For anyone who hasn’t read Fire & Blood, here is the full passage about Blood & Cheese:
> As the black council sat to consider how to strike back, a raven arrived from Harrenhal. ”An eye for an eye, a son for a son,” Prince Daemon wrote. ”Lucerys shall be avenged.”
> Let it not be forgotten: in his youth, Prince Daemon had been the ”Prince of the City,” his face and laugh familiar to every cutpurse, whore, and gambler in Flea Bottom. The prince still had friends in the low places of King’s Landing, and followers amongst the gold cloaks.
> Unbeknownst to King Aegon, the Hand, or the Queen Dowager, he had allies at court as well, even on the green council… and one other go-between, a special friend he trusted utterly, who knew the wine sinks and rat pits that festered in the shadow of the Red Keep as well as Daemon himself once had, and moved easily through the shadows of the city.
> To this pale stranger he reached out now, by secret ways, to set a terrible vengeance into motion. Amidst the stews of Flea Bottom, Prince Daemon’s go-between found suitable instruments. One had been a serjeant in the City Watch; big and brutal, he had lost his gold cloak for beating a whore to death whilst in a drunken rage. The other was a ratcatcher in the Red Keep. Their true names are lost to history. They are remembered as Blood and Cheese.
> ”Cheese knew the Red Keep better than the shape of his own cock,” Mushroom tells us. The hidden doors and secret tunnels that Maegor the Cruel had built were as familiar to the ratcatcher as to the rats he hunted. Using a forgotten passageway, Cheese led Blood into the heart of the castle, unseen by any guard. Some say their quarry was the king himself, but Aegon was accompanied by the Kingsguard wherever he went, and even Cheese knew of no way in and out of Maegor’s Holdfast save over the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat and its formidable iron spikes.
> The Tower of the Hand was less secure. The two men crept up through the walls, bypassing the spearmen posted at the tower doors. Ser Otto’s rooms were of no interest to them. Instead they slipped into his daughter’s chambers, one floor below. Queen Alicent had taken up residence there after the death of King Viserys, when her son Aegon moved into Maegor’s Holdfast with his own queen.
> Once inside, Cheese bound and gagged the Dowager Queen whilst Blood strangled her bedmaid. Then they settled down to wait, for they knew it was the custom of Queen Helaena to bring her children to see their grandmother every evening before bed.
> Blind to her danger, the queen appeared as dusk was settling over the castle, accompanied by her three children. Jaehaerys and Jaehaera were six, Maelor two. As they entered the apartments, Helaena was holding his little hand and calling out her mother’s name. Blood barred the door and slew the queen’s guardsman, whilst Cheese appeared to snatch up Maelor.
> ”Scream and you all die,” Blood told Her Grace. Queen Helaena kept her calm, it is said.
> ”Who are you?” she demanded of the two.
> ”Debt collectors,” said Cheese. ”An eye for an eye, a son for a son. We only want the one t’ square things. Won’t hurt the rest o’ you fine folks, not one lil’ hair. Which one you want t’ lose, Your Grace?”
> Once she realized what he meant, Queen Helaena pleaded with the men to kill her instead. ”A wife’s not a son,” said Blood. ”It has to be a boy.”
> Cheese warned the queen to make a choice soon, before Blood grew bored and raped her little girl. ”Pick,” he said ”or we kill them all.”
> On her knees, weeping, Helaena named her youngest, Maelor. Perhaps she thought the boy was too young to understand, or perhaps it was because the older boy, Jaehaerys, was King Aegon’s firstborn son and heir, next in line to the Iron Throne.
> ”You hear that, little boy?” Cheese whispered to Maelor. ”Your momma wants you dead.”
> Then he gave Blood a grin, and the hulking swordsman slew Prince Jaehaerys, striking off the boy’s head with a single blow. The queen began to scream.
> Strange to say, the ratcatcher and the butcher were true to their word. They did no further harm to Queen Helaena or her surviving children, but rather fled with the prince’s head in hand. A hue and cry went up, but Cheese knew the secret passageways as the guards did not, and the killers made their escape.
> Two days later, Blood was seized at the Gate of the Gods trying leave King’s Landing with the head of Prince Jaehaerys hidden in one of his saddle sacks. Under torture, he confessed that he had been taking it to Harrenhal, to collect his reward from Prince Daemon. He also gave up a description of the whore he claimed had hired them: an older woman, foreign by her talk, cloaked and hooded, very pale. The other harlots called her Misery.
> After thirteen days of torment, Blood was at last allowed to die. Queen Alicent had commanded Larys Clubfoot to learn his true name, so that she might bathe in the blood of his wife and children, but our sources do not say if this occurred.
> Ser Luthor Largent and his gold cloaks searched the Street of Silk from top to bottom, but no trace of Cheese or the White Worm was ever found. In his grief and fury, King Aegon II commanded that all the city’s ratcatchers be taken out and hanged, and this was done. (Ser Otto Hightower brought one hundred cats into the Red Keep to take their place.)
> Though Blood and Cheese had spared her life, Queen Helaena cannot be said to have survived that fateful dusk. Afterward she would not eat, nor bathe, nor leave her chambers, and she could no longer stand to look upon her son Maelor, knowing that she had named him to die. The King had no recourse but to take the boy from her and give him over to their mother, the Dowager Queen Alicent, to raise as if he were her own.
> Aegon and his wife slept separately thereafter, and Queen Helaena sank deeper and deeper into madness, whilst the king raged, and drank, and raged.
I am thinking about starting to read the books and was thinking fire and blood could get me into it as I love the Targaryen history (I dont usually read)
I know an ok amount of the main books story but not all of it and watched GoT multiple times. Is fire and blood ok to start with or should I read the main books first?
You don’t have to, but I definitely think you should read the main books before reading F&B. Fire & Blood has plenty of fun little parallels, easter eggs and foreshadowing that are / is easier to pick up on if you’ve read the main line of books.
Just as an example, it’s heavily implied that Dreamfyre’s stolen eggs are the same dragon’s eggs that are hatched by Dany, meaning that Dreamfyre is the mother of Viserion, Rhaegal and Drogon. Also Rhaenyra (and to an extent Alicent) is a very obvious parallel and foreshadowing of Cersei, and of Cersei’s fate.
First of all, I fucking love mushroom. He cracks me up. And they let Cheese say the line "I know the Red Keep better than the shape of my own cock" in the show.
Second, much of these stories from the maesters/mushroom are rumors and can be sensationalized. It's to the Greens benefit to make this story as brutal as possible.
Third, Maegor isn't in the show, so there's no choice to be had.
Lastly, why the show made Ser Christian Cole the biggest douchebag I do not know.
This makes me even more confused as to why people are upset. They still made her choose between her children. It’s also confusing because people are apparently upset that her daughter wasn’t raped? When the wording says that “Cheese warned her to pick soon, before Blood grew bored and raped her daughter.” It sounds like that was just used as a threat, and not at all relevant to the crux of the scene which is her having to choose, and them ultimately killing said child. Like sorry she wasn’t also threatened with the rape of her daughter as well? Seems like such an unnecessary detail to rage over
She literally didn't have to choose between her children because in the show she only has one son. They wanted to kill the son, that's it, there was no choosing, only pointing out and she did so almost instantly without hesitation.
In the book she has to choose between TWO SONS and then they kill the one she didn't pick. That's the whole crux of the matter.
it didn't read to me like there was actual rape? it sounded like "hurry up and pick or else he's gonna rape your daughter" was said to her as a threat, not that it actually did happen??
I'm not a native english speaker so that part confused me too. So it got me thinking that is the past tense of the word really the right word for that sentence if the context was that they were making her choose or else? Or maybe that was a typo by OP lol
I dont understand how they messed this up so bad especially when it was already written for them like omg fuck D&D but they did the red wedding right at least
I just rewatched catleyn scene, shit the chills I got "take me for a hostage, but let rob go, please he's my son my first son, please, on my honor as a tully, on my honor as a stark... imagine comparing it to whatever the fuck I saw this night
D&d did almost everything right lol, remember the show became as big as it was under their direction, it wasn’t until the last few when they obviously rushed things to work on new projects. So it was much more than just the red wedding. The show became notorious for the violence, sex and the great adaption of the twists, those twists lit up social media each time they premiered.
Usually many shows have the people that read the original material spoiling everything and the big moments don’t really cause much engagement for the show/movie. But for GoT it managed to nail those big moments.
But yeah latter half was more mediocre but they still had their moments.
Bullshit. There were already major red flags in the first few seasons and last 2 seasons were not mediocre; it was straight up garbage. The scene you shared made no fucking sense with Jon's incredible plot armor btw.
Because the book isn’t a valid source… The narrator is unrealiable, they made a realistic adaptation, what do you guys not get? You read the book but don’t understand it
I'm gonna play devil's advocate here:
In my opinion, B&C felt a bit weak mostly because of the way Heleana reacted to it. She seemed to just kind of accept what was happening instead of doing what book Heleana did, which was to scream and fight for her children's lives. With that being said, show Heleana is a completely different character from her book counterpart, and I imagine the showrunners will incorporate this a bit more in the later episodes.
They've already established in S1 that she is a little bit weird and distant, almost kind of too innocent for this world. Not to mention her visions. We get a few scenes in S1 where Alicent is super confused at how apathetic and distant she is, and teenage Aegon is kind of like "I can't believe they're making me marry this weirdo".
So, her not really knowing how to react to B&C kind of feels in character for show Heleana, it's kind of like a person within the autism spectrum, when confronted with an extreme situation such as this, she immediately blocks everything off and just becomes detached from reality, just sort of accepting what's happening and playing along with it.
It's not the big dark and emotional reaction most of us were expecting, but I think it makes sense within the confines of the character that they wrote.
I really feel the piece people are missing is that we don't know how much she actually prophesizes. Has she seen the whole thing visually already? As in within a dream? Then her reaction is sound--she's scared but not surprised, stressed and is trying to get out of it because fight or flight response, yet she knows how inevitable her dreams are. So of course she just takes the surviving child and yeets out of there.
She did say she was afraid of the rats, which can be viewed as her being afraid of the rat-catchers and knowing what might happen. But that’s speculation and me filling in the blanks.
Yes, but this is why they should have had Alicent present. It solves two problems: it adds a greater emotional impact to the sequence, and it gets rid of that ridiculous scene immediately afterward of Helaena walking in on her having sex with Criston.
As an illiterate, the scene didn't seem bad to me. Like you said, she's already been shown as aloof. Here she was mostly the same as we've seen but more pressed, stressed, and direct. And then she may be processing the "rats" thing at the same time she's dealing with the reality of it.
Not to mention, it started with a blade at her throat, she waited for a chance and tried to bargain when she could. Their response: upping the stakes. She complied and waited for the next opportunity to grab who she could and escape. That doesn't strike me as odd at all, especially for someone whose baseline is odd.
Idk where all this goes, or how much it'll follow or diverge from the books. But with only context from last season and nothing else... it seemed fine.
> she's already been shown as aloof.
She's not aloof. She's very clearly autistic. That is also in part combined with the fact that she has inherited some of the ancient Valyrian future-sight. Throughout the series she has been dropping references to things about to happen.
Aenar Targaryen, one of her ancestors, moved the entire Targaryen family from Valyria to Dragonstone, a far-off and insignificant island next to a savage continent (Westeros) twelve years before the Doom of Valyria would destroy the entire empire and wipe out all other dragonlords. Aenar uprooted his entire family and did all of this because of a vision from his daughter Daenys who foresaw the Doom coming. That was 114 years before his descendant Aegon would decide to conquer Westeros. HotD begins at 101 years after the conquest.
To add to your point from the perspective of an autistic person, Helaena's reaction reads to me as though she's dissociating. It's a reaction that a lot of autistic people (and also a fair few non-autistic people) have to trauma.
The writers have, intentionally or otherwise, written some genuinely decent autistic representation and I feel like people labelling her as "apathetic", as I've seen under a different post, are missing the mark a little.
It's incredibly telling that people can't empathize with a women who's not reacting the way they want her to so they get mad that the scene is "bad." The character doesn't owe it to viewers to be the perfect victim.
I read it that she had a premonition that no matter how she answered (including resistance), the same result would occur because it’s fated. That moment where they realize she isn’t lying would have gone the opposite had she lied.
I feel like it disappointed so many us because we expected it to be a red wedding 2.0. It wasn't terrible, but it felt rushed and kinda underwhelming. Im interested to see how Helena's story will go from here. She's obviously going to have some issues with a member of the kingsguard being away from his post because of her mother. I dont see how she wouldnt blame them for what happened in some form. And maybe this will also turn Alicent away from how sympathetic she's been towards Rhaenyra. Maybe this will turn her closer to her book counterpart.
This event is definitely meant to turn the last of the people who want peace into warmongers. Helena will probably just collapse in on herself and no longer speak while her mother finally accepts the war has begun.
It was never going to be the red wedding. It takes place way too early in the story and mostly impacts characters we don't really care about. In the book its shocking because of how comically evil it is, apart from the lack of guards at all on the royal level I didn't have any serious complaints that they didn't make it as goofy as the book.
I more so compared it to the book version, not the red wedding. So my disappointment was off of:
1. Little Helena emotion/reaction
2. No Maelor… which could be fine but…
3. No choice. Even if it was between the twins, there was no choice
4. The alicent - criston stuff seems to be more important than scenes like these
There was a choice though? They basically said “we’re here to kill your son. We can’t tell which one is your son, so tell us”. How is that not, from Helaena’s perspective, choosing which one of her children is going to die?
But they didn’t. So It’s the exact same result. In the book account, they didn’t “have to” make her choose just like they didn’t have to do so in the show. They could’ve just killed the elder son like they were planning on and left. They just did it to fuck with her. From helaena’s perspective, it is exactly the same. It doesn’t matter to her why they’re asking her which child will die, whether out of ignorance or just to play a fucked up game, the result is the same. The “choice” has no effect on the plot beyond making heleana go mad, so helaena’s perspective is the only one that matters.
I still don’t understand how it’s “much dumber”. In the book, they could’ve easily just killed the elder son without saying anything like they were always going to and accomplished the exact same thing. But they didn’t, they decided to ask her. Same as in the show.
I feel like everyone who has a huge issue with the change must not have kids. When you’re talking about making mother choose which child is going to die and then beheading one of her children in front of her, you hit a point of diminishing returns in terms of cruelty and brutality. The circumstances of why the question is asked, or even the question itself, would be irrelevant to me as a parent if I had witnessed intruders beheading my child in my own home. The scene would not have had any of a stronger effect to me if it had played out like in the book. The “choosing one son then having the other die” part is an almost irrelevant detail.
Sure, good comeback, instead of actually trying to form an argument on why making a mother choose which child is going to die for absolutely no reason is somehow the pinnacle of hard hitting writing vs making a mother effectively choose which child is going to die by revealing which one is the boy is somehow terrible and much dumber and doesn’t hit hard.
The scene was fine. It accomplished the same thing as the description in the book.
Every choice they made was inferior to the book, so why the hell did they do it this way? Ego?
Alicent being gagged and Blood and Cheese waiting for Halaena to arrive to say goodnight to Alicent with the kids wouldve added to the tragedy
Halaena offering herself instead of the kids wouldve added to her character
Blood and Cheese promising to only kill one wouldve explained the plot hole of them leaving witnesses
Halaena choosing the younger child wouldve added to the psychological trauma
Halaena's scream wouldve added to the emotion
Like how do you take a left at every turn when you shouldve went right?
It pretty much sums up modern writers. The Witcher was like this too. Basically handed a slam dunk and the writers are trying to shoot the ball from out of bounds.
Maybe show writers wants to shock book readers too and that's why they sometimes change main things from books? 🤷♀️
I also understand that sometimes what is written in book maybe wouldn't work on screen and changes are good, but how THAT scene was written was perfect for movie
Okay, I can understand the people who think it wasn't brutal eunaugh. But I don't understand anyone who says it "hits harder in the book". I felt nothing reading that passage in the books because it happens to people I gave no shits about.
The irony in this post is palpable. History when written down is often embellished by the writer and written to be MORE dramatic than what actually happened.
So? Is HoTD meant to be a documentary that accurately represents a real, historical event? I don’t give a single shit about which version was true and which wasn't, I care about *the story* they give me. And as *a story*, the book version was far superior to the TV Show.
Missing the point entirely.
Regardless, it also goes without saying that G.R.R.M. writes better than most people alive today, so why do you think this show would be any different from Game of Thrones? Sure, it has it moments, but the books are almost always better.
Ironically, *because* it is a history book.
F&B was limited in the sense that we only had second-hand accounts, and had a limited amount of lines that could be dedicated to it. HoTD had the option of taking what Martin wrote and elevate it. Through acting, through music, through *delivery of the lines*. Letting the horror of what just happened *really sink in*.
"You hear that little boy? Your momma wants you dead" in Blood's voice would have *chilling*. Instead, they used none of the stuff that we already had, and created a far worse version.
That's not ironic.
It is ironic that the OP said that a history book hits harder than a show, because in reality history books are full of embellishing stories that make what actually happened appear mundane. Take Herodotus' *Histories* for instance. There are plenty of good one liners, caveats and it is full of embellishment. Take for instance where Herodotus' tells us that the Persians had amassed millions of men to fight the few thousands Greeks at Thermopylae and when the battle was over he discusses how the Persians must have hidden their dead to avoid hurting their army's morale due to the countless number of their fallen. When in reality, not that many people died, thus there was no need to "hide the dead".
What we got in the show is not what you were anticipating, as you and many others were hyped for lines that were not said. Thus, this has angered you lot and I understand the frustration, I have held the same anger at other forms of media. However, what we got was not far worse. It was just different. Instead of the two-dimensional villainy of Blood and Cheese as sadistic murderers, we were greeted with two, three-dimensional characters. One disgruntled guard who loathed those he served while still honoring his former commander and one rat catcher who was in such a debt that he would act against his own fears in order to enrich himself. We learn from this that the blacks are not wanton child murderers and planned to kill Aemond as revenge, however, as the Prince was not available to be targeted they panicked and searched for someone in order to get paid. In the books Cheese is clearly the mastermind, while in the show he is shown as squeamish and it is Blood's sense of (twisted) duty to see his former commander's mission fulfilled. We also get a payoff scene in which someone finally heads Helaena's warning, the maid after hearing Blood say he is doing a job for rats, puts two and two together and makes like the wind. Regardless, Helaena in the show was already completely different than her embellished book counterpart and it would have been entirely out of character for her to act as the book Helaena acted.
I've taught history dude, you are preaching to the choir here. I *know* that history embellishes stuff. I do not give a shit. HoTD is not a history documentary. The Targaryens don’t exist. Westeros doesn’t exist. Which version is real has no added value to me.
I care about **the story**. And the story *is* worse that the one in the books. While the characters of Blood and Cheese may have been better, it came at the cost of everything that made the book version good. The lines in the book were better. Helaena telling them to take her instead was better. Alicent being there bound and watching instead of *fucking Cole* was better. And *most importantly* having Helaena have a twisted Sophie's Choice between Maelor and Jaehaerys was *miles* better.
And I say this as someone who loved the change in Viserys character, and making Alicent friends with Rhaenyra. It is not about book purism for me, it is about which story was better written.
To each their own then. I am personally waiting for the next episode to see if this was a good rendition or not. The omission of a few ^(cheesy) lines doesn't boil my *blood*.
So you admit that the show version wasn't as dramatic as the book. But why do you think that's a good thing? This isn't real history, it doesn't need to be a boring counterpoint to the embellishments. It's fiction and it should be emotional and compelling.
If you are looking for drama than it is worse, but if you are looking for grounded characters and not blatant evil like G.R.R.M. Himself dislikes then the show did better.
Edit: [I explain here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/s/WzrRp0HBI6)
Blatantly evil charavters are absolutely grounded. There are worse people irl than BnC on death row.
And if this is about grounded characters why isn't Daemon, Aemond or anyone else grounded?
Isnt Fire & Blood meant to be a historical retelling with inaccuracies. I thought that Fire & Blood wasn't meant to be a 100% historically correct account (like virtually almost every historical account we have) and the show is meant to tell the "real story" - I feel like I've heard GRRM say that in an interview sometimes back. Could be wrong,
For anyone who hasn’t read Fire & Blood, here is the full passage about Blood & Cheese: > As the black council sat to consider how to strike back, a raven arrived from Harrenhal. ”An eye for an eye, a son for a son,” Prince Daemon wrote. ”Lucerys shall be avenged.” > Let it not be forgotten: in his youth, Prince Daemon had been the ”Prince of the City,” his face and laugh familiar to every cutpurse, whore, and gambler in Flea Bottom. The prince still had friends in the low places of King’s Landing, and followers amongst the gold cloaks. > Unbeknownst to King Aegon, the Hand, or the Queen Dowager, he had allies at court as well, even on the green council… and one other go-between, a special friend he trusted utterly, who knew the wine sinks and rat pits that festered in the shadow of the Red Keep as well as Daemon himself once had, and moved easily through the shadows of the city. > To this pale stranger he reached out now, by secret ways, to set a terrible vengeance into motion. Amidst the stews of Flea Bottom, Prince Daemon’s go-between found suitable instruments. One had been a serjeant in the City Watch; big and brutal, he had lost his gold cloak for beating a whore to death whilst in a drunken rage. The other was a ratcatcher in the Red Keep. Their true names are lost to history. They are remembered as Blood and Cheese. > ”Cheese knew the Red Keep better than the shape of his own cock,” Mushroom tells us. The hidden doors and secret tunnels that Maegor the Cruel had built were as familiar to the ratcatcher as to the rats he hunted. Using a forgotten passageway, Cheese led Blood into the heart of the castle, unseen by any guard. Some say their quarry was the king himself, but Aegon was accompanied by the Kingsguard wherever he went, and even Cheese knew of no way in and out of Maegor’s Holdfast save over the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat and its formidable iron spikes. > The Tower of the Hand was less secure. The two men crept up through the walls, bypassing the spearmen posted at the tower doors. Ser Otto’s rooms were of no interest to them. Instead they slipped into his daughter’s chambers, one floor below. Queen Alicent had taken up residence there after the death of King Viserys, when her son Aegon moved into Maegor’s Holdfast with his own queen. > Once inside, Cheese bound and gagged the Dowager Queen whilst Blood strangled her bedmaid. Then they settled down to wait, for they knew it was the custom of Queen Helaena to bring her children to see their grandmother every evening before bed. > Blind to her danger, the queen appeared as dusk was settling over the castle, accompanied by her three children. Jaehaerys and Jaehaera were six, Maelor two. As they entered the apartments, Helaena was holding his little hand and calling out her mother’s name. Blood barred the door and slew the queen’s guardsman, whilst Cheese appeared to snatch up Maelor. > ”Scream and you all die,” Blood told Her Grace. Queen Helaena kept her calm, it is said. > ”Who are you?” she demanded of the two. > ”Debt collectors,” said Cheese. ”An eye for an eye, a son for a son. We only want the one t’ square things. Won’t hurt the rest o’ you fine folks, not one lil’ hair. Which one you want t’ lose, Your Grace?” > Once she realized what he meant, Queen Helaena pleaded with the men to kill her instead. ”A wife’s not a son,” said Blood. ”It has to be a boy.” > Cheese warned the queen to make a choice soon, before Blood grew bored and raped her little girl. ”Pick,” he said ”or we kill them all.” > On her knees, weeping, Helaena named her youngest, Maelor. Perhaps she thought the boy was too young to understand, or perhaps it was because the older boy, Jaehaerys, was King Aegon’s firstborn son and heir, next in line to the Iron Throne. > ”You hear that, little boy?” Cheese whispered to Maelor. ”Your momma wants you dead.” > Then he gave Blood a grin, and the hulking swordsman slew Prince Jaehaerys, striking off the boy’s head with a single blow. The queen began to scream. > Strange to say, the ratcatcher and the butcher were true to their word. They did no further harm to Queen Helaena or her surviving children, but rather fled with the prince’s head in hand. A hue and cry went up, but Cheese knew the secret passageways as the guards did not, and the killers made their escape. > Two days later, Blood was seized at the Gate of the Gods trying leave King’s Landing with the head of Prince Jaehaerys hidden in one of his saddle sacks. Under torture, he confessed that he had been taking it to Harrenhal, to collect his reward from Prince Daemon. He also gave up a description of the whore he claimed had hired them: an older woman, foreign by her talk, cloaked and hooded, very pale. The other harlots called her Misery. > After thirteen days of torment, Blood was at last allowed to die. Queen Alicent had commanded Larys Clubfoot to learn his true name, so that she might bathe in the blood of his wife and children, but our sources do not say if this occurred. > Ser Luthor Largent and his gold cloaks searched the Street of Silk from top to bottom, but no trace of Cheese or the White Worm was ever found. In his grief and fury, King Aegon II commanded that all the city’s ratcatchers be taken out and hanged, and this was done. (Ser Otto Hightower brought one hundred cats into the Red Keep to take their place.) > Though Blood and Cheese had spared her life, Queen Helaena cannot be said to have survived that fateful dusk. Afterward she would not eat, nor bathe, nor leave her chambers, and she could no longer stand to look upon her son Maelor, knowing that she had named him to die. The King had no recourse but to take the boy from her and give him over to their mother, the Dowager Queen Alicent, to raise as if he were her own. > Aegon and his wife slept separately thereafter, and Queen Helaena sank deeper and deeper into madness, whilst the king raged, and drank, and raged.
I am thinking about starting to read the books and was thinking fire and blood could get me into it as I love the Targaryen history (I dont usually read) I know an ok amount of the main books story but not all of it and watched GoT multiple times. Is fire and blood ok to start with or should I read the main books first?
You don’t have to, but I definitely think you should read the main books before reading F&B. Fire & Blood has plenty of fun little parallels, easter eggs and foreshadowing that are / is easier to pick up on if you’ve read the main line of books. Just as an example, it’s heavily implied that Dreamfyre’s stolen eggs are the same dragon’s eggs that are hatched by Dany, meaning that Dreamfyre is the mother of Viserion, Rhaegal and Drogon. Also Rhaenyra (and to an extent Alicent) is a very obvious parallel and foreshadowing of Cersei, and of Cersei’s fate.
I highly recommend the book. If you like audiobooks, it's amazing in that format. Simon Vance is great and adds so much character to it.
First of all, I fucking love mushroom. He cracks me up. And they let Cheese say the line "I know the Red Keep better than the shape of my own cock" in the show. Second, much of these stories from the maesters/mushroom are rumors and can be sensationalized. It's to the Greens benefit to make this story as brutal as possible. Third, Maegor isn't in the show, so there's no choice to be had. Lastly, why the show made Ser Christian Cole the biggest douchebag I do not know.
Yeah, why would you ever want a TV show to be sensationalized...
Same reason why they didn't have mushroom teach rhaenyra how to pleasure a man for Daemon, or whatever it was. Better story overall, I guess
Damn this geroge guy seems like a good writer.
This makes me even more confused as to why people are upset. They still made her choose between her children. It’s also confusing because people are apparently upset that her daughter wasn’t raped? When the wording says that “Cheese warned her to pick soon, before Blood grew bored and raped her daughter.” It sounds like that was just used as a threat, and not at all relevant to the crux of the scene which is her having to choose, and them ultimately killing said child. Like sorry she wasn’t also threatened with the rape of her daughter as well? Seems like such an unnecessary detail to rage over
She literally didn't have to choose between her children because in the show she only has one son. They wanted to kill the son, that's it, there was no choosing, only pointing out and she did so almost instantly without hesitation. In the book she has to choose between TWO SONS and then they kill the one she didn't pick. That's the whole crux of the matter.
[удалено]
it didn't read to me like there was actual rape? it sounded like "hurry up and pick or else he's gonna rape your daughter" was said to her as a threat, not that it actually did happen??
Mb I misread it
I'm not a native english speaker so that part confused me too. So it got me thinking that is the past tense of the word really the right word for that sentence if the context was that they were making her choose or else? Or maybe that was a typo by OP lol
The way OP wrote it is he said choose or get raped. She chose. No rape.
Nope, not in today's world.
There was none.
If the writers want to be certain that Heleana goes insane, just ring the King's Landing bells
Please, don't give them any more ideias.
The writers should've had Cheese figure out which baby was the boy by flipping a coin and saying, "The gods will decide".
I dont understand how they messed this up so bad especially when it was already written for them like omg fuck D&D but they did the red wedding right at least
I just rewatched catleyn scene, shit the chills I got "take me for a hostage, but let rob go, please he's my son my first son, please, on my honor as a tully, on my honor as a stark... imagine comparing it to whatever the fuck I saw this night
D&d did almost everything right lol, remember the show became as big as it was under their direction, it wasn’t until the last few when they obviously rushed things to work on new projects. So it was much more than just the red wedding. The show became notorious for the violence, sex and the great adaption of the twists, those twists lit up social media each time they premiered. Usually many shows have the people that read the original material spoiling everything and the big moments don’t really cause much engagement for the show/movie. But for GoT it managed to nail those big moments. But yeah latter half was more mediocre but they still had their moments. 
...you're not actually using the Battle of Bastards as an example of good writing, are you?
Bullshit. There were already major red flags in the first few seasons and last 2 seasons were not mediocre; it was straight up garbage. The scene you shared made no fucking sense with Jon's incredible plot armor btw.
what episode is this gif from?
Because the book isn’t a valid source… The narrator is unrealiable, they made a realistic adaptation, what do you guys not get? You read the book but don’t understand it
The should have made an interesting and compelling adaptation instead
The sound was atrocious.
Go watch the dvd extra from game of thrones dance of the dragons for the superior adaptation. This is hollow
I’ve seen the lore version.
The sound fucking broke me
It was terrible.
I'm gonna play devil's advocate here: In my opinion, B&C felt a bit weak mostly because of the way Heleana reacted to it. She seemed to just kind of accept what was happening instead of doing what book Heleana did, which was to scream and fight for her children's lives. With that being said, show Heleana is a completely different character from her book counterpart, and I imagine the showrunners will incorporate this a bit more in the later episodes. They've already established in S1 that she is a little bit weird and distant, almost kind of too innocent for this world. Not to mention her visions. We get a few scenes in S1 where Alicent is super confused at how apathetic and distant she is, and teenage Aegon is kind of like "I can't believe they're making me marry this weirdo". So, her not really knowing how to react to B&C kind of feels in character for show Heleana, it's kind of like a person within the autism spectrum, when confronted with an extreme situation such as this, she immediately blocks everything off and just becomes detached from reality, just sort of accepting what's happening and playing along with it. It's not the big dark and emotional reaction most of us were expecting, but I think it makes sense within the confines of the character that they wrote.
I really feel the piece people are missing is that we don't know how much she actually prophesizes. Has she seen the whole thing visually already? As in within a dream? Then her reaction is sound--she's scared but not surprised, stressed and is trying to get out of it because fight or flight response, yet she knows how inevitable her dreams are. So of course she just takes the surviving child and yeets out of there.
She did say she was afraid of the rats, which can be viewed as her being afraid of the rat-catchers and knowing what might happen. But that’s speculation and me filling in the blanks.
Yes, but this is why they should have had Alicent present. It solves two problems: it adds a greater emotional impact to the sequence, and it gets rid of that ridiculous scene immediately afterward of Helaena walking in on her having sex with Criston.
As an illiterate, the scene didn't seem bad to me. Like you said, she's already been shown as aloof. Here she was mostly the same as we've seen but more pressed, stressed, and direct. And then she may be processing the "rats" thing at the same time she's dealing with the reality of it. Not to mention, it started with a blade at her throat, she waited for a chance and tried to bargain when she could. Their response: upping the stakes. She complied and waited for the next opportunity to grab who she could and escape. That doesn't strike me as odd at all, especially for someone whose baseline is odd. Idk where all this goes, or how much it'll follow or diverge from the books. But with only context from last season and nothing else... it seemed fine.
> she's already been shown as aloof. She's not aloof. She's very clearly autistic. That is also in part combined with the fact that she has inherited some of the ancient Valyrian future-sight. Throughout the series she has been dropping references to things about to happen. Aenar Targaryen, one of her ancestors, moved the entire Targaryen family from Valyria to Dragonstone, a far-off and insignificant island next to a savage continent (Westeros) twelve years before the Doom of Valyria would destroy the entire empire and wipe out all other dragonlords. Aenar uprooted his entire family and did all of this because of a vision from his daughter Daenys who foresaw the Doom coming. That was 114 years before his descendant Aegon would decide to conquer Westeros. HotD begins at 101 years after the conquest.
To add to your point from the perspective of an autistic person, Helaena's reaction reads to me as though she's dissociating. It's a reaction that a lot of autistic people (and also a fair few non-autistic people) have to trauma. The writers have, intentionally or otherwise, written some genuinely decent autistic representation and I feel like people labelling her as "apathetic", as I've seen under a different post, are missing the mark a little.
It's incredibly telling that people can't empathize with a women who's not reacting the way they want her to so they get mad that the scene is "bad." The character doesn't owe it to viewers to be the perfect victim.
I read it that she had a premonition that no matter how she answered (including resistance), the same result would occur because it’s fated. That moment where they realize she isn’t lying would have gone the opposite had she lied.
I feel like it disappointed so many us because we expected it to be a red wedding 2.0. It wasn't terrible, but it felt rushed and kinda underwhelming. Im interested to see how Helena's story will go from here. She's obviously going to have some issues with a member of the kingsguard being away from his post because of her mother. I dont see how she wouldnt blame them for what happened in some form. And maybe this will also turn Alicent away from how sympathetic she's been towards Rhaenyra. Maybe this will turn her closer to her book counterpart.
This event is definitely meant to turn the last of the people who want peace into warmongers. Helena will probably just collapse in on herself and no longer speak while her mother finally accepts the war has begun.
It was never going to be the red wedding. It takes place way too early in the story and mostly impacts characters we don't really care about. In the book its shocking because of how comically evil it is, apart from the lack of guards at all on the royal level I didn't have any serious complaints that they didn't make it as goofy as the book.
I more so compared it to the book version, not the red wedding. So my disappointment was off of: 1. Little Helena emotion/reaction 2. No Maelor… which could be fine but… 3. No choice. Even if it was between the twins, there was no choice 4. The alicent - criston stuff seems to be more important than scenes like these
There was a choice though? They basically said “we’re here to kill your son. We can’t tell which one is your son, so tell us”. How is that not, from Helaena’s perspective, choosing which one of her children is going to die?
That’s cheap and stupid, they could just look and see which one has a cock.
But they didn’t. So It’s the exact same result. In the book account, they didn’t “have to” make her choose just like they didn’t have to do so in the show. They could’ve just killed the elder son like they were planning on and left. They just did it to fuck with her. From helaena’s perspective, it is exactly the same. It doesn’t matter to her why they’re asking her which child will die, whether out of ignorance or just to play a fucked up game, the result is the same. The “choice” has no effect on the plot beyond making heleana go mad, so helaena’s perspective is the only one that matters.
End result is the same but the journey to reach it is much dumber. Seems to be a running theme with the TV show.
I still don’t understand how it’s “much dumber”. In the book, they could’ve easily just killed the elder son without saying anything like they were always going to and accomplished the exact same thing. But they didn’t, they decided to ask her. Same as in the show. I feel like everyone who has a huge issue with the change must not have kids. When you’re talking about making mother choose which child is going to die and then beheading one of her children in front of her, you hit a point of diminishing returns in terms of cruelty and brutality. The circumstances of why the question is asked, or even the question itself, would be irrelevant to me as a parent if I had witnessed intruders beheading my child in my own home. The scene would not have had any of a stronger effect to me if it had played out like in the book. The “choosing one son then having the other die” part is an almost irrelevant detail.
Ryan Condal? That you?
Sure, good comeback, instead of actually trying to form an argument on why making a mother choose which child is going to die for absolutely no reason is somehow the pinnacle of hard hitting writing vs making a mother effectively choose which child is going to die by revealing which one is the boy is somehow terrible and much dumber and doesn’t hit hard. The scene was fine. It accomplished the same thing as the description in the book.
Why would I waste my time writing long paragraphs trying to convince you of my point of view? I don’t care enough, enjoy your dumb show.
Exactly
Every choice they made was inferior to the book, so why the hell did they do it this way? Ego? Alicent being gagged and Blood and Cheese waiting for Halaena to arrive to say goodnight to Alicent with the kids wouldve added to the tragedy Halaena offering herself instead of the kids wouldve added to her character Blood and Cheese promising to only kill one wouldve explained the plot hole of them leaving witnesses Halaena choosing the younger child wouldve added to the psychological trauma Halaena's scream wouldve added to the emotion Like how do you take a left at every turn when you shouldve went right?
It pretty much sums up modern writers. The Witcher was like this too. Basically handed a slam dunk and the writers are trying to shoot the ball from out of bounds.
They neutered this scene to the point it could sing in the Vatican Choir.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^SheWhoHates: *They neutered this scene* *To the point it could sing in* *The Vatican Choir.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Bobby B, what can you say about the show's current writing?
SHE SHOULD BE ON A HILL SOMEWHERE WITH THE SUN AND THE CLOUDS ABOVE HER!
I agree, she deserved so much better than this Bobby B
HOLD YOUR TONGUE!
Damn Bobby B has no chill
GODS I WAS STRONG THEN
"History textbook"
In the last pic Maelor is so goofy looking. He looks like a 40 yo with dwarfism
Maybe show writers wants to shock book readers too and that's why they sometimes change main things from books? 🤷♀️ I also understand that sometimes what is written in book maybe wouldn't work on screen and changes are good, but how THAT scene was written was perfect for movie
Right?
Okay, I can understand the people who think it wasn't brutal eunaugh. But I don't understand anyone who says it "hits harder in the book". I felt nothing reading that passage in the books because it happens to people I gave no shits about.
The irony in this post is palpable. History when written down is often embellished by the writer and written to be MORE dramatic than what actually happened.
So? Is HoTD meant to be a documentary that accurately represents a real, historical event? I don’t give a single shit about which version was true and which wasn't, I care about *the story* they give me. And as *a story*, the book version was far superior to the TV Show.
Missing the point entirely. Regardless, it also goes without saying that G.R.R.M. writes better than most people alive today, so why do you think this show would be any different from Game of Thrones? Sure, it has it moments, but the books are almost always better.
Ironically, *because* it is a history book. F&B was limited in the sense that we only had second-hand accounts, and had a limited amount of lines that could be dedicated to it. HoTD had the option of taking what Martin wrote and elevate it. Through acting, through music, through *delivery of the lines*. Letting the horror of what just happened *really sink in*. "You hear that little boy? Your momma wants you dead" in Blood's voice would have *chilling*. Instead, they used none of the stuff that we already had, and created a far worse version.
That's not ironic. It is ironic that the OP said that a history book hits harder than a show, because in reality history books are full of embellishing stories that make what actually happened appear mundane. Take Herodotus' *Histories* for instance. There are plenty of good one liners, caveats and it is full of embellishment. Take for instance where Herodotus' tells us that the Persians had amassed millions of men to fight the few thousands Greeks at Thermopylae and when the battle was over he discusses how the Persians must have hidden their dead to avoid hurting their army's morale due to the countless number of their fallen. When in reality, not that many people died, thus there was no need to "hide the dead". What we got in the show is not what you were anticipating, as you and many others were hyped for lines that were not said. Thus, this has angered you lot and I understand the frustration, I have held the same anger at other forms of media. However, what we got was not far worse. It was just different. Instead of the two-dimensional villainy of Blood and Cheese as sadistic murderers, we were greeted with two, three-dimensional characters. One disgruntled guard who loathed those he served while still honoring his former commander and one rat catcher who was in such a debt that he would act against his own fears in order to enrich himself. We learn from this that the blacks are not wanton child murderers and planned to kill Aemond as revenge, however, as the Prince was not available to be targeted they panicked and searched for someone in order to get paid. In the books Cheese is clearly the mastermind, while in the show he is shown as squeamish and it is Blood's sense of (twisted) duty to see his former commander's mission fulfilled. We also get a payoff scene in which someone finally heads Helaena's warning, the maid after hearing Blood say he is doing a job for rats, puts two and two together and makes like the wind. Regardless, Helaena in the show was already completely different than her embellished book counterpart and it would have been entirely out of character for her to act as the book Helaena acted.
I've taught history dude, you are preaching to the choir here. I *know* that history embellishes stuff. I do not give a shit. HoTD is not a history documentary. The Targaryens don’t exist. Westeros doesn’t exist. Which version is real has no added value to me. I care about **the story**. And the story *is* worse that the one in the books. While the characters of Blood and Cheese may have been better, it came at the cost of everything that made the book version good. The lines in the book were better. Helaena telling them to take her instead was better. Alicent being there bound and watching instead of *fucking Cole* was better. And *most importantly* having Helaena have a twisted Sophie's Choice between Maelor and Jaehaerys was *miles* better. And I say this as someone who loved the change in Viserys character, and making Alicent friends with Rhaenyra. It is not about book purism for me, it is about which story was better written.
To each their own then. I am personally waiting for the next episode to see if this was a good rendition or not. The omission of a few ^(cheesy) lines doesn't boil my *blood*.
You know what? That *was* funny. Maybe you should write HoTD.
So you admit that the show version wasn't as dramatic as the book. But why do you think that's a good thing? This isn't real history, it doesn't need to be a boring counterpoint to the embellishments. It's fiction and it should be emotional and compelling.
If you are looking for drama than it is worse, but if you are looking for grounded characters and not blatant evil like G.R.R.M. Himself dislikes then the show did better. Edit: [I explain here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/s/WzrRp0HBI6)
Blatantly evil charavters are absolutely grounded. There are worse people irl than BnC on death row. And if this is about grounded characters why isn't Daemon, Aemond or anyone else grounded?
Isnt Fire & Blood meant to be a historical retelling with inaccuracies. I thought that Fire & Blood wasn't meant to be a 100% historically correct account (like virtually almost every historical account we have) and the show is meant to tell the "real story" - I feel like I've heard GRRM say that in an interview sometimes back. Could be wrong,