If there's anything viewers learned over eight seasons of "Game of Thrones," it's that, in Westeros, no one is too important or too beloved to suffer a sudden, horrible death.
Fittingly, the long-awaited spinoff "House of the Dragon" opens with a death — two, actually — as memorable as they are poignant. In Sunday's "The Heirs of the Dragon," Queen Consort Aemma Targaryen (Sian Brooke) bleeds to death after a crude cesarean section performed without her consent or knowledge. The attempt to save her child and secure a male successor to the Iron Throne is ultimately futile: The infant lives for only a few hours.
The brutal sequence, intercut with a violent jousting battle, highlights the dangers faced by women in this mythical, quasi-medieval realm, but it also has surprising modern-day relevance in a perilous post-Roe moment.
