Westeros

The very eventful “We Light the Way” has aired globally, and we’re back with our usual non-review focus on providing some more background information and changes from the source material to the screen. We even have some dragon facts!

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Alicent Hightower embodying her house’s signal for war by wearing a green gown.

We’re back to discuss the events of “King of the Narrow Sea”, with our usual non-review focus on providing some more background information and changes from the source material to the screen. It’s an eventful episode, although one distinctly lacking in new dragon facts to discuss:

If you enjoyed the video, please do consider liking and subscribing, and feel free to comment with your own thoughts or questions!

Daemon Targaryen wearing the crown of the King of the Narrow Sea.

Both Linda and I got our first glimpses at the House of the Dragon-inspired beverages from Danish brewery Mikkeller (dubbing themselves House Mikkeller of Denmark, naturally) at the premieres of House of the Dragon in Stockholm and Amsterdam. The red Caraxes cans were very prominent at the afterparty bars, and seemed to be quite popular. Mikkeller Brewery contacted us about trying a sample of the beers, which we were glad to do despite neither of us being experienced with beer (non-alcholic or otherwise!) and we have to say it was a very interesting experience that makes us think we’re going to have to start branching out from the ciders which are normally all we drink when it comes to alcohol.

Below, you’ll see our video “review”, which I put in quotes because we’re woefully lacking in knowledge to give thorough and detailed impressions!

A photo from the European premiere’s afterparty in Amsterdam.

We’re back to discuss the third episode of House of the Dragon, titled “Second of His Name”. As usual, we discuss some changes from the source material, provide some additional background information for things touched on only lightly in the episode, and finally some dragon facts (quite brief ones, in this case!)

Well, this was big, surprising news. The Hollywood Reporter‘s James Hibberd has reported that after three, exhausting years working on bringing the first season of House of the Dragon to the screen Miguel Sapochnik is leaving the show and Ryan Condal will be the sole show runner. However, the very experienced director Alan Taylor—who played a key role in directing a number of early episodes of Game of Thrones—has come on board as an executive producer and director instead.

Another new episode of House of the Dragon, and another episode of Linda and Elio discussing it! This time we look into some of the changes to a couple of Kingsguard knights, and dive more into House Velaryon now that the episode reveals a change the show has made to their relationship to the Targaryens.

You can see the episode below:

Share your thoughts on the video, and let us know if there’s any changes or background details you’d like us to discuss in future episodes!

This tweet says it all:

Over at The Hollywood Reporter, James Hibberd provides a bit more detail, citing HBO’s report that in the US the show has cleared over 20 million viewers since the premiere, the kind of strong opening they were hoping for.

Just two months away from the release of The Rise of the Dragon, a book we’ve co-authored that takes Fire and Blood, boils it down to the essentials, and fills the rest of the pages with over 180 pieces of glorious, all-new artwork from artists both familiar and brand new to fans of A Song of Ice and Fire. Random House has started the wheels rolling promoting the book by releasing this video with George R.R. Martin where he talks about the book and its connection to House of the Dragon:

Been a long time since we’ve done one of these, and suffice it to say the combination of rusty recollection plus a bunch of new equipment made this a bit of a trial. Add a very lively puppy plus sundry other things, and this video is later than we hoped, but it’s done. As we remarked in our “Not a Review” of the first six episodes, we’re not really reviewing the show (as we did—and then Linda did solo after I quit—with Game of Thrones) but instead discussing some of the choices and changes made in the adaptation, as well as providing some background information and (of course) dragon facts.

You can see the episode below:

We’ve had the opportunity to watch the first six episodes of House of the Dragon, courtesy of HBO Max, and we certainly have some thoughts about the show. We’ve placed our “Not a Review” in our Features section which hasn’t seen much use since Game of Thrones came to an end, so go read it there.

We occasionally highlight really great, A Song of Ice and Fire-inspired fan works, and we’re happy to bring attention to the asoiafanimated instagram where a team of Italian animators led by professional animator Giovanni Ariutti. We have a very brief tease, but you should check the Instagram for a longer trailer, with music and all, and that in turn is leading to something even more substantial on August 23rd. See the teaser below, and the full details of the team working on the project:

A brand new promo ahead of the airing of House of the Dragon... and it includes an excellent look at the last living dragon from the Conquest, Vhagar:

And here is our last interview from the European premiere of House of the Dragon, with co-show runner and head writer Ryan Condal. Though it’s the last interview from the event, it’s not going to be our last interview with Ryan, who’s agreed to sit down with Westeros.org for a proper interview in the next few days. Feel free to comment on the video below with any questions you’d like to ask and we’ll try and pick the ones we find the most interesting to present to Ryan!

As promised, here are the next two interviews we managed to get from the press pit at the European premiere of House of the Dragon! In this pairing, we talk to Emma D’Arcy (Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen) and Steve Toussaint (Corlys Velaryon). You’ll find the interviews below the image I took of the replica of Balerion the Black Dread’s skull during the Dragon’s Den interactive event.

Below you’ll find two of the five interviews we, and our good friend Javi Marcos of Spanish fan site Los Siete Reinos who kindly helped us out by bringing along and manning the camera equipment, secured as part of the press pool at the red carpet for the European premiere of House of the Dragon in Amsterdam. We’ll release the other three over the next couple of days. Red carpet interviews tend to be short, and these were no different: there were more than a dozen outlets present and each only had limited time, especially as the screening time drew near. Still, we enjoyed the spectacle, and I even got to sit on the new version of the Iron Throne with Javi perched beside me (I joked he was Mushroom).

You’ll find the two interviews below!