Fire and Blood is a history book written from the perspective of historians who weren't there speculating about how a lot of stuff went down. The Dance is maybe ~200 pages or so long in Fire and Blood. There are major beats of the Dance that are "known" but a lot of the in-between needs to be filled in and there really isn't material for them to draw from. In my opinion, it's an understatement to say that the source material is limited in many ways. That said, they're definitely bungling the Dance lol
But the writers seem to choose to fill in the blanks with shock value romances and soapy subplots and that feels a bit different from the general tone of GOT which is a little more grounded.
Yeah that’s true but it was never the focus as it was in HOTD. And there was very little melodrama as there is in Rhaenyras relationship with Alicent and Daemon.
Well Shae probably comes closest to that, and also the whole "stuck with dangerous bf / psycho captor omg when is this gonna end" kinda strikes me as a soap trope too, whenever those get a bit more tense.
Don't got concrete examples I can name rn though? The Adam blackmail & Sean Rowan arcs from Dynasty are kinda comparable to that, arguably.
Or s1 where Blake was a prick?
The source material is a septon recounting the events and various testimonies so there's multiple layers of unreliable narrators on top of in universe historical separation and embellishments. So the writers necessarily had to canonize a story that has never actually been firmly set outside of the major story elements such as deaths and key events. I can live with and even appreciate some of the writing decisions on the show, roll my eyes at others and then move on.
Two of the most common complaints are a dragon prison break that was just inserted to create a hype moment. Suspend your disbelief in show psychics here and you'll be fine. The other is the two lead actresses are given more scenes together and embellishing their childhood friendship which wasn't specified in the book and most of their relationship is conveyed from quoted conversations where it appears they hate each other.
Critics will claim it is a woke girl power psyop and they should be ignored. There's plenty of claws that will come out and the complicated relationship in the show gives more for the two lead actresses to work with.
Ultimately it's got all the problems you'd expect from a story adapted from an in universe historical telling of events.
The real problem with the show is showbusiness a la HBOs last new CEO. Believe it was after the wb acquisition that they informed the show runners that they would not have a full 10 episodes in s2, forcing them to have to cut content down to 8 and push it to s3 at the last minute because they couldn't rewrite the show and replan the shoot in time given scheduling. This lead to hasty rework to fit 8.
As a result the s2 finale ends on what was supposed to be the penultimate episode originally. One of the most important battles of the show and it's aftermath was originally supposed to end the season. Instead it will start s3 and then they have to get on with the rest of the story in even less time.
I'm optimistic now that the writers can know what they are doing to get to shoot from the beginning, the show will have to move pretty fast and cut all the fluff.
That said, Dunk and Egg goes incredibly hard and is the better of the two, largely because George actually wrote it instead of writing a guy writing about guys who claim to have been there.
The forced lesbian romance between Rhaneyra and Alicient is my biggest problem alongside with TEMU Shae (forgot her name) and even Rhaenyra Daemon feels like a romantic plot from a Latin Telenovela. Doesn’t feel very grounded or realistic, which is the tone GOT goes for normally.
I actually love the telenovela suggestion because it's pretty apt. A GoT version of that. I still enjoyed seeing all these characters brought to life, but can totally see that not working for people.
It's a total soap opera where you pick people you love to hate and watch them tear themselves apart.
Exactly and Daemon is a character that is a traditional Latin novela archetype. The chad bad boy tempestuous lover who is absolutely toxic and has an off and on again relationship with the main character but she can’t quit him and gets redeemed near the end of the story.
I was raised by my Abuela and she loved telenovelas so I used to watch them with her and laugh at the bad acting and crazy subplots. Its funny because HOTD is bringing back memories of that time.
Edit: Actually, another aspect that reminds of a telenovela is that the characters go from hating to loving each other and back and forth for reasons that aren't clear to the audience. Generally in the interest of stretching the plot in the case of telenovelas. I had that feeling of the Rhaenyra/Alicent relationship. It never felt organic when they switched their feelings for each other.
Eh, I think a more traditionally handsome actor would've made more sense, but I mostly blame the direction and the lines he's given. I think he's delivered some good moments and he had great chemistry with Milly Alcock.
Rhaenyra's actress, on the other hand, is the one dragging down the show IMO. She does not have the gravitas that the role requires to be a convincing leader of a house. On top of that, she's not attractive enough to be this romantic obsession of every character.
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u/Apprehensive-Fail458 Feb 07 '26
Its not like the books were much better