HBO Announces Production Begins on House of the Dragon

[Jaenara Belarys]

4 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

The boss's friend's son, and the out of work actor whose wife was babysitting for his children.

Must be. 

[Lord Varys]

48 minutes ago, Werthead said:

That would create a continuity mismatch with GoT (where they don't have purple eyes) so I doubt that would happen. It might be nice, but they'd have to explain why they have purple eyes when Rhaegar, Viserys and Daenerys do not, which is probably more effort than it's worth.

Why would they care about stuff like that? HoD is what Enterprise was to TOS. They can update certain makeup styles, especially when dealing with characters who do have those specific purples eyes - like Rhaenyra or Aegon III whose deep purple eyes were apparently at least as poignant as Yennefer's.

The way to go with that is just give those people the eye color they are supposed to have ... and never comment on that unless it is really important for the plot (which it might if they do the plot about Rhaenyra's sons since that would then mean that some folks will talk about Valyrian looks and stuff).

I'd also hope they reimagine - especially - Casterly Rock and Highgarden and Harrenhal to make them fit better with George's vision (Harrenhal could be destroyed some more by Vhagar and Caraxes during the course of the war) if they show those places in HotD, and hopefully also Dragonstone and even King's Landing. Different times, different looks.

And for me that's not just limited to the Valyrian pricks - I also think that Jaime and Cersei and Tywin should have been green-eyed, the Baratheons blue-eyed, etc. ... but, especially, Tyrion should have had his mismatched eyes.

That said, I much more concerned with the looks of the actual people in the show than minor details like heraldic animals ... especially since the latter could be changed very easily during the production process.

50 minutes ago, Werthead said:

io9 just threw a nuclear bomb idea out there: that Daemon being "the heir" is a sign they might be changing the TV show so that it's Daemon and Rhaenyra at war, with maybe Aegon II as a third claimant.

I don't think that would be the case - that's an absurdly huge change - but that's a slightly disturbing thought I won't be happy until it's been ruled out (such as them announcing the casting of Aegon II, who is conspicuous by his absence thusfar).

Nah, that would be a completely weird change. The information we got about the background/relationship of the various characters is that things really start at the beginning of the reign of Viserys I - Daemon is the presumptive heir of Viserys I until Rhaenyra is named, Alicent Hightower isn't queen yet (and thus also not the mother of any rival claimants), and Criston Cole isn't even a Kingsguard knight yet ... much less the Lord Commander who would eventually become a Kingmaker.

I guess that might still be able to race all the way to Viserys I's death at the end of season 1 ... but then we should already have (at least) heard by now that Aegon II and Aemond are/would be main cast members

If that set prop thingy which seems to be a sarcophagus of a woman is a Velaryon thing then it might turn out that Laena Velaryon is going to turn out to be Daemon's first wife and they cut Rhea Royce. If that were the case then Laena could definitely die earlier than she does in the book - her death could even trigger Daemon's desire to go to war on the Stepstones or some of his other ambitions.

As I think I suggested they could switch things around so Baela & Rhaena aren't the children of Laena Velaryon but the elder children of Daemon and Rhaenyra, born before Aegon III and Viserys II. That could also help stress the entire 'incest marriage policy' thing which is crucial to the Targaryens as a family but actually not exactly something that's very prominent in the era of Viserys I nor was it stressed as something crucial in GoT.

If we had not only Rhaenyra eventually marrying her uncle and Aegon II marrying his full sister Helaena, but had also Jace and Luke being betrothed to their half-sisters rather than cousins then the incest thing would be more visible for the general audience. I'm still not sure whether the casual viewer of GoT actually realized that Dany and Jon are the scions of incestuous dynasty. It is mentioned casually back in season 1, I think, but not all that often.

And conceptually they could really play around with that thing, especially since Viserys I takes a second wife who isn't a sister or cousin, and he marries that woman because he loves her ... which technically is a good thing, especially from a modern perspective, but in this case this is going to turn out to be a bad thing as time will tell.

[The Dragon Demands]

I'm starting to lose hope we'll get two seasons out of Rogue Prince, but then again I'm not 100% certain. 

Then again, IF Season 1 ends with Laena's death and Aemond losing an eye (BIG "IF")....they need time to set up Alicent and Rhaenyra's children before the actual war begins. Doing a quick re-read of the end of Rogue Prince, all that's left is the subplot surrounding the Silent Five Velaryons, then Viserys II falls ill and gets better, only for a celebration feast at which Alicent's boys openly mock Rhaenyra's children. etc.

And we're just looking at this from the Targaryen perspective; what if they want to "widen the world", as it were, by inventing subplots to set up, say, Tyland Lannister and Cregan Stark? Or Jeyne Arryn?

[Lord Varys]

18 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I'm starting to lose hope we'll get two seasons out of Rogue Prince, but then again I'm not 100% certain.

If we were starting the Dance at the end of season 1, we should have an actor for Aegon II by now. He is the crucial other guy in the Dance.

In fact, Aegon II is arguably even more important than, say, Mysaria or Princess Rhaenys or Corlys Velaryon during the reign of Viserys I. He is the king's eldest son, not some scheming background character.

We would have him as a main character, and we would have Aemond. And we would focus more on those folks than the Velaryons or Mysaria or even Criston Cole.

[The Dragon Demands]

When you put it that way, maybe they will indeed spend Season 2 building up Alicent and Rhaenyra's sons more.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, The Dragon Demands said:

When you put it that way, maybe they will indeed spend Season 2 building up Alicent and Rhaenyra's sons more.

I guess they could not spend the entire second season with pre-Dance material. The war could start, say, in the second half of that season or something along those lines.

But they don't have to stick to the events from the books, they can and will invent their own subplots and stuff, else somebody like Mysaria would never be a main character ... and neither would Rhaenys and Corlys who literally do nothing of substance during the reign of Viserys I.

There is a chance that they simplify and streamline backstories ... but they wouldn't cut or reduce the roles of Aegon II and Aemond. Instead, they would cut other secondary and tertiary characters.

A buildup plot stretching over two seasons would also allow to introduce and show the larger Realm and lay the groundwork for them to later turn Black or Green. The whole thing cannot work if we get a new important lord every other week during the Dance ... even more so if they just popped up for a subplot like Borros or Jeyne or Cregan to disappear into nothingness thereafter.

It could also help that we have basically two layers of conflict there - the conflict in the royal family and the conflict in the larger Realm ... not to mention the three-generational layer of Daemon-Otto, Rhaenyra-Alicent and Rhaenyra's children vs. Alicent's children.

The latter layer especially should be build up properly, not just with the Vhagar incident, but also why those young people weren't able to overcome the animosity of their elders.

[Jaenara Belarys]

6 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I want to know where to complain

Maybe send somebody with a lute and tell them to play The Rains of Castamere. 

[Ran]

Per Rothery's A.B.C. of Heraldry (1915), the earliest examples of the seahorse in medieval heraldry "closely resembles" the actual animal. The mythological animal entered heraldry later. So that particular aesthetic argument would be mistaken on a factual basis.

[Jaenara Belarys]

23 minutes ago, Ran said:

Per Rothery's A.B.C. of Heraldry (1915), the earliest examples of the seahorse in medieval heraldry "closely resembles" the actual animal. The mythological animal entered heraldry later. So that particular aesthetic argument would be mistaken on a factual basis.

That's a nice tidbit. Thank you. 

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Why would they care about stuff like that? HoD is what Enterprise was to TOS. They can update certain makeup styles, especially when dealing with characters who do have those specific purples eyes - like Rhaenyra or Aegon III whose deep purple eyes were apparently at least as poignant as Yennefer's.

Well, exactly. Why would they care to make such a change and then have to constantly answer questions about it? They wouldn't. The Targs in the show won't have purple eyes.

Quote

And for me that's not just limited to the Valyrian pricks - I also think that Jaime and Cersei and Tywin should have been green-eyed, the Baratheons blue-eyed, etc. ... but, especially, Tyrion should have had his mismatched eyes.

These superficialities are irrelevant to the story.

Quote

 

Nah, that would be a completely weird change. The information we got about the background/relationship of the various characters is that things really start at the beginning of the reign of Viserys I - Daemon is the presumptive heir of Viserys I until Rhaenyra is named, Alicent Hightower isn't queen yet (and thus also not the mother of any rival claimants), and Criston Cole isn't even a Kingsguard knight yet ... much less the Lord Commander who would eventually become a Kingmaker.

I guess that might still be able to race all the way to Viserys I's death at the end of season 1 ... but then we should already have (at least) heard by now that Aegon II and Aemond are/would be main cast members

 

I find the idea that they're going to spend more time on a very short novella than they did on entire thousand-page novels to be a bit far-fetched. The logical end-point for the first storyline is Viserys's death and the start of the Dance, and you can easily reach that point in ten hours (thankfully this is not a 6-8 season show like other projects are suffering from). The only reason why they might spend more than one season on The Rogue Prince is if they are adding a ton of brand-new storylines and subplots.

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Well, exactly. Why would they care to make such a change and then have to constantly answer questions about it? They wouldn't. The Targs in the show won't have purple eyes.

These superficialities are irrelevant to the story.

That would only be 'a contradiction' for folks who want to see it as a contradiction. If Rhaenyra had purple eyes, say, then this has literally nothing to do with Daenerys in GoT from the point of view of a person who never read the books.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I find the idea that they're going to spend more time on a very short novella than they did on entire thousand-page novels to be a bit far-fetched. The logical end-point for the first storyline is Viserys's death and the start of the Dance, and you can easily reach that point in ten hours (thankfully this is not a 6-8 season show like other projects are suffering from). The only reason why they might spend more than one season on The Rogue Prince is if they are adding a ton of brand-new storylines and subplots.

I'd agree with that if they had Aegon II and Aemond and Rhaenyra's sons as main cast members in the first season ... and if they were indicating they would not bother with the early reign of Viserys I and the background of Alicent and Rhenyra becoming heir and the Criston Cole thing. That could all have been Harrenhal and Robert's Rebellion-like background material for a Dance show. There was no need to bother with it the way they seem to be doing. Establishing that the Rhaenyra has a stepmother and doesn't get along with her and her half-siblings wouldn't necessitate them showing how her father marries that woman.

It would also be increasingly odd if they raced through events up to the beginning of the Dance and then took their time covering two+ years in nobody knows how many seasons the show will run. That would make the show look very weird ... and it couldn't be hidden since with Alicent's and Rhaenyra's children not being there at the beginning of the show we would see them growing up as the episodes progress.

In my opinion, the Dance proper has pretty much no show material at all. It is completely anticlimactic, it is episodic - a character pops up, does something for five minutes, and then they are dead or disappear again. And the main cast members, the people who should carry the plot, are absent as well. Rhaenyra grieves for the first year of the war, Daemon sits around at Harrenhal the entire time, Aegon II gets drugged and disappears effectively until the end of the story, etc.

If they were actually faithfully adapting this story this show would never get off the ground. Nobody would want to watch this. Add to that that most dragon battles take place early in the war, that the war doesn't have a proper climax/finale but ends with a pitiful whimper and things get even worse.

The one thing to make anything interesting which is based on that general framework is to make the characters involved compelling and interesting. And the way to do that is to make it personal. We have to understand who Rhaenyra and Alicent and Daemon and Criston Cole, etc. actually are before the war starts.

[zionius]

We got Laenor & Laena, maybe https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/04/29/14/42368850-9525555-image-a-81_1619703067552.jpg

[Jaenara Belarys]

33 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

If they were actually faithfully adapting this story this show would never get off the ground. Nobody would want to watch this. Add to that that most dragon battles take place early in the war, that the war doesn't have a proper climax/finale but ends with a pitiful whimper and things get even worse.

 

What about the Muddy Mess? 

 

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

If they were actually faithfully adapting this story this show would never get off the ground. Nobody would want to watch this. Add to that that most dragon battles take place early in the war, that the war doesn't have a proper climax/finale but ends with a pitiful whimper and things get even worse.

 

Why will they not have purple eyes? The purple eyes seem to be the most common color for the Targaryens. 

[Sotan]

2 hours ago, zionius said:

We got Laenor & Laena, maybe https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/04/29/14/42368850-9525555-image-a-81_1619703067552.jpg

I wonder who this lady is? 

https://i.redd.it/rho7i8aut4w61.jpg

[The Dragon Demands]

2 hours ago, zionius said:

We got Laenor & Laena, maybe https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/04/29/14/42368850-9525555-image-a-81_1619703067552.jpg

Other than the platinum blonde wigs I'm not entirely sure

 

[The Dragon Demands]

@Ran

Hey...someone leaked out a photo of the canceled Long Night pilot. From the cave at Grotto del Turco; it's Naomi Watts in full costume. Same costume as before but with a cape this time. 

 

[Sotan]

Just now, The Dragon Demands said:

Other than the platinum blonde wigs I'm not entirely sure

 

You're not sure because you don't like the look, or you don't know who they are? 

[The Dragon Demands]

I'm not sure if they're main cast, much less make out the actors. For all we know they're handmaids etc.

[Sotan]

You have a point. 

[The Dragon Demands]

But who the heck is the blonde woman with the double peaked black hat with a gold border?

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/04/29/14/42368858-9525555-image-a-78_1619703060025.jpg