The second season of House of the Dragon made a lot of big changes to George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, and the author reportedly has them on his mind.
This past weekend, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin stopped by a convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico to give an open-ended talk about his life and his work. That’s according to people who were there and shared their impressions online, since the event wasn’t recorded.
After watching the second season of House of the Dragon, which is based on Martin’s book Fire & Blood, I know I was curious to hear what Martin thought about it, especially considering that it made so many changes from the source material. Martin has praised plenty about the season, especially episodes like “Rhaenyra the Cruel” and “The Red Dragon and the Gold.” But he’s also had some criticisms. He’s pointed out little things like the dragon heraldry on flags and such being off, and also talked a fair amount lately about his issues with TV producers who take a great book and make it “their own” when adapting it for the screen. “They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse,” he said during a recent talk. “Even if they’re adapting Dickens or Tolkien or Shakespeare or whoever, they decide to make it their own, but they never make it better because usually the people who are making it their own are simply not as good as the people who wrote it in the first place.”
To be clear, there’s no proof that Martin is referring to House of the Dragon here; he’s worked in TV before and he knows that things change in transition. Even if he was upset about the changes made to Fire & Blood, I get the idea that he’s too professional to bluntly say so.
At the same time, the timing is hard to ignore. And according to a Redditor named nickrl who attended the panel (and who has since deleted their posts, it should be said), Martin “hinted that there have been disagreements between him and the HOTD showrunners.”
“He said “House of the Dragon season 1 was great. Season 2… err… I’m going to write a blog post about that.””
Beware SPOILERS for House of the Dragon season 2 below
As I said, the House of the Dragon producers made a lot of changes to Fire & Blood in season 2, far more than in season 1. And some were really major. Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, who are on opposite sides of a war in the book, are working together by the end of the season. Daemon Targaryen, who rolls over the Riverlands in the book, is stymied at every turn on the show. There’s a much bigger emphasis on prophecy in the show than on the book, and there’s an important book character named Nettles who appears to be cut completely from the series, with her role apparently given to the character of Rheana Targaryen instead.
Sometimes, authors sell the rights to their books to Hollywood and don’t seem to care much about what happens after that; for instance, The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski doesn’t seem to care much about whatever Netflix is doing with its Witcher TV show. But Martin clearly cares. He watches the shows based on his work and writes about his impressions in blog posts, he visits the sets, and he’s consulted on other Game of Thrones spinoffs HBO is developing. According to another Redditor who was at the panel, brachycephalopod, Martin talked about “how TV is very rewarding because you can see your ideas come to life.”
So Martin is invested. And because he’s invested, I get the idea it bothers him when the show changes his books in a way that he agree with. According to nickrl, “Later [Martin] said he was starting to wonder whether he was a fool for caring about whether the show was good/faithful. He said lots of writers just sell the TV rights and never think about it again and are probably happier. He said he was torn between continuing to fight for a faithful TV adaption and just giving up and letting them do whatever they want while he focuses on the books.”
It does sound like a tricky dilemma. I hope Martin finds a way through it that agrees with him.