YMMV / House of the Dragon S1 E1: "The Heirs of the Dragon"

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Daemon's exercise in Police Brutality is ambiguous. It seems needlessly brutal, but — for all we know — it was necessary to protect the honest smallfolk of King's Landing. Even hundreds of years later the Westerosi punishment for a rapist is either castration or being sent to the Wall, so punishment for other crimes is likely still just as corporal.
    • After Daemon leaves the small council meeting, Viserys does admit that the city has officially had a rising crime problem ever since his grandmother died (leaving old king Jaehaerys a shell of the man he was, during which the royal administration slacked off). Both Viserys and Corlys Velaryon seem to think that Daemon's crackdown was necessary, at least in a small dose.
  • He also has this regarding his toast about the “Heir for a Day” — while he does give it in a pleasure house surrounded by the debauchery he and his men are participating in, his countenance is sombre when he raises his glass, and we don't hear his tone when he actually says it, only Otto recounting the words. Did he mean the phrase as a cruel, sarcastic remark, or as a solemn eulogy given in less-than-reputable circumstances and company? — The script was subsequently posted online, revealing some deleted scenes, including their original intention to actually show Daemon saying the line on-camera...but the script specifically says that Daemon says it in such an inscrutable way that even people present in the room are confused and uncertain what tone he meant it in. This would have played up the thematic point from the source material about Unreliable Narrator moments in historical texts, but apparently the writers decided it was too difficult for an actor to convey such ambiguity so they moved it off-screen.
  • Otto himself receives this, considering how quickly he moves after Queen Aemma and her newborn child's deaths to not just seek to disinherit Daemon, but encourage his own daughter to comfort the recently widowed Viserys. Is he just a practical and loyal minister and friend, or the Manipulative Bastard Daemon sees him as?

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