House of the Dragon showrunner calls Maelor’s omission a “compromise”

The season premiere of House of the Dragon unveiled the anticipated Blood and Cheese arc from George R. R. Martin’s Fire and Blood. The adaptation has sparked mixed responses from fans due to substantial deviations from the source material, such as the exclusion of Maelor. It appears that George R. R. Martin himself was not in agreement with these changes.

Ryan Condal addresses Maelor Targaryen’s absence

Following George R. R. Martin’s rant on his now-deleted post about the various changes in House of the Dragon, Condal got on to the show’s official podcast. Talking about Maelor, the youngest son of Aegon II and Helaena, he said,

“Maelor who is– who is the third son, who’s a little older in the book, would have been an infant because of the age of Jaehaerys and Jaehaera. And, you know, frankly, this goes back to our first season and trying to adapt a story that takes place over 20 years of history, instead of a story that takes place over 30 years of history.”

“And we had to make some compromises in rendering that story so that we didn’t have to recast the whole cast multiple times and really, just frankly, lose people. I mean, we were walking right up against the line with it in season one, and I think we did– I think we did a really great job. And I think the response to season one sort of extolls that.”

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Ryan Condal talks about the consequences of omitting characters

Condal is well aware of how the storyline would change by removing certain characters from the story. He explained, “But the casualty in that was that our young children in this show are very young, very, very young, because we compressed that timeline. So those people could only have children of a certain age and have it be believable, where it didn’t feel like we weren’t hewing to the realities of the passage of time and the growth of children in any real way. 

And people look at that stuff. And particularly with a show like this, they look at it very closely. So it was a choice made. It did have a ripple effect, and we decided that we were going to lean into it and try to make it a strength, instead of playing it as a weakness.”

Read More: Ryan Condal doesn’t think Blood and Cheese episode is like the Red Wedding

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