The Dragon Demands

I asked Entertainment Weekly's lead Westeros reporter Nick Romano what's going on with Steve Conrad and who's the showrunner, and he said even he doesn't know and is checking with business contacts:

Is it "naive" to be a knight who remembers his vows to defend the weak and innocent?

Question: I was under the impression that both the fourth and FIFTH novellas are nearly done, because Martin couldn't decide which to do first - indicating they're both near completion. We've got the She Wolves of Winterfell, and "The Village Hero" (in which we go to the Blackwoods and meet Egg's future wife).

Oh that's exactly what happened, as GRRM explained in his blog post back in March of 2022: Apparently they split the difference and decided to use the title of each novella as the byline for each season, after a colon.

But we've read The World of Ice & Fire, we know how it ends! In great detail! We all know what happened in the Third Blackfyre Rebellion...

HBO Max - now called "Max" - just greenlit the Dunk & Egg prequel: they were deciding between calling it "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" or "The Hedge Knight", and decided to just combine it: "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight" GRRM is attached as a "writer" (???) and executive producer, along with Ira Parker (who wrote HotD episode 1.4); Martin's agent Vince Gerardis as well as Ryan Condal are also attached. No mention of Steve Conrad but I assume he's on it? https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/game-of-thrones-prequel-series-a-knight-of-the-seven-kingdoms-hbo-1235578466/

Loni Peristere is a director who has collaborated with Greg Yaitanes before on that "Banshee" show, and Yaitanes' schedule indicates he's not returning this year because he's working on an Apple TV+ project; so it seems Peristere is standing in for Yaitanes this season as director. Otherwise, what role could Bernstein and de la Noy be playing? Are they just money people? Or is one of them going to be a producer-director?

This does raise an issue: the Starks & Lannisters are barely in the first half of Fire & Blood, from the Conquest through the fall of Maegor. The general audience will be eager for them. Oh they're in it a bit, but as important "guest stars"; even the Lannisters were outsiders at the royal court in the first century of the Iron Throne - Tyland was the FIRST one on the small council. This wasn't too much of a problem with House of the Dragon Season 1: maybe not too many Starks, but hey, there's a Lannister on the small council we can point to. In contrast....this is more episodic. The Starks are barely in it except for Torrhen, then they utterly disappear in the Faith Militant uprising years because they follow the Old Gods. Lannisters...show up a BIT in Rhaena's side story, but don't really do that much. Let's hope that House of the Dragon gets a general audience ALSO interested in "hey, what are the Hightowers and Velaryons doing in the Conquest generation?"

That sounds like Stark talk. I don't like it. Fire & Blood alone move the wheels of history!

They might not be doing it the way we would, but it should start with the Conquest and end with the fall of Maegor - the through-line is that Visenya lives to be very old, near the end of Maegor's reign. Given GRRM said "Sons of the Dragon would be 3 books if I fully narrativized it", I think we're looking at a 5 "Act" structure: Season 1 - The Targaaryen Conquest Season 2 - First Dornish War Season 3 - The weak reign of King Aenys Season 4 - The Rise of Maegor Season 5 - the Fall of Maegor "Season 1" or "Act 1" here has the least source material by word count, and is very action heavy...so...yeah, I can see that working as a big budget movie on the scale of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Telling the whole thing in 3 hours (hopefully not less). Reasonable men might differ on this but...the idea has merit. EDIT: Thomaerys Velaryon said basically the same thing a few posts up in the thread, the difference is that he said Maegor should be a single season. I cite that GRRM said 'Sons of the Dragon is 3 books worth of story" that it has 3 "Act breaks" in it. ...MAYBE have Maegor's reign be one of those super-sized final seasons that gets split in half to functionally make two smaller seasons, like final seasons of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Mad Men, etc.

....nothing in House of the Dragon really merited a dedicated "Rant or Rave Thread Because We're So Angry About How This Went Off The Rails but We Can't Let Yelling Dominate the Entire Forum" ---- I mean there's highs and lows but overall it's been a very well received adaptation by most if not all of us. There's always a point or two to disagree with, as with anything, but nothing I need to...."veny my frustration" about to maintain my basic sanity in a world gone mad. No real need for that again.

She can CHANGE him! All he needs is her love to break through his tough exterior!

Oh yeah that was an official change. Which I disagree with. They said they wanted to contrast a "Warm" King's Landing with a colder Winterfell. Because apparently it's just those two extremes with no Temperate zone in between. SMH...

I'm sarcastically setting up dialogue from a Simpsons joke. I couldn't find a clip but here it is in text: Bart: [about Jimbo Jones] What do you like about him? He's just a good-looking rebel who plays by his own rules. Lisa and Laura: [sigh wistfully] https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/New_Kid_on_the_Block/Quotes I left out the "Good looking" part because that would have made the sarcasm too obvious. And m'lord, to quote Oscar Wilde, it would be hard to find someone who was not Lord Byron's lover at the time...

I think Emily Carey mentioned rumblings about a cameo or something.

How can they love the man?! He's nothing but a brooding rebel who plays by his own rules!

@Ran I've been seeing some rumors lately...from sources who were reliable in the past and turned out to be correct on Season 1. These rumors were made DURING Season 1 so they may have CHANGED since then, of course. But I think they were at least being considered at the time: Rumor is that while Season 2 doesn't have time skips, it will have flashbacks. We'd already heard rumblings on that. Well there's some rumors that Michael Carter will return for flashbacks as King Jaehaerys. Or if not him, someone else to play Jaehaerys a decade or so younger. But the...extrapolation is that GRRM really wanted to show how Baelon got picked over Aemon's daughter Rhaenys, so Season 2 may have flashbacks actually showing Baelon, Aemon etc. - or at the least, have Jaehaerys return and reacting to their deaths. Perhaps even seeing him give Dark Sister to Daemon. Possibly an excuse to bring Paddy Considine back as Viserys for scenes with Jaehaerys, I'm not sure. But there was already speculation based on actor statements that young Rhaenyra and young Alicent might return for flashbacks. Heck, Game of Thrones Season 2 brought back Khal Drogo for a dream sequence just for fun, but flashbacks here would actually fill out the story more. Heck, maybe they'd actually show Queen Alysanne in flashbacks just to explain who the former rider of Silverwing was when that dragon is introduced. At any rate I trust the source, they were right before, but this is something they picked up *during the filming of Season 1*, and this plan may have been abandoned for all we know.

How do we know that Sapochnik "wanted to appeal to the general audience"? I'm not disputing that, I'm asking you to explain - I'm not certain what instances you're referring to.

Checked online, both Javi from Spanish fansite Los Seite Reinos and major French language YouTube channel Mestre Thibaut still consider this a fake rumor, and think Variety just mentioned it by accident or something: See thread here. We don't know. .

For those interested in such things, this is the 40 minute guide I put together on "everything we know about the three draagon breeds, six months since we first found out about them": I just cobbled it together from what we've been able to find scattered about. Has a few interesting things the designer told me in Instagram comments, and some concept art he posted there too. This is all of course "provisional".

I'm confused...the Variety article mentions that Casey Bloys had to "mediate" between Condal and Sapochnik... "Falling out"? Some weeks ago an unsubstantiated rumor spread that Sapochnik got into a fight with HBO over giving his wife more money (she's part of his production company and credited as a producer). NO ONE was willing to report on this because it had no evidence - Los Seite Reinos, even the hype fansites, all said it seemed like a misogynistic dig at his wife, and it contradicted other things (Sapochnik was hesitant to even come back for one season due to the heavy workload, so they gave him the proverbial dump trunk of money and co-showrunner credit). All agreed it wasn't worth dignifying the rumor by reporting on it. Does Variety actually know about something behind the scenes? Or is Variety repeating that rumor?....I don't think they'd just repeat it, but this is strange. ....should...should we re-assess that rumor? Or was there indeed a falling out, but due to something else? I really don't want to breath life into a false rumor. We need confirmation. @Ran

I'm often concerned that they'll condense Rhaena with someone else, to cut out Nettles or something. I wouldn't object to her new egg Morning hatching early in Season 2, BEFORE she goes to the Vale with this cat-sized dragon, I mean a big condensation. ****A thought which occurred to me is that Season 1 was written under the fear that it wouldn't be a hit, that they wouldn't get all the seasons they wanted. Not unlike early Game of Thrones. And LIKE early Game of Thrones, they might've...HALF set up optional paths to truncate certain storylines, but they didn't want to. You know, like how they carefully worded "Stannis has no sons", to self-consciously leave open the door to say he has a daughter. So while part of me suspects they half set up the option to combine Rhaena with Nettles (camera lingers on her when describing the wild ones)....maybe that was just a "worst case scenario" in case Season 1 wasn't a hit. I mean, they also avoided definitively saying how many children Alicent has in total, to leave open the door for Daeron. Plans change, after all.

https://redanianintelligence.com/2023/02/14/watch-1899-star-audition-for-a-major-role-in-house-of-the-dragon-season-2/

(shrug) I thought they'd assuredly cut Grey Ghost, only to then confirm that there are "three wild dragons". We'll see what happens.

Thus POTENTIAL types of dragons we'd realistically see, working backwards from Function: Strength Combat (Destriers) = T-Rex Shaped heads (confirmed) (Strength, with enough speed to fight) Pure Strength (Drays) = we'd only see these in Valyria construction projects Speed & Endurance (Dornish Sand Steeds) = Horse-Shaped heads ("bred for speed") Pure Endurance (Palfrey) = ??? (I always thought Dreamfyre was one of these) Pure Speed (Race Horses) = we'd only see these in Valyria Trackers (Hunting Dogs) = ...the Wolf-Shaped skull head dragons? Wide-set heads for better Sensory scanning, with decent Endurance, better than Destrier-dragons. But maybe they don't draw a distinction between "Pure Endurance" (like a Palfrey) with "Speed & Endurance" (like a Sand Steed). The functional labels I'd use for these 3 categories are "War Dragons", "Travel Dragons", and "Tracker Dragons".