From an outsider's perspective, House of the Dragon seems to be pretty divisive amongst Game of Thrones fans. While our reviewers have given both seasons of the spin-off series fairly positive reviews, it has also infamously provided much meme fodder — and outrage bait — for fans of the books on Reddit.
Despite having praised the way the show's writers adapted his 2018 prequel novel Fire & Blood earlier in Season 2, author George R.R. Martin has now disavowed the "toxic" changes to the source material that have "weakened" his original story.
In a since-deleted blog post titled "Beware the Butterflies," the writer aired his grievances with the second season of House of the Dragon — primarily the Blood and Cheese plotline in the Season 2 premiere, which (spoiler alert) features the death of a child character that doesn't take place in the book.
Martin has suggested that cutting the character of Aegon and Helaena Targaryen's youngest son, Prince Maelor, from the story will inevitably affect the future of the show, which has already been renewed for its third and fourth seasons.
"When [showrunner] Ryan Condal first told me what he meant to do, ages ago (back in 2022, might be) I argued against it, for all these reasons," the author wrote [via NME]. "I did not argue long, or with much heat, however. The change weakened the sequence, I felt, but only a bit."
He added that Condal had practical reasons for wanting to cut Maelor from the storyline, because casting another young child would slow down production and budget had already been an issue for House of the Dragon. However, Martin said he was assured that "we were not losing Prince Maelor, simply postponing him. Queen Helaena could still give birth to him in Season 3, presumably after getting with child late in Season 2."
"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," he explained. "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 storylines together, so one thing follows another in a logical and convincing manner."
Martin added these changes mean that the show is now likely to face more story-related issues going forward. "There 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…" he warned. This is not Martin's first time criticizing the show's adaptation of his story either: he recently called out House of the Dragon's "sloppiness" for getting the House Targaryen sigil wrong.
Condal previously explained his motivations for not including the Prince Maelor character on an episode of HBO's House of the Dragon podcast, saying, "The casualty in that was that our young children in this show are very young. Very, very young. Because we compress that timeline. So those people could only have children of a certain age and have it be believable where it didn't feel like we weren't hewing to the realities of the passage of time and the growth of children in any real way."
"And people, people look at that stuff. And particularly with a show like this, they look at it very closely," the showrunner continued. "So it was a choice made. It did have a ripple effect, and we decided that we were going to lean into it and try to make it a strength, instead of playing it as a weakness."