Sure, it’s ancient history, but it’s still agonizing watching as the Targaryens keep moving one step after another closer to open civil war on HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon.

The Season 2 premiere definitely pushed things forward with a tragic death that was a heartbreaking departure from George R.R. Martin’ssource material (primarily the fake history of Westeros book Fire & Ice).

The moment quickly came to dominate social media as fans were not prepared for the heartbreak as Rhaenyra, consumed with grief over the death of her son Lucerys demands the death of his killer, Alicent’s son Aemond.

It was in interesting shift in this premiere as Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen, who played such pivotal roles in Season 1’s progressions (and divide along the line of succession), appeared to at least temporarily shift a bit more into the background.

Rhaenyra did so in a deep state of mourning after the tragic death of her son Lucerys. While it was a tragic accident, misunderstandings are already the feul behind the fires of this brewing war and this only adds more flames. Plus, accident or no, an innocent kid died.

Plus, Rhaenyra’s grief-stricken motives are still the driving narrative of her throne-in-exile faction, with her orders to her small council that Aemond be brought to her the catalyst for the season premiere’s most brutal moment.

As for Alicent, she should have perhaps known that her influence would immediately wane the moment she helped to put a crown on her son’s head. While a reluctant leader, the erratic and unpredictable Aegon is quickly embracing his power, even as he’s not sure what to do with it.

Say what you will about Viserys’ ineffectiveness as a strong leader, he nevertheless tried for kindness and compassion in his rule. Watching Aegon nearly make his Master of Coin give a horseback ride to his little brother Jaehaerys in the middle of an important meeting gave us hints of Joffrey Baratheon (never a good thing).

By the end of the episode, Alicent has gone to her father Otto, the Hand of the King, to complain about being undermined in the small council to the point her council could end up completely ignored by her son. Little do they know, Otto appears to be being undermined himself by Larys, who has nefarious motives of his own.

Daemon comes into this premiere hot and ready to do something about the death of Lucerys. Maybe even launch an all-out war.

He is, however, hamstrung by the fact that it is Rhaenyra who wields the power. While headstrong Daemon of Season 1 might have flown off to do his will regardless, he does seem to respect his wife and queen, and so he stays his hand.

He is advised that it may well take visceral physical evidence for Rhaenyra to full accept that her son is gone. But that’s just what she finds when one of Lucerys’ dragon’s wings washes up on shore. While she spends much of the episode deep in mourning, her grief shifts to rage in this moment.

In a powerful scene, Rhaenyra arrives a her small council (complete with the requisite introductions) only to make a single decree of those assembled. She wants Aemond for the death of her son. And as quickly as she stood at the head of the table, she departs.

It’s all the permission Daemon needs to spring into action, hiring a couple of rat-catcher thieves to go about doing her will, we get a prolonged sequence of Blood and Cheese — or so they are dubbed in the source material — making their way into the castle.

We don’t quite get their full orders from Daemon, who started by telling them he wanted Aemond. They asked what to do if they couldn’t find or get him, but the camera cut away. By the time they were in the castle, the narrative was “a son for a son.”

Cut to a heartbreakingly awkward scene when we see that they’ve stumbled upon Queen Helaena with her twins — remember the wee Jaehaerys in the small council room? Declaring they need the head of a “son,” they demand the queen point out which is the boy or they’ll all die. And so she does.

With the viscerally gruesome sound of the killers removing his head, Helaena flees with Jaehaera in her arms. As awful as this sequence was, it could have been far worse.

For one, Fire & Blood sees Daemon ask them to kill a prince, while HotD has him specify that he wants Aemond (though we don’t see his full orders). The death sequence itself was also far more brutal — and cruel — in the source material.

For one, more time has passed in the timeline of the books than this show, so Halaena’s children are notable older — and there’s another one. In the book, the killers make her choose which son will die. Then, when she does, they make sure to emphasize to that boy that she chose him to die … and then they killed the other one.

For the first time in House of the Dragon, viewers took the long trip to the North, and then to the north of the North as Rhaenyra’s other son Jacaerys meets our first Stark, the stoic and very serious (aren’t they all) Lord Cregan Stark.

Just like poor Lucerys was trying to bolster the support of the Baratheons at Storm’s End, Jacaerys was on his way to Winterfell to ensure the Starks were on Team Rhaenyra. He probably didn’t expect a tour of The Wall as well.

For fans of Game of Thrones, it certainly appears that this is taking place when The Wall is better maintained and manned, as that’s what Jacaerys sees when the young Stark lord brings him there to talk about his split commitments to King’s Landing and The North.

A very young lord to oversee such a vast expanse as The North, this Stark is just as serious as Ned will be after him. It’s serious business being the warden of The North, holding back “death” with The Wall, as he tells an impressionable young Jacaerys.

Fans were thrilled to see Tom Taylor’s debut as this compelling new character, with the hopes that the Starks will continue to have a major role to play, even as his allegiances are admittedly divided.

A particularly touching scene was Jacaerys’ return to Dragonstone to report of the success of his political trip to his mother Rhaenyra. He could be seen and heard emotionally breaking even as he fulfilled his duty — but this was the first the mother and son have seen one another since Lucerys’ death, and finally the veneer of propriety cracks and breaks as he falls into her arms.

As always, it is emotion that drives the narrative forward in Westeros, and that’s definitely not always a good thing. Aemond’s emotions got the best of him — just as Vhagar’s got the best of him in that aerial battle — and Lucerys paid the ultimate price.

This, of course, comes on the heels of way too many emotions between Alicent and Rhaenyra (and Criston) driving the plot toward the brink of destruction in Season 1. Now, Rhaenyra’s grief has led to an unspeakable horror in King’s Landing. So what will follow?

Well, according to Tom Glynn-Carney,’ Aegon is reaching his own “point of no return” as he sits upon the throne. While it was his brother who killed Rhaenyra’s younger son, Daemon’s killers slew his heir.

“Look, when something as tragic as a tragic thing happens, it leaves a stain on a human being to the point of probably no return,” Glynn-Carney told People. “It’s a dangerous thing to happen to a very vulnerable and fragile and volatile human being.”

As we said, we’ve seen glimpses of his potential for cruelty, and he is still a very young rule. As far as the depths of inhumanity possible, Aegon has a very long way he could go down. Plus, how will this impact his relationship with Aemond, who is in some ways also responsible for Jaehaerys’ death.

The realm wants peace. Blood has been split for blood, but we all know there is no such thing as truly balancing the scales. Any and all moves toward a peaceful revolution have been destroyed by dragon and this week’s brutal beheading.

Even before we got into the brutal events of the premiere, fans were treated to a whole new visual to accompany the signature Game of Thrones score. Gone are the rivers of blood detailing the familial line of the Targaryens.

Instead, fans were treated to a tapestry coming to life, detailing the history of Westeros that viewers are seeing play out in real time (what will come to be known as The Dance of the Dragons). This intro is also expected to grow and evolve as the original GoT map sequence did to reflect changing times in that era.

Blood remains a part of the sequence, just as it remains a part of the bloody civil war just getting underway. As for why it changed, showrunner Ryan Condal told The Hollywood Reporterthat they felt they had no choice as Season 1 came to a close.

“As we got to the end of season one, we realized that the bloodlines and ancestry story we were telling that season — 20 years of time in Season 1 — had been brought to an end because now the Targaryen ancestry is sort of set. We didn’t have much place to go,” said Condal.

“So we decided to go with radical change,” he added.

“Now that the page has turned and we’re at war, this is a living history and we want to depict that history in a visual way and give the fans new things to take apart and dive into,” Condal explained, and so they leaned into the way much of actual history in the Middle Ages was chronicled, the tapestry.

“It gives us a lot of places to go. The story obviously starts on Valeria and and then at some point in the sequence, you’re like, ‘Oh, I remember that from from Season 1’ and you see how we’ve moved from Aegon the Conqueror’s time and pass through all the kings, and now we’re telling the story as we’re seeing it unfold and also seeing it literally being stitched into this tapestry.”

House of the Dragon, already renewed for a third season, airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO and Max.