Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin vs House of the Dragon: A timeline

The other week, author George R.R. Martin did something surprising: writing on his Not a Blog, he publicly criticized HBO's Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon, which is based on his book Fire & Blood. He dinged the show for changing things from the source material in a way that weakened the story, and warned that there were bigger, "more toxic" changes being contemplated for future seasons of the show.

Martin never did anything like this during the nine years that Game of Thrones (which is based on his book series A Song of Ice and Fire) was running on HBO, so the changes that House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal made from his book obviously upset him. We the fans had inklings that something was bothering Martin before he went public, but I certainly wasn't expecting him to be so up front about it.

Before this drama takes another turn, let's trace it from its earliest rumblings to its latest swerve, and see if we can figure out what it means for the show going forward.

The Adaptation Tango

While the second season of House of the Dragon was filming, Martin gave no indication that he was displeased with its direction, explaining to fans why it was able to keep filming during the strike and cheerfully hyping the trailers as they came out. He also spent a few days on set during filming, posing in front of the weirwood tree in the Harrenhal godswood (which actually has Martin's face carved in it).

During that 2023 set visit, Martin also "spent two days locked in a room with Ryan Condal and his writing staff (Sara Hess, Ti Mikkel, David Hancock, and Philippa Goslett) talking about the third and fourth seasons of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON." He said they had "lively, fun discussions, and we got some good work done… though two days was not nearly enough. There is so much ground to cover that I am not sure twenty days would have been enough." Put a pin in that.

The first hint that Martin was feeling some kind of way came with a May 2024 blog post called "The Adaptation Tango," published about a month before the House of the Dragon season 2 premiere. Martin doesn't actually mention House of the Dragon at all in this post — it's about how good a job the FX series Shōgun does at adapting James Clavell's book — but some of the things he writes seem germane in hindsight:

"Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and “make them their own.” It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone. No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and “improve” on it. “The book is the book, the film is the film,” they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own.

They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse."

George R.R. Martin complaining about screenwriters who say they're going to adapt a book only to completely change it in a way that makes it worse, you say? I wonder if that'll be relevant later.

Blood, Cheese, and Grief

Fans brushed off the eerie undertones in "The Adaptation Tango" in part because Martin heartily complimented House of the Dragon in a July 5 post, published after a few episodes of season 2 had aired. He gave rounds of applause for all of the actors and complimented the writers for putting interesting twists on his source material. He liked the changes made to the character of Helaena Targaryen and he loved how the show humanized Cheese, the ratcatcher who is hired to murder Helaena's son. "The silent presence of that dog reminded us that even the worst of men, the vile and the venal, can love and be loved," Martin wrote. "I wish I’d thought of that dog. I didn’t, but someone else did. I am glad of that."

However, Martin pointed out what a lot of book fans had already noticed: the scene where Cheese and his accomplice Blood kill Helaena's son, a key moment from Fire & Blood, was much changed from the text. Change isn't always bad, but I wasn't the only one who watched the premiere episode and thought something was missing.

The changes also didn't sit well with Martin, but he (mostly) held his tongue for now. "The issues are too complicated.   Somewhere down the line, I will do a separate post about all the issues raised by Blood and Cheese… and Maelor the Missing.  There’s a lot to say," he wrote.

I hope you brought more than one pin. Put one in that too.

How many legs do dragons have?

About a week later, after the episode "The Red Dragon and the Gold" had aired, Martin wrote about its spectacular dragon-vs-dragon battle climax. "Has there ever been a dragon battle to match it?" he asked. The answer to that is "no," by the way; that episode is incredible, easily the high point of the season.

But Martin couldn't leave it at compliments. He spends a lot of time talking about how the dragons in his fantasy world, and all the thought he put into how they should (and shouldn't) behave. His dragons are predatory, intelligent, and have only two legs legs, which is why he takes issue with sigils on Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon which depict four-legged dragons. He talks about how his dragons like to live around heat sources like the volcano on Dragonstone, and would only travel to cold climates if ordered by their riders. "You won’t find dragons hunting the riverlands or the Reach or the Vale, or roaming the northlands or the mountains of Dorne."

That last bit is pointed, because at this point on the show we'd gotten inklings that there might be a dragon living in the Vale, which was proved beyond doubt by the season's end. Martin is nitpicking in this post, but his larger point is that series ignore their own internal rules at their peril. "Fantasy needs to be grounded," he wrote. "It is not simply a license to do anything you like. Smaug and Toothless may both be dragons, but they should never be confused. Ignore canon, and the world you’ve created comes apart like tissue paper."

This is all a wind-up to him taking a big swing at House of the Dragon. Next, it's time for the main event:

Beware the Butterflies (and beware major SPOILERS below)

The next time Martin mentioned House of the Dragon was on August 30, almost a month after season 2 had ended. He said only that he wasn't looking forward to telling us "everything that’s gone wrong with HOUSE OF THE DRAGON," but that he felt he needed to.

Already, we can see a tone shift. In his earlier posts, Martin avoided directly saying that he had problems with the show, but this was different. Maybe seeing the muted reception to the season 2 finale put him in a different state of mind. Maybe it was his trip to the U.K. Or maybe something happened behind the scenes that we don't know about. Whatever the reason, he was ready to get more confrontational.

It happened in a September 4 blog post titled "Beware the Butterflies," which is mostly about the problems Martin had with the season 2 premiere, "A Son for a Son." To start, I'll say that Martin called the episode "terrific," so he's not here to put the writing team on blast, but he definitely had issues with some of what had been cut from the infamous Blood and Cheese scene. In particular, he didn't like that Helaena's other son, Maelor, had been removed from the show. In Fire & Blood, Blood and Cheese force Helaena to choose which of her sons will die: Maelor or Jaehaerys. She chooses Maelor and they kill Jaehaerys instead.

On the show, Maelor doesn't exist, which means he can't go on to die later at a place called Bitterbridge, as he does in Fire & Blood. According to Martin, Maelor's death is the main contributing factor to his mother Helaena deciding to commit suicide, a key event that leads to a number of big twists. Martin is afraid that cutting Maelor will lead to a series of changes that will weaken the narrative overall, and he isn't sure that showrunner Ryan Condal "has anything planned" to make up for it:

"In Ryan’s outline for season 3, Helaena still kills herself… for no particular reason. There is no fresh horror, no triggering event to overwhelm the fragile young queen.

Maelor by himself means little. He is a small child, does not have a line of dialogue, does nothing of consequence but die… but where and when and how, that does matter. Losing Maelor weakened the end of the Blood and Cheese sequence, but it also cost us the Bitterbridge scene with all its horror and heroism, it undercut the motivation for Helaena’s suicide, and that in turn sent thousands into the streets and alleys, screaming for justice for their “murdered” queen. None of that is essential, I suppose… but all of it does serve a purpose, it all helps to tie the story lines together, so one thing follows another in a logical and convincing manner.

What will we offer the fans instead, once we’ve killed these butterflies? I have no idea. I do not recall that Ryan and I ever discussed this, back when he first told me they were pushing back on Aegon’s second son. Maelor himself is not essential… but if losing him means we also lose Bitterbridge, Helaena’s suicide, and the riots, well… that’s a considerable loss."

Martin also mentions that, at one point, Ryan Condal told him that they were planning for Helaena to give birth to Maelor at a later time in the story, but at some point that idea was dropped and Maelor was cut entirely.

So Martin is airing a lot of dirty laundry here. People who know him, like fellow author Xiran Jay Zhao, theorized that Martin is going public with this stuff because it's the only option he has left after he raised his concerns internally and had them ignored. According to Zhao, the critiques in this post were "VERY mild" and Martin is trying to head off what he sees as far more damaging changes planned for future seasons. He hints at that in the original post: "here 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…"

The HBO response

Martin deleted his blog post not long after it went up. We can't know why, but I wouldn't be surprised if HBO asked him to remove it. It's not a good look to have the creator of a show feuding with the showrunner and his staff, but that's the impression people have whether the post stays up or not.

On their end, HBO released a statement in support of Ryan Condal's adaptation decisions:

"There are few greater fans of George R.R. Martin and his book ‘Fire & Blood’ than the creative team on ‘House of the Dragon,’ both in production and at HBO. 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. 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."

HBO also put out a new episode of their official House of the Dragon podcast specifically aimed at changes to the source material where Condal explained some of his choices, including the decision to cut Maelor, the decision to cut the character of Nettles, the decision to radically alter Daemon Targaryen's story, and much more.

If you can't say anything nice...

Martin hasn't mentioned House of the Dragon in public since his "Beware the Butterflies" post, but sometimes it's been notable by its absence. In a September 9 blog post, he talked about how much time he's spent over the past year working on TV projects: "Some of that was pleasant (DARK WINDS, and THE HEDGE KNIGHT), most of it was not." Obviously, he sorts House of the Dragon into the "not" category.

Martin again condemned House of the Dragon in abstentia when The Hollywood Reporter reached out to him for comment "on the Dragon situation." Instead of discussing the show, Martin talked about how much he was looking forward to another Game of Thrones spinoff called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, aka The Hedge Knight, based on his Dunk and Egg novellas:

"I visited the set in Northern Ireland in July and loved what I saw. Great cast. [The lead characters] Dunk and Egg look as if they walked out of the pages of my book. My readers are going to love them. I certainly do. [Showrunner Ira Parker] is doing a great job."

I'm not sure why Martin is holding back. Maybe he came to an agreement with HBO behind the scenes. Maybe he just figures that if he doesn't have anything nice to say, he shouldn't say anything, at least for the moment. Whatever the reason, it feels like shade.

Where do we go from here?

I don't know how people in either camp are feeling, but I'm getting a chilly vibe from Martin's side. Will Martin reconcile with Condal's team? Keep in mind that the "Beware the Butterflies" post felt like it was the tip of the iceberg when it came to Martin's complaints about the direction of House of the Dragon; unless the writers opt to change direction in a major way, I don't imagine that they'll have much to say to each other. Remember when Martin talked about speaking with Condal and the writers about the future of House of the Dragon when he visited the set in 2023? Well, in his post about visiting the UK earlier this year, he noted that, "The writers’ room for HOUSE OF THE DRAGON season 3 is also meeting in London, but I have no plans to attend."

Listening to Condal on the special podcast episode, it sounds pretty clear that he and his team are committed to their vision of what House of the Dragon should be, even if that vision doesn't much resemble what Martin wrote in Fire & Blood. It's my opinion that Condal and company are doing a far bit more than adding color and texture to Martin's story: I think they've changed the fundamental shape of the it, drastically altered who the characters are and how they relate to each other, and changed the meaning of what happens. Personally, I think they would be much better off sticking to Martin's ideas, but I'm not holding out much hope for that. House of the Dragon could still be an entertaining show, even if it isn't the show I wanted to watch after reading Fire & Blood. But I don't blame Martin for getting heated about how the show is changing his book; after all, he's a lot closer to it than I am.

As it stands now, the third season of House of the Dragon is due out in 2026. Before that, we'll get to watch the first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms in 2025. Martin has spoken positively about that one, which suggests an interesting scenario: what if the Song of Ice and Fire fandom divides in two, with fans of House of the Dragon pitted against fans of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the chosen favorite of the creator? Of course, most fans will just watch the shows and not think of this drama, but there could be some interesting conversations on Twitter/X.

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