House of the Dragon Showrunner Explains That Blatant Blood and Cheese Change

House of the Dragon ’s second season was quick to get slammed for all reasons possible as soon as it landed on Max last weekend. The show’s highly anticipated new installment had many fans claiming that the showrunners didn’t really understand the assignment as they just completely ignored the way things were done in George R.R. Martin’s book.

There have been quite many scenes that never got fans’ approval even several days after the episode’s release, though one of the most scandalous sequences was finally addressed by House of the Dragon showrunner, and the reason for making it different from the original novel is actually not what everyone suspected before.

The second season’s episode 1 finally introduces a long-awaited duo of thugs nicknamed Blood and Cheese who get hired by Daemon Targaryen to kill Alicent Hightower’s son Aemond.

Without wasting precious time, the assassins sneak into the castle and, having no trouble going through the royal chambers as total strangers, stumble upon Aegon’s sister-wife Helaena eventually ending up murdering young Jaehaerys instead of the one Daemon had told them about.

George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood has a very different version of all the shocking events, proving that Alicent was initially involved in the whole scene, forced to watch her grandson being killed.

On top of that, the novel even features one more potential victim, Aegon and Helaena’s third and youngest son Maelor who his mother chooses to sacrifice to save the heir, though Blood and Cheese still kill Jaehaerys.

Unlike the book, there is no mention of Maelor in House of the Dragon, making it clear that he most likely hasn’t been born yet, especially given that Aegon and Helaena’s kids are significantly older in the book while in the series they’re still babies.

Following the second season’s episode 1 release, House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal finally unveiled the main reason behind the creative team’s decision to adopt such radical changes in the show.

According to Condal, the production process difficulties are to blame, as “we would have to recast every character in the story and it would have been even more difficult to produce and dramatize than what we had” once the creators had opted for sticking to the original timeline and not shifting all the events to several years earlier.

Condal then admitted that the whole scene with Blood and Cheese is also different as “Maelor didn't exist in this time.”

Source: Decider