‘House of the Dragon’ Season Finale: The Reason Rhaenyra Paces Around During Miscarriage
The House of the Dragon season finale was full of dramatic moments. One of those was another birth scene, or more accurately a miscarriage. Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) gave birth on screen before in episode 6, but Rhaenyra’s miscarriage was a stark depiction after a series of brutal births on the show.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the House of the Dragon season finale.]
House of the Dragon creator and showrunner Ryan Condal was a guest on the House of the Dragon podcast on Oct. 23 to discuss the season finale. When it came to Rhaenyra’s miscarriage scene, Condal explained why she paced back and forth during the scene.
Rhaenyra has a miscarriage standing up in the ‘House of the Dragon’ season finale
House of the Dragon began with Aemma (Siane Brooke)’s death in childbirth and the death of the baby. The House of the Dragon season finale concluded with a miscarriage which Rhaenyra herself survived. Condal said it was producer Sara Hess’s idea for Rhaenyra to be pacing back and forth.
“She pitched that Rhaenyra was pacing around angry because Daemon was seizing control,” Condal said on the House of the Dragon podcast. “Her female body was keeping her out of the act of agency in the beginning of her own fight for her claim. And she was frustrated with Daemon and certainly frustrated with her femininity and her womanhood holding her back from this thing. She’s like, ‘She should be pacing around and toss everybody away and just basically bring the baby out of herself.’”
Rhaenyra knows her baby won’t survive the ‘House of the Dragon’ season finale
Part of Rhaenyra’s motivation is that she already knows her baby won’t make it. It’s too early, and the conditions of her labor make it unfeasible, so she just wants to get it over with.
“When Gerardys says, ‘This shouldn’t be happening, she’s well before her term,’ Rhaenyra’s been through enough of these things she knows what’s going on,” Condal said. “She knows she’s, at the very best, going to walk away from this with probably a stillborn child, which is what happens.”
The vast spectrum of births on the show
Though House of the Dragon takes place in a fictional kingdom, Condal said it was important to mimic the “battlefield” of childbirth in our own middle ages. Between births that claimed the mother, women giving birth in different positions, and the miscarriage in the House of the Dragon season finale, the show demonstrated many possibilities.
“Whereas the other births are live childbirth that either ends in triumph or tragedy, this is another experience that a woman would go through in this time,” Condal said. “This is brought on by whatever you believe in watching the narrative, the grief, the emotional experience Rhaenyra is going on. Perhaps there’s some higher order thing, omens, the things that operate in the world of Game of Thrones going on.”
Condal added that the difficulty of childbirth affects the women’s partners too.
“We wanted to dramatize that and show how it affected certainly the women taking part in it but also the men that surround them and are either partners in their life or their husbands or their sons and children,” Condal said.
