[spoilers]
The marketing for House of the Dragon Season 2 has tried to play up the civil war angle of the show, with the two factions being The Blacks, who support the claim of Rhaenyra Targaryen as the true air of Viserys Targaryen, and The Greens, which refers to the faction of Aegon Targaryen, the current monarch of Westeros.
However, despite trying to drum up the sort of support for each side, like IPs have done before (such as Captain America: Civil War doing Team Cap and Team Iron Man), the narrative of the show has been tilting toward painting one side in a more devious light than the other, and it seems that The Greens might have ended up with a shorter end of the stick.
Several Changes are made to the source material, and they are all favoring The Blacks
Whenever it comes to adaptations and translating a story from one medium to another, some changes have to be made to the stories to make them more suitable to their mode of presentation. Game of Thrones famously cut out a slew of characters and plotlines and killed many of them who were still alive in A Song of Ice and Fire. However, Martin has recently come out in criticism of adaptations being keen on twisting stories, but failing to make them better.
This might be the case for House of the Dragon as well, given that the show created a narrative that paints the Greens in a much less favorable light than the Blacks. There are plenty of issues in Season 1, and they only seem to have compounded with Season 2.
To begin with, the scene with Blood and Cheese has Alicent Hightower in the room with Haelena and the children, and she has to witness her grandson being murdered by the two assassins. In the show, however, this scene, which could have echoed the Red Wedding, is undercut by the affair that Olivia Cooke‘s Alicent Hightower was having with Ser Criston Cole.
It must also be noted that the entire episode saw Rhaenyra grieving, and went out of its way to have us sympathize with her. This would have been alright, especially given the enormity of the loss, if the Greens were given their moment at the hand of Blood and Cheese as well. Instead, as Rhaenyra grieved her son, all the tension and pathos of the Greens were pushed aside by Criston and Alicent’s affair, which has no precedent in any sources that are available inside and outside the narrative.
House of the Dragon might have been setting up the Greens as villains from Season 1
While Season 2 might develop differently, there is plenty of evidence of Season 1 that points towards an anti-Green agenda in the narrative. To begin with, the deaths of Harwen and Lyonel Strong were blamed squarely on Alicent Hightower and Larys Strong, when the source material pointed towards a slew of assailants, including Daemon Targaryen, Corlys Velaryon, and even King Viserys himself. However, the blame was squarely put on the Greens in the show.
Next, Laenor Velaryon’s death, which was attributed to the Balck faction for allowing Daemon to marry Rhaenyra, was written off as a ploy to allow Laenor to have his freedom, while also freeing Rhaenyra to marry Daemon. These inventions for the story clearly painted the Blacks in a better light than the Greens, putting them in a far more negative light than the Blacks.
The Blacks definitely have the backing in the narrative to be rooted for by fans, but it becomes infinitely more frustrating given that there are deliberate inventions to make one side look better than the other. Though the marketing of the show makes it seem that both sides stand an equal chance, it is clearly so that the narrative is looking to favor one side over the other, which is causing fans to do the same.
House of the Dragon Season 2 is streaming on HBO Max
