War is certain — or so Daemon Targaryen hopes.
The cunningly arrogant prince leads a strategy meeting inside the torchlit gloom of Dragonstone castle.
“I want patrols along the island’s perimeter,” declares the glowering Daemon, clad in all black with long, silver-blond hair. “Conscript the dragon riders, they’re capable fighters … we have Syrax, Caraxes and Tyraxes and …”
Smith, pauses. What’s the name of the fourth dragon again?
“Ah, for fuck’s sake!” Smith yells. “No fucking fuck! I want … ah fuck it!
Actor Emma D’Arcy, who portrays the free-spirited princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, sympathizes: “All the dragons have weird names with Xes in them!”
“I literally got to the point where I thought I was naming Santa’s reindeer,” Smith admits.
House of the Dragon’s character names — and its dragons most definitely count as characters — have been a source of discussion. HBO’s highly anticipated Game of Thrones prequel series is based on George R.R. Martin’s 700-page book Fire & Blood, which chronicles the history of House Targaryen and its dragon-riding royal family. The author aims for authenticity, and real-life dynasties tend to have a lot of repetitive names and suffixes (England had 11 kings named Edward, after all). So early in the writing process, Dragon showrunner Miguel Sapochnik pointed out to his fellow showrunner Ryan Condal they were going to have, for instance, a Princess Rhaenyra and a Princess Rhaenys unless they started making tweaks to Martin’s mythology.
“You know we have to change some names,” Sapochnik told Condal.
And Condal replied: “We can’t.”
Which firmly established that the production would take a staunchly loyalist approach to adapting Martin’s complex world.
“I’ve been a fan of these books for 20 years,” Condal explains. “I was a fan of Game of Thrones — I watched the pilot the night it aired on HBO and every episode after. You can’t follow Thrones, it’s the Beatles. I’m setting out as a fan to make the thing I want to see, and I’m happy with what we’ve achieved. The Targaryens are like the Jedi in Star Wars, where you heard about this time when they were plentiful and powerful and always wanted to see that. And now you get to.”
But making the first follow-up to what was arguably the biggest hit of the 21st century was an epic struggle nearly as high-stakes and dramatic as the show itself. Just figuring out which story to tell from Martin’s numerous books about Westeros and Essos took years of painstaking effort and a slew of talented writers and executives. Hundreds of millions were spent and a few heads ended up on spikes.
And it all started the moment Game of Thrones began to end.
