Why House of the Dragon changed Laena Velaryon’s death from the book

House of the Dragon’s sixth episode, “The Princess and the Queen,” was a particularly difficult one for almost everybody on the show. Ten years later, the series picked up and brought us back to its key characters. Many of them had had children in the interim.

Among these characters was Laena Velaryon, daughter of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen, and now Daemon Targaryen’s second wife. Laena is best known to viewers as the 12-year old girl who, in episode 2, spoke with Viserys on dragons. He then suggested that they marry. Laena was pregnant with the third of their three children, while Daemon and Laena had the two kids they wanted. Amid the drama of an incoming newborn is where the filmmakers decided to change a few details about her fate from the show’s source material, Fire & Blood.

[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood novel and for House of the Dragon.]

Fire & BloodLaena, just like the characters in the series, goes through difficult labor and gives birth to a stillborn infant. She spends many days dying and getting sick in the book. According to Fire & Blood’s maester author, legend has it that in her final moments, she tried to find her dragon, Vhagar, to fly just one more time, but died on her way.

This show takes all of this one step further and makes it a lot more real. Laena, overcome with grief at the death of her son rushes to the birthing chamber where she finds Vhagar. She kneels before the dragon, and orders it to set her ablaze.

Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO

One explanation for the change or this version could be several. Although Fire & Blood plays the part of a history, telling only the most important details of its tale — and even then, doing so with the fallibility of its author and their sources — House of the DragonRyan Condal, showrunner of Dance of Dragons claims that this is supposed to give a more accurate and thorough account of the event. It’s possible that that’s what is happening here — that Laena’s suicide by dragon was simply not recorded by Maester Yandel in the in-universe version of Fire & Bloodin order to protect the Targaryens’ image. But this isn’t the only possible reason for the new scene.

Many elements are similar to House of the Dragon so far, this isn’t so much a direct departure from the story of the books as it is a literalization of certain themes. While the difficulties of childbirth and women’s roles in Westeros are certainly concepts that are explored in Fire & Blood, the book doesn’t really spend time detailing them (or any other themes), choosing simply to recount events in Westeros rather than think about them.

The show’s changes come most often in the realm of character deaths. They often die after just a few days of being cared for by maesters or their leeches in the books. House of the DragonCharacters are preferred to be killed with flair. Characters like Joffrey Lonmouth, and even Daemon’s first wife, Lady Rhea Royce, were explicitly killed by House of the Dragon’s leads to help move the plot and characters along.

An added benefit of this choice in Laena’s case is that it more strongly defines her character. Though we didn’t spend much time with Laena in the show, seeing that she’d rather end her own life than bear the loss of a child adds an interesting wrinkle to who she was, and helps us better understand House of the Dragon’s very difficult relationship with motherhood, and especially with childbirth.