House of the Dragon Showrunner Explains Season 3 Changes From the Book

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Spoilers follow for both House of the Dragon and Fire & Blood.

House of the Dragon is based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood , a history book with thinly-sketched characters and multiple (and often unreliable) accounts of the same murky events chronicling the Targaryen dynasty. This required showrunner Ryan Condal to make firm, definitive choices in adapting the material for television.

The characters, events and subplots that Condal and his writers chose to omit have proven to be as important – or at least more controversial – as those they’ve included.

Season 2 left out Prince Maelor , King Aegon II and Queen Helaena’s youngest son who was a key part of the murderous “Blood & Cheese” sequence in the book. Martin infamously complained that the decision to not include Maelor would trigger a “butterly effect” affecting the rest of the show.

As House of the Dragon Season 3 hits its midway point, it's time to take stock of the deviations made from the source material thus far and what Episode 4 suggests is in store for the homestretch of the series’ penultimate season.

Helaena’s Pregnancy

With the revelation in Season 3, Episode 4 that Helaena is pregnant – foreshadowed in Episode 2 – it appears House of the Dragon will finally bring Maelor (or at least a character like him) into the series a season later than expected. That is if the baby even makes it to childbirth. Helaena’s pregnancy puts her and this new claimant to the Iron Throne in grave danger, as Condal explained to me in a recent interview. (Watch the full video interview with Condal via the player above or the embed below.)

“Helaena being pregnant is a major complication for her given the fact that she's literally in Rhaenyra's shadow and her captive. And if that child is a boy, it's going to be very problematic for both Rhaenyra, and for her, and for Alicent,” Condal said. “So it felt like a way to keep alive certain threads in the book in a way that sort of suited the plot, I think, and the story that we're telling here in our version, our adaptation of The Dance of the Dragons.”

Prince Daeron Revealed

In addition to Helaena’s unborn child, another possible heir to the throne Rhaenyra must contend with now is her own half-brother Daeron Targaryen, who, after last week’s misdirect, was confirmed in this episode to be the young aide who’s been following Ormund Hightower around since the season premiere.

The youngest son of Viserys and Alicent, Daeron has been raised among the Hightowers as Ormund’s ward. In Fire & Blood, “Daeron the Daring” is the closest thing the Greens have to a good guy. But as this week’s episode made clear, Ormund has spent years grooming Daeron to become king – and to kill if necessary. (Daeron also has a dragon, Tessarion, to add to the Greens’ firepower in the war.)

“I think Daeron is a very sympathetic character and that's what makes him really interesting because we've met everybody else from Alicent's offspring and with the exception of Helaena, the boys are very complicated individuals that were forged in the crucible that is being raised at King's Landing with a very ill and probably checked out father in Viserys and a very young mother who was ill-equipped, unequipped to raise, not only to just raise children, but to raise children who are going to maybe one day compete for the throne,” Condal said.

“So that's why Daeron is an interesting study because there's a bit of nature and nurture in all of the storytelling that we have here.”

But will Daeron actually be a hero? Condal essentially said wait and see:

“I think with anybody that's attuned to being a Game of Thrones reader or watcher, part of the fun of these stories is as they unfold over books and years and seasons, is that things change over time. Just because something is the case right now, did anybody think when Jamie Lannister pushed that kid out of the window that they would be rooting for him two seasons later, three seasons later, and then seeing him as one of the most tragic heroic characters in the story? No. I think the fun of telling this story is when you put people in this very extreme environment, you get to see what they're actually made of and who their characters actually are. And some people that you thought were good go to very dark places.”

Why Daemon Deceived Rhaenyra

A major change from the book this season is the elimination of the dragonseed Nettles, a young girl whose function in the saga has instead been given to Daemon’s daughter, Lady Rhaena. (While the book isn’t clear about it, Nettles and Daemon may have had a romantic relationship while he was married to Rhaenyra.) Instead, the show had Rhaena ride the wild dragon Sheepstealer into The Battle of the Gullet, inadvertently playing a role in the death of Rhaenyra’s son and heir, Jace , and his dragon, Vermax.

Queen Rhaenyra doesn’t know Sheepstealer’s rider is actually Rhaena but, as we saw this week, Daemon has learned the truth and lied to his wife (and queen) to keep his daughter’s involvement secret. Viewers should expect dramatic repercussions to that at some point.

“We knew that Sheepstealer's rider, that character causes extreme strife for Daemon and Rhaenyra's relationship. And that was sort of the place that we started in. We felt in Season 2 that we were telling the story of the dragonseeds pretty completely and robustly in terms of all the different walks of life that come to riding dragons,” Condal explained. “And it felt like pairing a wild dragon with a lady of noble blood that then becomes somewhat feral herself, which is a very interesting story to tell that helped keep us at the core of where we wanted to take Rhaenyra and Daemon's relationship.”

Condal continued, “It did not feel like, to us, an infidelity story [between Daemon and Nettles] was someplace that we wanted to go with Daemon and Rhaenyra given everything they had been through to this point. I think the audience really wants to see this couple work out, but they both have inextricable natures to them that they can only get so far away from. And we see that playing out with Daemon over the course of the season.

But I think more interestingly for Daemon is for the first time, he's doing something very self-interested, but he's doing it in the name of protecting his daughter, which we haven't really seen from him to date. It shows a more mature Daemon that's still Daemon. And I think that was the thing that we were really attracted to. And this is going to be a story that continues to obviously unfold, and evolve, and play out over the course of the season. We'll have ripple effects that take us all the way into the end of The Dance of the Dragons.”

The Other Wild Dragons

Speaking of wild dragons, there are a few from the book who have yet to appear on the show: Grey Ghost and The Cannibal , neither of which, in the book, were ever tamed let alone ridden.

Given that House of the Dragon will end with Season 4 , one might assume to never expect to see any of those beasts on the show, right?

“I think assumption and expectation are probably dangerous words to use in this particular world,” Condal told me. “No, look, there's a lot of runway left and it is called House of the Dragon. It is The Dance of the Dragons. I think there are more dragon cards to be turned over as time rolls on here.”

How do you feel about the changes and choices House of the Dragon has made so far in adapting Fire & Blood? Let us know in the comments.