Women Call Out For ‘House of the Dragon’ Showrunners Birthing Scene To Add More Blood

The “House of the Dragon” writers previously made a promise that the “Game of Thrones” prequel wouldn’t “shy away” from brutality against women. It seems that the series didn’t go too far when it comes to childbirth.

The shocking first episode of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” left viewers in disbelief when King Viserys (Paddy Considine), who is in need of a male successor, ordered Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke) to be ruthlessly sliced open in order to rescue her unborn son. Aemma gives birth to her kid against her will, begs for her life, and then passes away.

Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal, the co-showrunners of “House of the Dragon,” told Insider that they did not want the sequence to be “excessive” and pointed out that the show wasn’t “glorifying” the killing.

In fact, women in their life “unanimously” pushed the creators to make the scene more hideous so that those who had given birth would find it to be “horribly true.”

“We did make a point of showing it to as many women as possible and asked the very question: ‘Was this too violent for you?’ And unanimously, the response was ‘no.’ Often the response was ‘If anything, it needs to be more,'” explained Sapochnik.

“We shouldn’t be shying away from this thing that’s happened because it’s raising a point that seems to hit a real trigger for women, which is this idea of choice. She doesn’t get to choose. She’s effectively murdered by her husband. And that is a good indication of the state of play in this world that we’re inhabiting.”

“As we stated earlier in the episode, the birthing bed is almost a battlefield. You have 50 percent chance of survival. And so it seemed like this was an appropriate time to draw that parallel visually between the male and the female struggle. One’s fighting on the battlefield, the other’s fighting for survival — sometimes from the person closest to her.”

HBO’s “House of the Dragon” set a record for the biggest audience for the debut of an original series. Even though Westeros is a fictitious place and this is all made-up history, author George R.R. Martin, who wrote the series’ premise in “Fire and Blood” and provided consulting for the show, has previously said that the stories are neither “misogynistic” nor unduly harsh.

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