's say that you were born into one of these noble families. What do you think you'd be like?

It's interesting reflecting back on season one and thinking about I mean, they're marrying off girls at age 12. How do you even have a chance to really have a personality when, especially if you're a woman, your role is childbearer, and that's so dangerous, and that's all you get. So I don't know. It sounds just impossibly difficult, pretty much on every level, I would say. Especially, I think it's interesting watching the show because so much about season one, and I'm sure season two will be as well, is about the burden of the throne and how heavy the Crown sits. Of course, there are aspects of life that are much easier if you live in a castle, but also, but also, but also.

I was thinking, what would be the hardest part of living in this world? And there's a million different answers. But to me, I think it comes down to, touching on something you just said, which is the aspect of duty, where you're born into a role, and that's it. You fulfill your role. There's no horizontal or vertical mobility. There's no opportunity to jump from one role to the next. We watch it happen in Game of Thrones and in season one of House of the Dragon. You see people try to do it, but they're mostly unsuccessful. I would think that just must be frustrating is not even the word. It's tragic in a lot of ways. I think a lot of the drama that we see, particularly over the seasons of Game of Thrones, is people just desperate to escape this one thing that they've been born into that they can't ever escape and no one will ever look at them in any different way.

I think you especially see it in the higher classes in this world just because it's like, if you are born heir to the throne, that's what you're stuck doing. We see that so clearly, especially with Egon, I think, in terms of... I mean, I guess there's a little more ambiguity around heir to the throne, but he very clearly does not want to be king. And by the end of season one, he very much is king. Do you end up having any sympathy for him given that?

Egon is a terrible person. I think his parents bear a lot of responsibility for that. I do have some sympathy for him because it's an impossible situation. He wanted more love and affection from his parents and family, and really what they had for him was this iron-clad definition of duty. They were telling him from an incredibly young age that the entire hopes and safety and future well-being of the family, and indeed the country, rest on your shoulders, young man.

Yeah.

That's terrifying. So in that sense, yeah, I do feel bad for him. What about you?

Well, you're right that he's a terrible person. It is interesting to reflect on. It's not just telling him either. It was like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. But I don't know. I mean, I think it's an interesting question because I think you can also extend it to Reineera. And I think I have- Oh, for sure. A lot of empathy for her in the sense that she's told she has to have this role. There's very little question even of whether she wants it at this point, but she's literally lost children because of it at this point. The fact that people don't even have faith in her to do it is just devastating.

You know who I feel bad for also is Amand, Amand Onei, who clearly would be the better brother to be doing this. Yes. He's the one who takes it seriously, is reading the histories, is studying politics, is paying attention in meetings, and it must be tremendously frustrating to be him.

Yeah, that's another one where it's like, Oh, yeah, no, you're not first born, so you're out.

Nobody apparently could call an audible and go, Actually, this guy's the better one.

Family meeting? Let's do this one.

How about the one that reads?

It's interesting thinking about someone like Raneice because it does seem like she found a sweet spot. It's weird to say that because she definitely got completely looked over when it came to ruling. But it seems like once she was rejected for that, she still got to have a fair amount of comfort in her life. She loves and respects her husband, who also loves and respects her. I do wonder, I think it wouldn't be terrible to be Reynice at this point.

I agree. We talked about this in season one of the pod, but I think Coralice and Reynice are maybe my favorite characters of season one. Their dynamic is so interesting because, to your point, Reynice was looked over, but also had come to a place where she was like, I've come to terms with it. That's what this world is. Maybe I got my hopes up and they were dashed, and maybe I was naive about that. But of course, could it have ended any other way? It's so interesting because Coralice is the one who's very, very angry on her behalf when she's like, Stop, enough.

Yeah, enough. It's fine. It's fine. I think it would be useful for us in this episode to go through which houses and lords on the show are going to back Rainier in this season and who will back Egan. Because, of course, at the end of season one, we saw Rainiera send her sons off to try to win over three houses, the Baratheans, the Aaron's, and the Starks. But I think we should go over the houses on the board right now and who is on which side.

Let's start with the easy ones, right? We've got House Hightower. Otto Hightower has the family very, very deeply, deeply invested in Team Green, and I think that's clearly unshakable and not going anywhere.

Yes, clearly was also the word I was going to use. Another pretty obvious one, House Valarion, is for sure Team Black. There was a little bit of question about that, but Raine put her foot down, and that's pretty clear at this point, too.

Okay, now we come to the strongly in one camp, but with maybe a question mark, House Lannister. We saw that Thailand Lannister was in the small council and was part of the deliberations in the wake of King Viserus's death and watched our good friend, the bees, Lord Lymon Beesbury, get get murdered when he dare to raise an objection. So you would imagine he's pretty pot committed Team Green, but they are Lannisters after all. Exactly.

I was going to say, you can never count on a Lanister that way.

Okay, how strong? What do you think?

I think probably from here on out, it's just a lot of TBDs, right? I mean, how strong is a really interesting one, because if we're actually acknowledging what our situation is, we've got some strong boys that are on team Black, so you'd think they would go team Black. But also, I don't know. I could see them also being pretty bummed by the whole situation at this point, just opting out.

Yeah, I think Laris will probably have the family solidly team green. But also, I think much like the Lannisters, I think what we know about Laris is he will do what's best for Laris when the time comes to do the best thing for him. So we'll see. House Barathean, you mentioned. Poor Luke and Aras. Were on a diplomatic mission to Storm's End, and it seems pretty clear that House Barathean was at least very, very strongly leading Team Green. Do you think they might come out of that?

That is a great question. I guess we will just have to see. Do you have any special hypotheses about that one?

I don't, but I do think it's a little surprising, but it also feels like... It's nice to be wanted, and I think Team Green made them feel wanted. House Stark, we haven't seen much of, but I think we'll see more of this season. The Starks are the good guys because they do what they say and they keep their word as a family. I think it is quite reasonable to assume that they'll say, Well, I promise this, so I'm going to do it.

What's your read on House Tully?

The Tullies. The thing about the Tullies, we haven't seen them much at all in season one. We have not seen them much at all. Riverlands houses, we've only seen a little bit. The thing about the Riverlands is they're in the middle of the continent, so whenever there's a war, it always seems to happen there. Tbd, but I I would imagine that we're going to be meeting a lot of members of the Riverlands very soon because everything that happens is going to be of keen interest to them because it's probably going to be their lands, their people, their castles getting destroyed.

That's a really interesting point. To that end, do you think they would want to side with the team that has more Dragons or not? Because that just means more destruction on their territory.

I think they will side with the side that gets there first with Dragons.

Interesting. Okay. Another house we haven't seen much of is House Aaron. What's your read on that?

I think they have a lot of reason to not like Damon.

Good point. Yeah, we have seen enough of them to know that, haven't we?

They have a lot of reasons to not like Damon because he was married to Ria Royce, who we saw in season one, and the Royce's of Runestone, who live in the Vale that's ruled by the house of Aaron. They're one of the very notable families of the Vale. Then, of course, Damon not only never went to see his wife, but then the only time he did go to see her, he killed her, and he murdered her.

Yeah, pretty, pretty terribly.

So another TBD, but they do have a lot of reason to not like him. Yeah, we'll see.

Yeah, that's a lot of reason. If you were either Reniera or Egon, what would you do to unite the realm at this point?

Wow, it's so hard because of the blood that has been spilled. Yeah. Rhaunira, I don't know how she comes down off of this because she's already had the militant wing of her movement be agitating for war, and now her child is dead. I honestly don't know what she does. What do you think? How would you bring peace?

I don't know. My thought was to go like Oprah with it and just give everybody cars.

You get a dragon egg, and you get a dragon egg, and you get a… That was so much Much fun, Greta. I have to say, thank the gods we don't live in Westris.

Yeah, no, like 100 million thousand % for sure. That is it for today's podcast. Thank you all for listening. I am sure it is marked on your calendars already, but House of the Dragon Season 2 premieres on Sunday, June 16th on HBO and Max. We have one more pre-premier episode next week, and we are going to be welcoming back to the podcast showrunner Ryan Condal. We're going to try to grill him on everything that is to come in Season 2.

If you like what you're hearing, don't forget to leave a five-star rating and review on your podcast player of choice, and find us on the Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon social media channels. You can find me @netw3rk on X and Instagram.

You can find me @grettamjohnsenn. The official Game of Thrones podcast, House of the Dragon, is produced by HBO in collaboration with Pineapple Street Studios. This podcast is hosted by Jason Concepcion.

And Greta Johnson. Our executive producers for Pineapple Street are Gabriele Lewis, Jay-Ann Berry, and Barry Finkel. Our lead engineer for the show is Hannes Brown, and Hannes also mixed this episode. Pineapple's head of sound and engineering is Raj Makija. Pineapple's senior audio engineers are Marina Pais and Pedro Alvira.

This episode was edited by Darby Maloney with fact checking by Melissa Akiko Slaater, and our producers are Ben Goldberg, Elliot Adler, and my lovely co-host, Jason Concepcion.

Special thanks to Michael Gluckstad, Allison Cohen, Kenya Reyes, Seyvonne Slater, and Erin Kelly from the Max podcast team.

Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.