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Between the blonde wigs, the portents of doom and the hints of intra-familial horn the just-dropped Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon feels immediately like a very Game of Thrones-y place to be.
But the moment you know you're back in Westeros is when the first dragon swoops onto screen. We're the thick end of two centuries away from Daenerys and her dragons, at a time when the winged flamethrowers are the cornerstone of House Targaryen's power.
But being able to carbonise your enemies isn't all fun and games. As Paddy Considine's King Viserys Targaryen whispers to his daughter Rhaenyra, the dragons are "a power men should never have trifled with"; that feels like a pointer as to where House of the Dragon will take us.
Where did the dragons in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon come from?
In the Thrones-verse lore, the very first dragons came from a chain of volcanoes called the Fourteen Fires and were domesticated – or about as domesticated as a dragon can be – by the Valyrians.
They became the dominant force across the continent until they were destroyed by a massive volcano, at which point the Targaryens, safely out on Dragonstone, moved to the top of the food chain with the last surviving Valyrian dragons.
"Dragons are intelligent, more intelligent than men according to some maesters," Tyrion Lannister once noted. "They have affection for their friends and fury for their enemies."
At the time of House of the Dragon, the Targaryens are the only house with dragons; by the time of Game of Thrones, they're thought to be entirely extinct. We might well find out what happened there over the course of the series. Initially, George RR Martin wasn't even going to have any dragons in his fantasy world at all.
"Very early in the process, I was debating, should I do this just as like historical fiction about fake history, and have no actually overt magic or magical elements," Martin said on a panel in Chicago in 2012. His friend Phyllis Eisenstein, a fantasy writer in her own right, set him straight.
"She said, 'Nah, you have to have dragons. It’s a fantasy, you know!'"
What are the dragons in House of the Dragon called?
In episode one, we met Syras, the yellow dragon ridden by Rhaenyra Targaryen, and the big red guy Caraxes – also known, quite horribly, as the Blood Wyrm — ridden by her uncle Daemon.
If the series runs according to the book series, you can expect a few more dragons to come. There will be Meleys, a pink-scaled one ridden by Rhaenys Targaryen; a white one called Arrax; a gigantic bronze one called Vhagar; silver Seasmoke; and Sunfyre. We've not yet met all of the riders who'll take those dragons on though.
What do the dragons mean?
George RR Martin's storyworld draws most obviously from English and British history from the Middle Ages to the Tudors. But the dragons' function in politics and warfare in Westeros mirrors a situation that's much more contemporary.
Dragons are the ultimate superweapon, and the Targaryen family uses its them to maintain its power knowing they can destroy anyone who crosses them in a blast of unimaginably destructive fire with pretty much no chance of being struck back against. The dragons are the Thrones-verse's equivalent of nuclear weapons, and the Targarens are basically the United States in the bit after the Second World War where they were the only country with nukes.
Though Martin's never framed them like this himself, you can read the dragons – as well as who controls them and how they use them – as an analogue for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the fear of their use which pervaded post-war Europe.
We know we're not likely to end up with dragon non-proliferation treaties between the various houses following a dragon arms race, but don't be surprised if the face-off between the various factions ends up in mutually assured destruction.
