‘House of the Dragon’: King Viserys’ Final Throne Walk Was Not Actually to the Iron Throne
House of the Dragon Episode 8 was harrowing for King Viserys (Paddy Considine). Another six years later, Viserys continued to succumb to his illness. Despite his frailty, Viserys made a dramatic walk to the throne. But the episode’s director, Geeta Vasant Patel, said he wasn’t walking to the throne at all.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Episode 8, “The Lord of the Tides”.]
Patel was a guest on the House of the Dragon podcast on Oct. 9. She discussed what Viserys was really walking to. New episodes of House of the Dragon premiere Sundays on HBO Max.
On ‘House of the Dragon’ King Viserys took a long walk in real time
The scene is dramatic to watch, thanks to Considine’s performance, but also the sheer length of the walk. Patel recalls when they realized they had to let his slow walk play out.
“As we started preparing for that moment where Viserys enters the throne room and walks down, everybody was freaking out because it’s such a long walk, especially when you can’t walk that well,” Patel said on the House of the Dragons podcast. “I saw it and Miguel [Sapochnik] saw it and Ryan [Condal] saw it. All three of us were like, ‘It has to be real. We have to embrace that walk because if we shorten it, it actually doesn’t tell the story.’”
King Viserys was really walking to his daughter
Through blocking the scene, Patel discovered the true heart of the moment. The walk wasn’t so much about the iron throne, but about Viserys’s daughter, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy).
“I had always, I guess when I read the script, had envisioned okay he’s walking to the throne,” Patel said. “And we started rehearsing it and Rhaenyra was standing there and she had finished giving her speech that she was standing in the middle. I had a moment in rehearsal like stop stop stop. Viserys isn’t walking to the throne. He’s walking to his daughter. He’s doing it for Rhaenyra. And that was emotional for me even as someone who loves her father and I know he would do anything for me. It just crystalised the visuals for that.”
That certainly gives the scene added meaning. It’s one thing to make such a brave display to assert one’s power. It’s even more poignant to brave all that for family.
‘House of the Dragon’ has been about King Viserys’s love for his daughter
Love is complicated in any family, especially on House of the Dragon. Viserys still took a wife, and chose Rhaenyra’s best friend Alicent. But he also bucked tradition and committed to making Rhaenyra his heir.
“He’s this man who loves his children and loves his job, for lack of a better word, loves his duties,” Patel said. “As we all know, that’s just hard to balance. It’s kind of all or nothing for both a lot of times in life so it’s a very relatable situation because what’s good for one side of it is not necessarily great for the other side and to me, at least, that’s what that scene came to be about, the balance of his responsibilities and the lack thereof.”
