Bloody, Painful, Heartbreaking: Game of Thrones' New Show Tackles Pregnancy (Yikes)

What year is it?

Game of Thrones stirs controversy once again over a violent birth scene, but NOT over the bloody violence in the streets- that’s just business as usual. House of the Dragon takes a multi-generational dive into the history of HBO’s previously popular show, with new characters in everyone’s favorite platinum blonde wigs.

But why are we talking about a birth scene in 2022? I Love Lucy first showcased a pregnant Lucy in 1952, to so much controversy that the show was nearly banned entirely. By the time the birth episode aired in 1953, 44 million viewers were hooked on TV’s first delivery scene, a push for realism in media.

We tuned in for more realism on Sunday night and certainly got it. In arguably one of the best scenes of the pilot, a royal birth is depicted in tandem with violent scenes of soldiers ransacking their own city in an unsurprising visual juxtaposition of life and death.

With the exact amount of realism expected from the show’s famous battle sequences, the show instead illuminates how truly awful life-giving moments can suddenly become when a king chooses to do a medieval (read, fatal) c-section on his queen. If you thought he’d prepare her and share a loving goodbye, you sweet summer child, you probably didn’t have a good time on Sunday.

Queen Dragon Lady wanted to live.

I certainly squirmed in my seat; the scene is 100% hard to watch in an emotional and visceral sense. Now, watching actors paid beaucoup bucks to depict a forced birth in THIS political climate is one thing, but I can’t stress the importance of showing the reality pregnant people face every day in this country. There will be blood, there will be pain, and there are ramifications of the people left behind when something goes wrong. Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women in the USA, yes- STILL.

Fear of delivery addressed to an impressionable character earlier in the episode, and Queen Lace-front assures her that “Childbirth is our battlefield. We must learn to face it with a stiff lip,” but can we face the truth of birth without truly knowing it? I recall constantly hearing about friends not being ready for this bit or that bit of pregnancy and delivery, and we are OLD. Will this pilot be a waking call that we need to better educate our daughters? Probably not, but looking away will not shine light on the gravitas, difficulty, and pain that comes with birth.

Why is it important to start a dialogue about the mysterious and occasionally horrifying nature of birth (even without the dark-age-era surgery)? We don’t all have a terrible time, right? Perhaps you’ve had that quintessentially-blessed friend who was adequately medicated on their delivery day, who then went on to have a perfectly round-headed baby in a resort-style hospital– but not everyone has the privilege of achieving that level of preparation, access to that kind of money, or frankly the amount of LUCK.

While the birth scene is absolutely necessary to the plot, the show-runners could have shown less, and I appreciate the reluctance to look away. If we consent to put our bodies through an incredible ordeal, rewarding as it may be, we should put aside anatomical diagrams and callous medical descriptions of pregnancy and be able to choose; knowing the full extent of what’s ahead.

We’ve come a long way from I Love Lucy’s groundbreaking birth episode (1953), but have we really? If House of the Dragon’s pilot isn’t for you please sit this one out, I will likely be skipping the infamous birth scene on my next watch.