House of the Dragon featured a lot of unforgettable moments, but one scene in particular had everyone holding their breaths, and it involved Aegon Targaryen’s unlawful coronation in the Great Sept.
Rhaenys broke apart the ceremony on top of her dragon, Meleys, and was a “Dracays!” away from killing the entire royal family, but something in that final moment stayed her hand, or rather, her tongue. Even though the “Queen Who Never Was” refused to kill the Greens and end the Dance of the Dragons right there and then, she still slaughtered hundreds of people making that grand entrance from below the boards.
Now, the show’s VFX supervisor, Mike Bell, has revealed in an interview with ScreenRant that the scene in question was much more graphic and brutal before the producers decided to sugarcoat the scale of her massacre, at least to the degree that was plausible.
“[The coronation in episode nine] was changed a little bit, especially when Rhaenys exits, because we initially had shots where she exits and plows through thousands of people. And it was just like, ‘Well, that’s not really into the feeling of the character.’ There’s definitely a feeling like, ‘Is it okay that she’s just going through all this crowd?’ We went high and then reduced it down. But in all that dust, there’s also people flying and somersaulting. I think if you paused it, you might be able to count them. It’s hundreds, maybe thousands.”
The Targaryen princess made one thing perfectly clear—she is no easy meat. Perhaps the Hightowers would do well to remember that, especially in the wars to come.
Now, Rhaenys and her husband Corlys Velaryon, aka “The Sea Snake,” have pledged themselves to Rhaenyra’s cause, uniting the strongest fleet in the Seven Kingdoms with the house that controls the most dragons. Will that end up working in the Blacks’ advantage in their quest to reclaim the Iron Throne from the usurper?
That’s a question that only House of the Dragon can answer when it returns for a second season a year or two down the line.
