Spoiler alert for season two of House Of The Dragon, as well as some potential future plot-points for seasons three and four.
George R.R. Martin is once again spilling tons of ink writing about all the things screenwriters have gotten wrong while adapting his books, without releasing any new books of his own. We'd stop harping, but his latest—and since-deleted—blog post is long. Like, could have been a full chapter of Winds Of Winter long, if it wasn't so full of frustration with the people simplifying his brilliant but often unwieldy storylines, so they can actually make their way to the fans who want to experience them.
In an August 30 post on his blog, Martin promised a dressing down that even Littlefinger would have been proud of. "I do not look forward to other posts I need to write, about everything that’s gone wrong with House Of The Dragon… but I need to do that too, and I will," he wrote. Today was the day (until he deleted the post titled, "Beware The Butterflies," a few hours after it went up). It probably wasn't a great idea to accuse your co-executive producers of making "toxic… changes" to your work in such a public forum, but such is the nature of Martin's rants.
In the deleted blog (which The A.V. Club viewed before its removal), Martin mainly focuses on the brutal "Blood and Cheese" sequence from the season two premiere, and the "butterfly effect" of removing Prince Maelor, Helaena Targaryen’s youngest son, from the story. (Martin writes about Maelor in his book Fire And Blood, on which House Of The Dragon is based.) While Martin says he "argued against" the change when it was first proposed, he "did not argue long, or with much heat." "The change weakened the sequence, I felt, but only a bit," he continued. "Ryan (Condal, the showrunner) had what seemed to be practical reasons for it; 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. Budget was already an issue on House Of The Dragon, it made sense to save money wherever we could." (Condal elaborated on this decision on HBO's official House Of The Dragon podcast, explaining that it was difficult to cast kids because the compressed timeline of the show didn't allow the characters any time to grow up.)
Martin's real problem, however, seems to be with the fact that—again, spoiler alert—Condal decided that Maelor "was never going to be born at all," even in seasons three and four. The young prince "has an impact on the story all out of proportion to his size," Martin wrote, before detailing the myriad of ways the omission would change scenes still to come in the final two seasons of the show.
In fairness, Martin is in an incredibly tough position here. On one hand, Fire And Blood is a dense, 700+ page book that would have been impossible to adapt with complete, total accuracy, even across four seasons of television. Some tough cuts had to be made and, at least so far, Condal has proven himself to be up to the task. Then again, we all experienced the awful butterfly effect that happened when original Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B Weiss cut major characters like Lady Stoneheart, so the author does have good reason to be wary.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for HBO defended their show. "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," they told Variety in a statement. "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.
We'll see if that placates Martin, who concluded by warning that fans should be on guard as well. "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…" he concluded. We'll see if winter really does come for House Of The Dragon whenever the next season hits HBO.
