Includes major spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3!
George RR Martin House of the Dragon Spoiler Reveal seems to ignore one crucial original TV series story element that the prolific author previously praised. The HBO prequel series is based on Fire & BloodA companion book to Martin A Song of Ice and Fire series, which documents the fictional history of the Targaryen dynasty. The narrative of the book is written to be unreliable, allowing the reader to examine and interpret the history of Westerosi as with a real-life historical text. With this in mind, the TV series takes its creative liberties to bring the text to life.
The House of the Dragon The cast is comprised of an exceptionally talented group of actors who brought every character in Dance of the Dragons to life, often adding depth and intrigue that their book counterparts lacked. Martin has consistently praised the outstanding cast for their work in evolving his material in certain aspects, even suggesting characters like Viserys Targaryen are better on the show than they were in his book. But George RR Martin’s latest blog post has him venting about the show for deriving too much From its source material, even spoiled a major uplifting moment.
George RR Martin spoils the death of Helaena Targaryen in House of the Dragon season 3
Martin reveals Ryan Condal’s plans for Helaena’s televised death
George RR Martin’s criticisms of House of the Dragon Offered a lot of insight into how the book change decisions were made, mostly surrounding the Blood & Cheese event of the season 2 premiere. He explained how the decision to remove one character, Maelor Targaryen, from the story created a chain reaction of events that eventually detracted from the impact of future events. the main thing He immediately revealed that Helaena Targaryen’s death by suicide would essentially be caused by nothing. Read his full quote below:
“In Ryan’s outline for season 3, Helena still kills herself…for no particular reason. There is no recent horror, no triggering event to overwhelm the fragile young queen.”
Book readers knew that Helena’s tragic death was coming, but the moment in Fire & Blood is compounded by a series of horrific events. Helaena was clearly hurt by Blood & Cheese on the show, but her final scenes in the season didn’t indicate any lingering trauma, which would make it shocking for her to suddenly take her own life. It remains to be seen House of the Dragon handles the material, but hopefully, it won’t be as emotionless as Martin seemed to imply.
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Helaena’s death has to be different in the show because she is a dragon dreamer (which GRRM praised)
No matter what, Helaena’s death will not be the same as fire and blood
A major difference between book Helaena and show Helaena is that the TV version has dream visions. After the blood and cheese episode, Martin even praised this aspect of the character, saying, “Phia Saban’s Helaena is a richer and more fascinating character than the one I created in FIRE & BLOOD.” (via Martin’s blog) These visions add a rich mysticism to her character, which also applies to her fate.
House of the Dragon The image of Helena means to experience the world outside of the “today.” She seems to be aware of the future, and admits that she cannot change. This means that, in some capacity, She knows about her own fate, creating an interesting dynamic for her death. No matter which direction House of the Dragon Her death will not be completely meaningless, given the potential impact created by this aspect of her character.
Sources: Martin’s blog