House of the Dragon, the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel, will include some elements that are told “very differently” to the book it’s based on – but the showrunners have a very good (and very interesting) reason for that.
The source for House of the Dragon is Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin’s spin-off book that tells the story of the Targaryen family in the guise of a history book. House of the Dragon, on the other hand, isn’t being told like a history book, but a document of the real events.
In an interview with IGN (below), co-showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik explained that they want their show to feel like it interacts with Fire & Blood, rather than just telling the same stories onscreen.
“We’re taking more of the approach [of] playing with the history as it was written. Essentially, saying that this is the objective truth that happened,” Condal says of the show.
“The fun of this show is that it plays as a bit of a companion piece to the history book. It communicates with the history book. In a sense that, some things will line up. Other things will be told very differently. But the idea is that, in the end, the events are the same. It’s just the ‘why’ and ‘how’ they happened that changes as you see the actual history.”
It’s a fascinating approach to take, effectively giving existing fans of the book new reasons to pay attention to the events of the show, and compare them to Fire & Blood – and hopefully without inflaming the normal kinds of arguments about changes to the source material.
Condal – a huge fan of George R.R. Martin’s original work – is clearly bringing his expertise to bear here, pointing out why the truth of the events and the history books might differ based on teh source material itself:
“Most of those historical accounts that [Fire & Blood’s fictional writer] Archmaester Gyldayn was sifting through, at least two of them weren’t really around at the time. Or at least weren’t present as the events were happening. [Court jester] Mushroom was, if you believe Mushroom, but one was written after the fact. And then, Gyldayn certainly lived long after [the Targaryens] did.
“We’re taking the approach that history in its telling changes the story. Because the historian only ever knows so much about what happened, which is why primary sources and eyewitness accounts are so important. But we didn’t have all of that in this.”
Of course, we asked how big those changes might be – could a character who dies in the book survive in the show? Condal was understandably enigmatic:
“Certain events will play out in ways that surprise the audience if they have read the book. Given their understanding of the underpinning history.”
The other benefit for the showrunners was that Fire & Blood’s more academic approach means that the real surpises can come in the characterisation of the major players in House of the Dragon. Previously, we knew them just by the facts of their lives, but the show can show us the humans behind those acts.
“I think it was a gift,” says Sapochnik of that opportunity, “because it gave us stuff to do. To think through not the, ‘What they did,’ but how they did it and why they did it. I think it was a blessing, really.”
We’ll find out quite how big those changes may be when House of the Dragon premieres on August 21. The show is just one of many Game of Thrones spin-offs in development (not to mention a bunch of unused ideas).
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.