What did George R.R. Martin criticize about House of the Dragon? Contents of the deleted blog post explored

Not long back, House of the Dragon's co-creator George R.R. Martin, whose acclaimed work the series is based on, spoke about how he wanted to speak his mind about the things he felt were wrong in the first two seasons of House of the Dragon. Not a very vocal critic of the adaptations so far, this led to an alarming reaction amongst fans.

Living up to his promise, the A Song of Ice and Fire author finally spoke his mind on his new blog post, titled "Beware the Butterflies," which he has since deleted. The explosive criticism went at length about the changes that Ryan Condal and his team incorporated and how they are directly related to the story of the series.

The two major elements Martin called out were the treatment of Blood and Cheese in the series and the elimination of Aegon's youngest son, Maelor, whose absence, according to the author, changes the graph of the story completely.

He emphasized the butterfly effect caused by the absence of Maelor and even warned that the series could go down a further negative path in the upcoming two seasons if the changes that are planned as of now are executed.

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What did George R.R. Martin point out about House of the Dragon in his latest blog post?

In his since-deleted blog post, George R.R. Martin spoke in detail about the things that went wrong with the Fire and Blood adaptation, and most of it was with respect to the differences from the novel. Martin singled out the second season premiere as the turning point, where the sequence with Blood and Cheese was altered significantly.

He said in the blog post that the few changes, like Haelena not being given the choice given to her in the book and the absence of Maelor, Aegon's youngest son, are important beats in the story that significantly weakened the series from its literary counterpart.

Martin admitted that he initially agreed to Condal's plan of removing Maelor, but it did not quite shape up so conveniently.

Martin wrote in his blog post:

"When Ryan Condal first told me what he meant to do, ages ago (back in 2022, might be) I argued against it, for all these reasons,” Martin wrote. “I did not argue long, or with much heat, however. The change weakened the sequence, I felt, but only a bit."

He said he understood Ryan's decision based on the restraints on the budget from HBO, but claimed that this would have grave repercussions in the long run for House of the Dragon.

Martin continued, explaining his point:

"He is a small child, does not have a line of dialogue, does nothing of consequence but die… but where and when and how, that does matter. Losing Maelor weakened the end of the Blood and Cheese sequence, but it also cost us the Bitterbridge scene with all its horror and heroism, it undercut the motivation for Helaena’s suicide."

He added:

"None of that is essential, I suppose… but all of it does serve a purpose, it all helps to tie the story lines together, so one thing follows another in a logical and convincing manner."

It seems most of the problems that George R.R. Martin pointed out about House of the Dragon are based on the story that the series chose to adapt. He has not criticized any other aspect of the television show, like some that fans had pointed out.

But Martin also warned that the third and fourth seasons of House of the Dragon will also suffer if such small changes are incorporated into the story as that could lead to big repercussions. He claimed that there were plans to do exactly that in the next two seasons.

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Martin has since then deleted this blog post about House of the Dragon, but the content of the post is doing the rounds on all prominent social media platforms.