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Warning: This post contains spoilers for House of the Dragon‘s Season 2 premiere.
House of the Dragon Season 2 didn’t waste any time in getting to one of its source material’s more horrific interludes.
At the end of Sunday’s premiere, King Aegon and Queen Helaena’s young son, Jaeherys, was murdered in his bed by bumbling assassins. The killers, hired by Daemon, had been on the hunt for Aemond Targaryen — a retribution murder to avenge Lucerys’ death at the end of Season 1 — but wound up killing an entirely different, entirely innocent Targaryen prince instead.
Even worse: When the murderers couldn’t tell Jaeherys from his sister, Jaehera, they made Helaena direct them toward the little prince. (Read a full recap here.)
As horrible as the entire act was, it’s even rougher in Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin’s book on which House of the Dragon is based. In the text, the killers (referred to only as Blood and Cheese because their real names were forgotten long ago) first encountered Alicent; they tied her up, and murdered her handmaid. Then they waited for Helaena to bring Alicent’s grandchildren (in the book there are three of them: Jaehaerys, Jaehaera and another boy, Maelor) to say goodnight. When the queen arrived, Blood and Cheese quoted Daemon’s “son for a son” forced Helaena to pick which of her boys would die. She refused. The assassins then threatened to kill everyone (and throw in some rape, for good measure); under duress, Helaena chose Maelor. THEN — and this is the truly messed-up part of a wholeheartedly messed-up story — the men made sure Maelor knew Helaena had picked him… and then they killed Jaeherys, instead.
When TVLine spoke with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, he pointed out that some of the changes had to be made, based on which characters already exist in the series adaptation.
“I mean, just very simply, Maelor has not even born in the storyline,” the executive producer said. “We did have to compress time in Season one to make it so that we didn’t have to recast every character on screen. We were just recasting the kids, so to speak, as we went along, and part of that meant that Aegon and Helaena’s children were younger, as are Daemon and Rhaenyra’s children younger at the very end of this, because not as much time passed after their marriages to give time for all these kids to grow up.”
The person we should focus on, he continues, is the gentle queen who suddenly has such violence and death visited upon her. “The other [element] was just wanting it to be this very visceral experience that happens to Helaena, who I think a lot of people would argue is the most innocent person on either side of this conflict and just sort of finds herself in the crossfire of this tit-for-tat kind of punch-and-counterpunch that’s going on between the sides,” he said. “It felt like that was the core dramatic point that was important to be made.”
In the episode, Daemon very clearly instructs Blood and Cheese to kill Aemond. But in the book, his motivations aren’t as clear: Did he truly mean “son for a son” to mean that any of Aegon’s boys were fair targets?
“Look, I love the scene in the book,” Condal said. “It was deeply affecting the first time I read it. But it does speak to a different Daemon, I think, than the one that we’ve dramatized on screen. Look, he’s capable of some pretty bad stuff, but the moment in the book is so nakedly cruel.”
In the end, the show chose to leave room for viewers to decide what they think happened.
“I think it does help nuance the moment and make it left up more to interpretation for an audience that’s trying to figure out which side they’re going to take in this whole conflict,” he added.
What did you think of the episode-ending scene? If you read Fire & Blood, was the event what you expected/feared? Hit the comments with your thoughts!
This week I am really getting irritated of tv showrunners not adapting the source material as it was intended. Looking at you too Bridgerton
Yeah it should’ve been a big moment but it was pretty tame and lacked impact.
They did it because they want to make sure the Blacks are the heroes of the story. Alicent is the bad guy in the show, can’t have the audience ever question Rhaenyra and risk her being anything but the hero. In the book it’s not obvious which side should win or is better, they are both right and wrong. In the show they are making the greens the clear villains. It’s unfortunate because it makes it a weaker story.
Disagree. In terms of characterization Alicent is still one of the most sympathetic characters on the show. Rhaenyra (and Daemon) are mercurial and volatile by comparison, which makes great TV but also renders them at times unlikable. Alicent is much more relatable. I think both sides have their pros and cons.
Agreed. If you have Daemon order the murder of a small child, and it’s that horrible a process to boot, and it’s not something you come back from and be the “good guy” in any situation. You couldn’t excuse anything the Blacks did anymore. And since they gave Rhaenyra the “girl power” childhood they’ve been painting them as the protagonists all along. I think DL is observant and see some of their weaknesses, but they’ve glossed over them far more in the show.
Part of the problem is TV and really the story is about awful people doing awful things to each other (and why later it’s actually a good thing the line is dying out), but TV can’t or won’t tell stories like that. It’s not a story of good vs. evil. It’s awful vs. maybe a little more or less awful, depending on the day.
Agreed. Because of the “Ice and Fire” prophecy they threw into season 1 to connect it to the original show, Rhaenyra must “win” or at least have our sympathy or the lore of the original series doesn’t work. They’ve made Daemon toothless; two of his most heinous acts in the book (killing Laenor so he can marry Rhaenyra and killing Jaehaerys) were both papered over so he didn’t lose our sympathy. In the book it’s clear “both sides are bad,” but knowing how they’ve already changed things in the future the Greens will be the clear villains.
Why does Alicente never seem to age? She still looks like she’s in her early twenties, tops!
The actress is 30, so I’m sure she’ll take the compliment.
HOD is missing the impact element of GOT characters – whether it’s Cersei, Tyrion, Arya or Sansa. King Viserys stood out, perhaps Alicent as well, but the rest aren’t in the same league as GOT characters.
At this point in GOT only Ned Stark had really had that impact and he died at the end of the first season.
It also benefitted from the first season only spanning 6 months rather than 20 years.
Helaena also seems to have ‘The Sight’ as her babbling earlier in the episode about rats seemed to foreshadow the events at the end. It’s not the first time either that her ‘nonsensical’ rambling was actually revelatory about future happenings, occurred last season as well.