Last week, Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin posted on his blog teasing a future entry in which he would criticize everything wrong with HBO’s second season of House of the Dragon. Today, in what can only be described as post-blog clarity, Martin uploaded the promised post—only to swiftly take it down from his site.
According to IGN, Martin’s now-deleted blog post (read it in archived form here) slammed the show for a particular deviation from its source material, and warned fans of more “toxic” changes to come in House of the Dragon season three. As IGN notes, the main crux of Martin’s complaints comes with the show’s depiction of “Blood and Cheese,” an infamous moment in Targaryen lore in which King Aegon II’s young heir meets his grisly end.
In the show’s version of events, Queen Heleana and her twins Jaehaerys and Jaehaera are menaced by murderous intruders. She’s forced to identify which of the toddlers is a boy and she offers up a necklace in an attempt to bribe Blood and Cheese into showing mercy. In Martin’s Fire & Blood, Heleana has three children, with a second son named Maelor in the mix, and she’s forced to choose which child will be sacrificed. After offering her own life instead, and being told that’s not an option, she picks Maelor—but they end up killing Jaehaerys anyway. Although Martin found the episode “bloody and brutal,” he holds fast to his book handling it better.
“I thought the actors who played the killers on the show were excellent… but the characters are crueler, harder, and more frightening in Fire & Blood,” Martin wrote. “I would also suggest that Helaena shows more courage, more strength in the book, by offering her own own life to save her son. Offering a piece of jewelry is just not the same.”
“As I saw it, the Sophie’s Choice aspect was the strongest part of the sequence, the darkest, the most visceral,” Martin continued. “I hated to lose that. And judging from the comments on line, most of the fans seemed to agree.”
Martin also revealed that he argued with showrunner Ryan Condal about the change, but relented after getting Condal’s assurance that it would still be an impactful scene.
Martin also voiced his concern with Maelor not being in the show. According to the author, Maelor hasn’t been removed from the show entirely but postponed until season three of House of the Dragon. (Another child for Aegon and Heleana seems unlikely, given the logistical situation and physical condition the king was in at the end of season two, but stranger things have happened in Westeros.) However, Martin thinks the prince might as well be dropped from the show, given the character’s significance in Fire and Blood.
“Will any of that appear on the show? Maybe… but I don’t see how,” Martin wrote. “I have no idea what Ryan has planned—if indeed he has planned anything—but given Maelor’s absence from [season] two, the simplest way to proceed would be just to drop him entirely.” While voicing his concerns over the birth of Maelor being pushed to season three, Martin also spoiled the death of a major player in the upcoming season and warned fans of more “toxic” changes still to come in the House of the Dragon.
“In Ryan’s outline for season three, Helaena still kills herself… for no particular reason. There is no fresh horror, no triggering event to overwhelm the fragile young queen,” Martin wrote; in Fire & Blood, she takes her own life after Maelor meets a terrible end. Using the concept of the “Butterfly Effect” to explain how the changes in season two could affect the rest of the show, Martin continued. “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 three and four…”
Seeing as Martin’s dissertation on House of the Dragon no longer exists on his blog, one might assume the author either thought better of posting his heated reaction to the HBO show’s second season or that representatives of the show pulled out a comically large cane to yank him away from his computer.
Update, September 4, 4:05 p.m: HBO has issued a response to Martin’s blog post, as reported by Variety:
“There are few greater fans of George R.R. Martin and his book Fire & Blood than the creative team on House of the Dragon, both in production and at HBO. Commonly, when adapting a book for the screen, with its own format and limitations, the showrunner ultimately is required to make difficult choices about the characters and stories the audience will follow. We believe that Ryan Condal and his team have done an extraordinary job and the millions of fans the series has amassed over the first two seasons will continue to enjoy it.”
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