George R.R. Martin is airing his grievances with "House of the Dragon."
The "Game of Thrones" author, who wrote the book on which "House of the Dragon" is based, penned a blog post Wednesday criticizing the HBO series for changes to his source material "Fire & Blood."
The blog was the most direct that Martin, 75, has ever been about criticizing a show in the "Thrones" universe. He is credited as the co-creator of "House of the Dragon" alongside Ryan Condal. Shortly after the blog went online, a link to the post turned up a 404 error page, but it was unclear whether Martin deleted it.
Martin focused much of his criticism on the show's rendition of an infamous book event known as "Blood and Cheese." Noting that book fans found the TV version of this scene to be "underwhelming" and "watered down," he argued that "the scene in the book is stronger" than it was in the show.
In the first episode of "House of the Dragon" Season 2, a pair of characters known as Blood and Cheese murder Queen Helaena's young son, Prince Jaehaerys. In the book, Helaena has two sons, so Blood and Cheese make her choose which one they kill. They then kill the son she didn't choose as a form of psychological torture so the child who survives knows his mother picked him to die.
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In the show, the event plays out differently because Helaena does not have two sons in "House of the Dragon." Her other son from the book, Maelor, was cut from the HBO series. Rather than explicitly making Helaena choose which child will die, in the show, Blood and Cheese make her identify which of her children is a boy. Helaena also doesn't ask Blood and Cheese to kill her instead, as she does in the book, but offers them a necklace.
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In his blog, Martin wrote that he still loved the Blood and Cheese sequence, but he criticized changes the show made to his version. For one, he suggested it doesn't make sense that Blood and Cheese demand Helaena identify which one of her children is a boy because "you would think a glance up his PJs would reveal that."
Additionally, "the characters are crueler, harder, and more frightening" in the book, Martin contended, adding that Helaena "shows more courage" in his version "by offering her own own life to save her son."
"As I saw it, the 'Sophie's Choice" aspect was the strongest part of the sequence, the darkest, the most visceral," Martin said. "I hated to lose that. And judging from the comments online, most of the fans seemed to agree."
The author also revealed that he "argued against" this change when Condal told him about it. According to Martin, Condal said that Maelor was being cut for practical reasons to avoid casting another young child, as "kids that young will inevitably slow down production, and there would be budget implications." But Martin said Condal promised him Maelor would be introduced in Season 3, so he "withdrew" his objections. Besides, "losing the 'Helaena's Choice' beat did weaken the scene, but not to any great degree," he said.
However, Martin revealed that sometime later, a decision was made to cut Maelor from the series entirely — and he doesn't sound happy about it.
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Spoilers for "House of the Dragon" Season 3 will follow, as Martin in his blog surprisingly spilled the beans on some of Condal's future plans.
The author objected to the decision to cut Maelor from the series, citing the "butterfly effect" that this will have on future events from the book. Most crucially, Martin noted that in his book, the eventual death of Maelor is what drives Queen Helaena to suicide.
Because Maelor will not exist in the show, Martin revealed, "In Ryan's outline for season 3, Helaena still kills herself … for no particular reason. There is no fresh horror, no triggering event to overwhelm the fragile young queen."
Martin went on to outline other plot points from the book that will have to be adjusted or removed because Maelor no longer exists, and he argued that excising those events will be a "considerable loss." He concluded by warning that there are "larger and more toxic butterflies to come, if 'HOUSE OF THE DRAGON' goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for seasons 3 and 4."
The blog was notable given it's unusual to see Martin being so explicit about his disagreements with the writers of a "Game of Thrones" show. He was never so directly critical even during the controversial final season of "Thrones."
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In a statement shared with USA TODAY Wednesday, an HBO spokesperson backed showrunner Condal.
"There are few greater fans of George R.R. Martin and his book 'Fire & Blood' than the creative team on 'House of the Dragon,' both in production and at HBO," the statement reads.
"Commonly, when adapting a book for the screen, with its own format and limitations, the showrunner ultimately is required to make difficult choices about the characters and stories the audience will follow. We believe that Ryan Condal and his team have done an extraordinary job and the millions of fans the series has amassed over the first two seasons will continue to enjoy it."
Condal discussed his experience working with Martin in the final episode of this season's "The Official Game of Thrones Podcast: House of the Dragon," which released Wednesday.
"The writing that we do on the show is always available to him," he said. "I've always taken aboard his feedback wherever possible. There are, of course, places where we have not agreed and departed."
"I've always tried to pivot and make the thing work," Condal added.
He later continued: "The demands of television are great and heavy, and sometimes it's beyond even the showrunner to be able to change the nature of a thing in order to jam it into place on TV and a lot of what my job is is figuring out how to pivot and move and think laterally.
"And we can't do that thing, but we can do this thing or this thing because it's not a book. It's a television show."
Martin hinted at trouble in May when he penned a blog post cryptically criticizing adaptations of books that make unnecessary changes to the source material.
"'The book is the book, the film is the film,' they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound," Martin wrote at the time. "Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse."
Martin later raised eyebrows with a July blog in which he stressed that in his universe, "you won't find dragons hunting the riverlands or the Reach or the Vale, or roaming the northlands or the mountains of Dorne." This seemed like a shot against Season 2 of "House of the Dragon," in which a plot point involved a dragon roaming the Vale.
In another blog post that month, Martin also made a point to note that he would be traveling to London and that the writers room for "House of the Dragon" Season 3 will be meeting there, but "I have no plans to attend."
In August, Martin then teased that he would soon make a blog post revealing issues with "House of the Dragon," writing, "I do not look forward to other posts I need to write, about everything that's gone wrong with 'HOUSE OF THE DRAGON' … but I need to do that too, and I will."
It was unclear whether Wednesday's blog is what Martin was referring to or if there are additional issues that have not yet been revealed.
