Child beds and battlefields, House of the Dragon

There have been several reviewers, mostly men, but some women, who have criticised the abundance of childbirth scenes in HBO's fantasy series.

In episode 1 Queen Aemma tells her daughter Princess Rhaenyra "the child bed is our battlefield..." and House of the Dragon plays out that metaphor to the full. All those stunning, callous, sensitive, passionate, obtuse feuding princes and princesses have to be birthed and the way they are birthed has significance and impact and will influence subsequent events... Just as battles, tournaments and council sessions do. And especially since the civil war has its origin in the rival dynastic claims between the offspring of two singular women.

But I would argue that you might as well complain that battle and fight scenes, of which there are a great many in House of the Dragon, in fact, far more than childbirth scenes, are "gratuitously insensitive" because, indeed, they are. But due to the fact that men tend to be their main protagonists, there is therefore hardly a series, book or picture that doesn't feature such battles, duels, skirmishes and violent deaths, and we have all become inured to them.

Obviously it is disturbing seeing women giving birth, and the pain, trauma and angst childbirth entails, especially when several of the would-be mothers and the would-be babies, die. But like war, or even more so than war, this is a fact of life that we tend to hurry by... As we do the fact that before the advent of modern medicine childbirth had a mortality rate of approximately 5%, that's without taking into account the possible serious injuries to the woman's health. To this should be added that deaths in infancy were very high and there were no reliable forms of anti-conception available which led to many women having multiple pregnancies and thus increasing their possibilities of death or injury. But again, most fantasy fiction skates over this.

I would say that it is to its credit, that House of the Dragon does not.