An unofficial script for episode 1 of season 1 of House of the Dragon, “The Heirs of the Dragon.”

The description on HBO reads,

Viserys hosts a tournament to celebrate the birth of his second child. Rhaenyra welcomes her uncle Daemon back to the Red Keep."

As the first big foray back into the world of Westeros since the finale of Game of Thrones three and a half years prior, there was a lot riding on the first season of House of the Dragon’s success, and particularly on the ability of this, its premiere episode, to hook fans back into the franchise. By all accounts, it was a roaring success.

This episode draws from the chapter “Heirs of the Dragon—A Question of Succession” in George R. R. Martin’s Fire and Blood, an in-universe history textbook of sorts which serves as a prequel to the A Song of Ice and Fire books that Game of Thrones was based on, and as the basis for House of the Dragon.

The meat of the episode serves primarily to establish a brewing succession crisis. The main cast consists of members of the royal family of the Seven Kingdoms and those in their immediate sphere of influence, with the issue as presented in this episode being that the current king has no sons. Spurning the very precedent which put him on the throne, King Viserys names his only daughter Rhaenyra as his heir at the end of the episode, setting up the conflicts that drive the story to come.