Just when we thought we had heaped every sort of praise imaginable on House of the Dragon and all the things it gets brilliantly right, the director for the latest eighth episode has revealed that an incredibly poignant moment between Matt Smith’s Daemon and Paddy Considine’s Viserys was improvised by the former.
The sequence in question was already one of the most epic moments in all of Game of Thrones. Considering their win all but guaranteed, Queen Alicent and Ser Otto were almost ready to proclaim Vaemond the next Lord of the Tides when Viserys strode through the hall in his kingly garb.
But as the feeble monarch made his way up toward the Iron Throne, his crown fell on the ground, to be picked up by none other than his brother Daemon, who helped him up the final stair and on the chair. Per Collider, that powerfully sentimental moment between the two brothers happened by accident, when Matt Smith picked up the crown, and director Geeta Patel decided to roll with it.
“‘When we were shooting that – I think the rehearsal again, the first day – the crown fell off of Paddy’s head and Matt picked it up and we just kept going. We didn’t stop [filming]. There was a discovery there of this moment,’ she said. ‘We decided to shoot it both ways with the crown falling off and with the crown not falling off. Every time the crown fell off, all of us just caught our breath.’”
As the director sees it, that was the moment Daemon finally reconciled his brotherly envy for Viserys, and realized that he’s always wanted to help rather than supplant him.
“I was so thankful that accident happened, that the crown fell off because it proved to be, at least for me quite a heavy moment and quite a turning point for a storyline that had started in the pilot: Hey, I want your crown and by the end here I’m gonna put the crown back on your head and I’m gonna help you to your throne.”
King Viserys may be dead, but his brother still has a huge part to play in the Dance of Dragons.