It’s taken exactly one episode – one scene, really – for House of the Dragon to prove it’s as adept as Game of Thrones was at dominating the monoculture.
And what to make of the scene being juxtaposed with the elective and excessive violence of a jousting tournament?
But House of the Dragon wasn’t making a fundamental point about violence against women in its premiere, or even a prescient one given the state of abortion rights in America.
Like a lot of viewers, I hated the scene – not just for being needlessly graphic, but for being so purely ancillary to the plot.