The Targaryens’ Home Decor in House of the Dragon is Extremely NSFW

Warning: contains spoilers for House of the Dragon episodes 1 and 2.

House Targaryen are not us. The dragonlord rulers of the Seven Kingdoms live by customs that, in our time and culture, wouldn’t just raise eyebrows but would urgently require the involvement of social services and several SWAT teams. In the interests of keeping their bloodline pure, Targaryens marry their siblings (sometimes a handful at a time), betroth children to grown adults, and when it comes to sexuality, are unencumbered either by Judeo-Christian religious shame or childish embarrassment. Just look at their décor.

On the walls of the Red Keep – the royal palace in the city of King’s Landing – are multiple erotic murals depicting sexually explicit scenes. There are orgies, erect penises, penetration, cunnilingus and sex acts of every variety. These images aren’t locked away but out on view. They hang above the dining table where King Viserys eats with his teenage daughter, decorate the Red Keep’s corridors, and adorn the royal bedchamber.

That may explain why this New York Times article about Queen Aemma’s death in childbirth in House of the Dragon episode one, is accompanied by a doctored photograph. Above the deathbed is a blank space where, in the TV show, was a mural depicting the enthusiastic participants in group sex (see below). The edit was presumably made on grounds of taste. A serious discussion of the depiction of a woman’s death in labour might be undermined by the sight of a massive wang bobbing above the corpse’s head.

The Targaryens’ erotic art, of course, is entirely fitting for a dynasty heavily inspired by the Roman Empire and Ancient Greece. Those Pre-Christianity guys shared a similarly open-minded attitude to hanging sexually explicit art in the home. What better way to worship a god of fertility like Priapus than by airing his greatest hits above the fireplace? When Pompeii and Herculaneum were excavated, the 19^th century archaeologists discovered frescoes that made them blush so much that they hid them away for centuries as far too scandalous for the viewing public.

King Viserys I likely inherited his explicit decor from his predecessors on the Iron Throne, but if it was his choice, it’s an understandable one. We know Viserys has a preoccupation with matters of fertility in his search for a male heir. Thus it makes sense for a pantheist like him to surround his home with images in praise of copulation and fecundity. The saucy murals could serve both as marital aid and religious tribute, just like the incense and candles lit to the Gods in the Sept of Baelor. 

Some of the Red Keep’s frescoes even appear to feature dragons (see above) and dragon-headed men getting in on the act, which makes even more sense for a royal dynasty whose dragons are both the source of its power and – back in Old Valyria – also kind of its gods. (Targaryen dragons including Balerion, Vhaegar and Meraxes were often given the names of the Essosi faith’s old gods.) Greek and Roman sculptures of Pan/Faunus often showed the god copulating with she-goats, just as there are several famous depictions in Ancient Greek art of the god Zeus in the form of a swan attacking/seducing Leda, who went on to lay two eggs that hatched into children.

George R.R. Martin was heavily influenced by ancient Rome in his creation of the Targaryens, with their lost empire, cities destroyed by volcanoes, historical conquests, pantheistic religion and centralised seat of government, which makes House of the Dragon‘s art team’s choice of erotic decor sensible from a (fictional) historical perspective. Though we might feel queasy about sitting down to dinner with our kids underneath sexually explicit images, and would generally choose teddy bears or rabbits as motifs for over a newborn child’s cradle, as stated, House Targaryen are not us.