The House of the Dragon premiere, which took place on Sunday, compared audiences to a different version of King’s Landing than they might remember from Game of Thrones, from huge dragons to the ruling pale-haired family. Among the city’s fresh features is the Iron Throne, a Game of Thrones staple that now looks bigger and more dangerous to the occupant.
HBO’s House of the Dragon is a fantasy series set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and features Milly Alcock, Matt Smith, Paddy Considine and others as members of the dragon-riding House Targaryen. In a Vanity Fair interview published last week, House of the Dragon co-creator Ryan J. Condal explained why the Iron Throne is different from what we saw in Game of Thrones.
“We went into the series knowing this was a time of high decadence,” Condal told Vanity Fair. They were able to develop all the beautiful things that exist: peacetime, statues and art, roads and fountains.”
House of the Dragon contrasts with the time of Game of Thrones, Robert Baratheon, who is known to have largely lost the Targaryen dynasty and was replaced by “not even a penny for the betterment of the kingdom.”
Condal said, “I think original Game of Thrones executive producers David Benioff and DB Weiss designed this very iconic throne. What we want to do is honor that, but also not forget that 200 years have passed. If you look very closely, you will see that the original throne is there. “It shows that history changed something at some point in the intervening time,” he says.
Both House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones are based on the fantasy novels by George RR Martin. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Martin says that the creators of House of the Dragon used an Iron Throne more similar to the one described in the books.