House of the Dragon Boss on Why Season 2’s ‘Blood & Cheese’ Murder Doesn’t Unfold the ‘Nakedly Cruel’ Way It Does in the Book
House of the Dragon Season 2 didn’t waste any time in getting to one of its source material’s more horrific interludes.
At the end of Sunday’s premiere, King Aegon and Queen Helaena’s young son, Jaeherys, was murdered in his bed by bumbling assassins. The killers, hired by Daemon, had been on the hunt for Aemond Targaryen — a retribution murder to avenge Lucerys’ death at the end of Season 1 — but wound up killing an entirely different, entirely innocent Targaryen prince instead.
Even worse: When the murderers couldn’t tell Jaeherys from his sister, Jaehera, they made Helaena direct them toward the little prince. (Read a full recap here.)
As horrible as the entire act was, it’s even rougher in Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin’s book on which House of the Dragon is based. In the text, the killers (referred to only as Blood and Cheese because their real names were forgotten long ago) first encountered Alicent; they tied her up, and murdered her handmaid. Then they waited for Helaena to bring Alicent’s grandchildren (in the book there are three of them: Jaehaerys, Jaehaera and another boy, Maelor) to say goodnight. When the queen arrived, Blood and Cheese quoted Daemon’s “son for a son” forced Helaena to pick which of her boys would die. She refused. The assassins then threatened to kill everyone (and throw in some rape, for good measure); under duress, Helaena chose Maelor. THEN — and this is the truly messed-up part of a wholeheartedly messed-up story — the men made sure Maelor knew Helaena had picked him… and then they killed Jaeherys, instead.
When TVLine spoke with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, he pointed out that some of the changes had to be made, based on which characters already exist in the series adaptation.
“I mean, just very simply, Maelor has not even born in the storyline,” the executive producer said. “We did have to compress time in Season one to make it so that we didn’t have to recast every character on screen. We were just recasting the kids, so to speak, as we went along, and part of that meant that Aegon and Helaena’s children were younger, as are Daemon and Rhaenyra’s children younger at the very end of this, because not as much time passed after their marriages to give time for all these kids to grow up.”
The person we should focus on, he continues, is the gentle queen who suddenly has such violence and death visited upon her. “The other [element] was just wanting it to be this very visceral experience that happens to Helaena, who I think a lot of people would argue is the most innocent person on either side of this conflict and just sort of finds herself in the crossfire of this tit-for-tat kind of punch-and-counterpunch that’s going on between the sides,” he said. “It felt like that was the core dramatic point that was important to be made.”
In the episode, Daemon very clearly instructs Blood and Cheese to kill Aemond. But in the book, his motivations aren’t as clear: Did he truly mean “son for a son” to mean that any of Aegon’s boys were fair targets?
“Look, I love the scene in the book,” Condal said. “It was deeply affecting the first time I read it. But it does speak to a different Daemon, I think, than the one that we’ve dramatized on screen. Look, he’s capable of some pretty bad stuff, but the moment in the book is so nakedly cruel.”
In the end, the show chose to leave room for viewers to decide what they think happened.
“I think it does help nuance the moment and make it left up more to interpretation for an audience that’s trying to figure out which side they’re going to take in this whole conflict,” he added.
What did you think of the episode-ending scene? If you read Fire & Blood, was the event what you expected/feared? Hit the comments with your thoughts!
