The following article contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon season two, and maybe season three and/or four.
When he’s not grinding away at the hilariously belated new A Song of Ice and Fire novel The Winds of Winter—which has reportedly been “in the works” for more than a decade—George R. R. Martin loves to blog on his blog, curiously titled “Not a Blog.” His posts typically offer behind the scenes peeks into the Game of Thrones spin-offs, his writing process, and his personal goings-on. All pretty innocuous. Usually.
However, his most recent not-a-blog—since deleted, but you can’t scrub the entire internet — caused quite the hubbub over in Westeros. It seems the 75-year-old Fire and Blood author isn’t happy with some of the tweaks to his story made by the writers of House of the Dragon season two, which he warns will cause “toxic” butterfly effects for the seasons to come.
So, what’s George R. R. Martin’s problem with House of the Dragon?
Titled “Beware the Butterflies,” the post primarily concerned the “Blood and Cheese” storyline in the second season premiere, in which a pair of bumbling assassins are enlisted by Prince Daemon (Matt Smith) to take the head of Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) to avenge his killing of Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) son Lucerys. Unable to find him in the winding halls of the Red Keep, they instead decapitate the young son of Queen Helaena (Phia Saban), who offers them a necklace to save her kids to no avail. It’s a gnarly scene: though the camera pans away, we hear muffled screaming and what sounds like a hacksaw making its way through squelchy driftwood.
But there are some critical tweaks from the source material. For one, there are three children in the book, including the toddler Prince Maelor, who is absent from the TV show. (Martin dubs him “Maelor the Missing.”) Further, in the book, Helaena is forced to pick which son will get the sword, or they’ll all have their heads lopped off, but not before she offers her own life instead. That bargain declined, she painfully chooses Maelor, reasoning with herself that he’s too young to realize what’s happening. But Blood and Cheese aren’t having that. After taunting Maelor about his mother’s choice, Blood decapitates the older Prince Jaehaerys.
“It is a bloody, brutal scene, no doubt. How not? An innocent child is being butchered in front of his mother,” Martin wrote. “I still believe the scene in the book is stronger,” he continued, arguing that—though the actors “were excellent”—Blood and Cheese are “crueler in the book,” and that Helaena shows “more courage, more strength in the book,” by trying to sacrifice herself to save her sons. “Offering a piece of jewelry is just not the same,” he continues.
He further detailed how he argued against the changes with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, while conceding that there were “practical reasons” for the tweaks, namely budgetary reasons, and they only weakened the scene “a bit.”
But what’s all the talk of butterflies?
Spoilers for Fire & Blood—and (possibly, maybe) House of the Dragon seasons three and four—beyond this point.
