House of the Dragon opening Season 3 with the Battle of the Gullet seems like something of a mission statement. Considered to be one of the most impactful naval conflicts in Westerosi history, it’s the kind of thing that fans of the franchise were already eagerly anticipating, and to deliver it in a premiere is bold. So, too, is making several substantial changes to the way it plays out, most of them, at least in my estimation, for the better.
In its broad strokes, the battle as depicted in “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood” is largely the same as the way it plays out in the couple of pages of the source novel that cover it. But there are crucial deviations; characters who turn up who weren’t otherwise involved, characters who die who should still be alive and well elsewhere, and so on, and so forth. But in terms of the specific story that this show is trying to tell, the things it includes or omits end up being largely beneficial, at least theoretically (we’ll have to wait and see as the season progresses whether or not I’m right).
The Limitations of the Text
House of the Dragon is a partial adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, which, notably, while technically being a prequel to A Game of Thrones, is not so much a novel as an in-universe history text relayed by a Citadel maester from a variety of primary and secondary sources, some a lot more reliable than others. What this means is that there are often conflicting versions of events, and a lot of what is relayed is extremely dry and flat on the page.
For the show’s purposes, this basically mandates a degree of creative license, since any depiction is endorsing one of the viewpoints that the book itself was careful to point out may not be entirely accurate. It also means that most of the characterisation is coming from the show itself, not the original text.
Similarly, since House of the Dragon is only adapting part of the whole story – which is, I believe, only part of the rest of the story Martin intends to tell about the history of House Targaryen, presumably in lieu of finishing The Winds of Winter – it needn’t concern itself with anything that happens later in the book. Most of the creative decisions that were made in this depiction of the Battle of the Gullet were made with one or both of these things in mind.
The Broad Strokes
The Battle of the Gullet revolves around a fleet from the Triarchy – an alliance between the Free Cities of Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh – trying to break the Sea Snake’s blockade in the Gullet. The Triarchy have been harrying the Stepstones in a Dornish alliance since they were lost back in Season 1, when Daemon killed Crabfeeder, but this was depicted almost entirely off-screen.
Thanks to their experience in these conflicts, the ships of the Three Sisters were outfitted to fight back against dragons, which is just as well, since the major consequence of the battle is that Rhaenyra’s son, Jace, arrives to reinforce the Velaryon ships on his dragon, Vermax, and ends up getting killed.
This is precisely what happens in the show version, too. And the deaths are largely the same; Vermax is brought down by an anchor attached to a grapnel, dragging the giant, wounded beast into the water, and while Jace is able to unhook himself and swim to the surface, he’s subsequently peppered with crossbow bolts and consigned to the deep.
A Misunderstanding Between Dragons
The big changes that House of the Dragon makes to the battle largely revolve around the inclusion of Baela aboard her own dragon, Moondancer, and Rhaena being dragged into the conflict by a recalcitrant Sheepstealer. While these things don’t change the outcome, they do alter the circumstances around it.
In the book, Baela simply wasn’t there. But Sheepstealer was there, albeit being ridden by Nettles, a character the show never included. Rhaena trying to control Sheepstealer, and the dragon going rogue and barbecuing ships on both sides indiscriminately, not to mention trying to eat Moondancer, is all made up by the show. It consolidates a couple of character arcs and motivations while freeing up the Dragonseeds, who were present in the book version but are elsewhere in the show, to do something else.
It’s Jace and an injured Vermax trying to save Moondancer from Sheepstealer that causes him to fly too low and become susceptible to the anchor. Therefore, it’s now Sheepstealer and, by extension, Rhaena, who are going to be considered more directly responsible for the death of the realm’s heir.
Surplus to Requirements
In the book, the Battle of the Gullet largely ends thanks to the arrival of multiple dragons being ridden by the Dragonseeds, but since that can’t happen here because they’re busy elsewhere, it instead takes on a more personal shape. Admiral Lohar, desperate for revenge on Corlys, sends part of the fleet to High Tide, his castle on Driftmark, and then goes after Corlys directly through a narrow path that he lures her down in the hopes of wrecking her flagship. He almost succeeds, but she sacrifices the life of Tyland Lannister and his men, who had allied with her in the first place, to reduce the weight of the ship.
When Lohar is finally able to get into direct conflict with Corlys, she’s killed in a scuffle with Alyn. In the book, Lohar survives the battle, and Tyland is never there, but the relevance that both of them have in the remainder of the story occurs in the portions that HBO isn’t going to be adapting in this series. Instead, both characters are killed off to raise the stakes, since they’re surplus to requirements.
The Gay Abandon
An important detail that the show omits is the fate of Rhaenyra and Daemon’s sons, Aegon and Viserys. In the book, both are being spirited to Pentos aboard a ship called the Gay Abandon, and the show has mimicked this trajectory, even name-checking the vessel itself.
However, in the book, that ship ends up in the midst of the Battle of the Gullet. Aegon is able to escape on his dragon, Stormcloud, but the dragon doesn’t survive, while Lohar kidnaps Viserys. As far as Rhaenyra believed, though, Viserys had died along with Jace.
In the show, the Gay Abandon doesn’t – or doesn’t seem to, anyway – get caught up in the battle, and without Lohar, nothing happens to Viserys. For now, it isn’t immediately clear what’s going to happen in this regard, but it’s obvious that the showrunners have some plans for it. Like everything else, it’ll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
