House of the Dragon is back, HBO’s show adapting the historical narrative of Fire and Blood, George RR Martin’s fictional work. The Dance of the Dragons civil war period, the time period of the show, is set before his famous A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series (and HBO’s juggernaut show Game of Thrones) by roughly 200 years. (Give or take several decades, don’t check my math.)
And back with it is the DISCOURSE that plagued Game of Thrones and the showrunners, who did a solid job adapting Martin’s books (if we kind of ignore much of book five) and were then forced to complete the uncompleted and incredibly complex series, more or less from whole cloth.
I’m not here to litigate Benioff and Weiss’ final seasons of Game of Thrones, but I am here to talk about the first episode of House of the Dragon‘s second season – titled “A Son for a Son.” It is impossible for me to talk about this episode without referring to the source material in Fire and Blood, so if you have not seen the episode, or if you’ve seen the episode and might want to read the book and don’t want advance knowledge of specific book details, feel free not to read the rest of this. I’ll miss you, of course, but thank you for visiting.
Are they gone? Cool. Filthy casuals. Let’s talk about Blood and Cheese.
THE BIG PICTURE
With Lucerys Velaryon’s tragic death, with Aemond Targaryen at least 90% responsible (your percentage might vary) – the Black faction initiates a plan of revenge.
Daemon Targaryen leverages his seedy underworld contacts; two felonious types are involved: a rat-catcher with knowledge of the Red Keep’s secret ways and a Gold Cloak (a former Gold Cloak in the books, a currently employed one on the show) with a history of violence are paid to infiltrate the Red Keep and end up beheading the very young Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen.
This is all done in front of the child’s horrified mother Helaena Targaryen, who was required by the assassins to choose which of her available children die.
BOOK VS SHOW
Straight up, the book version is more complicated, and is more horrifying. The narrative’s implication is that Daemon contacted his ally Mysaria (she’s still in King’s Landing) and she recruited the violent former Gold Cloak (known informally in the histories as “Blood”) and the sneaky rat-catcher (known informally as “Cheese”) to specifically kill one of Aegon Targaryen’s sons, as repayment for Rhaenyra’s son Luke’s death. To summarize the book account – the duo went to Queen Alicent’s apartments and tied her up. Blood passed the time by strangling Alicent’s maidservant – because strangling is just more entertaining I guess than tying up and gagging a second woman.
When Helaena brought her three kids to see Queen Alicent for a goodnight kiss, she was forced to choose if her six year old son Jaehaerys would be killed, or her two year old son Maelor would be dispatched.
After some encouragement from Blood and Cheese (who were going to kill everybody (and then some) if Helaena did not choose) she indicated that Maelor would be the one to be killed. The two year old was explicitly informed that his mother wanted him dead, and then they killed Jaehaerys. What scamps!
This was wild, over-the-top horrible. Helaena being forced to choose between her boys, who were witnessing all of this, and then having the child she tried to spare be killed was just extra terrible nightmare fuel.
Much of the elements from the books are present in the show, but admittedly toned down.
Daemon explicitly recruits a Gold Cloak enforcer known to him, and uses Mysaria’s recommendation to recruit Cheese because of the rodent wrangler’s knowledge of the secret ways around the castle.
(These guys are not named on the show per se, but I’ll just keep rolling with their book nicknames.)
Blood and Cheese’s objective is clear from Daemon, they are to kill Aemond Targaryen. Daemon gives a solid description of his nephew. Tall, silver hair, one eye.
Cheese asks what should be done if Aemond isn’t available to be killed. The question is not shown to be answered, but (and I’ll talk more about this) it does seem like our pair of skullduggers are given a Plan B.
Not finding Aemond in his quarters, after some searching about, Cheese finds Helaena Targaryen unguarded, and Blood establishes that “a son for a son” was their objective now.
Helaena: Hey, I can give you my necklace.
Blood: Okay. And we’ll need to kill your son.
Faced with twins, and being squeamish about checking under bedclothes for evidence (look, even our evil assassins might have been rattled in this moment) Blood and Cheese demand that Helaena simply indicate which of the identical children is Jaehaerys, her son and Aegon’s heir, so they could kill him and be on their way. Cheese probably was keen to find and comfort his poor dog and Blood was probably keen to kill someone else, just for fun, out on the town.
Helaena specifies one of the children. Blood suspects that maybe she chose the girl to trick them.
Blood: Look, you can’t trust dames, I tells ya.
Cheese believes her though, the empathic rascal that he is, and they lay in on beheading Helaena’s choice. Which turns out to actually be Jaehaerys, and not Jaehaera as Blood had skeptically suggested.
Helaena flees with her groggy daughter, to report Jaehaerys’ murder to Queen Alicent, who had been riding Ser Criston Cole vigorously.
Ser Criston Cole: One of my jobs is to serve the queen.
Sam Tarly: Technically his vow is that he can’t take a wife, which I am interpreting as actually marrying her. Ser Criston Cole has done nothing wrong!
Joffrey Lonmouth’s Ghost: Bloody hell.
Both scenarios are horrible for Helaena, and are the result of some hellish base perfidy initiated by high-up members of the Blacks Administration. Again, I’m not trying to say that the show version matched the psychological horror of the book version, I’m just saying that it was horrifying (my show-only wife would agree) and that it set up whatever would be happening next, the same as the book version did.
THE AFTERMATH
Oh, the aftermath on the show won’t happen until the weekend, but the Discourse kicked right off, with people who had expectations of Blood and Cheese finding themselves unsatisfied.
I appreciate some of this. As a book reader, I had expectations. They were expectations that I had kept to myself, other than hinting that something shocking would happen this season. I tried to keep that pretty low key, for obvious reasons.
Book readers had done a masterful job of keeping Ned’s beheading a secret for the first season of Game of Thrones. Likewise, other than the words “Red Wedding” kind of floating around, most of the viewing audience who had not read A Storm of Swords were taken by surprise as much as the Northern hosts were in the Rains of Castamere episode in Season 3 of the show.
Well done, fellow book readers.
Likewise, I wasn’t aware of Blood and Cheese specifics floating out before the show. But there was a LOT of vague expectation setting.
There was no reason to put stuff out like the above ScreenRant article, back in 2022. This wasn’t the showrunners making promises, this was people with book knowledge trying to leverage that. That’s not on the show.
Imagine if this had happened in Season One of Game of Thrones.
“Oh, you like Ned Stark? Too bad for you. The shocking thing that the book readers are keeping quiet on.“
And that expectation fed into articles like this:
I’m sorry Michael feels that the moment was botched. I can’t argue about how he feels, because feelings are valid and subjective. But I reject his premise because I don’t think that the episode was botched – I feel that it was effective.
I also think that people insisting that the event should have been adapted as closely as possible to the events in the book are underestimating what that would require, or would be accepted by the network to even show.
First up, child actors are complications. What people are asking for is for young children to be able to put in dramatic performances. That happens all of the time, I’m sure. But maybe not always with two year olds.
Maelor would have to roughly be as old as the child playing Rhaenyra’s child Aegon in Season One, Episode Eight. That kid was on the screen for maybe 1 second. I know, because it was a pain in the butt trying to get a good screenshot of him for my In Defense of Aegon Targaryen, Second of His Name post for Watchers on the Wall. I can only imagine how difficult it was to get that solid 1 second filmed.
The horror on the page, where Blood is telling Maelor that his mom is sentencing him to death, is one of several pivotal horror moments. It’s important to get that horror moment right. Let us imagine the practical details of getting a little actor to emote properly. Or, maybe we can adapt the story differently, and omit Maelor from the story. (Spoiler alert for Fire and Blood, Maelor does not make it, and I’m relieved we won’t see what happens to him.)
TechBro: Alternatively, we could use AI to create a photo-realistic CGI terrified toddler. I just need to visually model the behavior and reactions of 1000 terrified, absolutely soul-stricken horrified real-human toddlers – that is if we really want to minimize the Uncanny Valley and I’m sure that we do. It’ll cost a lot of money (to run my server farm to create the model) but it’ll be worth it.
Me: Fuck you.
I think having three children, wide awake, emoting awareness of what’s happening would be too hard practically. Wait, you filmmakers might be saying, we can just not film them so much, and let the horror play out on Helaena’s face.
You know, like what the show did, by having the kids asleep and Helaena reacting? Great idea.
THE BENEFIT OF SURPRISE
I’m just saying, as a book reader, I don’t mind being surprised in small ways. Laenor Velaryon faking his death and heading off on a life of gay adventure, rather than being murdered, was a pleasant surprise.
In regards to my knowledge of Blood and Cheese, I was expecting far worse and maybe I was relieved by the surprise of certain things not happening.
Remember in the recap of the book events, where I mentioned that Blood strangles a maidservant? On the show, Blood wanders – torch and rat-traps in hand – into a room where a household servant is doing some chores. She looks at him with some suspicious concern.
Me: Oh no. He’s going to strangle her.
He doesn’t. He plays the “don’t mind me, I’m just a rat-catcher” card and moves on, to eventually find Cheese threatening Helaena.
Me: *sigh of relief that I didn’t see someone strangled. Then- * Oh no. (Because impending child murder.)
I was still pleasantly surprised that these book details are right there, but not taken advantage of. They definitely could have had Blood crush that maid’s throat to keep her quiet, but they didn’t. Maybe this is a win, you guys. Because that book detail of the strangled maidservant was terrible! (I’m not saying that GRRM was wrong to write it, I’m just saying that it was not pleasant to imagine or experience.)
The assassins making Helaena indicate which of the twins was Jaehaerys also worked for me, but maybe not in the ways that people are thinking – not just as a rough homage to Helaena’s choice. The show could have had Helaena point to Jaehaera, since the book choice was not Jaehaerys, and this would be Helaena trying to trick the assassins as Blood suspected. Why? Would she do this because she obviously values Jaehaerys’ life over Jaehaera? That seems explicitly cold.
But that’s exactly what I thought was happening, in my smug way. I was convinced that Helaena was trying to trick Blood and Cheese, sacrificing her daughter so Aegon’s heir would live, and that the assassins would not believe her, and choose not to kill Jaehaera and kill their actual target, Jaehaerys. But then, it turned out that she was honestly indicating Jaehaerys as demanded of her. Why might she do that? Also, this was a surprise to me. How nice to be surprised!
I prefer to think that she chose Jaehaerys because they were going to kill a child no matter what, and she had no motivation to trick them to kill her daughter, just to save her son. Girls in Westeros are already not valued, so seeing Helaena value her daughter -no one else is going to – was almost a plus for once. A pleasant surprise.
THE HISTORICAL ACCURACY ARGUMENT
After the episode, there was some discussion on how the show violated the historical accuracy of Fire and Blood. This at least is a more objective criticism, but I also think that it is misguided.
Fire and Blood is a history written by some maesters who are often called out by the readers for probably fudging details to promote their conservative, patriarchal agenda. There’s already a strong anti-Rhaenyra bias in Fire and Blood (I won’t go into details) so having the account of Blood and Cheese being as awful as possible would line up with this agenda. All we know for sure is that some assassins came in, killed Jaehaerys. That’s bad on its face. Oh, but what if it was even more worse! These scoundrels decided to toy with Queen Helaena, giving her the illusion of choice. It wasn’t enough to just kill a child, they had to trick the youngest into believing he was going to be executed with his mother’s consent.
Shocking! Also Daemon Targaryen insisted on the death of a child (when killing Aemond might almost be considered a reasonable response.)
I shouldn’t even put this on the maesters’ writing Fire and Blood. It is certainly within reason that the Greens would bake up the details to be even more heinous, so there is less sympathy for the Blacks in regards to Lucerys’ death.
I can imagine Otto Hightower jumping on the opportunity to milk what political capital he could from Jaehaerys’ death, in all of his letters he’s sending via ravens to the lords in Westeros who are on the fence. The maesters writing Fire and Blood might be just faithfully carrying water for the Hightower propaganda effort.
I’m just saying, don’t hold the text in Fire and Blood so dear that adaption choices shouldn’t be made. If that’s your jam, just read Fire and Blood again, because the show has already shown its willingness to do its own thing.
THE ARGUMENT FOR VIOLENCE
One of the most disturbing thing I’d see was people angry that the show didn’t fulfill their expectation of violence. I’m not trying to be judgy (I am, a little) – when the Red Wedding happened, I probably would have been irritated if we didn’t see some bad stuff happening. We’re kind of in this show partly for the action. In Season One of Game of Thrones, Tyrion was knocked out before the Battle of the Green Fork, a book battle which featured tremendous personal action details on Tyrion’s behalf. This was probably, literally, unfilmable based on the budget and scope, etc. But those practical matters don’t stop book fans from pointing it out. (Book fans love to point stuff out. I know, I’m one of them and I point things out.)
Tyrion: It’s what you do. You don’t drink and you know things missing from the show. Huzzah.
I would have probably not appreciated it if we saw Daemon hiring Blood and Cheese, the focus cuts away from King’s Landing for awhile and then there’s an alarm at the castle and everyone is running about because young Jaehaerys is dead and missing a head and Helaena is freaking out – and we’re to assume that Daemon’s assassins have done their work. I completely would have felt that the show whiffed what would have been a powerful scene.
Obviously, the show did not do that. It let us witness the events leading up to a child losing a head (mercifully we only heard it happening.) But for some there wasn’t enough violence shown.
On Twitter, a person I follow was arguing that the show should have been more violent in adapting Blood and Cheese.
As a reminder, Blood and Cheese in the book are responsible for two fatalities: a beheaded child, and a strangled maidservant. That’s it. (Sure, we have threats of violence and Alicent gets tied up. But only two fatalities.)
Wait. I just remembered that it was three fatalities. Helaena and the kids have a guard who gets quickly dispatched. But, no one is going to stress out about a guard getting killed. Guards get killed all the time. It’s like part of the ambient atmosphere. So it’s technically three, but lets ignore the guard for now, since unless it was an extremely cool death, no one is going to be excited by that inclusion or omission.
Was this person making the lack of violence complaints demanding that they see a maidservant be strangled? And that would have made things better?
Game of Thrones would often get a lot of heat for having violence aimed at women. Some of the violence was implied in the books but not shown (for example, we are kidding ourselves if we don’t believe that Craster’s wives are not being sexually assaulted by the Night’s Watch deserters), but some of the violence shown was in the books, but happening to different characters than in the show. (Sansa being substituted for Jeyne Poole is the classic case, and it’s an open question if people would be all that angry at Game of Thrones if Jeyne Poole had remained in the show, and was subjected to the role of Ramsay’s bride. Certainly, Dave and Dan could just blame things on George and deflect.)
I think it should be considered a win if we get less of this specific violence on the show, or at least it seems to be a mixed message to be mad that we aren’t getting enough of this specific violence when it has been criticized before.
THE BAD WRITING ARGUMENT
Inevitably, people fall back on insisting that something happening on a show that they don’t like or don’t agree with is the result of bad writing, or silly writing, or lazy writing. That’s wildly subjective, and hard to argue with meaningfully. Is it almost always in bad faith? Maybe? I don’t care if it is earnestly believed or not.
My gut reaction is that accusations of lazy writing, for example, is lazy criticism. It is easy to say. Maybe too easy, and no one seems inclined to defend it. Lazy!
The sequence of events in the final twenty minutes of House of the Dragon‘s Season Two premiere certainly felt tense and appropriately dramatic to me. I was dreading everything going on, every second that passed. Blood kicked a dog, for Heaven’s Sake. I gasped when that happened. (The maesters left that out in Fire and Blood, though.)
I’ve seen some assertions that the show didn’t do enough to foster sympathy for Jaehaerys. That only having a brief moment where the kids are seen at the end of Season One was not enough, and having Jaehaerys bedevil Tyland Lannister in the small council chamber in the episode was not enough.
What kind of sociopath can’t sympathize with a child being murdered? (Or with Helaena, who we do know.) Look, I respect inventing dialogue for characters – I’m guilty of that too – but this isn’t it.
In Fire and Blood, Jaehaerys, Jaehaera, and Maelor are in exactly one page (hearing a story from King Viserys on the evening before he dies.) The next time we see them, they are being Blood and Cheesed. Had we seen more of them last season – they’d have to be recast because the Season One child Jaehaerys would be two feet taller this season, maybe ready to shave – the viewing audience would be irritated at the seemingly wasted time. Lord R’hllor knows that they were primed to criticize the time jumps and the pacing last season.
I was just glad that we saw little Jaehaerys and Jaehaera at all last season. Be grateful for what we’ve been given, please.
(If I am wrong about the amount of pages the kids are in in Fire and Blood before Blood and Cheese, feel free to correct me, I can take it.)
IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE BAD
I can’t deny that no matter what the show did, it was going to get bad takes. Blood and Cheese is a big deal. There’s always been fan debate on what the intention was in sending the assassins and the target. Did Rhaenyra know? Did Mysaria make the call and Daemon is unfairly being blamed for it?
Because some viewers/readers have a personal investment in either making the Greens seem as awful as possible or the Blacks seem as awful as possible, how Blood and Cheese played out was going to get scrutiny. I think I was ready for that, no matter how it played out. My only hope was that something wildly different wasn’t going to happen.
At the end of Season One, people were speculating – since the show was willing to defy commonly understood things, that maybe the death of little Jaehaerys was unintended.
The wild speculation I’m referencing is more or less this: maybe Blood and Cheese will be actually burglars, sent by the Blacks to steal the Dagger of Destiny because Rhaenyra wanted it as her birthright. And during the theft, oh, I guess some shenanigans would happen and the events get WILDLY misreported.
I couldn’t fathom how that would have worked out.
Scene: Blood and Cheese sneaking about, looking for a dagger.
Jaehaerys: Stop, you knaves. I’ll know your business!
Blood: You’re well-spoken for a six-year-old.
Cheese: We’re just catching rats, little prince. We’re not here to steal a priceless Valyrian dagger.
Jaehaerys: That’s oddly specific. I surmise that you’re actually agents of my aunt, Rhaenyra.
Blood: Gasp! We’ve been routed. The plan is awry.
Cheese: If only we were more violent men, but this child has foiled us.
Jaehaerys: Hold. It was well met that we are all here. I have recently learned of the death of my cousin, Lucerys Velaryon, at the hands of my cyclopean uncle, Aemond. I cannot bear to live with the shame of uncle’s kinslaying ways, since it might bring doom upon our house.
Cheese: You ARE well-spoken for a six-year old!
Jaehaerys: Take back my little head as repayment for Lucerys’ death. My brother Maelor can now be heir.
Blood: Who?
*Jaehaerys beheads himself*
Cheese: Well, we might as well make the best of this.
So, the agreement between the book source and the TV show is a lot more closer than it could have been. The above invented dialogue would have been more in line with the bad writing argument. And also in line with the accusation that wild coincidences or misunderstandings keep happening, like Alicent not grokking what dying Viserys was laying down, or that Vhagar is responsible for Luke’s death.
But the secretive revenge plot of Daemon’s is not wacky happenstance. The assassins did not accidentally mistake Jaehaerys for their target Aemond.
Blood: ‘ere ‘e is.
Cheese: Is this him? He seems shorter and has two eyes. I guess he shrunk and grew the eye back.
Me: NO! You obviously were told by Daemon to kill a son for a son if you couldn’t find Aemond. You’ve repeated it enough! Don’t feed the trolls or the shitposters!
Blood: Well, yes. My earlier statement was clearly that we should kill Aegon’s son as repayment for Rhaenyra’s son’s death.
Cheese: I’m still rattled about my dog being kicked, sorry.
If the show wanted to have bad writing, I’m clearly available.
WHY DEFEND BLOOD AND CHEESE
Wait, I’m not defending the actual characters, don’t be weird.
But I’ll admit that I am sensitive to how the show is perceived and talked about.
The premiere episode, A Son for a Son, was an excellent example of a premiere episode in the Game of Thrones style. It’s a difficult task, coming back from the inter-season hiatus and re-establish the world, the existing characters, the new characters, and to move forward on things. Sometimes that can be perceived as slow or boring or confusing. Some people no doubt found it a slow episode. Some people I know were confused (my dad wasn’t, because I wrote him a long Dramatis Personae with the plot highlights.)
But we got so much. Winterfell and the Wall. Legendary Cregan Stark. Alyn of Hull. Hugh Hammer. (Some of these guys you might have missed, that’s fine.) Great name drops: Jeyne Arryn of the Eyrie, Dalton Greyjoy, Addam of Hull!
An exhausted Rhaenys shutting Daemon down on his proposed Vhagar hunt. Jacaerys’ emotional return to Dragonstone and the funeral for Luke. That little horse that Corlys gave little boy Lucerys way back when at Laena’s funeral.
This is all good stuff, but it wasn’t that talked about because the adaptation of a specific event that could have easily been embellished by the Greens didn’t meet book reader expectations and therefore they have to talk about it. Even though it was well done, and the end result is the same as the book.
I don’t want us to overly focus on the negative, or at least I want us to also celebrate the positive. But sometimes, one has to push back on the negative, or else it takes root.
I respect people feeling how they feel, and expressing that. That is good, healthy talk around a show. But have some reflection on things. There are absolutely bad faith folks who would love for this show to fail, for so many weird reasons.
We don’t have to love the show uncritically, but we should be smart about things.
Alright, no more lecturing.
Please, someone talk about Cregan Stark referring to Alysanne and Jaehaerys not able to fly their dragons past the Wall. That’s the seemingly contradictory stuff from Fire and Blood‘s accounts that I want to hear talked about! (It’s documented that Alysanne is without Jaehaerys, alone with her dragon. Why this change?)
(Comments are always welcome. Super welcome! But if you want to talk spoilery Game of Thrones talk with me (also welcome) I’d invite you to visit my Safe Spoilers page on my backup blog. That way my non-book-reading friends won’t be shocked with foreknowledge.)
Images from HBO’s HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. I make no claims to the artwork, but some claims to the text here. So there.
If you liked this article, thank you! I have all of my Game of Thrones related articles on my handy-dandy Game of Thrones page should you want to read more but don’t want to navigate around my site.
© Patrick Sponaugle 2024 Some Rights Reserved
I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time 