The showrunner of House Of The Dragon has defended the show against George R.R. Martin’s criticisms, insisting they have “serviced” his book and remained “respectful”.
The second season of the Game Of Thrones prequel series, which is based on Martin’s 2018 book Fire & Blood, wrapped up last month on HBO. A third season is currently being written and expected to go into production next year. Showrunner Ryan Condal has also confirmed that the show will conclude after its fourth season.
Earlier this week, Martin had decried the “toxic” changes to his source material in the last series, arguing that it “weakened” his original story.
Now, during an appearance on the official House Of The Dragon podcast, showrunner Ryan Condal has responded to Martin’s critiques, arguing that they have done what they can to be “faithful” to Fire & Blood.
“The way we approach this is we are constantly balancing the need to tell a broadly appealing fantasy story and also servicing this book that we revere very greatly in Fire & Blood, and rendering an adaptation that remains very faithful to it and respectful to it,” he said.
“And sometimes we will not do exactly the thing the audience expects or what is in the text. But I think in the final analysis of it, hopefully most people can go in and see, oh I can see how historians have one perspective on this story, but then when you tell the subjective story of what it was actually like living there on the ground with these characters, how that story was then absorbed into the history, either because that was the accepted propaganda at the time, because somebody had an agenda, or simply, because that person wasn’t there, and only knew the what, the who and the when, but didn’t know the how and the why.”
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Condal also urged anyone with doubts about the direction of the show to let the story play out. “Please stay tuned,” he said. “I think most people will see what we’re doing and will be able to see how it actually dovetails in very nicely with the history as it exists.”
It comes after some fans of House Of The Dragon expressed their disappointment at the lack of narrative progress in the finale of the show’s second season online.
Martin had originally praised the adaptations in some of the season’s early episodes, but he was more critical about other changes made later on in the season.
In a blog post published on Wednesday (September 4) titled Beware the Butterflies, Martin wrote: “When Ryan Condal first told me what he meant to do, ages ago (back in 2022, might be) I argued against it, for all these reasons. I did not argue long, or with much heat, however. The change weakened the sequence, I felt, but only a bit.”
Martin singled out the decision to kill off a child character in the opening episode of season two, and to leave out another character entirely, namely Prince Maelor, son of Aegon and Helaena Targaryen.
He concluded by suggesting the show would face more story-related issues moving forward. “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…”
In specific response to those comments, Condal has said: “The casualty in that was that our young children in this show are very young. Very, very young. Because we compress that timeline. 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.”
This isn’t the first time Martin has criticised changes made to House Of The Dragon’s story. In July, he accused the show of “sloppiness” after the show got the House Targaryen sigil wrong.