This intense focus on Maelor being included is a little baffling though. He mentions in the blog post that Maelor survives Blood & Cheese only to be brutally torn apart by a mob later on. I certainly don’t fault House of the Dragon writers for not necessarily wanting to include that, though I do understand where Martin is coming from. He argues that Maelor’s exclusion will likely cause a Butterfly Effect, if it hasn’t already, that could mean other characters and events from the book aren’t included in the series at all. According to Martin, events like the Bitterbridge scene and Helaena’s death by suicide wouldn’t have the same impact or narrative power without Maelor. It’s not so much that Maelor is uniquely important as it is that the people connected to him are likely to be affected by his exclusion from the series.
And yet, Martin’s arguments would be much stronger if he also acknowledged the limitations that House of the Dragon faces, especially when compared to Game of Thrones. HBO’s parent company isn’t under the same leadership it was back in the Thrones days. Under Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s tenure, the company is a lot less interested in creating art for art’s sake than it is making as much money as possible off of existing IP, as evidenced by how much of their own content they’ve essentially erased off of the internet. WBD is also struggling financially under the new regime, leaving less money to spare for epic (and expensive) fantasy series like House of the Dragon. Stock is tanking and the company is 38 billion dollars in debt according to their most recent earnings report.
Martin’s argument’s may be valid, but they are missing the point of the greater conversation happening around House of the Dragon. He doesn’t take into account the bigger picture of what’s happening behind the scenes, missing the point entirely.
The entire post seems eager to point the blame at Ryan Condal and the writers, with the last line of his post the most cutting of all. He says “And there are larger and more toxic butterflies to come, if House of the Dragon goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for seasons 3 and 4…” This directly calls out the changes being made in the series in an inflammatory way, and sets up hardcore fans of Martin on a potential warpath for any changes made in House of the Dragon moving forward.
It’s hard to take Martin’s complaints as more than just the petty grievances when he displays them as such. Martin is an executive producer for the show, it’s not like he couldn’t grab lunch or coffee with Ryan Condal to air his grievances if he truly wanted to. The blog post does mention that he’s had conversations with Condal about the show, but Martin doesn’t say how extensive those conversations were. He acts like Condal has simply blown off his concerns, which could very well be true, but this still doesn’t feel like the right way to handle this situation.
