WARNING! This article contains SPOILERS for House of the Dragon season 1, episode 5!House of the Dragon episode 5’s wedding being a prime example of how the major houses and faces may change, but their shocking actions do not.
Although Alicent and Viserys were married between House of the Dragon episodes 2 and 3’s time jump, Laenor and Rhaenyra’s wedding is the first big marriage celebration depicted in the series. The feast begins peacefully enough as the union of House Targaryen and House Velaryon is celebrated, but soon takes a turn when Alicent Hightower walks into the room wearing a symbolic green dress. Within a matter of moments, Daemon attempts to talk Rhaenyra out of her marriage, King Viserys’ nose begins bleeding, and Criston Cole bludgeons Joffrey Lonmouth to death. Even in House of the Dragon, no wedding can commence without blood being spilled.
Game of Thrones had a memorable tradition of shocking and deadly weddings, with season 3’s Red Wedding still being considered the show’s most agonizing moment. Even after Robb, Catelyn, and a pregnant Talisa Stark were brutally slaughtered at a wedding celebration, Game of Thrones’ characters failed to learn from the Freys’ betrayal. In Game of Thrones season 4, the wedding feast for Joffrey Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell was cut short when the groom was fatally poisoned, leading to the event’s nickname of the “Purple Wedding.” Although there was no death, Sansa Stark and Ramsay Bolton’s wedding night in Game of Thrones season 5 was also excruciatingly horrific. From this point on, Laenor and Rhaenyra’s union is apt to be labeled the “Green Wedding” due to its most shocking moment being the establishment of the “green” and “black” Targaryen factions. Following Joffrey Lonmouth's murder, House of the Dragon’s wedding is presumably the true start of the unofficial Westerosi tradition in which a marriage celebration isn’t over until someone is brutally killed and a major betrayal is committed.
Why Weddings In Westeros Are So Brutal
As with most of the important events in Game of Thrones, tensions are especially high at weddings due to so many lords, ladies, and knights across the realm being united in one location. However, unlike tourneys, which are tailored for violence and confrontations for long-standing feuds, such atrocities committed at weddings are more shocking and personal. Weddings are meant to be peaceful occasions marking the celebration of a major political union, but they also present convenient opportunities for warring factions, jealousies, and betrayals to truly reveal themselves.
Similar to how Game of Thrones' Red Wedding was a strategic place for Walder Frey to get his revenge on Robb Stark, House of the Dragon’s climactic wedding presented a fitting time for Alicent Hightower to symbolically declare war on Rhaenyra. Some of the most important lords and ladies of Westeros are in the room at weddings, making it much easier to quickly band together allies at once rather than laboriously send ravens. Marriages in the world of Game of Thrones are also rarely arranged out of love, so jealousy inevitably rears its ugly head as those spurned or cast aside attend the celebrations. Rhaenyra and Laenor’s wedding may be House of the Dragon’s first catastrophic wedding, but Game of Thrones tradition signifies that it won’t be the last.
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