The upcoming Game of Thrones prequel series that will air in 2022, House of the Dragon, although based on George RR Martin’s Targaryen history book Fire & Blood, will not feature Targaryens only, but many other houses and many other legendary figures from that time period as well.
Besides Targaryens, we will have important Starks, Lannisters, Baratheons,Tyrells but also Hightowers. Although Hightowers existed in Game of Thrones as well, we hadno important Hightowers in it.
In House ofthe Dragon on the other hand, Hightowers playthe biggest role alongside Targaryens.It’s Otto Hightower (the Hand of the King)and his daughter Alicent Hightower (wife of King Viserys Targaryen with whom she has children) that basically started the Dance of the Dragons, Targaryen civil war.
The key event of the show is also the key in the history of House Targaryen, the Danceof the Dragons – the Targaryen civil war, which divided the entire kingdom and launched a huge war that was fought from 129 AC to 131 AC.
House of the Dragon will start with a buildup towards the Dance of the Dragons and early seasons will cover the Dance itself. So Otto Hightower was a knight from House Hightower who served as Hand of the King to three kings, although two of the kings removed him from office at various times.
The younger brother of Lord Hightower, and the uncle of Lord Ormund Hightower of Oldtown. His children included Alicent Hightower, the second queen of King Viserys Targaryen, and Ser Gwayne Hightower, second in command of the gold cloaks.Otto is remembered as a warning that knowledgeis not everything.
Otto Hightower fights or should I say serves on the behalf of his grandson, Aegon II Targaryens against Rhaenyra Targaryen. Ser Otto first served as Hand of the King after the death of Prince Baelon Targaryen, the Hand and son of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen. Otto effectively dominated the Seven Kingdoms as Hand within the final 2 years of Jaehaerys’s reign, whereas his daughter, Alicent Hightower, breast-fed the under the weather king.
Otto continued as Hand to Jaehaerys’s grandchild and successor on the throne, Viserys I Targaryen. He became a bitter rival of the king’s brother, prince Daemon Targaryen, who had been named master of coin.
Otto convinced the king to get rid of him from workplace and did therefore once more once Viserys named Daemon master of laws. He came to regret this, however, when Daemon was named commander of the City Watch, as this put two thousand men under Daemon’s command and the prince thrived in this new office.
Otto feared Daemon would become a second Meager the Cruel if he ever ascended to the Iron Throne, sharing his fears with his brother, the Lord of the Hightower. Thus, by this time, Otto wished for Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen to succeed her father.
Otto’s daughter Alicent became King Viserys’s second wife in 106 AC, after the death of Queen Aemma Arryn. IIn 109 AC, Otto was removed because the Hand for hounding Viserys to declare Alicent’s sons the heirs to the Iron Throne rather than princess Rhaenyra.
Having no place at court anymore, Otto returned to Old town. A queen’s party referred to as the greens, the cluster of powerful lords who were friends with Queen Alicent, remained, who supported the rights of Alicent’s sons.
In120 AC, Otto returned as Hand after Lord Lyonel Strong died. When Viserys died in 129 AC, Otto played a crucial role in crowning his eldest grandson as King Aegon II in defiance of the last will of Viserys I, which specified Rhaenyra as the successor.
This defiance precipitated the war referred to as the Dance of the Dragons. The Dance of the Dragons began with Otto serving as Hand of the King to Aegon II Targaryen. in keeping with Orwyle, Otto ordered the confinement of Lord Lyman Beesbury within the black cells.
Ser Gwayne Hightower, Otto’s son, was named because the second in command of the gold cloaks, behind Ser Luthor Largent. The blacks, Rhaenyra Targaryen’s faction opposing Aegon’s greens, enclosed the battle-tested prince Daemon Targaryen, who, within the course of his pre-war adventures, had created several foes, as well as Otto.
Afterthe death of Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen at the hands of Daemon’s assassins, Blood and Cheese, Aegon ordered deaths of King’s Landing’srat catchers. Otto brought a hundred cats to the Red Keep. Otto reached out to other enemies of the prince Daemon, the Kingdom of the Three Daughters, as allies. They were crucial in breaking the Velaryon blockade in the Battle of the Gullet.
Otto was unsuccessful in gaining an alliance with Qoren Martell, the Prince of Dorne. King Aegon II told his grandfather& Thrones are won with swords, not quills. Spill blood, not ink.& Aegon II perceived Otto’s diplomacy as slothful at a time when Prince Daemon had captured Harrenhal and manyhouses had declared for the blacks.
This junction rectifier to Otto’s replacement because the Hand by Ser CristonCole, the Lord Commander of the Kings guard, despite the pleading of Queen Alicent Hightower, Otto’s daughter and Aegon’s mother. it absolutely was solely when his dismissal that Otto’s diplomatic efforts bore fruit.
Just as he had predicted, Otto was the first to be beheaded as a traitor by Rhaenyra after the fall of King’s Landing in 130 AC, which was not the end of the Targaryen civil war, as Rhaenyra later loses Kings Landing, but it was the end for Otto Hightower.
Actor Rhys If ans will play a role of Otto Hightower in House of the Dragon. HBO’s official description of the character reads The Hand of the King, who loyally and faithfully serves both his king and his realm.
As the Hand sees it, the greatest threat to the realmis the king’s brother, Daemon, and his position as heir the throne. The show will stay true to the books in this matter, Otto’s greatest rival in the books was Prince Daemon Targaryen and he will also be in the show.
But most of the other thing show ever will differ from the books. Not only will there be differences between the books and the show like it was with Game of Thrones, but after reading the book Fire And Blood, you still don’t know how most of the events really played out.
Some would think that you could just read the book Fire & Blood to know what will happen the show based on that very same book, but that’s far from true. Why? Because Fire And Blood is not a conventional novel, it is an imaginary history book, and according to George RR Martin himself, not very accurate at that.
Because while Fire And blood book was written by George RR Martin, it was not written from him as facts, but rather through the perspective of the Citadel’s Archmaester Gyldayn who gathered all info and as many different sources as he could and used itto write a book about the Targaryen history.
Some info is fake, some info is true, and some info is semi-true. No one will know for affect what was happening in real history until the House of the Dragon airs in 2022.The show unlike the book will contain truth, it will depict what actually happened, not the changed history, fake or semi-true, not what might or might not have happened.
Fire& Blood is a complete history of House Targaryen written by George R. R. Martin from the perspective of Archmaester Gyldayn who wrote it many decades after the events took place.
Sure, most of the main events such as battles and deaths probably did happen, but as Gyldayn says it in the books, the full truth about what happened behind closed doors, in the privacy of stairwells council rooms, and bedchambers he does not fully know and he turns to many different sources which usually differ from one another.
He looks into the course of chronicles laid down by Grand Maester Runciter and his successors and many court documents as well. Gyldayn looks into accounts written decades later by children and grandchildren of those caught up in the events of these times.
While they’re without doubt of use, most time has passed between the event and therefore the recording that a lot of confusions and contradictions have inevitably crept in. Unfortunately this is also true for Gyldayn’s two accounts by firsthand observers that have come down to him.
Sept on Eustace who served in the royal step in the Red Keep during much of this time and spent much time as a confidant and confessor to King Viserysand his queens. His account is biased, favoring Aegon II over Rhaenyra.
The second account is based upon a verbal account of the court fool Mushroom who was present at court for all of them for King Viserys, Princess and Queen Rhaenyra and both King Aegons, the Secondhand the Third.
During his reign, King BaelorI Targaryen had Mushroom’s book burned on account of its scandalous content. There square measure many main sources for historical data on the Dance of the Dragons, that square measure often at odds with one another.
Gyldayn also usessource written by Grand Maester Orwyle, who had served King Aegon II Targaryen on his counciland was arrested by the forces of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen when she took the city. Or Wyle wrote his account while locked away in the black cells.
Uncertain about whether or not he would survive the war, he attempted to paint himself in the best light possible. Grand Maester Munkun’s The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling was based on Orwyle’s account.
Using all these sources which often differ from one another, archmaester Gyldayn wrote his work, Fire and Blood, his work about the history of House Targaryen. This format brings up Martin’s major thematic point about the uncertainty of memory, and history being written by winners.
Neither side truly won the war, nor decades after the war, did both sides write their own biased history books trying to put their actions in a better light. Thus histories written by the Greens depict Aegon II in good lightand Rhaenyra in a bad light. On the other hand, histories written by the Blacks do the opposite.
We’ll know exactly what happened in this time period when the show airs, and that’s why you cannot just read the book Fire and Blood and think you would know what actually happened or what will happen on the show. Books are written by Archmaester decades and decades after the events took place, using many sources that in most cases are very different from each other and most of them are biasedas well.
What we can tell you for a fact is that House of the Dragon starts filming in around 3 weeks and will air in 2022 on HBO. We can also tellyou that Otto Hightower will play a huge role. He’s the grandfather of Aegon II and he (alongsidehis daughter Queen Alicent) starts Targaryen civil war. The war began when King ViserysI died, started by the Greens, Otto and Alicent Hightower among others by disobeying King Viserys’ orders of crowning Rhaenyra and instead crowning Aegon as the new King of Westeros.
The same day that Viserys I died, Aegon II’s followers, the Greens, staged a coup, and he was soon crowned in King’s Landing. Rhaenyra, as the Princess of Drag on stone, had her power base on Drag on stone island, where she responded by being crowned queen by Daemon and declaring Aegon a traitor. Thus the Targaryen civil war began.
