Game of Thrones architect George R.R. Martin might be less than thrilled with the current state of House of the Dragon, which just concluded its second season and has a third on the way, but HBO—which pushed through the negative reaction to Thrones‘ final season and launched Dragon to great fanfare—isn’t shying away from exploring more of Westeros. We already know of two more spin-offs, one that’s officially en route and one that might be happening, and now a second title in that latter category has a small update to share.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which like House of the Dragon involves the powerful Targaryen house, is set about 100 years before Game of Thrones; it’s actively in production and is slated to arrive on HBO in 2025. Then, there’s Ten Thousand Ships, a more ancient tale of folk hero Queen Nymeria; in June, Martin himself revealed that Pulitzer-winning playwright Eboni Booth is crafting a new pilot, though there’s been no word from HBO if the show is officially in development.
And that brings us to yet another potential spin-off—no, not the Jon Snow show; that one’s off the table entirely—that honestly we’d almost forgotten about, focusing on the first great Targaryen ruler, Aegon the Conqueror. He was the first Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, which means he pre-dates by several generations his namesake, King Aegon II, who House of the Dragon fans know very well. But his legacy (and certain trappings of his reign, like his sword, Blackfyre, and the outrageously huge skull of his dragon, Balerion) looms large, especially in King’s Landing.
The excitement of Aegon’s Conquest is a natural choice for a Thrones spin-off, and one of the creative minds working on the potential show (like Ten Thousand Ships, it is not yet HBO-official) is Mattson Tomlin, who’s currently making the rounds promoting Netflix’s new anime series Terminator Zero. Nexus Point News (via Collider) asked Tomlin about his approach to writing the Aegon the Conqueror series, which is seemingly taking its cues from the same Targaryen history that’s shaping House of the Dragon, Martin’s Fire & Blood.
“It starts with what George has done. I’ve now gotten to spend quite a bit of time with him, and there have been a lot of pinch-me moments of just kind of going through Fire & Blood, highlighting passages, and asking him, ‘What did this mean? What is this?’ What I think it is. You know sometimes really grilling him, going, ‘I don’t understand, what’s happening here.’ And then other times going, ‘I think that it could mean this.’ But it’s really taking that text and treating it like it’s real history,” he explained.
“… My approach to it was [that] Fire & Blood is written like a real history and these things happened … but then also there’s that great quote that somebody much smarter than I said: history is written by the people who won,” Tomlin continued. “And so then there’s that as well. For me, it’s about making sure that I respect George and I respect the text. And then also, it still has to be a dramatic story. Those characters have to go on a journey; they have to change; they have to go from a beginning to a middle to an end. Figuring out how to do all of that with the clues that that textbook has left for me and go, okay, I’m going to interpret this very real history and try to make it a really vivid show that hopefully people love and don’t hate, doing the best I can.”
Are you interested in an Aegon the Conqueror series, or are you growing weary of blonde royals riding dragons? Let us know in the comments below.
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