House of the Dragon is another hit for HBO, picking up the ratings that Game of Thrones commanded and exceeding them. It is also a boon that the fans are enjoying the series too, even if it was a bit gruesome at the start.
But for creator George R.R. Martin, the series isn’t being executed in the precise way he would’ve liked. During a Q&A with Penguin Random House, Martin explains that the writers for the new series were having a ball debating where the series should start. According to TV Insider, one writer wanted to kick things off right at the screams of the dying Aemma Arryn, the wife of King Viserys I Targaryen, as she died in childbirth. Gruesomely, if we need to remind you.
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But other writers actually wanted to start the series almost exactly near the end of the first season’s ending, where King Viserys dies from his vicious ailment. But for Martin, he would’ve gone back further in time.
“The other possibility we discussed – which was actually my favorite, but nobody liked it except me – I would have began it much earlier,” Martin said. “I would have began it, like, 40 years earlier, with an episode I would have called ‘The Heir and the Spare,’ in which Jaehaerys’ two sons, Aemon and Baelon, are alive. And we see the friendship, but also the rivalry, between the two sides of the great house.”
As he explains, there was a succession beef during this period also, somewhat mirroring the story we are about to see unfold in The Dance of Dragons. “Aemon dies accidentally when a Myrish crossbowman shoots him by accident on Tarth, and then Jaehaerys has to decide who becomes the new heir. Is it the daughter of the older son who’s just died, or is it the second son, who has children of his own and is a man, and she’s just a teenage girl?” he adds.
The book Fire and Blood, which the series draws its inspiration from, tells the story of the Targaryen kings from the beginning of Aegon’s Conquest and the first king of the seven kingdoms, covering past the Dance of Dragons and to the immediate aftermath. Outside of the setting and several characters with familiar surnames, the book is separate from the A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Fans are still awaiting the release of The Winds of Winter, which Martin claims is around 3/4 complete at this point. He also spoke in stronger words about how certain changes can happen to works being translated from page to screen, which he is not in support of seeing.
“There are changes that you have to make – or that you’re called upon to make – that I think are legitimate. And there are other ones that are not legitimate,” Martin said. “I was new to Hollywood…I didn’t say, ‘You’re f-ing morons.’”
