How House of the Dragon will be different from Game of Thrones

House of the Dragon may be a Game of Thrones prequel but it will be different according to showrunner Miguel Sapochnik. In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, he said that they were very respectful of the original show. It wasn’t broken so that they are not trying to reinvent the wheel, but the prequel series has its own tone that will evolve and emerge over the course of the show.

He said: “It’s very important to pay respects and homage to the original series, which was pretty groundbreaking. We’re standing on the shoulders of that show and we’re only here because of that show. So, the most important thing for us to do is to respect that show as much as possible and try and complement it rather than reinvent it. And I was involved in making the original show, so I feel like that’s been useful. Like, I’m not arriving going, “Let’s change everything! Let’s do a different colour palette!” No, I quite like the colour palette.”

“That said, we can’t say, ‘Well, when we did Thrones, we did it this way …’ If you start every sentence with that, you’ve lost. This is something else and should be something else. It’s a different crew, different people, different tone. Hopefully, it will be seen as something else. But it will have to earn that — it won’t happen overnight. Hopefully, fans will enjoy it for the thing that it is. We’ll be lucky if we ever come close to what the original show was, so we’re just putting our heads down and getting on with it and hoping what we come up with is worthy of having a Game of Thrones title.

Miguel Sapochnik directed some of Game of Thrones most remarkable episodes such as Hardhome, Battle of the Bastards, The Winds of Winter, The Long Night and The Bells. The House of the Dragon pilot script that landed the series order was written by Ryan Condal who is also co-showrunner of the show.

Violence towards women

Another difference to the series will be the way women are portrayed. It’s highly unlikely that House of the Dragon will feature gratuitous scenes of violence towards women. This was one of many criticisms of Game of Thrones.

Olivia Cooke who plays Alicent Hightower, the queen of Westeros and wife to King Viseryes Targaryen the first (Paddy Considine) had this to say in an interview with the Telegraph:

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable in being a part of anything that has just egregious graphic violence towards women for no reason whatsoever, just because they want it to be tantalising in a way that gets viewers,” she says. “I was lucky enough to read the [prequal] script before, and it has changed a lot from the first few seasons [of Thrones]. I don’t think they’d be in their right minds to include any of that anymore.”

Game of Thrones was criticised many times during its run for depicting graphic violence against female characters. One storyline featuring the rape of Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) on her wedding night received widespread backlash from fans against the show’s writers and creators.

It’s comforting to know that House of the Dragon will learn from the mistakes of Thrones and hopefully, this will result in a series that even more fans can enjoy.

House of the Dragon is based on George RR Martin’s Fire & Blood novel. It is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones from the time when House Targaryen took up residence on Dragonstone. 

Fire & Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and recounts the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that revered seat, to the civil war called the Dance of the Dragons that pit different members of the Targaryen family and their dragons against each other and nearly tore their dynasty apart.