House of the Dragon’s Overreliance on Miscommunication

House of the Dragon’s Overreliance on Miscommunication

(Spoiler warning for episodes 1–7 of the TV show, but no Fire & Blood spoilers.)

“God damn it, Alicent!” I shouted as she attempted to stab her erstwhile best friend, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. HBO’s new hit series, House of the Dragon, had been building to that climactic scene in Episode 7 since Episode 1, and it was rewarding to see the fallout. I love messy, emotional conflicts in my fantasy political thrillers and know I’m watching a good show when I’m yelling at the TV.

Contrary to the tone of the title, I’m not here to lambast the story. I’m all in for House of the Dragon (or “HOT D” as the world’s creator dubbed it) so far, and I’m a superfan of George R. R. Martin’s works, as a glance at my bookshelf can demonstrate.

That being said, HOT D has repeatedly leaned on a particular writing device to advance its plot, and it’s noticeable to the point where it has entered cliché territory.

I’m talking about the miscommunication trope.

What Is the Miscommunication Trope?

Have you ever watched a show or read a book where it was so obvious that the characters could resolve a conflict with a few words — and that most people, including the characters themselves, would recognize the opportunity — that it broke your story immersion?

While inherently subjective, that’s the cliché I’m talking about here.

The miscommunication trope is the overreliance of a writing device where one or more communication breakdowns between characters drive the plot toward a conflict in a way that suspends the audience’s disbelief. What makes this device a cliché is when the only thing preventing the conflict from being resolved is — ahem, some clarification, and the characters choosing not to seek clarification simply serves as a convenient way for the creator to reach a predestined plot point.

This trope is often associated with romance stories — in fact, I’ve obliquely written about it before — but it appears in other genres. Calling this cliché a single “trope” is misleading, too, since the miscommunication can come in a lot of different flavors.

There’s the classic misunderstanding, where characters try and fail to resolve an existing or future conflict because of missing intentions or context. This flavor of the trope results in a conversation where both parties either walk away hurt or subsequently feel betrayed since they missed a chance to clear the air.

Related to that, there’s the omission, where a character fails to communicate how they feel to another, resulting in asymmetrical knowledge between them. There’s also the lie, where a character feeds false information to another, breaking trust or also leading to later feelings of betrayal.

Of course, that’s not to say that these miscommunications don’t happen in real life— we all make these very human mistakes. I’m also not annoyed by merely seeing them in stories; rather, it’s the singular or repeated reliance on them to raise the stakes of a story conflict that grates my nerves. These concepts become tropes because they serve as shorthand to both create and delay the release of tension, allowing the writer to sidestep creating a more complicated conflict.

HOT D’s Showcase

So, after reading that, perhaps you’ll agree with me that HOT D employs this device on more than one occasion. Let’s pull the receipts:

  • Rhaenyra and Viserys misunderstanding one another about 1) Viserys’s intentions to marry Alicent, and; 2) Rhaenyra’s feelings about how he treats her.

  • Rhaenyra failing to talk to Alicent about why her marriage to her father hurt her.

  • Alicent failing to explain her situation (i.e., two adult men forcing her into an uncomfortable position) to her best friend, Rhaenyra.

  • Rhaenyra not following up with Alicent about why she was to be married to her father.

  • Alicent failing to admit her jealousy and envy of Rhaenyra.

  • Rhaenyra omitting the truth about the night she slept with Ser Criston Cole and lying to Alicent that Daemon never touched her.

  • Rhaenyra and Criston failing to have a conversation after the disastrous one on the boatride back to King’s Landing.

  • Alicent not confronting Rhaenyra upon learning the truth from Larys Strong and Criston Cole.

  • Daemon omitting how he feels to pretty much everyone (e.g., Rhaenyra, Viserys, Laena, Rhea).

If a character in this story were to have extended an olive branch in just one of the scenes above, perhaps we’d not have reached the point in Episode 7 where Aemond loses an eye and Alicent nearly murders her former best friend. You could argue that the show would be far more boring, in which case I would agree, but I would counter by asking: was how they reached that scene believable?

Was it digestible that so many characters failed to talk about these conflicts for a decade? For instance, Rhaenyra wouldn’t have asked, “Hey bestie, why did you marry my dad without telling me?” Or, Alicent wouldn’t have commented, “Seems like you’re mad, Rhaenyra, but I wanted you to know that I didn’t have a choice.” Or Rhaenyra wouldn’t have said, “Hey, Criston, let’s circle back to how you just stormed off like a petulant child before I could tell you about the prophesy that my bloodline will save the world.”

I’m not arguing that these moments in HOT D are bad in and of themselves. It’s the fact that, instead of tweaking character motivations or set-ups, the show repeatedly dips into the same ingredient of miscommunication to build its drama that tastes indulgent to me — kind of like the writers stubbed their toe on the vanilla extract for a cake.

The Show’s Structure

Perhaps one reason the writers employed this device again and again is because of the show’s structure. And by that, I mean the time jumps.

HOT D skips a decade of time in approximately seven hours, which necessitates certain framing choices. It’s hard to know what conversations have or haven’t occurred in the intervening time as the audience is missing years of events in the characters’ lives, and thus need to understand that the key moments shown carry weight and consequences.

The show often executes this excellently, such as the establishing scene in Episode 6 where Rhaenyra gives birth to her third child and then is immediately summoned to the queen’s room. Emma D’Arcy and John Macmillan’s fantastic acting conveys tremendous tension between Rhaenyra and Alicent. And yet, from what we know, that tension is rooted in them not hashing things out in the first place, just like many other conflicts in the show.

I can see why the writers would use the shorthand here, but because it triggered me to write this article, I’d say my sense of disbelief was fairly suspended.

Going Forward

As the conflict has taken a violent turn, I think we can expect to see fewer appearances of the miscommunication trope in the show. There are other reasons now for the cast of characters to hate one another. But while I eagerly await each Sunday for the next episode, I hope we can leave this theme buried beneath the shore of Driftmark.