House of the Dragon -Episode 2

What impressed you most in the premiere episode of House of the Dragon? Someone joked that the first episode is all about “one man’s fanatic desire for a male heir causing a bloodshed of his wife/queen”. Yep, the most memorable (or say horrible/terrible to some viewers) scene in episode 1 would be the death of Queen Aemma following a forced C-section in a difficult birth/labor. As the queen, that’s her fate and duty in a patriarchal society. The discomfort of continuous pregnancies and laboring is how they serve the realm as she said to her daughter Princess Rhaenyra: “we all carry royal wombs and the birth bed is our battlefield”. Eventually, the queen died in that battlefield (birth bed). For those playing catchup, it has been six months since the death of Queen Aemma during the difficult birth. It is now time for King Viserys to start thinking about marriage once again. Or at least, that's what Lord Corlys and his wife, Rhaenys Targaryen ("The Queen That Never Was"), tell him as they propose King Viserys marry their daughter Laena. King Viserys isn't super excited about remarrying as he's still mourning Aemma, and worries a second marriage may upset Rhaenyra. "Your mother's absence is a wound that will never heal. Without her, the Red Keep has lost a warmth that I dare say it will never recover," as she said to her daughter Rhaenyra. The compounding matter is the age of Laena. She's 12. We can see Viserys and a very young Laena walking through King's Landing's lush gardens making chitchat about dragons, and the contrast in age is grim. King Viserys talked to his members of the Small Council about the proposal. Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King, objected to the idea and he seems to be a scheming guy as she had already asked his daughter Alicent Hightower to visit the chamber of the King shortly after the death of the queen. Like Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon also seems to shock the viewers and the characters in the show. Instead of wedding Laena, King Viserys announces his intention to marry Alicent Hightower, the daughter of the Hand of the King, who is also the BFF of his daughter Pricess Rhaenyra. Surprise to Rhaenyra! Well, the premiere episode has set the stage. Now the show just begins. Three episodes have been aired. Due to an eventful fortnight, I was behind. Anyway, I’m trying to play catchup.