How ‘The House of the Dragon’ deals with sex scenes and sexual violence against women

On August 22, ‘The House of the Dragon’ arrives at HBO Max, the prequel to ‘Game of Thrones’ focused on the Targaryen House, in which we will get to know Daenerys’s ancestors a little better. Although the series takes place a couple of centuries before the events of ‘Game of Thrones’, it debuts more than ten years after the premiere of HBO’s mastodon, and a lot has changed..

For example, we can’t expect ‘House of the Dragon’ to treat sex, and especially sexual violence, in the same way that the original series did. The rape scenes became very notorious in the adaptation of George RR Martin’s novels, but they also received a lot of criticism even from the cast members themselves. The prequel does not intend to go down the same path. Nor will he ignore the fact that these situations were all too common in the medieval era in which Martin’s work is encompassed, even if it is in a fictional setting. Miguel Sapochnik, one of the showrunners, explained to THR that the Serie “won’t run away” of those kinds of situations, but they are going to “shed light on that aspect. You cannot ignore the violence that women suffered at the hands of men at that time. It should not be minimized nor should it be glorified”.

Executive producer Sara Hess clarified to Vanity Fair that we will not see explicit sexual violence in the new series: “We dealt with a case off screen, and we show in the series the consequences and impact on the victim and the mother of the guilty party. I think what our series does, and what I’m proud of, is that we chose to focus on the violence against women that is inherent in a patriarchal system.. Many ‘historical’ or historically based series romanize powerful men in sexual or marriage relationships with women who were not old enough to consent, even if they were ‘willing’. We show that on camera, and we don’t hide the fact that our protagonists in the first half of the series are coerced and manipulated into doing the bidding of grown men. It is not necessarily done by those who we would define as rapists or aggressors, but generally by well-intentioned men incapable of seeing that what they do is traumatic and oppressive, because the system in which they live has normalized it. It’s less obvious than rape, but just as insidious, just in a different way.”.

“Too Many” Sex Scenes

But sex will continue to be very present in ‘The House of the Dragon’. Tell Matt Smith, who plays Daemon Targaryen in the series and when asked in Rolling Stone if he has many sex scenes, he replies: “Yes, too many, if you ask me”. The actor does not sound very comfortable talking about them: “You get to ask yourself: ‘do we need another sex scene?’ and they say ‘of course’. I guess you have to ask yourself: ‘What are you doing? Are you representing the books, or are you diluting the books to represent a current time?’ I think our job is to represent the books truthfully and honestly, as they were written.”.

‘The House of the Dragon’ has Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal as showrunners, and has in its cast Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best and Rhys Ifans, among others. The first episode will debut on HBO Max on August 22.