If there’s one thing House of the Dragon fans have learned by now, it’s that the series has no problem venturing away from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood source material. That’s the main reason why Martin himself has criticized the show, even as co-creator and showrunner Ryan Condal maintains that sometimes, adaptations have no choice but to make changes.
The character at the center of that original Martin complaint, Helaena Targaryen—she of the gruesome “Blood and Cheese” affair in season two—had a memorable season three, and actor Phia Saban recently spoke about what it was like bringing Helaena from the page to the screen.
First things first: in both the book and in House of the Dragon, Helaena dies after leaping from her window in the Red Keep. In Fire & Blood, she’s despondent over losing her younger son, Maelor, not long after her older son, Jaehaerys, was assassinated by Blood and Cheese.
But Maelor doesn’t appear in House of the Dragon. In season three, we find out Helaena is pregnant, but she makes her fatal jump before the baby is born. However, the show still provides her with plenty of misery material, including the realization that Rhaenyra, her half-sister, will almost certainly never let her go free—especially if she gives birth to a boy who could potentially threaten the queen’s reign.
Speaking first to the Hollywood Reporter, Saban admitted she knew from the start what was coming for Helaena—and that she followed the fan discourse around the character, too.
“When I got the job, I spent a lot of time Googling and searching the wikis, so I’ve always known this was coming,” she said. “Plus, there are so many fans out there in the world, and I know so many people who knew and would make a point to tell me about what was going to happen to me.”
But talking to Variety, Saban said she knew she couldn’t focus too much on the Helaena who appears in Fire & Blood. The screen version that she helped flesh out had to take priority.
“I think you can only play the story that you’re telling,” she said. “So really it’s the character that I built, and the story that Ryan and Sara [Hess] and all the writers were creating, that was really all that felt relevant. But I know that there are differences in the stories, and I think that some of those differences are really cool. And I don’t think that Helaena would have been maybe such a juicy part for me personally to play if there weren’t some of the differences that have been made. So you kind of just roll with the punches.”
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