The second season of House of the Dragon ended in early August with a finale that delivered the show’s strongest connection to Game of Thrones so far. The ratings for Season 2 weren’t quite what they were for the first season back in 2022, but HBO had already ordered a third season earlier this summer. Recently, though, A Song of Ice and Fire and Fire & Blood author George R.R. Martin heavily hinted that he’s not too happy.
Of course changes are required in any adaptation from book to screen, and we were never likely to get every Targaryen riding their dragon and every battle shown in minute detail. But since it seems like a very safe bet that George R.R. Martin’s issues are with how the show adapted his source material, let’s look back at what I see as the five biggest story changes from Fire & Blood.
And let’s start with the biggest, which also happens to be the one that I can’t really defend even as a fan of Season 2.
Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS ARE AHEAD for House of the Dragon Season 2 and George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood.
Blood And Cheese
If there was one thing that Fire & Blood readers could be fairly confident of after Season 1 ended with the death of Lucerys, it was that Blood and Cheese was going to happen early in Season 2. As a supporter of Team Black, I wondered if the tragedy about to befall the Greens would be enough for viewers to switch loyalties from one side to the other. After all, Blood and Cheese is really, really, really bad in the book.
While the murder of a young boy in his bed was still really, really bad in the show, I never imagined how much House of the Dragon would soften the incident. Not only was it presented as the assassins deciding to kill Prince Jaehaerys on their own rather than Daemon ordering it, but the actual scenario was less nightmarish.
In the book, Helaena was the mother to three children: Jaehaerys, Jaehaera, and Maelor. Assassins broke into Alicent’s rooms and killed all the servants so as to take the young queen by surprise when she brought the children in. Blood and Cheese promised to only hurt one but only if Helaena chose which of her children would be killed, with the threat that Jaehaera would be raped if she took too long to choose.
Sobbing, Helaena chose young Maelor to die, prompting Cheese to whisper to the youngest prince that his mother wanted him to die before Blood beheaded Jaehaerys in front of Helaena, Alicent, and both of his siblings. It was a truly despicable act, and being forced to choose slowly but surely drove Helaena mad over the rest of her short life.
In the show, Helaena didn’t have to make a choice, and really seemed to recover from her son being murdered quite quickly. The choice to give Helaena visions of the future has been mostly interesting in House of the Dragon, but her resignation to Jaehaerys' death rather than how the character responded in the book really lessened the impact.
It didn’t help that Alicent was absent from the scene in the show and in the middle of a tryst with Ser Criston Cole instead, which brings us to…
Alicent's Affair With Criston Cole
House of the Dragon wasted no time in Season 2 in establishing that Criston Cole and Alicent started sleeping together. Neither really felt great about it, with the affair weighing on the dowager queen’s conscience and Cole was past the point of bothering with moral quandaries. As far as I recall, the only rumored partner that Alicent ever had other than Viserys in Fire & Blood was King Jaehaerys before him, and that rumor only came from Mushroom.
There’s nothing in the book to suggest that anything was actually happening between Alicent and Cole beyond his role working alongside Aegon and later Aemond. There’s certainly some hypocrisy from both of them in the act, but the question that has been bugging me ever since Alicent required some moon tea is of how much time actually passed from Season 1 to that point in Season 2.
While moon tea has been used in the show as a contraceptive, A Song of Ice and Fire proved with Lysa Arryn that it can also be used as an abortifacient to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. All of Alicent’s actions in that particular episode struck me as her attempting to force a miscarriage, not preventing pregnancy in the first place. Since Viserys didn’t die all that long ago and wasn’t really in any condition to be making babies toward the end of his life, the implication is that Alicent was pregnant via Criston Cole.
And if she was far enough along to know that she was pregnant, the timeline suggests that she was sleeping with Cole before Viserys died unless Season 2 snuck in a bigger time jump than was necessary. Is it possible that I’ve put way more thought than intended into the timeline leading to Alicent drinking moon tea? Sure, but I see it as another sign that the affair with Cole really hasn’t added anything good to the series.
Daemon's Loyalties In Question (And Visions At Harrenhal)
Daemon may not be the most morally upstanding character of Fire & Blood, but his political loyalty to Rhaenyra was never in question, and he certainly didn’t spend his time in Harrenhal considering whether or not he should try to usurp his niece/wife/queen.
Even when Rhaenyra was past the point of reason and ordered that Nettles be executed, the closest Daemon came to betraying her was helping Nettles escape alive and then going after Aemond instead of rejoining his wife. Plus, HOTD Daemon knowing courtesy of Alys Rivers where he’s supposed to die might lessen the impact of his decision to face Aemond later on, although that’s presumably at least one season away from being adapted on the show.
Admittedly, I’ve never been a huge fan of House of the Dragon stretching to tie everything to Game of Thrones and Daenerys, so I’m a bit biased, but Daemon only declaring his loyalty to Rhaenyra after getting a vision of Dany didn’t do The Rogue Prince any favors.
The show playing up the love story of Daemon and Rhaenyra’s marriage has been fine, in my eyes, but toying with Daemon betraying her to make a claim of his own goes against Fire & Blood in a way that bugged me for a lot of Season 2, even though the entire Harrenhal setting was quite impressive and I’m officially one of many fans for whom Ser Simon Strong was the MVP of the storyline. Daemon’s loyalty to Rhaenyra in Fire & Blood was one of his defining qualities, and it was lacking in Season 2.
Omitting Nettles
Technically it’s possible that House of the Dragon intends to bring in the character of Nettles but just hasn’t yet, like the delay in introducing Daeron Targaryen until his cameo with his blue dragon in the Season 2 finale. But unless Rhaena is burned to a crisp in the Vale, it certainly seems that instead of incorporating Nettles, House of the Dragon is giving a modified version of the Sheepstealer storyline to Daemon’s daughter.
And while some characters in a book as packed as Fire & Blood are inevitably going to be left out of a TV adaptation, no way would I ever have predicted that Nettles would be cut. Not only is she an example of possibly how a non-Targaryen could tame a dragon, but her ambiguous relationship with Daemon is a major plot point toward the end of the Dance of the Dragons.
Deeply paranoid after being betrayed by several of the other dragonseeds by this point, Rhaenyra came to believe that Nettles and Daemon were having an affair and demanded Nettles’ death. Not only did this set off the chain of events that ended with Daemon’s death, but Rhaenyra demanding that Lord Manfryd Mooten violate guest right to kill Nettles prompted him to flip to support the Greens.
It’s hard to imagine what Rhaenyra could be convinced of about Rhaena that she would order her death. Even the Targaryen family tree doesn’t partake in parent/child incest, which is why Daemon’s dream of his mother was a step too far even for him. I don’t have any idea what the show intends to do by merging Rhaena and Nettles (or why nobody noticed Rhaena was missing long enough for her to trek through the Vale), but I’m guessing that George R.R. Martin has thoughts.
Rhaenyra And Alicent's Bond
Rhaenyra and Alicent’s friendship was one of the earliest major changes from the book to the show, as House of the Dragon aged up Rhaenyra and aged down Alicent to make them peers and pals. It tracks that the history between them would continue to affect them as war ramps up between their two branches of the warring Targaryen family, but Rhaenyra sneaking into King’s Landing dressed as a septa was a stretch.
In hindsight, though, Rhaenyra sneaking into King’s Landing is downright normal compared to Alicent sneaking herself to Dragonstone to reveal Aemond’s plans and tell the Black Queen when she should move against King’s Landing. Alicent basically gave up Aemond and Aegon for dead so that she could escape with Helaena, which… is one way to go with her character, but my biggest bummer is that it takes away some of the triumph of how Rhaenyra and Daemon took King’s Landing in Fire & Blood. That was a major win for the Blacks, not the result of Alicent spelling out how they could enter the capital.
All of this may sound like I hated House of the Dragon Season 2, but I did enjoy it for the most part. Having read Fire & Blood, though, I can definitely see changes from the book that diverge pretty wildly from what George R.R. Martin wrote and might not sit well with him. For now, we can only wait and see what he plans to say about it, and/or rewatch House of the Dragon streaming with a Max subscription.
