If you haven’t been living like Patrick Star, you’ve probably heard about the latest HBO flagship series, House of the Dragon.
Despite all the claims made about the franchise’s death, the cultural juggernaut that is Game of Thrones has resurfaced.
This time, everyone’s favorite dark fantasy politicking show is set during a famous Targaryen civil war.
As someone who’s read the books, I’m going to do what book readers do best: nitpick about the changes.
But unlike Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon isn’t really a conventional book that can directly be adapted into a TV show or a movie.
Instead, the show is based on Fire & Blood, a fake history book written by in-universe characters, so adapting it is a lot harder than most people would think.
Let’s look at how House of the Dragon is performing as an adaptation so far and how it could improve, in my opinion.
If you’re familiar with how Fire & Blood works, you can click here and skip to my thoughts on the adaptation.
Introducing the Sauce: Fire & Blood
Fire & Blood is a historical book within the universe of ASOIAF, written by Archmaester Gyldayn and transcribed by George R. R. Martin.
Despite George’s attempts at trickery, I think we can all guess that Archmaester Gyldayn might not be a real person and George himself wrote everything.
So, our devious author wrote it from the point of view of some old dude that lived in the world he’d created. That means the contents of the book are going to be biased.
Let me give you a quick example. The Silmarillion by Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien is a book about the history of Middle Earth, and it’s been compared to Fire & Blood by some people.
If the Silmarillion were to say, “Feanor was a dickhead” then it’s the writer himself stating a fact. We can then conclude that Feanor was indeed a dickhead (which he was FYI).
But if Fire & Blood were to say, “Daemon Targaryen was a dickhead” then it’s just Gyldayn calling him a dickhead, and he’s just a human being who could be mistaken.
So, Daemon could still be a decent guy (which he probably wasn’t).
Since Gyldayne wasn’t there when things happened, he uses 3 sources when writing his book:
- Various Maesters: Royal servants and healers who serve the lords of Westeros
- Septon Eustace: A clergy and a representative of the Faith of the Seven
- Mushroom: The court jester during the war and a notorious pervert (yes, really)
As you can see here, all the sources are different kinds of people with different ideologies. Naturally, they contradict each other often, so we’ll never really know for sure which of them (if any) is telling the truth.
For example, Septon Eustace says that Aegon II was with a daughter of a wealthy merchant when Criston Cole convinced him to take the crown.
Mushroom, on the other hand, says Aegon II was at an amateur MMA tournament for children (i,e a fighting pit) with a young girl when that happened.
Despite the number in his name, Aegon can’t be in two places at once, so both accounts can’t be true. And if you’re adapting the scene, you’ll have to choose which version to go with, and that can completely change how viewers will see that character.
(Of course, the TV show went with Mushroom’s version here and made a lot of people very mad, which we’ll get to later).
So, you’re basically between a rock and a hard place when adapting Fire & Blood.
If you were, hypothetically, adapting Fire & Blood into a TV show, then my advice would be to accept that you’re screwed either way and just bite the bullet
How They Adapted It
In House of the Dragon, the showrunners don’t really stick to just one source and end up changing things up. Sometimes it follows Mushroom’s version, sometimes, it follows the Grand Maester’s version, and it keeps things from seeming one-sided most of the time.
Plus, the actors are amazing, the set design and production values are magnificent, and the dragons… well… the dragons don’t look bad. Overall, there’s a sense that the story has been brought to life.
The basic gist of the story remains the same, though: Rhaenyra Targaryen was appointed as heir to the throne by her father, Viserys. But Viserys later remarries, and many believe his first son has a better claim to the throne than Rhaenyra.
She’s then forced to marry Laenor Velaryon, the gayest gay man to ever gay, who dies shortly, and she marries her uncle Daemon. Once the King dies, people who support his son seize the throne by force, sparking the conflict.
Rhaenyra’s second son is sent as an envoy to gather allies, but he’s killed by Aemon Targaryen, marking the point of no return for the conflict.
While they’ve played around with the details, all these events are from Fire & Blood, so the general course of events is the same as the books.
At the same time, they also changed some pretty major details or added scenes that weren’t there in Fire & Blood at all.
To judge these changes, let’s take an example of a change that works and use it to see how the show can actually improve on the source.
After that, we’ll look at a change that doesn’t work and see where the show often falls short.
What Works
The characters of Viserys and Alicent have been changed heavily by the adaptation, and in my opinion, this is a clear improvement from the books.
In F&B, Viserys is just a guy who wants to have a good time and ends up blissfully unaware of all the scheming that goes on behind his back. It’s not like he’s poorly written or anything, he’s just not much of a character.
The show adds so much to Viserys that it’s more or less unrecognizable. When Viserys is introduced, we see him making a hard decision to sacrifice his wife for the sake of a son who could then take the throne and lead the realm.
The C-section was another addition made by the show, which wasn’t in F&B.
Despite making the hard choice, the whole thing backfires on him, and Viserys loses his son and his wife. And for the rest of his life, Viserys is constantly agonizing over his decisions. He wants peace in his family and in the realm and ends up achieving neither because he is too afraid to make hard choices again.
It’s all written fantastically, and the acting by Paddy Considine just elevates the thing to another level. Even GRRM agrees that the show version of Viserys is the superior character.
This really shows the strengths of the show because Fire & Blood, by design, can’t really give us such an intimate look into a character.
Another good example of that is Alicent Hightower. In the books, Alicent is more of an evil stepmother figure who’s there to scheme against Rhaenyra. She’s not completely devoid of positive traits
By making Alicent and Rhaenyra childhood friends, the show gives us another reason to be emotionally invested in their relationship.
It’s not just people who are on opposite sides of a war; it’s childhood friends who end up in a horrible war when they were *this* close to reconciling.
Plus, spending more time with Alicent beyond just third-hand rumors gives us a clearer picture of her. We can just see how miserable she is because of the burdens society places on her. The show then contrasts it with Rhaenyra’s relative freedom, so we can intuitively see why Alicent has a problem with her former friend.
Another change I liked (and this might be controversial) was with Aemond’s character.
In the books, Aemond is just a straight-up anime villain who’s there to stir shit up and do horrible things.
In the show, Aemond is also a straight-up anime villain who’s there to stir shit up. But he isn’t horrible enough to want to kill his nephew.
While book Aemond is said to have intentionally murdered Luke, the show makes this an accident, and it’s honestly brilliant.
Because the narrator of F&B is not omniscient, Aemond killing Luke could have been an accident in the books as well.
He can now either admit to losing control over his flying nuke (disastrous for his reputation) or lie and say he killed Luke (disastrous for his reputation). Instead of showing an event in a straightforward way, the show gives us another interesting character conflict.
What Doesn’t Work (Girlbossing a Massacre)
In the books, Aegon II’s coronation was a straightforward event. He gets crowned, rides around in his cool dragon, and things are all fine and dandy.
But in the show, there’s a slight interruption in the form of a giant fire-breathing lizard bursting from the ground and killing a fuckton of people.
The sequence then ends with Rhaenys confronting Aegon II and his supporters and then dipping out instead of roasting them with her dragon. Needless to say, it caused quite a stir among the fans.
Many people who were rooting for the Blacks got frustrated because Rhaenys threw away an easy chance of ending the war. On the other hand, many who supported the Greens got annoyed because the coronation was interrupted by a girlboss moment for Rhaenys.
It certainly didn’t help that the creators described the scene as a “great heroic moment” for Rhaenys. Even if you were a fan of the scene, you can’t deny that it was pretty divisive overall.
And that’s the big problem here. My biggest issue wasn’t that Rhaenys made a bad choice or that she killed tons of people without being bothered by it.
Those things could still make for a good show.
My problem was that it felt like the scene was written to be big and climactic first, without logic being a distant second priority.
And this leads back to my biggest concern with House of the Dragon, they’re trying too hard to add big moments like this.
Wikipedia Articles Don’t Make for Good Pacing
Because of how F&B is written, it doesn’t have the natural ebb and flow of most stories. For instance, take the book version of Game of Thrones. Just by following the story, you can have tons of places you could cut to create memorable climaxes or build tension for the next episode.
The book already has Bran getting pushed out the window, Lady’s death, Dany standing up to Viserys, Catelyn arresting Tyrion, and so on. All they had to do was place these events in the right parts of the episode, and they could keep people watching.
In contrast, HoTD had to add scenes like Viserys talking about Aegon’s prophecy, Daemon’s tantrum on Dragonstone, and Rhaenys’ murderous escapades that weren’t in the books at all. And even for the existing scenes, they had enough leeway to spice things up with more.
That’s how you get people dying all over the place in tourneys, nobles disobeying their host and dueling in a castle, Crispy Cole straight up punching the future King consort, Daemon trying to 1v1 the Triarchy, and so on.
And don’t get me wrong, these additions can be amazing, and F&B has enough leeway for them to add these details. Viserys dragging himself to the throne one final time was one of the greatest TV moments in recent years. But when it doesn’t, it really harms the show as a whole.
Unlike a lot of book readers, I find it easy to disagree with changes but still continue watching the show. But when the change is the climax of the entire episode, like with the Rhaenys scene, it’s much harder to look past.
Once the episode ends, it won’t be the small parts they nailed that stay at the forefront of my brain. It’ll be the chunk right near the end or at the climax because they’ve written it to be the most impactful part of the whole thing.
And that’s the biggest challenge they’ll have to face and where the show has the biggest potential to falter.
Rhaenyra the Hero
A lot of fans have voiced their complaints about the way Rhaenyra was presented in the show compared to Aegon II.
Some sources in F&B theorize that Rhaenyra had something to do with Laenor’s death, but the show has her giving him a chance to start fresh away from an unhappy life. In fact, she’s much more understanding of his sexuality in the show compared to the books.
On the other hand, Aegon II is presented as an all-around horrible person. Of course, there were parts of F&B (mainly Mushroom’s) that supported that portrayal, but the showrunners had to make the decision to choose that source as the one they’d adapt.
Personally, I don’t think bias against the Greens is the reason, so let me make the case:
When the show was still going on, a writer made a huge stir when she basically said that Daemon’s popularity was baffling because he was unambiguously a shitty person.
If we use that as an indication of bias against Daemon in the writer’s room, then a lot of things make sense. For example, we see Daemon killing his wife by crushing her head in with a rock when it was one of the few murders that even the books don’t blame him for.
After all, he was fighting the Triarchy on the other side of the continent when that happened, and flying on a dragon isn’t exactly stealthy.
Similarly, a scene of him comforting his kids after his wife’s death was cut, and him rebelling against the Iron Throne by claiming Dragonstone was added. While his responsibility in Laenor’s death was removed, he did kill a random dude and used the body as a decoy.
In comparison, Alicent is much more sympathetic than in the books, and her crazy anime villain son Aemond is also made more likable. His fight with the “Strong boys” is made less one-sided by adding Daemon’s daughters into the mix.
We also get another scene of the other kids mocking him pretty harshly for not having a dragon, so it’s a lot more understandable when he claims Vhagar.
Both the Greens and Blacks get moments that make them look worse and parts where they look better.
So why is it that we get the worst version of Aegon II when Rhaenyra looks a lot cleaner? Well, Breaking Bad didn’t start with Walter White already a ruthless drug kingpin.
In F&B, we could follow along with a story even if all the people are all massive bags of dicks since it’s not character-driven. On the other hand, we’re taking the journey with the characters in HotD, so if they’re too horrible, some people might want off the ride.
Rhaenyra is more or less our protagonist in HotD, and it’s her journey we’re following for the bulk of the show. And I think that’s why she’s more sanitized in the show.
If Rhaenyra were to order Laenor’s death, then she’d be crossing into villain protagonist territory for many in just episode 6 of a show that’s supposed to go on for 4-5 seasons.
At the same time, they have an excuse that F&B is biased against Rhaenyra, so they could very well be showing the “true” story. Making Aegon II less sympathetic isn’t a problem by that logic since he’s not even the prominent character in his own faction – Alicent has that on lock, and she’s also made more likable.
So what does this mean for House of the Dragon?
Because of how the source material is written, they’re more or less forced to pick sides, make changes, and even add scenes at times.
When done so with the intent of fleshing out characters and giving us a clearer view of them, it can be a huge improvement over the original. But making changes for the spectacle is a risky path, and if they lean on that too much, they can easily go the way of Game of Thrones.
Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about how HotD ended up. While there are some rough bits, the good parts are more than enough to keep me interested.
