Readers of George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood were well-aware that House of the Dragon Season 2 would have to include the infamous Blood and Cheese sequence. The scene in question may not be quite as shocking as Martin’s Red Wedding, as seen in Game of Thrones, but it’s definitely one of the most brutal moments in the book. Now, House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal is opening up about why the show made certain changes to the scene.
Warning: the following contains spoilers from the Season 2 premiere of House of the Dragon. If you haven’t seen the episode or don’t want to know what’s in it, stop reading now.
In the context of the episode, Blood (Sam C. Wilson) is a member of the City Watch who is loyal to Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), while Cheese (Mark Stobbart) is a rat catcher who knows his way around the royal palace. Daemon hires this pair of unlikely assassins to find and assassinate his nephew, Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). And when they can’t locate Aemond, Blood and Cheese settle for killing Prince Jaehaerys, the young son of King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney).
The show’s depiction of Jaehaerys’ death is off-screen, but it also omits a key part of the scene. In the book, Queen Helaena (Phia Saban) was forced to choose between letting the killers murder Jaehaerys or her youngest son, Maelor. She chooses Maelor, but Blood and Cheese simply mock her and kill Jaehaerys instead. While speaking with Decider, Condal explained why Maelor isn’t in the show.
“The first season, in the book, like that story would take place over more than 30 years,” said Condal. “And it’s just if we tried to do that, we would have to recast every character in the story and it would have been even more difficult to produce and dramatize than what we had. So it just means that… Helaena and Aegon’s kids and Rhaenyra and Daemon’s kids are just younger in this than they would have been in the original story. So it just means that Maelor didn’t exist in this time.”
Condal also confirmed that the killers were instructed to find a substitute victim if Aemond wasn’t an option.
“Daemon hires a guy. He sends them in on a plot and it’s a heist mission that goes wrong,” related Condal. “We actually don’t hear what Daemon tells them right before… when they ask, ‘Well, what happens if we can’t find them?’ And my sense is that we know from their conversation inside the room that Daemon almost certainly said some version of like, ‘Don’t leave empty-handed.'”
House of the Dragon Season 2 will continue on June 23 on HBO and Max.
