Last week, George R.R. Martin, who is listed as co-creator and executive producer on House of the Dragon, took to his “Not a Blog” to hint at some significant grievances with the recent sophomore season of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series, and promised to go into more detail soon.
Now, the writer has done just that, with a lengthy post outlining why he felt one particular character omission in the season premiere could have a "butterfly effect" on later seasons of the show.
In the show, Aegon and Helaena have two children (the 6-year-old twins Jaehaerys and Jaehaera), but in Martin's Fire and Blood, they have a younger brother, 2-year-old Maelor. The infamous “Blood and Cheese” sequence in the series shows the hired thugs kill Jaehaerys in front of his mother, but the events of the book are quite different - and a lot more disturbing.
“I argued against it, for all these reasons,” Martin writes. “I did not argue long, or with much heat, however. The change weakened the sequence, I felt, but only a bit. And Ryan had what seemed to be practical reasons for it; they did not want to deal with casting another child, especially a two-year old toddler. Kids that young will inevitably slow down production, and there would be budget implications. Budget was already an issue on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, it made sense to save money wherever we could. Moreover, Ryan assured me that we were not losing Prince Maelor, simply postponing him. Queen Helaena could still give birth to him in season three, presumably after getting with child late in season two. That made sense to me, so I withdrew my objections and acquiesced to the change.”
But, Martin adds, “Sometime between the initial decision to remove Maelor, a big change was made. The prince’s birth was no longer just going to be pushed back to season 3. He was never going to be born at all. The younger son of Aegon and Helaena would never appear.”
Martin goes on to mention some other changes that might have to me made going forward, and warns: “And there are larger and more toxic butterflies to come, if HOUSE OF THE DRAGON goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for seasons 3 and 4…”
Martin has since deleted his post, but the details are all over the net. What do you make of his comments? Let us know in the usual place.
"The prequel series finds the Targaryen dynasty at the absolute apex of its power, with more than 15 dragons under their yoke. Most empires—real and imagined—crumble from such heights. In the case of the Targaryens, their slow fall begins almost 193 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when King Viserys Targaryen breaks with a century of tradition by naming his daughter Rhaenyra heir to the Iron Throne. But when Viserys later fathers a son, the court is shocked when Rhaenyra retains her status as his heir, and seeds of division sow friction across the realm."
House of the Dragon season 2 sees Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Eve Best, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans reprise their respective roles. Additional returning cast includes Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Jefferson Hall, and Matthew Needham.
The directors for the new season are Alan Taylor (Episodes 1 & 4), Clare Kilner (Episodes 2 & 5), Geeta Patel (Episodes 3 & 8), Andrij Parekh (Episode 6), and Loni Peristere (Episode 7).