House of the Dragon season 3 is speeding toward its halfway point, with Rhaenyra Targaryen sitting the Iron Throne and the army of her new foe Ormund Hightower securing an underhanded advantage by seizing the city of Tumbleton. The Dance of the Dragons civil war is moving into a new phase, and it will reshape all of Westeros as these titanic forces drag the realm into one bloody battle after another.
In George R.R. Martin's books, the effects of the Dance are felt long after the war ends, especially through the characters who survived it and go on to steer the next chapter of the Seven Kingdoms' history. That includes two very important figures: Aegon the Younger and Viserys, the two young sons of Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen. These two boys are on a ship bound for Pentos just before the Battle of the Gullet, and end up caught in the crossfire when their ship is captured by the Triarchy. Aegon escapes on the back of his young dragon Stormcloud, who dies carrying him back to Dragonstone. Viserys is taken prisoner by Sharako Lohar and presumed dead, only to turn up long after the war is over and make his own mark on Westerosi history.
However, none of this happens in House of the Dragon, leaving a massive question mark over the fates of Aegon and Viserys in the television show. They do depart for Pentos at the end of season 2, but they never cross paths with the Triarchy or get involved in the Battle of the Gullet. Presumably, they safely arrived in the Free City, where some other story awaits them.
Ryan Condal explains why Aegon and Viserys were cut from the Gullet
Adapting Fire & Blood is no simple task, since it's a fake history book with conflicting narratives rather than a traditional novel. But even still, there are crucial building blocks that are impossible to ignore without drastically altering the story. Aegon and Viserys' role in the Battle of the Gullet is one such building block, and it was a bold choice for the show to change it.
According to a recent interview with showrunner Ryan Condal, that decision was not made lightly. When asked if there were any specific adaptation choices that he was really torn about, he singled out this deviation for Aegon and Viserys — and explained how it happened in the first place.
"A great example is, during the Battle of the Gullet in the book, Rhaenyra [Emma D'Arcy] sends her two youngest sons with Daemon [Matt Smith], who in the show [are aged down], and the eldest one is not yet ready to fly his dragon; he flees and warns the Sea Snake," he told Backstage. "It's a really visceral and memorable scene in the book. But, going into Season 1, we took 30 years of history and decided, 'We're going to make it 20,' because, at some point, it becomes too broad and vast. And while that got us out of having to recast everyone, it also meant the youngest kids in the story either didn't exist yet in the timeline or were that much younger. So Rhaenyra and Daemon's kids are basically toddlers, and, in television, toddlers are not characters—they’re props. You're dealing with the practical concerns of, these kids can't act because they're 4-year-olds, it’s not safe to have them do stunts, and you can't create a CG kid and make it realistic."
In addition to the practical concerns of having young children involved in a complex battle shoot, Condal also put forward the idea that the Gullet sequence in the show was streamlined to better highlight the death of Jacaerys Velaryon, who meets his end along with his dragon Vermax at the hands of the Triarchy. Having Aegon and Viserys in the mix might have muddied the waters, pulling viewer sympathies in too many directions.
"We also felt that the Gullet [in the show] became so much about Rhaenyra’s loss of her son Jace [Harry Collett] that it felt like too much trauma at once," he explained. "So all these things factored into us saying, 'We need to be responsible adapters and producers of television.' It was a much cleaner story to tell for this totally different medium that we have to engage with on a much more emotional level. It was a bummer that we couldn’t [adapt] that part of the battle, but we understand where that story goes, and we have a plan for it. We debated for a long time, and there was a lot of sweating and consternation in the room, but, ultimately, I think it was the right decision."
Should House of the Dragon have kept Aegon and Viserys in the Battle of the Gullet?
For my part, I think a lot of what Condal says makes sense. The show already committed to compressing the timeline down from 30 years to 20 during its first season; once that was done, there was no way to feasibly age up Aegon and Viserys so they could be more active participants in the events at the Gullet. And he's not wrong that you can't expect 4-year-olds to do complex acting or stunts; that's just not realistic.
At the same time, I find it kind of funny that this series which cracked this massive battle sequence using multiple ship sets, multiple water tanks, state-of-the-art VFX for its dragons, and more, is stymied by...filming scenes with children. Condal and his team for House of the Dragon routinely solve insane production challenges, but the thing that finally got the best of them was the idea of working around a few toddlers for what likely would have amounted to a handful of scenes. It wouldn't have been possible to film a few shots with the kids for Aegon and Viserys on closed sets, and fill in the narrative blanks via dialogue from other characters or quick cuts to things like Stormcloud in flight from afar? Was there truly no solution to this problem, outside of cutting it entirely?
As for the idea that the tragedies that befall Aegon and Viserys would have detracted from Jace's death by heaping too much trauma onto Rhaenyra...that's kind of the point, isn't it? In the book, the Battle of the Gullet is the thing that burns away Rhaenyra's hesitation. It's said that she was shattered by the death of Lucerys; but when Jace died, Aegon barely made it home, and Viserys vanished, she decided to go seize the Iron Throne or rain fire down upon any who would stand in her way. I think that if it would have been too confusing to have these three important characters each impact Rhaenyra, then that's a problem with House of the Dragon not taking time to properly set it all up in the preceding episodes more than it is with their involvement in the first place.
Obviously, I'm not a showrunner on a massive big budget HBO show, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. But it strains my disbelief a bit that there was no possible way to work these two crucial characters into a sequence which drastically alters the course of their lives — and the Seven Kingdoms in the process.
All that said, it is encouraging to hear Condal say he has a plan in the works for Aegon and Viserys. These two characters are utterly essential to the tapestry of Westeros' history. At some point, House of the Dragon will have to reckon with how it's changed their stories. But for now, at least we have a deeper explanation for why it happened, and the reassurance that Condal and his fellow writers agonized over it before making the call.
New episodes of House of the Dragon air Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
Add us as a preferred source on Google