HBO’s House of the Dragon has given me my favorite messy bitch in Daemon Targaryen. He’s a man who doesn’t care who his dramatic ways hurt and just wants to live his life to the fullest. It often means angering his brother and doing things that the society of Westeros doesn’t agree with, and it’s beautiful to see play out onscreen. But now, it seems as if the Targaryen prince may also be exploring his queerness on the show (even if it is currently just fleeting glances in the actual episodes).
Daemon Targaryen was talking to a man at dinner and got close to him, and I instantly screamed “DAEMON BISEXUAL???” in glee. Then, in deleted scenes, we can see more of Daemon flirting and seemingly embracing this man, and so to know that Daemon Targaryen is most definitely a bisexual king makes our universal love for him and his mess that much sweeter.
Twitter has already clung to the idea of Daemon being bisexual given his brief moments with men in the last two episodes, creating fanvids and expressing joy at having one of the leads of the series be a queer man, given that there are not many queer characters in the series.
But this is now the second moment when the series has deleted scenes that would have made us all love Daemon more than we already do, and I have to wonder why they’re omitting them from Daemon’s storyline.
Stop deleting Daemon Targaryen
This is now the second scene in note (from the last episode) where Daemon has a humanity and relatability to him that found its home on the cutting room floor—the first being him embracing his daughters after their mother died. In their grief, Daemon is there to comfort his girls in a way that his brother Viserys was not for Rhaenyra.
Daemon is willing to show his emotions and embrace those around him and we see it in the way he looks at Rhaenyra and how he reacted to the death of his wife Laena.
Pair this though with the scenes seemingly confirming that Daemon is bisexual and I have to wonder if the show is making a pointed effort to erase the humanity that does exist within him to turn him into a character we’re not supposed to love.
The thing is: I do love Daemon. I recognize that he’s a mess but I love him very much and my favorite parts of House of the Dragon are when they let him be who he is and have fun. Each episode has focused so heavily on Viserys and his nonsense that it almost makes me angry to see these cut scenes that I could have had with Daemon.
I don’t want to infer that he’s bisexual from a cut scene. I don’t want to have to see him hug his daughters in images shared after the fact. I want those to be a part of the story too. So yes, it seems as if Daemon Targaryen is embracing his queer identity in the show and I do hope we get to see it because I don’t want to continue to just hear about it after the fact.
(via io9, featured image: HBO)
