![]() ![]() They cleverly half-follow Mushroom’s version of what happened to Laenor Velaryon and Qarl Correy Mushroom’s version becomes what people believed happened (Daemon had them both killed), while what really happened ( they faked their deaths and ran away) is a secret. ![]() They follow Mushroom’s version of the last dinner Viserys has with his whole family before his death almost exactly, for example. With a book written in this format, reporting rumors and gossip and contradictory versions of events, the TV writers have a lot of freedom to show scenes that are different to anything in the book, on the basis that the book’s eyewitness characters were not there or were lying or mis-remembering things. When it comes to Mushroom’s actual versions of events, the television adaptation has selected some incidents where they want to follow the Mushroom version, and others where they have gone with a different version of Westerosi history, or even more often, a slightly different story all together. The only way the television adaptation could follow the pretend-history format would be to do some kind of documentary, which of course would not work in a Westerosi setting (not unless we want to jump very far forward into Westeros’ future!) so the TV writers needed to actually show intimate acts and secret meetings directly to the audience, and they did not need a narrator-character to walk in on anyone. Archmaester Gyldayn tells his readers that he has two sources written by eyewitnesses to the civil war called the Dance of the Dragons a relatively somber history from a cleric called Septon Eustace, who was a supporter of Aegon II, and the Testimony of Mushroom, an account told by Mushroom – a supporter of Rhaenyra – to an unnamed scribe years later which revels in salacious detail and always includes the most shocking, vulgar, or violent version of every story.ĭuring the part of the novel that was adapted into season 1 of House of the Dragon, Mushroom’s main role is as an historical source that disagrees with Septon Eustace and that occasionally provides intimate details, like claiming he found Rhaenyra and Harwin Strong in bed together one morning, for example. ![]() He is a court jester who served primarily with King Viserys I and Queen Rhaenyra, though he also spent some time with Rhaenyra’s rival King Aegon II. ![]() Mushroom is part of this narrative set-up. There have been a few fantasy novels written this way – Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, for example – in which the story is written as if it were a history of the fictitious events, complete with references to its source material. Its narrator is Archmaester Gyldayn, a scholar writing up a history of the Targaryen dynasty sometime shortly before the start of the action in A Game of Thrones. The book House of the Dragon is based on, Fire & Blood, is a pretend-history. We can see why the writers chose to cut Mushroom from the show at first. But sometimes, the cutting of a character takes away something the story really needs, and in the case of House of the Dragon, we think that character is the court jester, Mushroom. This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 1.Īdapting a book for television always involves making some changes to the source material, and even a multi-season TV show does not always have time for every character and subplot from a long book. ![]()
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