However, it looks like we got lucky with the timeline that HBO went with. George R.R. Martin has just revealed that he had wanted House of the Dragon to open 40 years before King Viserys I Targaryen loses his wife to childbirth. That means the Game of Thrones prequel would have followed King Jaehaerys I Targaryen’s sons. House of the Dragon already showed us Jaehaerys in its premiere episode which opened with the king convening a Great Council to choose an heir. In this case, Jaehaerys chooses Viserys over Princess Rhaenys Velaryon.
Interestingly, George R.R. Martin wanted to take the show a lot further into the past. In a new interview with his publisher Penguin Random House, the Fire and Blood author admitted he wanted House of the Dragon to explore the story of Jaehaerys’ sons Aemon and Baelon Targaryen. “I would have began it like 40 years earlier with the episode I would have called The Heir and the Spare, in which Jaehaerys’s two sons, Aemon and Baelon, are alive. And we see the friendship, but also the rivalry, between the two sides of the great house,” Martin said. “You know, Aemon dies accidentally when a Myrish crossbowman shoots him by accident on Tarth and then Jaehaerys has to decide who becomes the new heir,” he continues. “Is it the daughter of the older son who’s just died or is it the second son, who has sons of his own and is a man and she’s just a teenage girl?” It would have been interesting to meet Aemon and Baelon. However, their story takes place way ahead of the major events that lead to the Dance of the Dragons. With that in mind, we’re glad that George R.R. Martin didn’t get his way with the series.
