Viserys' Stance On Reproductive Rights Has House Of The Dragon Fans All Saying The Same Thing
Spoilers for Season 1 Episode 4 of "House of the Dragon" ahead.
The fourth episode of "House of the Dragon" gets pretty steamy at points, but the ending really serves up some tea.
In "King of the Narrow Sea," Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) finally returns from war in the Stepstones, back in the good graces of his brother King Viserys I (Paddy Considine) and reunited with his, uh, favorite niece Princess Rhaenyra (currently played by Milly Alcock). The devious duo end up making an escape from the sanitized realm of the Red Keep and exploring the bowels of King's Landing, drinking and cavorting before finding themselves at a brothel... and engaging in some disturbingly intimate behavior themselves.
Though nothing comes to fruition during this encounter (so to speak), Viserys, upon hearing that his brother and daughter were caught in flagrante, is furious; though he denies to his now-disgraced Hand of the King that this possibly could have happened, he sends a very clear message to Rhaenyra the next morning. As the episode draws to a close, Rhaenyra receives an odd delivery from a grand maester — a cup of tea, which she's told will prevent "unwanted consequences," clearly intended to mean a tiny Targaryen baby borne out of incest. Naturally, this shockingly progressive stance from a fictional medieval king has the internet buzzing — here's what fans have to say about Viserys' view of reproductive rights.
Twitter is atwitter over Viserys' birth control methods
Unsurprisingly (in this current climate), the response to Viserys' medieval version of the morning-after pill set Twitter ablaze like one of his family's dragons might do to an enemy. Rhaenyra might swear to her former best friend Alicent Hightower (currently played by Emily Carey), now Viserys' wife and queen, that she and Daemon never touched, but clearly, Viserys is making sure nothing comes of whatever may have happened.
Twitter went to town over this scene, making exactly the parallels you'd expect these days. "I cannot believe Viserys is more supportive of women's reproductive rights than half the United States Congress," wrote Twitter user _AttorneyAtPaw, while @AshleyG84288214 paired a photo of a fully exasperated man with the caption "Me realizing Westeros has better abortion access than some states in the US." Some viewers, however, kept it shocked and simple, like @Juraiacies: "Did he just give her a medieval Plan B??? What is this show!!!"
Clearly, these fans are referencing the current battle for reproductive rights waging throughout the United States in the aftermath of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade being overturned in June. Certainly, they didn't expect to see such a blunt and progressive stance from a television show that has dragons on it, but, crazier things have happened.
House of the Dragon's approach to childbearing has been a bit problematic
Viserys might be taking a pretty proactive and progressive approach to his daughter's reproductive rights, but let's be honest: this series isn't exactly a beacon of progressivism when it comes to women and forced birth.
In the series premiere, Viserys' first wife and beloved queen Aemma (Sian Brooke), heavily pregnant with a child Viserys hopes is a boy, tells her daughter, "This is how we serve the realm as royal women. Childbirth is our battlefield. We must learn to face it with a stiff lip." Unfortunately for Queen Aemma, she ends up living that belief in the most gruesome way possible when Viserys elects to give her a horrifying, crudely performed C-section thanks to complications during labor, which kills her... and to add insult to fatal injury, the baby boy dies hours later.
This grueling scene, which finds a confused, alarmed, and heavily sedated Aemma begging her husband before her life as she's forced to give birth to a tragically doomed baby, isn't exactly in line with the "my body, my choice" chant of those who advocate for widespread reproductive rights. "House of the Dragon" might take somewhat of a step forward with its mystical take on the morning-after pill — a medication which may eventually be legislated out of existence — but let's not forget all the steps it's taken back so far.