The Dragon Demands

Oh I WISH I could do this full time. But "A Song of Ice and Fire" analysis isn't a full time paying job.

A new casting update courtesy of reliable news source Redanian Intelligence: https://redanianintelligence.com/2021/10/14/hbos-game-of-thrones-prequel-house-of-the-dragon-casts-young-mysaria-and-others/ Young Mysaria will be played by Spanish-Korean actress Rosa Escoda. They seem to be going for a "vaguely Asian but mixed race and hard to identify" look for Mysaria, as her adult version is played by British-Japanese actress Sonoya Mizuno. That is, I don't think she's straight up "from Yi Ti", but just "a slave from the east" and thus the product of racially mixed slave stock from all over. As for implications to the timeline, it's hard to say when the older actors will have time skips (we suspect Rhaenyra and Alicent will shift around episode 6 ). Three other minor roles cast....which might be CODE NAMES and not their actual names: Edward Rowe as Ser Howland Sharp. While there is a "House Sharp" in the Iron Islands, they're not knights. Bijan Daneshmand - an Iranian actor, cast in a role only described as "The Priest" Nina Barker-Francis - a young, light-skinned black actress cast in a role described only as "Jayne". A Young Nettles? She doesn't look like Nettles, Nettles is very black.

Because Criston Cole is still using House Cole heraldry and isn't wearing Kingsguard armor. We're pretty sure they filmed Aemma Arrryn's funeral. As the tourney happens before that, she'll probably have a few scenes.

Spy photos from Caceres seem to have confirmed suspected casting of the Cargyll twins: hey, what’s the correct pronunciation of “Cargyll”? ”Car-guile” or “Car-gill?”

Seems to have been moved to Horn Hill, based on the teaser trailer.

Hey, I put together an hour-long documentary video summarizing EVERYTHING from the England location shoots in September, outlining their schedule for October, and cross-referencing with the leaked list of directors by episode to try to develop a rough timeframe for what Season 1 covers: Directors: Miguel Sapochnik - episodes 1, 6, 7 Greg Yaitanes - episodes 2, 3, 10 Clare Kilner - episodes 4, 5, 9 Geeta Patel - episode 8 Director list was leaked with casting sheet for Laenor. Generally makes sense: episode 1 is so important they have Sapochnik do it, then directors filming 2 episode blocks back to back; Yaitanes for 2 and 3, Kilner for 4 and 5, and Sapochnik for 6 and 7. But then episodes 8, 9, and 10 break that pattern, going Patel-Kilner-Yaitanes. Why is Patel only doing one episode? She's a documentary filmmaker. What's so special about episode 8 ? Yaitanes was spotted filming the beach battle in the Stepstones, which would line up with episodes 2 and 3. Kilner was spotted filming young Laenor and young Rhaenyra on a beach, with a clapper that said episode 5 on it. This also matches up. While we've seen certain scenes in spy photos to try to parse out the timeline (filming Laena's funeral), they're now redundant with the first teaser trailer, which established that they're starting AT LEAST as early as the Tourney for the ascension of Viserys I (moved to Horn Hill? ) and as late as Aemond claiming Vhagar (trailer shows Alicent angry with the dagger, we've seen spy photos of Aemond on the beach of Driftmark) - also seems to be a spy photo of Aemma Arryn's funeral (which is after the tourney) It's an open question whether we'll actually see the Great Council at Harrenhal on screen. No casting mention it yet. The main question is of course when will season 1 end....with the death of Viserys I and outbreak of the Dance? Because that would mean skipping 10 years of internal time. It's possible that they're actually PADDING OUT the storyline so Season 2 covers the 120s AC, and the civil war only begins in late Season 2 (which I prefer). I possible hint at this is casting Vaemond Velaryon so prominently (perhaps setting up the Velaryon succession conflict as a major ongoing subplot in Season 2?) We cross-referenced with descriptions for minor characters to determine that Laena & Laenor's double funeral is probably in episode 7. Thus the rough outline for the season is beginning to look like this: Episode 1 (Sapochnik) - Harrenhal? / Tourney for the Ascension of Viserys I at Horn Hill Episodes 2 & 3 (Yaitanes) - War in the Stepstones, death of Aemma Arryn, remarriage to Alicent Hightower Episodes 4 & 5 (Kilner) - Young Rhaenyra & Young Laenor, Harwin, etc. / deepening court intrigues Episode 6 (Sapochnik) - wedding of Young Rhaenyra and Young Laenor the transition between young Rhaenyra/Alicent and adult Rhaenyra/Alicent happens around episode 6 or so; which includes the very end of episode 5 or beginning of episode 7, depending on how they want to play it. Episode 7 (Sapochnik) - funeral of Laena and Laenor; Aemond claims Vhagar Episode 8 (Patel) - unknown Episode 9 (Kilner) - unknown Episode 10 (Yaitanes) - unknown

One of the most hilariously inept trailer reactions I've ever seen produced by a mainstream news site: Looper I didn't find this myself, another Westeros YouTube channel Gray Area, she pointed it out to the rest of us. Then it started making the rounds on social media for how comically inept it is. These morons had TWO YEARS to prepare for this, and...they clearly didn't bother to google anything, and even someone who just watched the Game of Thrones TV show would have known this stuff. It's actually based on an equally bad text article: https://www.looper.com/623877/small-details-you-missed-in-the-first-house-of-the-dragon-teaser-trailer/ Considers it a major point that "Dragonstone will feature prominently"...then proceeds to show and describe the feast scene...in which the Iron Throne is clearly visible. Later in the same video they repeat the same image and even point out the Iron Throne. Didn't know what the sword Blackfyre was, clearly just reading off a wiki article, saying "we can probably expect this series to show the Blackfyre Rebellion". At some considerable length, assumes that because Otto Hightower is Hand of the King, he's a Ned Stark type character, a good advisor trying to restrain the corrupt and insane Targaryen kings. When he's more comparable to Tywin Lannister. Didn't they bother to GOOGLE "Otto Hightower"? They're just reading off the casting sheet! Why do we bother making fan guides! Doesn't know what the golden sunburst on blue heraldry is at the tournament. It's House Lefford, and even appeared in Game of Thrones before....meaning that even TV show heraldry guides have images of it. Rather than google "Westeros - heraldry" or something...he not only fails to identify it, but concludes by saying "it's probably a forerunner of House Tarth". Openly admits "we don't know why Alicent is angry in this trailer" even though EVERYONE can hazard a guess it's when Aemond gets his eye slashed.....to reiterate, this video is titled, "Things Only Real Fans Noticed in the Trailer" I don't know how they have jobs. Read the comments section it's full of fans ripping Looper's "analysis" apart.

I think the woman sitting next to King Viserys at the feast is young Rhaenyra, not Aemma Arryn.

Presence of Tarlys is a point of evidence that they might not cut Daeron the Daring’s Reach subplot.

That really happened. August 23.

Maybe it's more subtle in the show an the trailer people just blew it out of proportion.

I actually feel similarly: to us the book fans, regardless of anything after Season 1, it's a nice Easter Egg: there are only 200 blades, most come from the Targaryens, not impossible one is in the mix. What I'm annoyed about is I'm already anticipating ALREADY SEEING the hype fansites reporting on SPECIFICALLY THIS and little else about the trailer! I made this meme image which I feel sums up the situation:

Harwin COULD be his father, but they may never know.

I did too for a minute, but...I think any parent would fly into a rage at seeing that their child had just been permanently maimed, an eye slashed out. The real issue is that it's an out of character moment they chose to feature in a trailer.