House of the Dragon is a “dark…complex…very human” story

HBO is almost ready to debut its first Game of Thrones prequel series: House of the Dragon, which is set some 200 years before the story we know. The series tells the story of a brutal civil war fought between rival factions of the Targaryen dynasty, back when it was at the height of its power. It’s based on George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, and it’s looking like it could be something very special.

Martin himself recently went on the Game of Owns podcast to talk all about it, remembering how he pitched the show to HBO back in 2016, when it became clear that Game of Thrones was ending. The show had been the biggest hit in the network’s history, and they wanted more. “They responded to that idea right away,” Martin remembered.

It makes sense that HBO would like this one. The Dance of the Dragons, as the war is called, is full of drama; as the rival factions battle over the Iron Throne, sibling will fight sibling, lover will fight lover, and of course, dragon will fight dragon. “The level of conflict, the characters; some of them are very colorful, interesting characters.”

There won’t be any conflicting perspectives in House of the Dragon

As we said, House of the Dragon is based on Fire & Blood, which Martin has called a “fake history” book. It’s not a novel where the story is told start to finish. Rather, the book is “written” by Archmaester Gyldayn, a historian born many years after the events he’s writing about. As such, he’s working with different primary sources, some of which conflict with each other. What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? The sources aren’t clear, so neither are we.

Martin got the idea for telling a story with conflicting perspectives many years ago while doing research for a book about journalism. He was trying to find out the number of stories in a certain building long since razed, and found that different books said different things.

That said, the TV version of Fire & Blood won’t have conflicting perspectives — the writers chose which version is the “real” one — although Martin and the rest of the team did consider framing the story with Archmaester Gyldayn writing 200 years later, which would have allowed for us to see different versions of the same events. “Sort of a Rashômon approach,” as Martin put it.

George R.R. Martin outlines his contributions to House of the Dragon

There are other changes House of the Dragon made to Fire & Blood. For instance, the show has a different take on King Viserys I Targaryen, played by Paddy Considine. And this is one of those changes that Martin liked so much he wished he would have written it differently in the book. “Viserys…was not a character who particularly engaged me,” Martin said. “What Paddy Constantine has done, to my mind, has made him much more of a tragic figure, and less of an amiable guy who doesn’t really realize what’s going on about him.”

For the record, while Martin is involved with the show, he’s not in the writer’s room or anything, nor has he visited the set. “I’ve been too busy writing things here,” he said. Showrunning duties fall to Ryan Condal, whom Martin recommended, and Miguel Sapochnik, who directed some of the biggest episodes on Game of Thrones. “There’s part of me that would love to be actually writing and running all of these shows…but I can’t! You may not know this, but there’s this book that I’m writing…it’s a little late, but I gotta keep working on it and finishing it!”

"Those are life-eating jobs. It’s 24/7 to be a showrunner…You’re the one they call at 2 in the morning when something has gone wrong in Morocco…There’s no way I could do that and hope to do any of the novels. So my part in all of these things is generating some ideas, helping setting up, keeping it consistent with the world, and finding good partners to work with, and I think I’ve found great partners in Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik."

Game of Thrones spinoffs beyond House of the Dragon

The first season of House of the Dragon is pretty much done; all that’s left is for us to watch it when it premieres next month.

“If quality is any indication, I think House of the Dragon should do very well,” Martin said; he’s seen rough cuts of the first nine episodes. “It’s a dark story…and the characters are grey. They’re complex, they’ve very human, they’re driven by things I think real human beings are driven by, which is ambition and power and revenge for slights they feel that were done to them and lust and all of these things I think we all have…Those are the kinds of characters I like to write about…they have a good side, they have a bad side. We don’t have any orcs, who are just pure creatures of evil going around doing evil…We don’t have any glowing heroic characters, either, so it’s almost kind of Shakespearean in some ways.”

Beyond that, HBO is developing a number of other Game of Thrones spinoffs, including one about Jon Snow, but there’s no guarantee we’ll see any of them. “If House of the Dragon does well, then you’ll see more seasons and I think you’ll see more successor shows,” Martin said. If House of the Dragon is a failure, “then who the hell knows?”

"My hope is that a number of them will make it to air, maybe not next year or the year after that, but eventually. I also like the idea that they are different from one another. I don’t want to write the same story over and over again. And one of the things that I like in my fantasy is the worldbuilding. And I’ve obviously spent decades building the world of Westeros and Essos and regions further beyond, and it’s a process that continues to this day. But the thing about worldbuiding is if you do it right, you have a world, and a world has many stories in it. [A Song of Ice and Fire] is one story."

Indeed, a lot of the spinoffs sound pretty different. House of the Dragon has a lot of the high-stakes political gamesmanship that made Game of Thrones so entertaining. There’s also a show in development based on Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas; that one would be a little more relaxed. There’s even an animated show in the works about Yi Ti, a far-off country based on medieval China that we never see on the show or in the books. “A Stark is not gonna show up in the middle of that show,” Martin quipped.

But again, none of these shows are guaranteed to air. “House of the Dragon is running like a motherf**ker,” Martin said, but the other spinoffs aren’t “nearly as far along yet…Some of them are coming better than others but I’m excited about the potential for all of them.”

But first thing’s first: House of the Dragon premieres on HBO and HBO Max on August 21.

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