House of the Dragon boss compares dragon-riding to the Force from Star Wars

The other week, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin openly criticized House of the Dragon, HBO's Game of Thrones prequel show, expressing an especial amount of concern over how the series is deviating from its source material: his book Fire & Blood. In response, HBO dropped a surprise episode of its House of the Dragon podcast where showrunner Ryan Condal talked through why he changed certain things from the book. Yes, the author of Fire & Blood and the man running the TV adaptation are in a shadow feud. I didn't expect this but I am, at minimum, entertained now that it's happening.

It's true that the second season of House of the Dragon made a ton of changes to the source material, many of which didn't go over well with fans. But there were a few changes that viewers mostly enjoyed. The Battle of Rook's Rest went over well, for instance, as did the Red Sowing, the big set piece in the seventh episode where Rhaenyra Targaryen shoved a bunch of Targaryen bastards into a room with a couple of dragons and hoped for the best. In the end, two men actually managed to claim dragons: Hugh Hammer now rides the enormous dragon Vermithor while the drunkard Ulf White rides the graceful Silverwing. And the episode before, the dragon Seasmoke sought out Addam of Hull, the bastard half-brother of his former rider Laenor Velaryon. By the end of the season, Rhaenyra had a whole new dragon-riding air force!

This is different from how the Red Sowing goes down in the book, which to be fair doesn't go into a ton of detail. On the page, it's implied that all of the hopeful dragon-riders try their luck on an ad hoc basis, approaching the dragons (and usually being rebuffed) one by one, rather than being herded into a room as a group. On that special podcast episode, Condal talked about how things changed in the transition from page to screen.

"We had to make some of it our own because again, we are dramatizing scenes that are described more simply in the book," Condal said. "[W]e had to show actually Hugh — in what's one of my favorite sequences of the season — Hugh going to claim Vermithor and how that worked. And what we really wanted to do across that entire multi-episode arc of Rhaenyra's new riders claiming dragons is show that it's different every time. Just like nobody has the same experience in breaking in as a screenwriter — everybody has a different story — every dragon-rider that manages to claim a dragon has a different story of how that happened. Addam was claimed by Seasmoke. Hugh claimed Vermithor in an act of insane bravery, one might say an act of self-harm. And then Ulf: was it his supplication? Was it the fact that he had broken the egg sack but not harmed any of the eggs? Or was it simply the fact that Silverwing had been in search of a new rider for some time and any old guy will do? And Tom Bennett was just very, very compelling to her?"

I miss the ad hoc sowing of the seeds from the book a bit, but by and large I enjoyed the show's versions of events and I think most fans agree. I think that's key to understanding why some book changes resulted in blowback while others went over well. If the new scene you come up with is entertaining, fans will forgive a lot even if it changes things.

House of the Dragon showrunner on the beautiful mystery of dragon-riding

Condal also talked a bit about the rules surrounding dragon-riding. What exactly determines who can and cannot ride a dragon? The characters aren't clear on it themselves. Maybe it's Targaryen blood. Maybe just anybody with Valyrian ancestry will do. Or maybe the dragons are using criteria we don't understand.

Fire & Blood doesn't explain the specifics, and neither does House of the Dragon. Condal thinks the ambiguity is a strength, and uses a Star Wars comparison to illustrate his point. "I mean, if somebody came on the screen and described literally how the way the Force works — which actually they did in the prequels — It's not as interesting as when Obi-wan is telling Luke that it's an energy field that surrounds us and penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together," he said. "And we see in the drama of Luke's training as a Jedi, how all those things work. But nobody's ever literally telling you: this is the Sony stereo guide, the instruction manual for the working of dragons, that stuff just isn't as interesting."

"I think in holding to a clear mythology as we go along but not taking the time to explain how everything little thing works, it makes it feel more kind of rich and dare I say magical in a good way, where it is one of these great mysteries of the world that's never really fully explained. And I think we're very proud of how that all came together."

I completely agree with Condal that the mysteries of dragon-riding should remain mysterious. It reminds me of when I read author Brandon Sanderson's book series Mistborn, which explains all of magical elements in detail so exact they cease feeling magical at all. Better to leave some things up to the imagination.

On the other hand, this is part of the reason I strongly disagreed with Condal's decision to cut Nettles, an important character from Fire & Blood, from House of the Dragon, since I think she muddies up the rules of dragon-riding even further in some really interesting ways. That's just one of the many things Condal's been explaining lately as the feud with George R.R. Martin continues:

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