Seeing a horrible young Prince living in King’s Landing obviously calls to mind Joffrey (the character from Game of Thrones, not the one-day-old baby from House of the Dragon), and not surprisingly, people on social media are already gleefully hating on this little monster.
It remains to be seen where all of this goes, but right now, it feels like the show is trying a little too hard to make us dislike this kid; as if having a royal child jerk was something Game of Thrones fans would want, no need to see in the spin-off. But arguably, Joffrey’s awfulness acted, at first, as a subversion of classic fantasy tropes; the fair-haired boy Prince that Sansa wants to marry turns out to be an unrelentingly brutal monster. Whether or not Game of Thrones reveled in that brutality a tad too much is debatable, but it still served a larger point to begin with. Aegon, so far, feels like the show had to slot in another meme-able jerk boy with a punchable face.
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Thumbnail: HBO