House of the Dragon

When House of the Dragon first aired I had not read the book it was based on. I have since done that and now we are going to do a little compare and contrast. As it was said during the airing of the first season that the production of the show was very….creative with its use of the source material. Now the first season actually didn’t cover very much as it was all set up. But we are going to go through the things that the show omitted and probably should have included, and the things that they just fully changed for whatever reason. I will not be going over all the things they adapted well, though overall it wasn’t bad. The problem is that the things that they changed are so fundamental that it truly affects the whole story.

Let’s start with things that weren’t mentioned that should have been, or at the very least things that should have been made more clear;

First in the little bit of context that we got, the council meeting of 101, that Daemon Targaryean took up for his brother when his claim was questioned against Rhaenys. I think when talking about Daemon and his loyalty to Viserys it would have been pretty important to include this, but they want us to hate Daemon so badly.

Then we have the fact that the source material is unreliable and calls itself so. “So much time has passed between the event and the recording that many confusions and contradictions have inevitably crept in”. Now I understand that some narrative license needs to be taken when adapting what is essentially a history book, however the fact that certain characters are getting painted fully wrong would tell me that the creative team fundamentally misunderstood the source material. There is no way to experience this story and be on team Green. I’m sorry there is no way to experience this story as a sane, intelligent person and be on team Green.

Of course we couldn’t mention that master manipulator, Otto Hightower himself said that in matters of succession Rhaenrya should in fact be named over Daemon.

Then of course we have the things that they changed completely that actually affect how this story gets told;

First we have the fact that Daemon was nowhere near his first wife at the time of her death, he was in fact at war and there wasn’t even speculation that he was involved with her death.

For some reason they decided not to include that Rhaenyra and Leana were very good friends. And that Rhaenyra was at her bedside during her last labor and her death.

And then, of course, we have Alicent’s age change. In the show her and Rhaenyra are the same age which really only served to show that the writing team has no idea how female friendships work. In Fire and Blood Alicent is a full adult at 18 when she marries Viserys and she has beef with her 9 year old stepdaughter. Alicent is really out here bullying a child.

These changes and omissions do nothing but weaken the story as a whole. It is clear whose side the production team is on and they made it so that they are in fact the unreliable narrators. The reading comprehension among the writing team is nonexistent. They have tried so hard to make the audience team Green but there are still some of us that are hanging on to common sense and reason that will simply refuse to be anything but team Black. As far as season 2 goes we will be reading along as the show airs to do the same kind of compare and contrast.