‘House of the Dragon’: Inside Helaena’s Choice in Blood & Cheese With Phia Saban

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 1, “A Son for a Son.” It also contains a discussion of sexual assault.]

House of the Dragon delivered the kind of gruesome death Game of Thrones was known for in its Season 2 premiere. The episode, ominously titled “A Son for a Son,” saw the brutal “Blood and Cheese” story from George R. R. Martin‘s Fire & Blood come to life. There were major changes made when adapting this story from book to screen (more on that from creator Ryan Condal here), but still at the center of the story was Phia Saban‘s Queen Helaena Targaryen. Here, Saban explains how Helaena made the impossible choice she was forced to make and why she thinks it raises the stakes from the source material.

In Fire & Blood, Blood and Cheese are two lowborn men hired by Daemon Targaryen to kill a son of King Aegon II Targaryen following the murder of Prince Lucerys Velaryon. The names of these men are lost to time, but they’re known in Westeros history as Blood and Cheese because of this event. Blood is a former member of the City Watch known for his violent nature. Cheese is a rat catcher who works in the Red Keep and knows his way around the castle. In the House of the Dragon Season 2 premiere, which aired Sunday, June 16 on HBO, Daemon (Matt Smith) hired Blood (Sam C. Wilson) to kill Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), not one of Aegon’s children. Blood recruited Cheese (Mark Stobbart) from there.

Ollie Upton / HBO

Daemon didn’t give any alternative plan in case the men couldn’t find Aemond. In the absence of their target, and stemming from a dark desire to get their payday and hurt the Hightowers at the same time, Blood and Cheese settled for one of Aegon and Helaena’s young children. In the show, the married siblings only have two kids, twin brother and sister Jaehaerys and Jaehaerya. In the book, the twins also have a little brother named Maelor. Maelor has so far been excluded from the series.

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Helaena was put into a Sophie’s Choice-esque scenario in the novel. Under threat of sexual assault and death, as well as the death of her daughter, Helaena was forced to pick a son to die. She offered her own head instead but they denied her. She picked Maelor, but Blood and Cheese chose the opposite and killed Jaehaerys via decapitation while Helaena watched, and then they took his head with them.

In the show, there is no Maelor. The assassins instead held Helaena at knifepoint and ordered her to reveal which of the twins was the son. Helaena was forced to make a quick judgment call, and she told the truth when pointing out her son. Blood and Cheese didn’t switch targets like in the book; they murdered Jaehaerys. You don’t see how, but you hear the sounds of stabbings.

Saban tells TV Insider that she thinks House of the Dragon‘s Blood and Cheese raised the stakes of the story.

“It’s an interesting moment. In Fire & Blood, there’s this extra layer, which is that she doesn’t tell the truth, and then they kill the other one anyway, which is awful,” Saban tells us. “But I almost think that the way we’ve done it, the simplicity that she just sees the moment for what it is, that it’s life or death, that it’s the highest stakes it could ever be — and when he says, ‘which one is it?,’ and she believes how dangerous they are, she’s just like, it’s that one. It’s that important that there isn’t an option of messing around with it. It’s the most important decision.”

Essentially, had Helaena not followed their orders, Saban believes that there would have been more deaths that night. The aftermath of Blood and Cheese seems to be teased in the trailer for House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 2 and beyond.

The video above begins with a shot of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) sitting with her two young sons, Aegon and Viserys. After the sounds of their laughter fades, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) is heard screaming, “I’ll kill them!” followed by, “I declare war!” At Dragonstone, Rhaenyra tells Daemon, “You have wounded me, weakened my claim to the throne.” The time for diplomacy, it seems, is over.

While the war between the blacks and the greens reaches new heights, there’s tension in the Hightower camp as well now that Helaena walked in on her mother, Alicent (Olivia Cooke), having sex with Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) as Jaehaerys’ murder was taking place. This affair marks another book change, one that we’re not all that surprised was worked into this season. With their mutual complicated feelings for Rhaenyra, Alicent and Criston are a twisted perfect match.

House of the Dragon, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO, Streaming on Max