2 Attachment(s)
House Of The Dragon Has A Different Book Problem To Game Of Thrones
George R.R. Martin has told the story House of the Dragon will be adapting, but while that gives it an advantage over Game of Thrones it'll still face some issues in translating the work from book to screen. The Game of Thrones prequel will draw from Martin's Fire & Blood, a history of House Targaryen; more specifically, it will tell the story of the Targaryen Civil War known as the Dance of the Dragons, nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones. Martin himself is a co-creator on the show (alongside Colony's Ryan Condal, who serves as co-showrunner with Miguel Sapochnik), but it could still face some book problems.
While Game of Thrones started off adapting Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, it caught up with and largely overtook the books by around season 5. Martin outlined many of his key ending points to showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, but they had to craft the remaining journeys and ultimately destinations mostly on their own, robbed of the blueprint that had guided them for so long. That is largely considered to be the decisive factor in Game of Thrones season 8 and overall ending being so controversial, and it's not hard to imagine things might've been better had Martin managed to finish the books before they got to that point.
House of the Dragon doesn't have that problem, since the story of the Dance of the Dragons has already been told: unlike questions such as who claims the Iron Throne, the winner of the Targaryen Civil War and much of its fallout has already been confirmed by Martin in his works, so it shouldn't have an ending problem in that regard. It does, however, have its own unique challenges. Fire & Blood is not a novel in the way the A Song of Ice and Fire books are, but rather a history book told as though written by Archmaester Gyldayn, and he himself is drawing on other historical accounts for much of his information, and both of those aspects, while core to Fire & Blood, will pose some difficulties for House of the Dragon.
In particular, House of the Dragon's storytelling will likely have to be more decisive and definitive than what has been presented so far about Targaryen history. Much of what's known about the Dance of the Dragons comes from a combination of sources: there is Gyldayn himself, using various methods of research and giving his own opinions; then are are the writings of two people who were there at the time, Septon Eustace, who served during the reign of King Viserys I Targaryen, and Mushroom, a court fool for Viserys. Both were around for many of the events before, during, and after the Dance of the Dragons, but have very different accounts; the examination of those, the differences in who did what and when, not to mention the far more salacious details offered up by Mushroom, all add to the intrigue of this storyline. Unless House of the Dragon does have some narration (which so far there's no indication of), then it will need to essentially show what "really" happened. That should still be a compelling story, but could lose some of what makes this history so compelling, mysterious, and fun.
Similarly, House of the Dragon also has to make this a much more active story. The book reads like the historical text it is supposed to be, but the Game of Thrones prequel has to be much more present in its storytelling. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as it should allow for the story to be driven much more by the characters (who can be further fleshed out), but does show there's less of a blueprint for this series to work from, which could be freeing but also means there's a chance to get things wrong too. This isn't too dissimilar from another book problem Game of Thrones faced, which is that A Song of Ice and Fire is all told via point-of-view chapters, which wouldn't work on TV. In that regard, the show did a great job of adapting Martin's books, and hopefully House of the Dragon can overcome its own challenges as well.
