This character, Queen Aemma Arryn, is at the centre of the harrowing scene in question. Photo / HBO
This character, Queen Aemma Arryn, is at the centre of the harrowing scene in question. Photo / HBO
OPINION:
WARNING: This article discusses episode one of House Of The Dragon, and also touches on moments from its predecessor, Game of Thrones. That means there will be spoilers. Continue at your own risk!
Across eight long seasons of Game of Thrones, there were two scenes so unsettling I now refuse to rewatch them.
If you're curious, those scenes are the death of Oberyn Martell, in which his skull is crushed like a watermelon, and that of Shireen Baratheon, who is burned alive by her parents. Both of them are certified nightmare fuel.
So far just a single episode of Thrones' prequel series, House Of The Dragon, has aired. And already it has offered up another scene on that same disturbing level.
This character, Queen Aemma Arryn, is at the centre of the harrowing scene in question. Photo / HBO
The scene in question shows a character named Aemma Arryn, Queen of Westeros, attempting to give birth. The baby won't come. And the medical experts – such as they are, given we are set in the high fantasy equivalent of medieval times – conclude Aemma will not survive.
They present her husband, King Viserys Targaryen, with a terrible choice: Allow both mother and child to die, or attempt to save the baby by cutting a fully conscious Aemma open, forcing her to endure a harrowingly painful death.
Without consulting his wife, Viserys chooses the latter option. We witness first her confusion, then her terror, then her screams of agony as the procedure is carried out against her wishes, leaving her dead in a huge pool of blood.
Viserys and Aemma in less awful times. Photo / HBO
Sian Brooke, the actress who plays Aemma, spoke about the scene in a freshly published interview with Variety.
"It was a bloodbath," Brooke said.
"Behind that [prosthetic] belly was a whole bag full of blood and fluid. When the incision was made, they would have to time it with pumping this blood out of the belly.
"[The belly was] incredibly lifelike, so much so I found myself walking and waddling around. My body must have thought, 'Hellooo? Where are we now? We're not going back there again, are we?' They were quite weighty, but being pregnant you do feel quite weighted."
She said the blood was "cold and wet, seeping all over". By the time the scene was finished it "looked like a horror movie".
Brooke encountered another problem too: The day-and-a-half of filming for the scene left her almost without a voice. You know, from all the screaming.
"I was definitely quite hoarse," she said.
"My children couldn't really hear me for the next 48 hours, but that's probably the best thing on their part. For a couple of days after filming, it sounded like I'd been out on a very good night and had a very good time.
"Sadly that didn't happen. I was lying on the bed screaming."
Aemma with Viserys in an earlier, less disturbing scene. Photo / HBO
She may have only lasted half an episode, but Brooke's character still made her mark, sharing important dialogue with both Viserys and the pair's daughter, Rhaenyra.
In her conversation with Rhaenyra, Aemma tells her daughter she will be pregnant soon enough herself. Foreshadowing what's to come, she describes childbirth as a "battlefield".
"I'd rather serve as a knight and ride to battle and glory," Rhaenyra says.
"We have royal wombs, you and I. The childbed is our battlefield. We must learn to face it with a stiff lip," Aemma responds.
Then, in her scene alongside Viserys, Aemma tells him her current pregnancy will be the last, citing five previous failed attempts to give him an heir to the Iron Throne.
