Yesterday evening, George R.R. Martin published an entry in his “Not a Blog” blog called “Beware the Butterflies.” In that post, he did something he’s never done before – critiqued the work of Ryan Condal and HBO for their House of the Dragon adaptation.
In sum, Martin’s blog post (which has since been deleted but you can check out the webarchive link here) outlines the one key issue it seems he held with the second season of House of the Dragon, and it’s largely to do with Blood & Cheese.
Martin regards the first two episodes of the show as “well written, well directed, powerfully acted.” But, he finds the Blood & Cheese segment to be an indication of a wider problem within the show, in that it is cutting out certain elements of Fire & Blood for seemingly no reason.
By not having the character Maelor in the show, Martin believes this causes a butterfly effect of missing out a tragic moment that’s in the books, which causes the suicide of another character. That suicide still happens, according to Martin, but without any proper reasoning. As mentioned, the blog has since been taken down, likely due to a bonfire happening at HBO right now or due to Martin thinking he spoke too harshly, but it’s a dire look for House of the Dragon to have the source material creator go after it in such a way. Not even in the throes of Game of Thrones Season 8 did Martin stand up so boldly for his work.