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House of the Dragon Showrunner Found GRRM Criticisms "Disappointing"

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal found George RR Martin's post criticizing changes made during Season 2 to be "disappointing."

Earlier today, the official word came down that production on the third season of HBO & showrunner Ryan Condal's House of the Dragon was officially underway. Along with the rollout of the good news, Condal also sat down for a profile interview with Condal about the new season and the series overall – and that included discussing the not-so-pleasant back-and-forth that Condal and George RR Martin (GRRM) got into last fall after GRRM criticized the series on his blog for the changes that were made that he wasn't a particularly big fan of.

"It was disappointing," Condal shared. "I will simply say I've been a fan of 'A Song of Ice and Fire' for almost 25 years now, and working on the show has been truly one of the great privileges of not only my career as a writer but my life as a fan of science-fiction and fantasy. George himself is a monument, a literary icon in addition to a personal hero of mine, and was heavily influential on me coming up as a writer." As for the work that the series is based on, Condal noted that the structure of the work puts them in the position of having to make changes and certain judgment calls.

"It's this incomplete history, and it requires a lot of joining of the dots and a lot of invention as you go along the way. I will simply say, I made every effort to include George in the adaptation process. I really did," Condal continued. "Over years and years. And we really enjoyed a mutually fruitful, I thought, really strong collaboration for a long time. But at some point, as we got deeper down the road, he just became unwilling to acknowledge the practical issues at hand in a reasonable way. And I think as a showrunner, I have to keep my practical producer hat on and my creative writer, lover-of-the-material hat on at the same time." The Showrunner/EP added, "At the end of the day, I just have to keep marching not only the writing process forward, but also the practical parts of the process forward for the sake of the crew, the cast, and for HBO because that's my job. So I can only hope that George and I can rediscover that harmony someday. But that's what I have to say about it."

House of the Dragon: GRRM Criticizes Series Changes

Heading into September, Martin shared on his blog that he was going to go into more detail on "everything that's gone wrong with" House of the Dragon. – and he did just that on September 4, 2024. To kick things off in his Not A Blog post ("Beware the Butterflies, which was eventually deleted), GRRM shared that he thought "A Son for a Son" and "Rhaenyra the Cruel" were "terrific episodes: well written, well directed, powerfully acted. A great way to kick off the new season." From there, GRRM goes on a lengthy run regarding that "Blood and Cheese" moment, explaining (with points) why he understood viewers who believe that the HBO series dialed back the impact of the scene as it played out in the novel: "The readers of FIRE & BLOOD found the sequence underwhelming, a disappointment, watered down from what they were expecting."

Things begin to take a more critical turn when GRRM addressed the absence of Prince Maelor Targaryen (son of King Aegon II Targaryen and Queen Helaena Targaryen). Offering some behind-the-scenes perspective, GRRM shared that he "argued against" Maelor being left out of the scene but was convinced otherwise by Condal's "practical reasons" for making the call. "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," GRRM added, noting that budget issues were already impacting the spinoff series. "Budget was already an issue on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, it made sense to save money wherever we could."

Another reason GRRM gives for being okay with the decision is that "Ryan [Condal] 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." But then, "sometime between the initial decision to remove Maelor, " GRRM notes that "a big change was made" and that Maelor "was never going to be born at all" in the series. And that's when GRRM begins bringing the "butterflies" into the conversation – as in, "The Butterfly Effect" that's now in play without Maelor having never been born.

As GRRM writes, that means that the horrifically tragic scene at Bitterbridge involving Ser Rickard Thorne and Maelor won't be happening. In addition, the brutal manner of Maelor's death is what drives Helaena to commit suicide ("The grief and guilt are too much for her to bear"); while GRRM notes that Condal's Season 3 outline has Helaena taking her own life, he adds that he sees it as happening "for no particular reason. There is no fresh horror, no triggering event to overwhelm the fragile young queen." And then "butterflies" continue to flutter because Helaena's suicide was meant to light the fuse that would lead to Rhaenyra's rule over King's Landing to an end – and eventually, her life – after rumors that Helaena was actually murdered by Rhaenyra caused the citizens to riot. "It is the beginning of the end for Rhaenyra's rule over the city, ultimately leading to the Storming of the Dragonpit and the rise of the Shepherd's mob that drives Rhaenyra to flee the city and return to Dragonstone… and her death," GRRM wrote.

"What will we offer the fans, instead once we've killed these butterflies? I have no idea. I do not recall that Ryan and I ever discussed this, back when he first told me they were pushing back on Aegon's second son. Maelor himself is not essential… but if losing him means we also lose Bitterbridge, Helaena's suicide, and the riots, well… that's a considerable loss," GRMM ended his post with – but not before warning that "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…"

House of the Dragon: Condal Defends "Blood & Cheese," Maelor Changes

A bonus episode of the show's official podcast dropped in the midst of all of the finger-pointing and posts disappearing, one that saw Condal addressing a number of questions regarding bringing "Fire & Blood" to live-action life. Here's what Condal had to say in defense of the decisions made regarding "Blood & Cheese" and Maelor:

"Blood & Cheese": "I stand behind the adaptation of how the plot unfolded. I have talked about this quite a bit, but I will just say it in plain text: the children that we had in the story were simply too young to be able to construct that narrative exactly as laid out in the book. Period. I have lots of experience working with very young performers. To ask two four-year-olds to play through that level of drama; it's just not a realistic expectation.

There's also a practical element around the things that you can expose young children to on a film set. Yes, you can do clever cutaways, and dummies, and all those things. We wanted this to be a very visceral, subjective experience, not something that was very 'cut-y' and with closeups. And when you start actually breaking apart what happens in that room, and the things that are said, and the things that are done, it became such a challenge to think about and mount that we started looking for—what are the base elements of this story, that Daemon and Rhaenyra send assassins into the Red Keep, and as a result the king's child and heir [is] murdered—and how do we dramatize that in a way that's exciting, and visceral, and horrifying, and do it in the best way possible?"

Losing Maelor: "And Maelor, if he were born yet in this version of the the television timeline, would have been an infant because of the age of Jaehaerys and Jaehaera. Frankly, this goes back to our first season 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. 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 lose people. 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."

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