Adaptations are a tricky business, especially when you’re translating a world as vast and complex and infused with magic as George R.R. Martin’s. Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss discovered that the hard way when their series outpaced the author’s writing, forcing them to fill in the blanks in a fantasy madlibs exercise that tainted the legacy the show’s first few seasons had earned. It wasn’t that every off-book turn was bad, but whether you quiz a show fan or someone who’s read every installment in Martin’s Ice & Fire universe, they’ll probably offer the same answer as to when GoT took a turn for the worse. (Somewhere in season five, we’d argue).
All that to say, jumping ship and navigating un-plotted waters in Westerosi lore is a brave, foolish thing to do. And yet, House Of The Dragon’s fourth episode does just that – reimagining one of the defining battles of the Dance of Dragons to elevate it beyond its source material. And that seems to be a consistent storytelling theme of Ryan Condal’s series, a show that’s basically flipping the middle finger to the “but the book is better” crowd, to the benefit of both readers and watchers alike.
Drawing like for like comparisons to Martin’s work is futile and pretentious, most of the time. If you enjoy his books, great, but if you come to this place for the dragons and the witches and the ice zombies, that’s okay too. We (and Nicole Kidman) welcome you. But with HoTD, things feel different. This is a show that rode the coattails of another prestige drama to inception, one that exists thanks to the success of Weiss and Benoiff’s work. It’s also a series that was handicapped from the get-go by its predecessor, given the unenviable task of curating all of GoT’s good will, while distancing itself from the backlash of its final season. Essentially, House of The Dragon needed to be the best of both worlds – HBO’s and Martin’s. To do that, Condal and company have been taking bold, storytelling risks, few more fascinating than the Battle of Rook’s Rest.
To explain fully, we’ll have to break our own rule and reference Martin’s Fire & Blood novels. (Apologies.)
In the book, the Battle of Rook’s Rest serves as a devastating blow for both the Blacks and the Greens. A squabble over a minor castle that’s meant to bolster each side’s image more than strategically advance their position, the Greens hope to take the Crownland keep to cut off Dragonstone – Rhaneyra’s power seat – from the rest of Westeros. The Blacks hope to keep one of their council members happy by protecting their interests. It’s a political move – and a personal quest for revenge for Criston Cole – on both page and screen, with a few key additions. In the book, Aemond and Cole’s plot to divert their attentions from Harrenhal to Rook’s Rest is a calculated move that everyone seems on board with. Aegon rides into battle with Aemond, the two a seemingly united front against Rhaenys and her dragon, Meleys. But HoTD retcons that choice, painting Aegon as a sullen manchild out of his depth at his council’s table and within his own family. He’s undermined by the brother he’s taunted and bullied his entire life, humiliated by his inability to speak his mother tongue or scheme a few steps ahead like his younger sibling. And his Hand, the man who serves as his most trusted advisor, has been holding secret meetings with the royal spare, planning his war without his knowledge. It takes sibling rivalry to a whole new level, and sets the stage for Aegon’s choice to defy the good council of his mother, ride into battle drunk on a young, inexperience mount, and waste the element of surprise both Cole and Aemond have worked so hard for. It also paves the way for Aemond’s betrayal, his choice to hold Vhagar back, let Aegon take to the skies on his own and have fate decide the outcome.
Aemond knows Meleys is larger than Sunfyre, that Rhaenys is more formidable than his brother, and that the chances Aegon could be seriously injured or killed are far to high to simply sit back and wait. But he does, only intervening to use the excuse of rescuing his king from certain death to set his brother (and torturer) on fire. If the brothers ride into battle together, book-style, this deception and betrayal doesn’t happen, and Aemond’s unbothered response to seeing the charred remnants of his attempted fratricide doesn’t hold the same weight.
Nor does Rhaenys’ sacrifice, one that differs from her book counterpart’s in key ways. On the page, Rhaenys is already patrolling Rook’s Rest, surprised by the attack and hoping for aide from Rhaneyra during the battle. On the screen, Rhaenys volunteers for the fight, suspecting that she’ll meet at least one dragon in the air, making for an emotional sendoff with Meleys at Dragonstone. She nearly defeats Sunfyre and maneuvers a path of escape for herself before turning back, intent on ending the conflict by ending Aemond.
In the book, she and Meleys are trapped on both sides in a downward spiral that ends only with Vhagar emerging unscathed. In the episode, however, the choice to attack not once, but twice, hoping for victory but expecting death, feels like a callback to Rhaenys’ controversial act of mercy in season one. Back then, she could’ve ended the war – and, according to Aemond, saved Lucerys’ life – by burning the Hightowers to a crisp. She didn’t, holding out for peace, counseling Rhaneyra to do the same even after the death of her child and an assassination attempt, trying to stem the bleeding of her House. Perhaps, for Rhaenys, the Battle of Rook’s Rest is a somber epiphany, a final realization that she can’t prevent any of this, that the war didn’t start with a stolen crown or a damaged eye or a passed over heir. It always was, because the men in power always are. But without the choices HoTD made in changing up episode four, that moment – in all its frustrating, heartbreaking glory – wouldn’t have landed as hard.
House of the Dragon has a track record of enriching its source material, one that’s not confined to just this battle. The show has done it by altering Alicent and Rhaenyra’s relationship, turning them from foes to friends and putting them under a microscope so that we could witness the injustices (big and small) they faced as women in this patriarchal hellscape. The series has done it with Daemon, a rogue prince given more emotional motivation than his apathetical shit-stirring counterpart on the page, with Viserys, a paranoid old man who loved his daughter fiercely until the very end, with Laenor’s death and Alicent’s affair and the Blood & Cheese tragedy. Flipping the script with Rook’s Rest isn’t unprecedented, it’s proof HoTD is perhaps even more exciting of a show than its predecessor because it’s willing to take risks and take it’s time setting up their payoffs.
Sorry to say, none of that makes watching dragons die any easier though.