
For the most part, HBO’s House of the Dragon has remained faithful to Fire & Blood, the 2018 novel that inspired it. That said, Season 1 does diverge from Fire & Blood in a handful of small but significant ways. Most notably, the show has gone out of its way to make its two lead characters, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), much more nuanced than their Fire & Blood descriptions.