Much has been made of how the House of the Dragon (HotD) show has adapted the characters of Blood and Cheese from the novels, and their impact on the story. I will cover some spoilers in this post but will mark them out. For those not in the know Blood and Cheese are two characters who appear in the first episode of the second season of House of the Dragon. Their main contribution is to assassinate a child and set in motion later parts of the plot.
*** Spoilers For the Show and Novel Begin ***
For those who haven’t read the book, it differs from the show. The book has three children, two boys and one girl. Blood and Cheese force the mother to choose which of her sons die, after being forced to choose, the assassins kill the other one, making a point to let the surviving son know his mother picked him to die.
In the show there are just one boy and girl and the mother is forced to identify which is the boy. This summary doesn’t fully do the scene justice as the book is quite well written and packs a lot of punch in the page or so that covers this event. Likewise, the show does itself little favors by having this scene be shot in a weird way. The issues involve introducing Blood and Cheese in a strangely comical tone, having the mother uncover an affair immediately afterward, and also featuring some lackluster acting.
While there are deserved criticisms for these factors, I have seen much of the discussion focus on the lack of the second son, and the knowledge his mother picked him to die. I think this is misguided for a number of reasons.
- This boy doesn’t really factor into the plot much later. We never see any real impact of this choice on him, as it is unclear how much of this he was capable of understanding.
- The scene is brutal enough without the psychological torture
- It allows them to skip having another kid die on screen
Admittedly, points #1 and #3 are connected. This second son, Maelor, would go on to be killed by a mob later on in the conflict. While there is some question about whether this was done intentionally or as an accident, it’s still pretty brutal and leads to his corpse being dismembered. As with his older brother’s death, this event largely indulges George R. R. Martin’s love of human depravity and the brutality of the conflict in the books.
*** Spoilers For the Show and Novel End ***
Thus, this simple change allows the show creators to tone down the intensity of the scene, and also avoid having to include the death of a child later on. While I agree that this scene was poorly done, with lots of very strange choices in how it was shot and acted, it was a solid decision from a writing standpoint. I think people don’t always realize or may have forgotten some of the events that are still yet to come in this show. In the book this war is pretty brutal with lots of cruelty towards innocents, as well as some pretty brutal animal cruelty coming (in the next 1-2 seasons). Furthermore, the show has been trimming episodes, featuring only 8 for this season. Ideally, this will allow them to focus on other plot lines which achieve the same effect as the novel, without having to set up and pay off additional character deaths.
HotD and Game of Thrones have a reputation for excessive violence and gore. While I think there may be an argument for including this as a message about the nature of man, it can also become a flaw if it becomes the focus of the show, or if the creators revel in it. I think the approach to Blood and Cheese in the show was a fundamentally smart approach that doesn’t get credit. While I agree that it was executed poorly, that still doesn’t mean it was a bad idea.
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