7 costume details you might have missed in 'House of the Dragon'

Gina McIntyre, author of "Inside the Creation of a Targaryen Dynasty," spoke with Temime and learned that she had been able to read most of the season one scripts even before the actors were cast.

"I did the concept by character — the beginning, the middle, and the end," Temime says in the book. "So I knew which shape I was going to use in that evolution."

You can see this clearly in Viserys, who begins the series as a young and healthy prince, father, and husband. But by the eighth episode, Viserys' physical body had been weakened by an unnamed disease and he is barely able to walk up to his throne on the day he dies.

This is mapped through the cloaks and tunics he wears, which begin with squared shoulders.

The clear lines in his silhouette vanish and become more rounded and weighed down as he ages.

"It's decay that you feel with the shape of his body, how he walks," Temime says. "You can really feel this man who is very powerful beginning to get sick and disappear."

"You can see him aging, and his wife, she becomes squarer and squarer while her husband is becoming rounder and rounder," Temime says.

In the above images, you can see this literal transformation happening in the shape of Viserys and Alicent's outfits. Once she's older (and played by Olivia Cooke instead of Emily Carey), Alicent is significantly more conservative in her religious beliefs. She and the other Hightowers set themselves against Rhaenyra and Daemon because of their "strange" Targaryen obsessions with each other and dragons.

Alicent adorns herself in the Faith's iconography of a seven-pointed star and modest, higher-necked gowns. But all the while she is also starting to adopt the power Viserys once held as King, and her shoulder silhouette is squared.

Temime says she felt a "dose of fear" when it came time to start creating the various looks for the "Game of Thrones" prequel because she wanted to make them distinct from the first HBO show.

The new book says Temime ultimately decided to root the overall aesthetic of the costumes in "latter-day medieval fashion, with elements taken from both the 11th and 13th centuries and select Japanese influences."

That inspiration can be seen clearly in the tunic and skirt combinations that Daemon Targaryen wears throughout season one.

She said she approached the costuming for actor Matt Smith as Daemon in the same way she had when she did the costume design for the 2012 James Bond movie "Skyfall." Temime describes both men's costumes as "very fitting" and "very animalistic" while also allowing the audience to see them moving.

Each of Daemon's skirts is paired with trousers and tall boots.

"When he moves or he turns or he fights, the skirt is moving, and I think that's very cool," Temime says. "It reminds you how masculine a skirt can be. It can look very, very macho."

Most of Daemon's costumes throughout season one are either black, silver, red, or some combination of all three.

"He wears gray when he doesn't want to be a Targaryen," Temime says.

One of the notable times Daemon wears grey comes in episode six when he is living in Essos — willingly distanced from the Iron Throne and Westeros and the Targaryen line of succession.

A real swordsmith named Peter Johnsson was hired to make the two new ancestral Targaryen swords: Dark Sister and Blackfyre.

The two new Targaryen sword grips were made with real ostrich skin because the animals have "knotty" flesh.

"The skin from the body of an ostrich is a bit knotty, and because of that, it suggests the hide of a dragon wing," Johnsson says in the book.

The cold open to "House of the Dragon" season one shows the Great Council of 101 A.C. and the moment when Rhaenys learned a gathering of lords had voted for Viserys to become the next ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.

The dress she's wearing in this scene is only shown in full for a couple of seconds, but it communicates something about her character: The red, black, and gold striped gown is the most "regal and refined" outfit we'll see Rhaenys wear for the rest of the season.

She stood up there at the Great Council dressed like she had already won, only to become known as "The Queen Who Never Was."

Episode five of "House of the Dragon" is centered around the welcome feast for Rhaenyra and Laenor's planned week of wedding activities. The great Houses from all over Westeros were gathered in one room for the occasion, which sent Temime's team into overdrive to tell a unique story with each individual garment.

"We had to produce 250 or 300 costumes, but what was most challenging was to give to each one something good, to not get into factory mode," Temime says. "You had all the houses wearing different colors — you could really see the power between the houses."

"House of the Dragon: Inside the Creation of a Targaryen Dynasty" is out in bookstores now.

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