Blood and Cheese in the book is propaganda against Rhaenyra, says Ryan Condal

Ryan Condal, the showrunner of House of the Dragon, discussed the portrayal of the infamous Blood and Cheese event from George R.R. Martin’s book Fire and Blood in an exclusive interview with Westeros.org. He explained that the scene in the series was adapted to fit the show’s vision and practical production constraints while emphasizing the idea that historical accounts can be biased.

Read More: Ryan Condal doesn’t think Blood and Cheese episode is like the Red Wedding

Condal explains the themes of propaganda in Blood and Cheese

Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson, who run Westeros.org and have helped George R.R. Martin write many of his books, interviewed showrunner Ryan Condal regarding House of the Dragon Season 2. You can watch the full interview here:

The Blood and Cheese scene is brutal and clear-cut in Fire and Blood. The scene plays out very differently in the show than in the book. However, Condal suggested that this account may be a form of propaganda against Rhaenyra Targaryen. Condal said:

“I understand the scene from the book is one of the most spelled out things. But when we started considering the production practicalities, the reality of getting two very small children of that age to act, which you cannot do. So we would have had to radically age up the children, and then you run into the problem of things that you can actually expose children to on set. So if you were playing a scene with a knife to the child’s throat, you would have had to be doing a lot of double work and cutaways and things like that.”

“Not to say that you totally couldn’t do it. It just really hampered our ability to approach the scene. So we decided to just sort of open it up and say, okay, well, if we were just going in with this is the concept and with the idea that the events of Blood and Cheese, as chronicled in the history, were somewhat of a, call it a propaganda against Rhaenyra, what is the most awful version that Alicent would have recounted to historians, or that would have gotten around the castle to impugn Rhaenyra and Daemon as the blackest of villains and their, their weird, incestuous whatever black magic is going on over there on Dragonstone.”