House Of The Dragon Skipped A Lot Of George R.R. Martin's Lore About The North, And It Gives Me A Bad Feeling About The Shorter Season 2
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Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 premiere of House of the Dragon, called "A Son for a Son."
The premiere episode of House of the Dragon Season 2 delivered plenty for people to talk about while waiting for Episode 2, ranging from the brutality of "Blood and Cheese" to a dog being kicked while assassins broke into the Red Keep. It's easy to overlook what started the premiere in light of how it ended, particularly since Cregan Stark and Jacaerys' time in the North was reduced to one sequence early on.
While the screentime was surely a treat for any who have been missing the Starks and the North since Game of Thrones' series finale back in 2019, readers of George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood know that there was a lot of lore that didn't make the cut from the book to the show.
Now, I say "lore" rather than "story" because – as with almost everything in George R.R. Martin's fictional history Targaryen book – there are multiple sources telling slightly different stories of what happened when Jace went North. But all of those sources agree that more happened than Jace visiting the Wall and Cregan promising 2,000 "greybeards" to fight for Rhaenyra. So, let's look at what happened in Fire & Blood for why the changes to the story in the North make me a little concerned about how Season 2 is going to be shorter than Season 1 when I was previously only optimistic.
What Happened In The North, According To George R.R. Martin
Spoilers for George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood through the chapter called "The Dying of the Dragons – A Son for a Son."
It's normal in any book adaptation for changes to be made from page to screen, and most of them don't really matter. Will it change the course of House of the Dragon that Jace's meeting happened during the summer rather than the autumn, like in Fire & Blood? I doubt it. Was the Season 2 premiere incomplete without the full paragraph of exposition about Cregan's origin as Lord of Winterfell? No.
The points that are presented as undisputed facts from Fire & Blood are that Cregan gave Jace a warm welcome while the North was preparing for the coming winter, but the Targaryen prince didn't stay long because "snow and ice and cold made Vermax ill-tempered." The two came to an agreement, as George R.R Martin writes:
This we do know: Cregan Stark and Jacaerys Velaryon reached an accord, and signed and sealed the agreement that Grand Maester Munkun calls 'the Pact of Ice and Fire' in his True Telling. Like many such pacts, it was to be sealed with a marriage. Lord Cregan's son, Rickon, was a year old. Prince Jacaerys was as yet unmarried and childless, but it was assumed that he would sire children of his own once his mother sat the Iron Throne. Under the terms of the pact, the prince's firstborn daughter would be sent north at the age of seven, to be fostered at Winterfell until such a time as she was old enough to marry Lord Cregan's heir.
While these book details were omitted from HOTD's return, Cregan dropped some cryptic comments about the Wall that seemed designed as callbacks to Game of Thrones more than anything else. (His comment about King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne's dragons refusing to fly over the Wall did come from Fire & Blood, though.)
In this particular chapter of Fire & Blood, there were some stories about Jace's trip to the North that were juicy, but differed from source to source. According to Munkun, Cregan and Jacaerys "took a liking to each other" since Jace reminded the Stark lord of his late younger brother, and they "swore an oath of brotherhood, sealed in blood." According to Septon Eustance, Jace spent most of his visit with Cregan trying to persuade him to "give up his false gods and accept the worship of the Seven."
The court fool known as Mushroom provided the most salacious tale, as was the case with what happened between Daemon, Rhaenyra, and Criston Cole. According to Mushroom, Jace fell in love with Cregan's bastard half-sister, Sara Snow, and "he lay with her of a night." Sara told her brother that Jace had married her secretly in the Winterfell godswood. Mushroom also claimed that Vermax "left a clutch of dragon's eggs at Winterfell," but other sources dismissed this, since Vermax was – as far as anybody could tell – male and had never produced any eggs.
Why I'm Getting Nervous About Season 2 After Jace's Trip North
Perhaps I'm a bit biased due to my love of the Starks in Game of Thrones, but I would have preferred to get more of George R.R. Martin's lore in Season 2 of House of the Dragon when it comes to the North, which might have been possible with ten episodes instead of a season trimmed down to eight. The details of the "Pact of Ice and Fire" would have been interesting, at the very least. I also won't get into spoilery details too far ahead, but some of what happened with Jace securing the support of the North could be pretty pivotal in future seasons.
More than House of the Dragon leaving out the facts of the Pact of Ice and Fire, though, I would have loved to see the show settle what truly occurred and what was false from the pages of Fire & Blood. That's what happened when Mushroom's tale of Daemon smuggling Rhaenyra to brothels was used in the show, rather than one of the less scandalous options from Fire & Blood that seemed more likely.
HOTD could have shown a blood oath of brotherhood between Jace and Cregan, introduced Sara Snow if she did in fact ever exist, and/or revealed if Vermax did leave any eggs at Winterfell. (I don't think we need HOTD to confirm that Jace didn't fly North to preach the Faith of the Seven.) The scene that aired in the first episode of the 2024 TV schedule felt like dropping the bare bones of exposition before moving back to conflict within the Targaryen family tree, and I feel like that might not have had to happen if Season 2 produced ten episodes like Season 1 instead of just eight.
Co-creator Ryan Condal explained the reasoning behind opening Season 2 in the North, saying to EW that that had been the hope for a long time but that "as fun as that sequence is, beyond Cregan agreeing to send soldiers South, there isn't any real inherent drama in that scene."
If House of the Dragon could skip out on adapting, confirming, and/or debunking the Winterfell rumors from Fire & Blood, what else could be skipped in this shorter second season? It's already curious that certain key book characters haven't been confirmed for the show, and it remains to be seen what Laenor faking his death means for Seasmoke as one of the dragons of House of the Dragon.
Did I love that HOTD changed Fire & Blood's lore about Daemon killing his first wife or that Alicent was absent from Blood and Cheese? Maybe not, but I can imagine that Jace's trip North might have been meatier if there was more time in Season 2 to spend outside the Dance of the Dragons.
All of this said, House of the Dragon is about the Targaryens, not the Starks for those of us who were Team North during the Game of Thrones days, and I'm looking forward to what else Season 2 has in store. New episodes of House of the Dragon air on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and can be found streaming with a Max subscription.
