In the second episode of the second season of HBO’s House of the Dragon, we learn that Aemond Targaryen—the fearsome swordsmith—has mommy issues. Most nights, when everyone else in the Red Keep is asleep, the one-eyed warrior and master of the biggest dragon in the Seven Kingdoms sneaks off to the same brothel and asks for the same prostitute, a woman named Sylvi – not to have sex with her, but to lie in her lap and talk about his past as she strokes his silver hair.
“I do regret that business with Luke,” he tells her, referring to last season’s finale, when his brash taunting inspired Vhagar to devour his half-brother, Lucerys. “I lost my temper that day. I am sorry for it.”
Sex and sexuality play an important role in House of the Dragon, just as they did in its parent series Game of Thrones—but to different ends. The original series showcased so many uncensored bodies going at it while major plot points were being doled out that critics coined the term “sexposition,” and while a lot of these sex scenes were indeed somewhat gratuitous, that was also kind of the point. Author George R.R. Martin included them in his books for the same reason that other fantasy writers didn’t. “As much as I admire Tolkien, you have to wonder where all those Hobbits came from,” he once said. “Sex is an important part of who we are. It drives us, motivates us, makes us do sometimes very noble and sometimes incredibly stupid things. Leave it out, and you’ve got an incomplete world.”
In addition to imbuing fictional universes with a sense of realism, sex reveals character. Robb Stark’s decision to marry lowborn Talisa over his Frey fiancée led to the infamous Red Wedding, while his bastard-brother Jon Snow’s relationships remind him – over and over – that “love is the death of duty.” Arya sleeping with Gendry before the White Walkers attack Winterfell symbolizes her turning her back on her training with Braavos’ Faceless Men, changing from No One back into Arya Stark: a person with hopes, dreams, fears, and desires.
Where Game of Thrones’ sex scenes mainly added realism and shock value, those in House of the Dragon serve an overarching thematic purpose. The spinoff show is based on Fire and Blood, a history of the Targaryen dynasty George R.R. Martin wrote from the perspective of three unreliable in-universe narrators: a maester, a priest, and a jester. Less of a straightforward adaptation and more of an interpretation of the actual events these writers recorded, many of the show’s plot points differ from the accounts of the maester and priest. Tellingly, it’s the salacious and scandalous details shared by the jester – a dwarf in service Rhaenyra who has yet to make his on-screen appearance – that seem closest to the truth, even though they are routinely dismissed by the other, more respected writers.
The “historical accuracy” of the jester’s rumors affirms Martin’s comment that “sex is an important part of who we are,” even if – in public – we often pretend that it’s not. As showrunner Ryan Condal has said in interviews, the history of Targaryen civil war does not – as the maester and priest suggest – result from gender-biased quarreling between Rhaenyra and Alicent, but from two capable and powerful women running up against the constraints of the patriarchal society they live in. The story of House of the Dragon is, ultimately, also a story about sex – and one cannot be told without the other.
Where most Game of Thrones sex scenes unfold in much the same way – kissing, thrusting, climaxing – causing them to all blend into one another, the prequel depicts each character getting intimate in their own, unique way. Rather than providing the cast with a temporary escape from the tensions of Westerosi politics, the sex scenes of House of the Dragon help us better understand the psychological traumas and insecurities driving the battle for the Iron Throne.
Larys Strong, the House of the Dragon-equivalent of Varys, is revealed to have a foot fetish. In the first season, the Red Keep’s resident spymaster offers his services to Queen Regent Alicent in exchange for letting him – a cane-wielding disabled person nicknamed the “Clubfoot” – masturbate to her royal feet. The significance of his sexual fantasy is clear as day: raised in the shadow of his older brother, Ser Harwin “Breakbones,” one of the fiercest knights in the Realm, Larys’ deformity and accompanying sense of inadequacy made him what he is today: a man who will stop at nothing to attain the power and prestige his sibling managed to acquire through combat.
Alicent also has an ongoing relationship with Criston Cole, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, her son Aegon’s sworn swords. Kingsguard swear an oath of chastity when donning their white cloaks – an oath Cole broke when he fell in love with (and was later dumped by) Rhaenyra in the previous season. Hoping to take revenge on the woman that rejected him, he swears fealty to Alicent, demonstrating his allegiance by performing cunnilingus in the season 2 premiere.
If Cole feels guilt over breaking his vows, so does Alicent. A devout follower of the Faith of the Seven, she struggles reconciling her religious beliefs with the demands of her position as Queen Regent; her relationship with Cole is sinful, but also necessary for ensuring his continued loyalty to the Crown. After intercourse, she often sinks into her bathtub. But no matter how hard she scrubs, she can’t get clean again.
Where Alicent is ashamed of her social transgressions, Rhaenyra relishes in them. A confident, headstrong girl with little regard for convention and custom, she turns Westerosi society on its head when her father Viserys declares her heir to the Iron Throne – a throne which, previous successions established, could only be passed down through the male line. Eager to rebel against the system, Rhaenyra starts an affair with her uncle Daemon that, if uncovered, could cause scandal. (While the Targaryens frequently marry brothers and sisters in the Valeryan tradition, the practice – clashing with Westerosi ethics – has not yet become as normalized as it is during the time of Game of Thrones). Years after encouraging Cole to break his vow of chastity, Rhaenyra starts a relationship with Harwin Breakbones while her secretly homosexual husband Laenor continues seeing his own lovers.
Aemond’s sexuality is perhaps the most complex of all. Similar to the Clubfoot, his apparent impotence seems to stem from a deeply-rooted sense of inadequacy and guilt. “They used to tease me, you know,” he tells Sylvi as she cradles him. “Because I was different.”
In the third episode of the second season, a heavily intoxicated King Aegon visits the brothel with the goal of helping his squire lose his virginity. He eventually intrudes on his brother. Aemond jumps up, cradling his knees, the king’s laughter no doubt reminding him of the childhood torment we saw a glimpse of during the season 1 episodes that depict them as adolescents. In a world where dragons double as metaphors for penises and power (just look at the people-on-dragon orgy murals lining the interior of the Red Keep), young Aemond never felt like a true man, much less a knight, and even now that he commands Vhagar, his fear of emasculation lingers.
“Did you fuck her like a hound?” Aemond laughs, barking. “You see,” he says to his squire, “such is the madam’s prowess that even now he will not sample another.”
As soon as Aemond realizes the king is too drunk to understand what’s really going on between him and Sylvi , he regains his usual confidence and rises, displaying his manhood for all to see. “Your squire is welcome to her,” he lies, hiding his pain at hurting Sylvi’s feelings. “One whore is as good as another.”
Despite their thematic importance, sex and nudity feature far less prominently in House of the Dragon than they do in Game of Thrones. Especially in Game of Thrones’ later seasons, sex and sex-related jokes were almost exclusively shocking and gratuitous, rather than integral to the plot. Condal, by contrast, only has his characters undress when doing so moves forward the story or helps flesh out their personalities, going as far as to cut an extended and - according to the press - “animalistic” sex scene between Alicent and Cole because it didn’t communicate anything that had already been communicated by other, shorter sex scenes involving the two.
Before the first season released in 2022, co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik already warned audiences that House of the Dragon would “pull back” on sex compared to its parent series. Not because his team had a particular aversion to nudity, or because they felt it wasn’t important to the narrative, but because they understood that their predecessor’s overreliance on sex scenes had robbed these sometimes intimate, sometimes violent moments of their gravitas. By limiting the number of sex scenes, and making sure that each serves a purpose beyond showcasing sexuality itself, House of the Dragon ensures they hit as hard as they’re supposed to.