The most recent episode of House of the Dragon, "Smallfolk," is one of the better ones this season: things set up much earlier began to pay off, the show made good use of its deep bench of characters, the interpersonal drama was crackling, and a dragon fried a guy alive for the crime of getting too close. It was a good episode of TV.
The show also moved the show further and further away from its source material: the book Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin. Here's an incomplete list of some of the changes, in rough order from least consequential to most:
- In Fire & Blood, Otto Hightower has the idea to contact the Triarchy, old enemies of Daemon Targaryen and Corlys Velaryon, and bring them in on the side of the Greens. On the show, Otto's grandson and prince regent Aemond Targaryen gets that idea.
- Daemon Targaryen's stay at Harrenhal little resembles his time at the crumbling Riverlands castle as laid out in Fire & Blood. There, Daemon sweeps into the Riverlands and has almost no trouble raising an army. Alys Rivers is a Harrenhal wet nurse who doesn't do much of importance at this point in the story. On House of the Dragon, Daemon's attempts to raise an army have failed at every turn, and Alys is a healer who may well have been the deciding factor in getting things to turn around.
- In the book, a peasant named Nettles befriends and mounts a dragon named Sheepstealer, who lives on Dragonstone with the other wild dragons. On the show, it looks like Daemon's daughter Rhaena will encounter that dragon instead. We can't be certain, but it's looking more and more like Nettles has been cut from the story entirely. Also, the dragon now lives in the Vale.
Incidentally, in a recent blog post about the dragons in his books, Martin wrote about how they never fly far from warm places like the volcanic island of Dragonstone. "You won’t find dragons hunting the Riverlands or the Reach or the Vale," he wrote, which seems very pointed. The show also added a lot of elements in this new episode that aren't there in the book; the plotline involving Rhaenyra and Mysaria winning over the people of King's Landing by gifting them food is invented for the show, as is the resulting mob riot. Nowhere in the book is a romance between Rhaenyra and Mysaria mentioned, so that's uncharted territory as well.
The Adaptation Tango
There's nothing inherently wrong with changing the source material for a new medium; indeed, some alterations are inevitable. But the ones on House of the Dragon are starting to pile up in a way that's making me nervous, because I think the series has a mixed record when it comes to changes.
Some changes I've really enjoyed. The smallfolk riot in Green-controlled King's Landing may not have any basis in the book, but I thought Mysaria and Rhaenyra's plan was clever. The delivery of food via unmanned rowboats was cinematic, and the riot gave us a chance to see minor characters like Hugh Hammer and Ulf White in a different context. And I was scared for Alicent and Helaena, who were caught in the middle of it.
I'm also intrigued by the budding romance between Rhaenyra and Mysaria. I didn't see the kiss coming, but I'd been enjoying their scenes together all season and this felt like a natural development. That's basically the definition of a good twist: something you don't expect but that makes perfect sense when you think about it.
But other changes have flopped for me. There are still a couple episodes to go, but I've grown very tired of Daemon's extended time at Harrenhal. The dream sequences have overstayed their welcome, and I'm perplexed that the writers seem to want to make Daemon seem ineffective and incompetent. His sections have no tension; when Aemond talks about the threat Daemon poses or when Daemon says he wants to take the Iron Throne for himself, I can't take any of it seriously because I see how bad Daemon is at this. And again, in the book it's established that Daemon is a veteran warrior who knows what he's doing, so this is a change the writers are making on purpose.
I'm reminds me of another George R.R. Martin quote from a blog post entitled, "The Adaptation Tango":
"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 was writing here about how much he enjoyed the series Shōgun. He's enthusiastically praised House of the Dragon on multiple occasions, so I don't think he's shading it. But I'm betting a lot of people can vibe with what he's saying. Why do so many adaptations seem to want to fix what isn't broken?
Will House of the Dragon end like Game of Thrones?
The first season of House of the Dragon adapted Fire & Blood more or less faithfully, and when it strayed, it tended to falter. For instance, in the book, Criston Cole kills a knight named Joffrey Lonmouth during a tournament. Since it happened during an inherently dangerous situation, Criston isn't punished — he gets off on a defense of "these things happen" — and is allowed to stay on the Kingsguard.
On the show, Criston beats Joffrey to death at a wedding, which means he can't claim that the death was an accident or that things got out of hand. And yet he's still not punished. We just have to accept that he murdered a guy in front of a room full of witnesses and wasn't even given a slap on the wrist. That reminds me of yet another George R.R. Martin quote. "Fantasy needs to be grounded. It is not simply a license to do anything you like...Ignore canon, and the world you’ve created comes apart like tissue paper." Criston's outburst didn't break the world of House of the Dragon apart, but it put a lot of strain on it.
The changes have gotten bigger and more frequent since then. In that way, House of the Dragon is like its predecessor show Game of Thrones, which broke from Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books more and more the longer it went on. Here's one more Martin quote for the road, about Thrones: "There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes...And now we have reached the point where the beat of butterfly wings is stirring up storms."
I think there's a question of whether an adaptation is really still an adaptation if everything people remembered about the source material is changed. Personally, I don't mind so long as the adaptation ends up being entertaining. And indeed, some of the best moments on Game of Thrones were invented for TV, or else executed with only partial guidance from Martin. That includes Cersei Lannister blowing up the Sept of Baelor in the season 6 finale, probably my favorite sequence from that show.
But Game of Thrones continued after that. It continued long enough to have one of the most divisive final seasons of any TV show in history, with a backlash loud enough to drown out any explosion. That wasn't completely its fault — the producers had run out of source material to adapt by that point — but it's a good example of the dangers adapters can encounter when they make a story "their own," out of necessity or otherwise.
I worry that House of the Dragon may wander so far away from the safety of Fire & Blood that it falls apart. Some changes have been thrilling, others have fallen flat, and others I'm waiting on; for example, I'm not happy that Nettles has been written out of the show, but I'm curious to see where they take Rhaena's journey. I'm still enjoying the ride, but the further the show goes off the beaten path, the greater the chance it careens over a cliff. Put on those helmets and enjoy.
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