Warning: The below story contains full spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, as well as some potential spoilers for Season 3.
After saying he would outline some of the issues with HBO's House of the Dragon Season 2, Fire and Blood author George R.R. Martin has fulfilled his promise, calling out a major deviation the show made from the source material in the second season. But not only that: he's warned fans that even more "toxic" changes might be on the horizon.
Martin posted the blog post on Wednesday, starting off by touching on the first two episodes of Season 2, calling them "terrific episodes: well written, well directed, powerfully acted." There's just one problem, however, according to Martin: the handling of the Blood and Cheese storyline, which saw the death of the young Prince Jaehaerys.
As Martin explains, in the show, Aegon and Helaena only have two children, the twins Jaehaerys and Jaehaera. But in Fire and Blood, they have three, with the addition of Maelor. In the book, to fill the mandate of "a son for a son," Helaena must choose between her two sons, or else see all three of her children killed. She also offers her own life, to no avail. Helaena ends up choosing Maelor, but Blood kills Jaehaerys instead, with the added cruelty of telling Maelor that his mother wanted him dead.
In the show, however, since there is no Maelor, Helaena is forced to identify which of the twins is the boy, which still sees the death of Jaehaerys. Instead of offering her own life, she offers the killers an expensive necklace.
While acknowleding that the scene in the show is "bloody and brutal," Martin writes, "I still believe the scene in the book is stronger."
"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," he continued. "...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," he said. "I hated to lose that. And judging from the comments on line, most of the fans seemed to agree."
Martin said he argued against the change with showrunner Ryan Condal at the time, but acquiesced based on an assurance from Condal. And he noted that he still loves the Season 2 premiere, "and the Blood and Cheese sequence overall. Losing the 'Helaena’s Choice' beat did weaken the scene, but not to any great degree," he wrote.
But there's another aspect about the absence of Maelor that concerns the author quite a bit.
Warning: Potential major spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3 to follow.
Martin said he acquiesced to the Blood and Cheese changes because Condal told him he wasn't removing Maelor altogether, but simply "simply postponing him," as Helaena would give birth to the young prince in Season 3. But, Martin wrote, "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."
He then went on to reference the theory known as The Butterfly Effect, essentially a longstanding sci-fi concept that small changes can lead to major consequences. He goes on to describe a number of important events in Fire and Blood because of Maelor's mere existence.
"Will any of that appear on the show? Maybe… but I don’t see how," Martin wrote. "The butterflies would seem to prohibit it... I have no idea what Ryan has planned — if indeed he has planned anything — but given Maelor’s absence from episode 2, the simplest way to proceed would be just to drop him entirely, lose the bit where Alicent tries to send the kids to safety, drop Rickard Thorne or send him with Willis Fell so Jaehaera has two guards."
He's also worried about (last spoiler warning!) the death of Helaena who, in the book, kills herself after hearing of Prince Maelor's grisly death.
"In Ryan’s outline for season 3, Helaena still kills herself… for no particular reason," Martin wrote. "There is no fresh horror, no triggering event to overwhelm the fragile young queen."
After bringing up more issues with the possible changes for Seasons 3 and 4 due to Maelor's absence, Martin concluded on an omnious note, writing, "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…"
IGN has reached out to HBO for comment.
Condal himself recently defended the removal of Maelor in a recent episode of HBO's official House of the Dragon podcast, saying at the time, "frankly, this goes back to our first season and and trying to adapt a story that takes place over 20 years of history, instead of a story that takes place over 30 years of history. And we had to make some compromises in rendering that story so that we didn't have to recast the whole cast multiple times and really just frankly, lose people."
"But the casualty in that was that our young children in this show are very young. Very, very young. Because we compress that timeline," Condal continued. "So those people could only have children of a certain age and have it be believable where it didn't feel like we weren't hewing to the realities of the passage of time and the growth of children in any real way... So it was a choice made. It did have a ripple effect, and we decided that we were going to lean into it and try to make it a strength, instead of playing it as a weakness."
We'll have to wait and see if Martin's disapproval will lead to any changes with regard to Maelor in the show, with Condal recently revealing that the team is in the midst of writing Season 3, to begin production in "early-ish 2025." That means it likely won't premiere until 2026.
IGN gave House of the Dragon Season 2 a 7/10, writing, with Helen O'Hara writing that it's "made up of some impressive components and stellar episodes, but it’s held back by its glacial pace."
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
