‘House of the Dragon’ Just Set Up Its Most Controversial Book Deviation Yet

With House of the Dragon well into its third season, it has made a habit of not following George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood too closely. Showrunner Ryan Condal and his writers have shown no reluctance to put their own spin on the source material, a freedom they have justified by pointing to the book’s own framing of history as an unreliable and often contradictory thing. The season three finale, however, has put in place what is arguably the show’s most contentious departure from the page so far.

Maelor Targaryen is the name of the game.

According to Martin, Maelor is the youngest of Helaena and Aegon II’s brood and his very presence ushers in some of the war’s more sinister turns. Not so on HBO. The character has been conspicuous by his absence since the “A Child for a Child” premiere of season two, where fans saw how the lack of a third sibling changed the dynamic of the Blood and Cheese affair, robbing it of some of its psychological edge. Most put it down to the demands of screen time until “Tumbleton” came along and Helaena told Alicent she was with child.

Read Also: ‘House of the Dragon’: Is Aemond the Real Father of Helaena’s Unborn Child?

That news set the fandom abuzz. It is a structural anomaly; in the novels, Helaena has all three of her children before the Dance of the Dragons even gets underway. And while one might think the father is Aegon II, the show’s timeline makes that hard to reconcile. After the mauling he took at Crows’s Rest, Aegon was quite clear that he was done siring heirs.

The discrepancy has given rise to a more scandalous conjecture on the internet: Aemond. There is an intimacy between him and Helaena in the series that you won’t find in the text. Even if season two put a strain on them over Helaena’s refusal to send Dreamfyre into the fray and her unsettling prophecy about Aemond’s end, the groundwork for a paternity twist seems to be there.

Then there is the matter of what this child will do to the story. In Fire & Blood, Maelor’s awful death is what compels Daeron to burn Bitterbridge in a vengeful fit and sends Helaena to her own demise. By holding off on his birth, the writers have an opportunity to rework those fates entirely.

Expect a close examination of the plot. Martin has been open about his displeasure with the show’s handling of Maelor, telling readers on his blog after season two that such changes to the lineage would have a butterfly effect on the last two seasons. We will have to wait and see if this pregnancy is meant to make amends with the author or if it is a wholesale reworking of the Bitterbridge tragedy. One thing is certain: as the series heads for its final act, the writing room is still ready to play with fire.