Is House Of The Dragon Based On A George R.R. Martin Book? Yes And No
Let's talk Targaryen history.
It’s well known the Game of Thrones HBO series was based on the unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire novels by author George R.R. Martin, a man notoriously slow at releasing new work. But what about the new show, House of the Dragon — is that based on a George R.R. Martin book series as well? The answer is a bit complicated.
Although readers are still awaiting The Winds of Winter more than a decade after A Dance with Dragons was released, Martin hasn’t been idle. He’s released several other books, some of which are A Song of Ice and Fire prequels, a few of which, like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, are in various stages of development at HBO. (Apparently, it’s easier to make a show about Westeros when there’s a book to follow.)
One of those books, Fire & Blood, is a 300-year history of the Targaryen dynasty. Martin has only published Volume 1 of the two-parter, carrying the reader through the first 150 years and the Targaryen inter-family conflict known as “The Dance of Dragons.” That last section, and the events that brought it about, are at the heart of House of the Dragon’s story.
However, when asked about adapting Fire & Blood at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, Ryan Condal said that he and co-showrunner, Miguel Sapochnik, had not used the book that much for the HBO show. Fire & Blood is not like A Song of Ice and Fire — the five books of the latter series are novels with scenes and dialogue, descriptions of houses, landscapes, food, and first-person experiences of battles, travel, and relationships. Fire & Blood is not. It’s a history book, a fantasy textbook covering the histories, with chapters of Targaryen history.
That overview angle is part of why Martin was able to knock Fire & Blood out quickly while only making slow progress on The Winds of Winter. Because he didn’t have to flesh out the conversations, the relationships, the day-to-day adventures, and the thoughts of these characters, he could just put down the events in order and leave the rest up to the reader’s imagination.
But a show requires the fleshing out of characters, internal monologues, and relationships, so Condal and Sapochnik had to come up with everything on their own. Although they followed the outline in the book, there’s a level where they did not use Fire & Blood, because they couldn’t; that stuff wasn’t there.
In that sense, a reader could go out and read Martin’s book and come away with no significant spoilers for the show, since what the show adds is the stuff Fire & Blood never had in the first place.
House of the Dragon premieres on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022, at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and streams simultaneously on HBO Max.
