House of the Dragon's Blood and Cheese Killing Is Even More Brutal in the Fire & Blood Books

The season 2 premiere ends with Daemon Targaryen arriving at King's Landing by boat, slipping into the stronghold and catching the attention of a man named Blood, who he pays off with coins to get through the gates. That detail actually comes straight from the source material, which notes that in his youth Daemon Targaryen had been Prince of the City, his face and laugh familiar to every cutpurse and gambler in Flea Bottom, and that he still had friends in the low places of King's Landing and followers among the gold cloaks. From there he hires both Blood and Cheese and tells them to find Aemond. The show even teases what happens if they cannot find him, then cuts away before Daemon answers.

I have to be honest, seeing Aemond kick a dog earlier in the episode actually got to me more than what follows, more than that council meeting sit down. As a father of twins I cannot condone that, and I have a dog myself, so that one stuck with me.

From there Blood and Cheese make their way through the kingdom to where they think Aemond is. In the show they hold Helaena at knife point and force her to point out her heir, she does, and manages to get her daughter out of the room before we see them going after Jaehaerys. It is a genuinely terrifying moment because Helaena is completely helpless and is being forced into an impossible choice about her own children, and it is one of the most messed up deaths in the whole Game of Thrones universe. But the book pushes it further, and that is what I want to get into.

Unlike the show, Mysaria was never a captive when Daemon set this plan in motion

Unlike the show, Mysaria was not held captive in the books, she remained free in King's Landing, Daemon reached out to her directly, and she sought out this terrible vengeance herself. The text says that amidst the stews of Flea Bottom, Daemon's go-between found suitable instruments. One had been a sergeant in the City Watch, big and brutal, who lost his gold cloak for beating a man to death in a drunken rage. The other was a ratcatcher in the Red Keep. Their true names are lost to history, they are remembered only as Blood and Cheese, and we are told Cheese knew the Red Keep better than the shape of his own hand, a line that actually makes it into the show.

From there they travel through the hidden doors and secret tunnels built by Maegor the Cruel, which lets them slip past all the guards on their way to the Tower of the Hand. This is where the first major difference shows up, because Alicent is not present in this part of the book's version at all.

Blood strangled a bedmaid to death instead of letting her go

The book describes the two men creeping up through the walls, bypassing the spearmen posted at the tower doors. The rooms of the Hand held no interest for them, instead they slipped into his daughter's chambers one floor below, where Queen Alicent had taken up residence after King Viserys died and her son Aegon moved into Maegor's Holdfast with his own queen. Once inside, Cheese bound and gagged the Dowager Queen while Blood strangled her bedmaid to death, and then the pair simply settled in to wait, because it was Helaena's custom to bring her children to see their grandmother every evening before bed.

That is already a big departure, because in the show Blood lets the servant escape to keep up appearances. As of making this piece I had not seen episode 2 yet, so I could not say for certain how that choice plays out, but my instinct is that letting her live is going to cause problems down the line. I cannot imagine how frightening it must have been for Alicent in the book's version, sitting there bound and gagged with these two strangers holding her at their mercy while they waited in silence.

Helaena was forced to choose between her two sons at knifepoint

The book says that, blind to her danger, the queen appeared as dusk was settling over the castle, accompanied by her three children. Jaehaerys and Jaehaera were six, Maelor was two. As they entered the apartments, Helaena was holding Maelor's little hand and calling out her mother's name. Blood barred the door and killed the queen's guardsmen while Cheese snatched up Maelor. Helaena screamed that they would all die, but Queen Helaena kept her calm, it is said, and demanded to know who they were. "Debt collectors," said Cheese, "an eye for an eye, a son for a son. We only want the one, to square things. Won't hurt the rest of you fine folks, not one little hair. Which one do you want to lose, your grace?"

In the show, Helaena offers up her necklace to try to bargain her way out of it. In the book she goes further and offers her own life instead, but they tell her a wife is not a son, and Blood warns her to make her choice or he will kill her little girl. In the end Helaena picked her youngest, Maelor, telling herself it was because he was too young to understand what was happening. There was also the unspoken fact that Jaehaerys was the heir and next in line for the Iron Throne, which made him more important to keep alive.

The cruel trick that made Helaena believe she had chosen her son's death

This is where the real twist comes in, because Blood and Cheese pulled off a sick trick. They whispered to Jaehaerys, telling him, "You hear that, little boy, your mama wants you dead," and then Blood swung his sword and beheaded him in a single blow while Queen Helaena screamed out in agony. That is far more messed up than the show's version, because it takes away any comfort in the idea that she chose which son would live. It becomes an even bigger issue afterward, because Helaena never knew for certain how much Maelor understood in that moment, whether he simply heard his mother order his death and grew up carrying that, even though he was only two years old. The truth is Helaena never knew, but it slowly ate away at her regardless.

Blood was tortured for thirteen days and Cheese vanished without a trace

After the killing, Blood and Cheese kept their word and did not harm anyone else. Two days later, Blood was seized at the Gate of the Gods trying to leave King's Landing with Jaehaerys's head hidden in a saddle sack. Under torture he confessed he had been taking it to Harrenhal to collect his reward from Prince Daemon, and he gave a description of the woman who had hired them, an older woman, foreign by her speech, cloaked and hooded and very pale, whom the harlots called Misery. After thirteen days of torment, Blood was finally allowed to die. Queen Alicent had reportedly commanded that his true name be learned so she might bathe in the blood of his wife and children, though the sources do not say whether that actually happened.

The gold cloaks searched the Street of Silk from top to bottom and stripped every harlot in King's Landing, but no trace of Cheese or of the White Worm was ever found. In his grief and fury, King Aegon II ordered every ratcatcher in the city hanged, and it was done. Otto Hightower brought a hundred cats into the Red Keep to keep the vermin down afterward.

Helaena's descent into madness and her rumored death at twenty one

Though Blood and Cheese spared her life, Queen Helaena cannot really be said to have survived that fateful dusk. Afterward she would not eat, would not bathe, and would not leave her chambers, and she could no longer stand to look at Maelor, knowing she had named him to die. The king had no choice but to take the boy from her and give him to the Dowager Queen Alicent to raise as her own. Aegon and Helaena slept separately from then on, Helaena sank deeper and deeper into madness, and the king raged and drank.

What happened to her after that we do not fully know, but we do know she died. It is said that when Rhaenyra took King's Landing, she sold Helaena to Mysaria, who put her to work in her brothel day and night. Helaena apparently fell pregnant, which made things even worse given how that pregnancy came about. Mysaria reportedly told her that Maelor had been killed too, and there are rumors she was sent his head stuffed inside a chamber pot. Some witnesses say Rhaenyra wept upon learning of it, others say Rhaenyra was the one who had it sent to her in the first place. Rhaenyra comes across as a genuinely nice person in the show, at least most of the time from what we have seen so far, so I do feel like the adaptation is going to pull its punches with that part of the story.

Either way, what happened next is not fully known. There were rumors Helaena was murdered, but the most widely accepted account is that she flung herself out a window and landed on the spikes at the walls and gates below. She was twenty one years old. It sounds almost like something out of a true crime account, and she is not a real person, but it is still a pretty grim way for her story to end.

How do you think the show will end up handling Helaena's fate after this?