 Fire and Blood tells the history of House Targaryen as they ruled over Westeros, including events like Aegon's initial conquest and the Civil War known as the Dance of Dragons. House of the Dragon focuses on the dance and the events leading up to it, including the rivalry between Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Queen Alison Hightower. However, just like the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon makes several changes from the source material in order to make the transition from page to screen. Don't worry book loyalists, change can be a good thing, and in House of the Dragons case, a grand majority of the adaptation choices work to enhance the narrative instead of detract from it. From structural differences to missing characters and more, here are the biggest changes House of the Dragon has made so far. The ages in House of the Dragon are a little bit different. As was the case with Game of Thrones, the characters on the show are not the same ages as they were in the book. For example, in the book, Alison Hightower is 18 when she marries the 29-year-old King Viserys. And his daughter, Princess Rhaenyra, is about 8 or 9. In the show, Rhaenyra and Alison are both about 15, and Viserys, played by 48-year-old actor Paddy Considine, is older as well. By the end of the season, Rhaenyra is 33 and her oldest child is 15. So are some of the relationships. One of the most revealing differences, but not necessarily changes between the book and the show, is that Alison and her future stepdaughter were friends in court. The book only talks about how they became rivals later in life. A big reveal happened in Episode 1. At the end of the premiere, just before Viserys names Rhaenyra as his official heir to the Iron Throne, the King tells his daughter a secret that has been passed on from one Targaryen to another for centuries. He says that egg on the conqueror, more or less the founder of Westeros had a dream that a terrible winter would come and that the only way to defeat it was with the Westeros united under a Targaryen on the throne. Viserys then says that egg on called his dream a song of ice and fire. Did you point at the screen like that Leo meme when he said that? A song of ice and fire is the title of Martin's series. Now we know, officially, what it means. That's not in any of the books, but it did come from Martin himself according to an interview with the showrunners, her insider. And because this wasn't a part of the book, that means the part where Viserys slips up and accidentally tells Allicent wasn't either. One character likely won't show up. In the book, there is a dwarf called Mushroom, which feels offensive especially given that this book was published in 2017. Mushroom served as a fool during the reign of King Viserys Targaryen and a few subsequent Targaryen regents. According to the book, the nobles at court thought that Mushroom seemed less intelligent than he actually was, which made it easy for him to be unsuspecting and learn everyone's secrets. After Tyrion Lannister and Peter Dinklage's performance changed how people with dwarfism are viewed on screen, particularly in fantasy, it would feel like a step backward to introduce a new dwarf character who's the butt of jokes. It's 2022. But while we likely won't see him on the show, Mushroom's point of view is important to the book. The book is by George RR Martin in real life, but the title page adds a fun narrative convention by saying that Martin is simply transcribing a text by Archmaster Gildane of the Citadel of Oldtown. You may remember the Citadel from Game of Thrones. It's where Samuel Tarly goes to study when he decides to become a maester. In the book, Gildane as the narrator makes a few editorial comments. He specifies that some things are just rumors. Mushroom is one of his sources, so that means that not everything in fire and blood is necessarily true, so to speak. Gildane and Mushroom and the other fictional historians who contributed accounts to the book could have gotten the facts wrong. Like anyone in the Song of Ice and Fire universe, these are human beings with opinions and loyalties that are anything but objective. Because the book has an unreliable narrator, small changes from the text to the show are way easier to justify and not necessarily going against canon. For example, in episode 2, we learn that Damon's lover, Masaria, can't get pregnant because she ensured long ago that she would never be threatened with childbirth. Even though Damon had already announced to a lot of people that she was caring as child. In Fire and Blood, Gildane writes that Masaria actually was pregnant and had a miscarriage at sea when Damon was forced to send her away. Maybe Damon just let people believe a lie so successfully that it ended up in the history book. There's also no record of Princess Rhaenys busting through the dragon pit floor after egg on the second's coronation in Fire and Blood. But you can chalk that up to Gildane or Gildane's sources thinking it's unimportant or perhaps embarrassing for the Greens. The only casualties were small folk, aka peasants and commoners, and both House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones make it clear that anyone with even a little bit of power in Westeros does not care what happens to ordinary people. The biggest discrepancies between the events as they were recorded in Fire and Blood and how we see them on House of the Dragon concern the deaths of three key characters. Harwen Strong, Lenore Velaryon, and Lucerys Velaryon, Targaryen, Strong. In the book, Rhaenyra's lover and the alleged father of her three oldest sons dies in a fire at Harrenhal, but nobody knows who is responsible. The book suggests several suspects, but the show makes it clear that it was Westeros' at number one foot enthusiast Lars Strong who killed his own kin. A similar thing happened with Lord Beesbury, who became the first official casualty of the Civil War when Kristen Cole bashed his head in during the Green Council meeting. The book has conflicting accounts of how and when he died, and the show makes a clear choice. Daemon Targaryen's first wife dies in a hunting accident in the book, and people think that's what happened in the show, but it's secretly Daemon. You get the Also, Rhaenyra's first husband, Lenore Velaryon, is said to have been killed by his lover, Carl Cory, in the book, but the show reveals, so to speak, that his death was faked and the two ran away together. That's actually a really nice change. Happy for them. Finally, in the season finale, Rhaenyra's son Luc does technically die the same way that he does in the book. Fire and Blood tells us that Daemon killed Luc in a dragon duel at Storm's End, seemingly in retaliation for his eye, but the show adds a little nuance. We see that both boys lost control of their dragons, and that Daemon didn't ask Vegard to chomp on Luc in his dragon air axe like that. Daemon is visibly shocked and maybe even feels a twinge of guilt. It makes him less of a villain. King Viserys finally shuffles off the mortal coil in this episode. We all saw it coming. He's been marched for blood since day one. However, we never anticipated just how that death would play out in House of the Dragon. In Fire and Blood, Viserys grows old and dies in his sleep. In House of the Dragon, the man goes full cryptkeeper. He's rotting off his own bones. He's losing body parts left and right. He's just going through it. Finally, at the end of Lord of the Tides, he passes away, and just after a relatively happy family dinner no less. But this being House of the Dragon, we won't know peace yet. That's because right before he dies, Viserys mentions the song of Ice and Fire prophecy to Allicent, believing her to be Runira. After hearing a few mumbled words about Aegon, thinking he was referring to Allicent's son, not the conqueror, and him uniting the kingdom, Allicent believes Viserys wants his son to take the throne instead of Runira. No, Viserys, why couldn't you just keep your mouth shut? The future was looking somewhat bright, at least by Westerosi standards. But your last words may have divided the Seven Kingdoms forever. We're crowning Aegon, we just have to find him first. Episode 9 of House of the Dragon, titled The Green Council, picks up right where Episode 8 left off, with Viserys dying and Allicent interpreting his last words as him choosing Aegon as his successor. As soon as Otto gets word of this, he springs into action, gathering the small council to organize Aegon's coronation. The only problem? Aegon is nowhere to be found. So sets in motion a hunt for the King to be, a hunt that surprisingly pits Allicent against Otto. The Hand wants to kill Runir and her family as soon as possible, but Allicent has doubts about that, especially following their slight reconciliation last episode. Much of the search for Aegon is new to the show, as is the tension between Otto and Allicent. In the book, they are a united front as they work to rouse and crown Aegon. Here, Otto is the heartless monster who sets things in motion, while Allicent comes off as much more sympathetic, thanks to her worry for Runira. House of the Dragon also greatly speeds up the time between Viserys' dying and Aegon's coronation. In the book, it takes about 10 days to finalize the choice to crown Aegon, during which the smell of Viserys' corpse stinks up the Red Keep. Here, Otto and Allicent move fast. Plus, the show adds a bunch of new material, like Aemon and Kristen's discussion, Lars and Allicent's arrangement, and Misaria's involvement. The Street Urchin fighting rings are very much in fire and blood. The entire expanded search for Aegon emphasizes just how much of a pawn he is in the schemes of older characters. Plus, in seeing all his common haunts, again, the child fights, we realize just how unfit he is to be king. Pair that with the fact that neither of his parents truly love him and the extreme ego boost he gets from the crowd's cheering at his coronation, and you're looking at a recipe for a megalomaniac disaster.