Warning: Full spoilers follow for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 1, “A Son for a Son.”
House of the Dragon Season 2 has finally arrived, and with it comes one of the most notorious moments in the history of Westeros: the awful event known by fans of the George R.R. Martin book series as Blood and Cheese.
In Season 2, Episode 1, Matt Smith’s Daemon hatches the plot that leads to what has been described as the “Red Wedding” of House of the Dragon. After Rhaenyra’s son Luke is killed in the Season 1 finale in a dragon chase with Alicent’s boy Aemond, Daemon seeks revenge. And so with Rhaenyra in mourning, he hires a brutal member of the City Watch – that would be Blood – and a ratcatcher – that would be Cheese – to infiltrate the Red Keep. His orders, in the TV version anyway, are to kill Aemond. But when asked by Cheese what they should do if they can’t find Aemond, Daemon simply stares back at the killer… and the camera cuts to the next scene.
Indeed, what follows is not the murder of Aemond, but of the child Prince Jaehaerys, the son of Aemond’s brother King Aegon II. I spoke to Smith, Emma D’Arcy (Rhaenyra), Olivia Cooke (Alicent), and other major members of Team Black and Team Green about this startling and brutal development.
The Cast Responds to Blood and Cheese
“I think the overriding emotional effect that that has on [Daemon] subsequently is it makes him stare into the abyss,” Smith said of the child being killed instead of Aemond. “And when a man stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back. I think ultimately it triggers something that unnerves him psychologically. I think they’re sort of umbilically connected, Rhaenyra and him, and there’s something… The absence of her screws with him.”
The members of Team Black who I spoke to agreed that Daemon’s culpability in what happened to Jaehaerys does not make them undeserving of the Iron Throne, even if they feel bad for Team Green.
“I watched it only once, but as far as I’m concerned, his instructions were pretty clear as to who he wanted dead,” said Steve Toussaint (Corlys). “It’s the incompetence of the people he sent that resulted in what happened. So no, I don’t think… Other than the fact that he just wants blood for blood. We can talk about that.”
Are we forgetting the first strike wasn’t ours? -Matt Smith
Smith also points to the loss Team Black took recently – the death of Luke. While it was last season for us, it’s only been days for the characters.
“Are we forgetting the first strike wasn’t ours?” says Smith. “Do you know what I mean? Let’s not forget that.”
When I suggest that Luke’s death was an accident, Smith says it “doesn’t matter” and D’Arcy takes exception to the theory.
“I don’t think that’s the dominant narrative at all,” they say.
‘A Living Nightmare’
Meanwhile, over on Team Green’s side of the aisle, there’s Phia Saban, who plays Queen Helaena, the mother of Jaehaerys who is forced to choose which of her children will be killed. She says that shooting that scene was scary because she wanted to make sure she did it well.
“That’s the most obvious thing in the world, but I think I had to really try to put that aside in order to focus on the reality,” she says, while explaining that everything changes for Helaena in that moment. “I think it’s a living nightmare, genuinely. I think that there’s not so much in her world that makes her feel safe. And I think that her kids being part of that, or even just simply part of her routine, it just throws absolutely everything upside down. And she needs her mom so much. That motherhood thing that they have together, it just becomes really important what that dynamic is. It’s all about what you need – needing each other.”
Tom Glynn-Carney plays King Aegon II, and while we don’t see his character’s reaction to his son’s murder in the season premiere, the actor promises that Aegon is brokeon “on a cellular level.”
He adds: “The first time I read the scripts, there was an option to go one of two ways, I think. Either play as if it was a personal slight towards him, or something that has just viscerally happened on an atomic, chemical level in his body. … I think it fully damaged him to an irreversible level, which fuels the rest of the narrative.”
How Blood and Cheese Plays Out in the Book Fire & Blood
The Season 2 premiere of House of the Dragon adapted one of the most notorious stories in George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood: the sadistic saga of Blood and Cheese. While the show made some notable changes from how things played out in the book, in both cases the end result was the same: young Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen is brutally murdered.
In the book, hired killers “Blood” and “Cheese” are sent by a go-between of Prince Daemon’s (said to be Mysaria, aka Lady Misery aka the White Worm) to exact revenge on Team Green for the death of Lucerys Targaryen. In the book, Blood is a former Gold Cloak while in the show he’s still a member of them. Fire & Blood doesn’t explicitly state who the dastardly duo are hired to kill. “Some say their quarry was the king himself,” it says, but Aegon is protected by the Kingsguard and ratcatcher Cheese didn’t know any way to get in and out of Maegor’s Holdfast undetected. The Tower of the Hand, however, was less secure so Blood and Cheese target Dowager Queen Alicent’s bedchamber because they know it’s customary for Queen Helaena to bring her three young children there to see their grandmother every night before bed.
Once inside her quarters, Blood and Cheese gag Alicent and strangle her bedmaid. They then wait for Helaena and her kids – Prince Jaehaerys, his twin, Princess Jaehaera, and youngest brother Prince Maelor – to arrive. When they do, Blood bars the door while Cheese snatches up Maelor. Cheese warns them not to scream, telling Helaena: “An eye for an eye, a son for a son.” He demands that Helaena pick one of her sons to die and if she takes too long then Blood will rape Jaehaera. And if she won’t choose they’ll kill all of them.
A weeping Helaena ultimately selects Maelor (who, unlike Jaehaerys, is not Aegon’s immediate heir). “You hear that, little boy? Your momma wants you dead,” Cheese taunts. In the book, the duo play a cruel bait and switch where Blood kills Jaehaerys instead, decapitating him with one single blow of his sword in front of his family. While we don’t see Jaehaerys’ murder in the show, gruesome sound effects make clear that his throat is slit and his head sawed off with a knife as Helaena flees with Jaehaera. In the book, the murder of Jaehaerys – and knowing that she had chosen Maelor to die – of course weighs heavily on Helaena. Indeed, she couldn’t even come to look upon Maelor, who is given to Alicent to raise. The impact of this incident irrevocably alters Helaena, but will avoid saying more for now about that.
In the show, Alicent is not present for Jaehaerys’ execution nor is her bedmaid slain. Alicent isn’t sleeping with Ser Criston Cole when Blood and Cheese strike in the book. The show makes it appear that Cheese is the one responsible for targeting Helaena as they initially were seeking out Aemond Targaryen before Cheese spots Helaena’s quarters. It’s also left unclear just how much approval Daemon gave them to kill Jaehaerys should they not find Aemond. (Blood and Cheese walk right past a drunken but heavily guarded Aegon while infiltrating the Red Keep.)
Mysaria’s role in the case of Blood and Cheese is minimized in the TV version. While she is seen being offered a deal by Daemon to provide him with intel in exchange for her freedom, Mysaria plays no active part in recruiting the pair of killers as she does in the book.
The episode’s most notable change from the book is the complete absence of Maelor, who has yet to appear as a character on House of the Dragon. Maelor’s exclusion removes an element of the “Sophie’s Choice” that Helaena is forced to make and eliminates the guilt that so deeply impacts her in the book. (It also eliminates the surprise of Blood killing Jaehaerys instead.) Time will tell how grief affects Helaena in the HBO series.
Cooke agrees that the Blood and Cheese story will have a huge impact not just on the Team Black versus Team Green dynamic, but also on Alicent in a variety of ways.
“She feels so responsible because she was with Cole [Fabien Frankel] and he should have been making sure that castle was like Fort Knox and instead his mind was elsewhere,” says Cooke. “And so she feels so shameful and so guilty and she’s utterly, utterly devastated. And I think she lives with that guilt. And you see how that sort of manifests in the way she then operates within the castle, and she’s on damage control massively because she knows that this is just the start of what’s to come.”
We’ll soon see what’s to come from House of the Dragon as Season 2 is now in full swing. Let us know in the comments what you thought of how the show adapted the Blood and Cheese story.
