Milly Alcock returned to the position of Rhaenyra Targaryen (by way of a Harrenhal-induced imaginative and prescient) in the previous few episodes of Home of the Dragon. And so did the factor the Australian actress as soon as known as essentially the most stunning little bit of Home of the Dragon set design: the pornographic frescoes on the Pink Hold.
“We’re strolling round. We [Alcock and co-star Emily Carey] search for and we’re like, Huh… that’s fascinating,” Alcock stated in a 2022 roundtable forward of the primary season. “The tapestries of women and men making love; ladies and ladies making love — dragons making love, within the combine as nicely, with people there. However like in all places.”
If watching season 2 (and even season 1) of Home of the Dragon didn’t really feel like a continuous parade of dragon intercourse frescoes, don’t fear; surprisingly they scan as fairly refined on the present after they do present up, which is more and more uncommon. Manufacturing designer Jim Clay stated this was an intentional alternative, in an effort to make it seem as if the luster has left the Pink Hold in Aegon’s (and Alicent’s) tenure.
“The Targaryens are a household of immense energy, and management, and incest,” Clay advised Polygon. “The Pink Hold — it was a kind of decadent place beneath [Viserys]. After which his spouse died, and […] Alicent’s affect was somewhat extra puritanical and monastic (regardless of her personal actions).”
Picture: HBO
The model was like the remainder of Home of the Dragon’s artwork, what Clay calls “primarily medieval.” (Although he notes he does “attempt to introduce components that aren’t purely Renaissance, simply so we alter it up somewhat bit so it’s not acquainted British or European Renaissance buildings.”) He credit season 1 showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik with the concept for the pornographic artwork as a way for displaying how indulgent and even gentle life was beneath Viserys’ rule. Nevertheless it was Clay who enlisted artist Steve Mitchell to do the paintings for the present.
“Steve can do something, from a small fresco to an enormous, 200-foot-long backdrop,” Clay says of Mitchell’s work (which can also be on show behind Harrenhal’s roundtable). Which is nice, since they’d a number of floor to cowl making King’s Touchdown really feel lush. “It’s fairly onerous to make a constructing like that really feel decadent as a result of we don’t have artwork to place round aside from the pornographic frescoes.”
Nonetheless, even that kind of background “gentle furnishing” provides up — and its absence has contributed to the citadel feeling extra like what it’s, and what Clay and his workforce had been initially working to keep away from: “a chilly, stone citadel.” It’s telling that many of the rooms within the Hold are beginning to seem like Otto Hightower’s extra austere dwelling quarters, together with the Seven-Pointed Star of the Seven on the partitions extra prominently than earlier than. It’s his tastes dictating a lot of the Pink Hold’s look, whether or not he’s Hand to the King or not, with Aegon solely on the throne by way of his manipulation. Even Alicent’s personal eremitic model is a product of her father’s manipulation and affect, and the temper of the citadel follows swimsuit, leaving the citadel extra simplified and drab. And consequently, issues really feel a lot colder at King’s Touchdown — from the artwork on the partitions, to the rat catchers hung outdoors, and the sunshine filtering in by way of the home windows.
Such particulars could possibly be thought-about a small factor within the background of Home of the Dragon’s bigger struggle plot. However shedding them communicates volumes about how the Hightowers run this regime, and the way they need to transfer the household ahead. It is a elimination of lineage, erasing the intricacies (weird, commanding, and in any other case) of the Targaryen line in the identical approach that King Robert in Sport of Thrones hid all of the dragon skulls when he conquered King’s Touchdown.
So it is sensible that we see the artwork linger in a single notable place in the latest episodes of season 2, nonetheless nestled they’re behind emptied bookshelves: in Aegon’s chambers, previously Viserys’. There’s nonetheless a little bit of the previous methods left in King’s Touchdown — however sadly, because the battle in episode 4 reveals, that’s not sufficient to win a struggle.
