BLOND AMBITION

IF GAME OF THRONES TAUGHT US anything, it’s that finding a successor to the king is a big deal – such a big deal, in fact, that an entire continent will happily go to war to get their preferred candidate on the throne. HBO faced a similar power vacuum when its smash hit fantasy series called it a day back in 2019, but thankfully the US cable giant’s solution to the problem seems to involve rather less actual bloodshed, and a considerably larger budget.

Set around 200 years before the Lannisters, Starks, Baratheons, Greyjoys and Martells began their monumental tussle for the Iron Throne, prequel series House Of The Dragon is based on author George RR Martin’s Fire & Blood. This “fake history” book – jokingly described by the Tolkien-loving Martin as the “GRRMarillion” – details the three centuries of the Targaryen dynasty in the run up to Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire saga.

This being Westeros, you can guarantee that dysfunction and back-stabbing will be rife among the blond-haired, dragon-riding members of King’s Landing’s first family. In fact, we’ll meet Daenerys’s ancestors just before a Targaryen spat descends into an epic, continent-spanning civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons.