The title sequence is set in Old Valyria, fitting for a prequel with a narrowed focus on a part of Westeros. And it makes a good foil to the original GOT title sequence, which was a map that encompassed all of Westeros.
The title sequence has blood gushing throughout its crevices. While the Rule of Symbolism (especially if you get to see the clockwork sigils in Freeze-Frame Bonus) supposedly represents the bloodline ties of the Targaryens from Aegon the Conqueror up to King Viserys I and Rhaenyra themselves, these literal "rivers of blood" could very well symbolize the metaphorical rivers of blood that will be shed come the breakout of the Dance of the Dragons, the event looming on the horizon of the show's storyline.
When Viserys I confronts Daemon Targaryen, the king ceremonially holds Blackfyre in front of him, point down, to convey that he's making an official pronouncement. When Daemon makes to advance on him, the Kingsguard move to intercept him. As a Freeze-Frame Bonus, when we next see Viserys, his grip on Blackfyre has flipped to overhand, revealing that he actually anticipated needing to defend himself from his brother. The boys' relationship has sure soured quickly!
One thing that makes sense now is that among the shows' dragons, which vary in size and appearance (as if they were different species/breeds), Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal share the same body build and crests. Apart from budget constraints, this cements the fact they were indeed blood brothers.
We see that the Targaryens are all fluent in High Valyrian even though it is doubtful anyone in Westeros outside their family, the dragon keepers, and the Velaryons can speak it, so other than cultural tradition there seems to be little reason at first to learn a complicated second language. (Unlike in Essos, where bastardized forms of High Valyrian are common in the Free Cities.) But what better way to have a conversation in private in a place like King's Landing where everyone at court has spies than to speak a language literally no one else on the continent is likely to understand.
It also echoes how England/Britain (which Westeros in many ways is known to be based upon) was ruled for centuries by royal dynasties who primarily and often exclusively spoke their ancestral language at court rather than the local language.
Including an echo to Game of Thrones, in the episode "The Rogue Prince", after Corlys criticizes Viserys' choice to marry Alicent, Viserys declares "and I am your king" to shut him down. In the Game of Thrones episode "Mhysa", Tywin shuts down Joffrey with "Any man who must say, 'I am the king' is no true king." This subtly hints at Visery's lack of true authority for most of the series.
In "We Light the Way," Rhaenyra and Laenor perform a pre-wedding dance in which their choreography is clearly meant to evoke flying dragons. The war that the show portrays is called the Dance of the Dragons.
Corlys Velaryon's attitude towards his son's sexuality. It's influenced by his profession—as a sailor, he would be familiar with the Situational Sexuality of men turning to one another for sex and affection due to the long absence of women, and therefore sees Laenor's relationship with Joffrey along the same lines. It's influenced by his deep love for his wife—he himself married a Targaryen princess and is to this day completely attracted to her, and he's projecting his own experience onto his son. It's influenced by his ambition—it would be very convenient if Laenor was at least bi, and so there's Selective Obliviousness in simply pretending that's the case.
Aemond and Aegon beating Jace and Luke in the brawl only underlines how the "Strong" in his backhanded compliment referred only to the family name of their real father.
The casting of Ty Tennant and Tom Glynn-Carney as young and adult Aegon received criticism for the just so-so resemblance in a franchise that usually aces Separated-at-Birth Casting. However, the main difference is Tennant's very defined bone structure compared to Glynn-Carney having a naturally fuller face, which can also be read as puffiness that Aegon has contracted from years of excessive alcohol consumption. In the books, Aegon II was also said to have a puffy face, albeit from overuse of milk of the poppy after the injuries he got in his duel with Baela.
Larys' attraction to Alicent's feet makes sense beyond him just having a clubfoot. Larys is obsessed with power, and his clubfoot has made it so that he lacks the power that feet provide. If he were just attracted to feet, there's no reason why he can't find someone in Flea Bottom willing to indulge his fantasies. Since Alicent is the most powerful woman in the world, by extension, her feet would be attractive to him due to the extreme power they possess. Adding to this, many cultures across the world use feet as a symbol of power (think about I Kiss Your Foot being Older Than Feudalism, and multiple mythological/religious figures being depicted standing on a defeated enemy in artwork), and Westeros is likely no exception. In the previous episode, we saw Dyana cowering at Alicent's feet, showing that interacting with someone's feet is an act of submission, and showing that feet being a symbol of power isn't just something Larys thinks.
Seeing a mixture between two families (Targaryen and Strong) created children that strongly favored the Strong look versus the Valyrian, who were much more visible and clearer when mixed with another of their line. One could even say the seed was strong.
As a First Man family, the Strongs also lean on the idea that First Men genes are dominant over Valyrian genetics, which typically mixed with the Andal, Andal with First Men ancestry, or Rhoynar-Dornish families in the following centuries. Targaryens with genes from families like the Hightowers (who, while old, had mostly mixed into the Andals over time) and Martells (Andal and Rhoynar). As such, when a certain Jon Snow would be born, much like the 'Strong Boys', looking very much not Valyrian at all.
Childbirth is a recurring theme throughout the first season, shown in brutal detail along with its attendant risks. Why? Because the show is about civil war and Queen Aemma says in the first episode that the birthing bed is "the woman's battlefield," especially in the days before modern obstetrics, and the aftermath is no less gruesome than an actual battlefield.
Throughout the first season we're told and shown that dragons are terrifying, willful war beasts that even their bonded riders can just barely control. The fact that, hundreds of years later, Daenerys Targaryen was able to bond with three of them, and exert an unprecedented level of control over them, speaks volumes about her strength of will. Whatever she became in the end, Dany was a greater dragonrider than any of this generation of her ancestors.
Dany's not bonded to any of her dragons, we know because she doesn't suffer pain from their wounds. The dragons are imprinted on her, there's a difference; her skill as a rider is definitely top tier because she can fly them without that bond, but it's got nothing to do with strength of will. No, what Dany is, is the world's most brilliant dragon tender; the dragon tenders in House of the Dragon allow the dragons to rear their own, and have to fetch eggs to put in their babies' cribs. Dany raised her dragons as her own.
In episode 7, Laena says about half of all dragon eggs never hatch. Assuming this is the beginning of The Magic Going Away that will culminate in the extinction of dragons as a species during the reign of Aegon III, the most likely Watsonian explanation for the implausible number of stillbirths and troubled pregnancies that Targaryen women and women married to Targaryen men go through on this show is that they're being affected by the same phenomenon, just to a lesser degree - Valyrians have magic in their blood, after all, its what gave them their ability to command dragons in the first place.
There's every chance that the dragons themselves are also inbred to some degree, particularly with there being so few of them.
Rhaenyra and Aegon's respective crowns reflect their respective justifications for their claim to the throne - Rhaenyra was named the rightful heir by Viserys, so she wears Viserys's crown. Aegon is the rightful heir according to Westerosi tradition, so he wears the crown of the Founder of the Kingdom.
Otto Hightower manipulating Viserys into marrying his daughter Alicent, an act that can be pointed to as one of the causes of the Dance of the Dragons, adds new meaning to Aerys' utter refusal hundreds of years later to even consider allowing his son Rhaegar to marry Cersei Lannister. He remembers what happened the last time the royal family married the daughter of their Hand.
The Velaryons being given a Race Lift in the series was obviously in part an effort to make a more diverse cast but it was also very much a case of Pragmatic Adaptation. In the books they have the same pure Valyrian features as the Targaryens (i.e. pale skin, white-blond hair, violet eyes). Given the amount of time skips and how often the two families appear on screen and intermarry, it would have been seven hells trying to tell them all apart visually. This approach had a crucial advantage for an important story beat, though. The Velaryons' darker skin appears to dominate offspring between the Velaryons and Targaryens but given that both families have white-blond hair, that also gets passed down. Ergo, when Luke, Jace, and Joffrey come along and their parentage is questioned, it's easier to see that the people doing the questioning have a point. After all, blondes having a brunette baby is rare but not unheard of. But to be brunette and have neither the pale skin of the Targaryens nor the significantly darker skin of the Velaryons would be enough to raise some eyebrows.
The revelation of Aegon's prophecy means that the vast majority of the work he did and his heirs for preparing Westeros was All for Nothing. By the time that the White Walker's actually come: the dragons are all but dead, the Targaryens are out of power, a massive civil war is happening, and the Targaryen heirs have no idea of what's coming. To rub salt in the wound, it was not even necessary that the Targaryens were seated on the Iron Throne for the Long Night to be vanquished; the Night King himself was killed by someone with no Valyrian blood at all, to boot. One might wait for the books to learn if Aegon's prophecy and Targaryen's involvement to thwart the Long Night will hold a lot of weight...
Viserys makes it clear that the telling of Aegon the Conqueror's dream is a tradition passed from king to heir. Almost certainly, the Mad King forgot to pass this tradition on. And even if he did...no one would have passed it to Robert Baratheon. One wonders if The End was even triggered by the fall of the Targaryens...
The Crabfeeder is merely The Heavy for the Triarchy and their goal of undermining Westeros by conquering the Stepstones isn't something that is going to be stopped by killing their figurehead. Indeed, the three years of war that devastated House Velaryon's resources and inhibited trade are exactly what they wanted from the conflict. Daemon and Corlys really played right into their hands by engaging them.
Alicent and Rhaenyra burying the hatchet and making sincere apologies in episode 8 appears to be sweet and heartwarming...until you realize this is the last time they see or speak to one another before the Dance of the Dragons begins in earnest.
Aemond's goading seems like jerkass behavior in its own right considering the surprisingly pleasant and relieved atmosphere at the dinner in episode 8. But then you consider the full context. Jace has just been affirmed as the new Crown Prince once Viserys passes, and ultimately Aemond's King by law, with Lucerys next in line. Meaning that if one were to take the sudden building of bridges for good value, 16-year-old Aemond is deliberately, seriously threatening and humiliating his future monarchs. ...Meaning that in all likelihood, he doesn't believe that peace is a real possibility and has already decided that the Strong boys won't get to claim their supposed rights regardless of how anyone else feels about it. Yikes.
Heleana mentions that Aegon just ignores her, unless he is drunk. Keep in mind that Aegon is a serial rapist and gets especially bad when under the influence of alcohol.
The books never mentioned how Lucerys dies, and it's implied Aemond murdered him, leading to the title of Kinslayer. Here, it's because Vhagar disobeyed him, and actively chose to devour Arrax in retaliation. And it all happened above the clouds with no one else to see. No wonder the books were written by an Unreliable Narrator...and how the war would be started not by Aemond intentionally being evil, but by him being reckless and thinking he was in full control over what was basically a Kaiju on wings...until the horrific moment when he wasn't.
During the confrontation with Otto, Daemon states that he would rather feed his sons to dragons than have them carry shields and cups for Aegon. Guess what happens to his second stepson/future son-in-law? Talk about Foreshadowing.
Littlefinger's famous speech about how there are only a few hundred blades that make up the Iron Throne gets an ironic twist here. There are only 200 or so swords in Littlefinger's time, but here, the throne takes up an entire dais. It's not the story has been told over and over again until we forget that it's a lie, it's been told over and over again until the truth is worn away. It's a way of connecting it to the idea of the show itself, that rather than the unreliable narrators who tell the story in the books, the camera is a neutral observer, and the differences are what's getting lost in the retelling, and to the overall story of Westeros in that Game of Thrones begins with a Night's Watchman bringing a Cassandra Truth to Ned Stark and losing his head for it.
Vhagar's presence in Driftmark was after her rider's death, and it's implied she flew there herself on her own volition. Vhagar was also grieving.
Which could also lead to some Fridge Brilliance: when Laena was a child, she mentioned Vhagar's "sad songs" and Viserys said that "even dragons get lonely". This could possibly explain why she chose Aemond so easily: she was lonesome, mourning her last rider, and felt she could use some company.
is set in Old Valyria, fitting for a prequel with a narrowed focus on a part of Westeros. And it makes a good foil to the original GOT title sequence, which was a map that encompassed all of Westeros.