Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the House Of The Dragon finale.
Emma D’Arcy has shared their take on the controversy surrounding House Of The Dragon’s grisly birth scenes.
The Game Of Thrones prequel came to a close earlier this week, and while the show was largely praised by fans, it did come under fire from some critics due its graphic depiction of birth, with four such scenes airing over the course of the series.
One of these took place in the finale, and involved Emma’s character Rhaenyra Targaryen losing her unborn child.
Speaking about the scene, and their character’s refusal to receive help, Emma told GQ: “I don’t know how contentious this is going to be, but the most important thing for me about the birth in episode 10, is that… She has a fear that begins when she loses her mother.
“And that’s one of either dying in childbirth, and/or being incapacitated by childbirth by being forced to bear children within this system.”
They continued: “Simultaneously, she lives in anticipation of this call to the throne when her father dies. But she’s in the worst-case scenario, in that she is fundamentally incapacitated at the same point as being told ‘your father’s dead, the throne is yours, and you’ve been usurped’.
“The advice Rhaenyra is receiving is to have patience, in the hope of preventing the child being stillborn or preventing harm to the child. And she ignores the advice, seeking instead to get this body out of her.
“And I think it’s really fundamental, and it will be possibly divisive, but ultimately I think she chooses her own bodily autonomy. She prioritises her own bodily autonomy. She literally says in the scene, like ’get it out’.”
Emma was then asked if they were aware of the “criticism surrounding the frequent birth scenes”, admitting they “haven’t seen loads of it to be honest”.
“But I take real issue with the idea that we shouldn’t see women in labour depicted with gritty realism, and blood, and placentas,” they said. “Especially on a show where part of its USP is big, gory battle sequences.
“What it feels like is that we want women to conform to a certain image. Which is interesting, insofar as acting is concerned, because, there’s also a lot of fun to be had getting to do the big physical, physically demanding sequences. And it’s interesting that maybe sometimes that is not afforded to female characters.”
The first episode of House Of The Dragon saw Rhaenyra’s mother Queen Aemma dying after a graphic childbirth, with her newborn son then also dying shortly afterwards.
Showrunner Miguel Sapochnik later defended this potentially-triggering scene, stating that he “made a point of showing it to as many women as possible”, and asking whether they found it “too violent”.
“Unanimously, the response was, ‘no’,” he claimed. “Often the response was, ‘If anything, it needs to be more’.”
Miguel continued: “We shouldn’t be shying away from this thing that’s happened because it’s raising a point that seems to hit a real trigger for women, which is this idea of choice.
“[Aemma] doesn’t get to choose. She’s effectively murdered by her husband. And that is a good indication of the state of play in this world that we’re inhabiting.”
While the first season of House Of The Dragon is now over, a second has already been confirmed to be in the works.
Help and support:
- Sands works to support anyone affected by the death of a baby.
- Tommy’s fund research into miscarriage, stillbirth and premature birth, and provide pregnancy health information to parents.
- Saying Goodbye offers support for anyone who has suffered the loss of a baby during pregnancy, at birth or in infancy.