Ryan Condal, Showrunner For HBO's 'House Of Dragons', Explains The Major Change To House Velaryon
Ever since HBO created the cultural phenomenon that became Game of Thrones, other TV stations or streaming services have tried to create their own fantasy franchise, or even better - the next GoT. Amazon has put out Wheel of Time, Netflix The Witcher and Amazon again will see its most ambiguous (and probably most expensive) push into the worlds of wizards, dragons and medieval sword-fights released at the beginning of September: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
But maybe the next Game of Thrones will actually be Game of Thrones again. Just two weeks before the release of the prequel to Tolkien's masterpiece, HBO, the pay television pioneer, who started the race to the fantasy throne in 2011, will premiere House of the Dragon on August 21.
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Taking place 200 years before the time of Daenerys (played by Emilia Clark) and Jon Snow (Kit Harington) the new series will tell the story of the so-called Dance of the Dragon, a civil war that broke out among the House Targaryen, the wealthiest family in Westeros, about the succession to the throne.
But the Targaryens aren’t the only mighty and rich clan, that will play a major role in House of the Dragon.
Trailing not too far behind the ruling family is House Velaryons and while the Targaryens commanded the skies, riding on their mighty dragons, the Velaryons commanded the oceans in their ships and had even helped their fellow clan to take over Westeros many years earlier.
George R. R. Martin’s novel Fire & Blood, on which the new TV series is based describes the Velaryons as having pale skin, silver hair and purple eyes, but Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, the two showrunners for House of the Dragon wanted something different:
“The world is very different now than it was 10 years ago when [Game of Thrones] all started. It's different than 20 years ago when Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings. These types of stories need to be more inclusive than they traditionally have been. It was very important for Miguel and I to create a show that was not another bunch of white people on the screen, just to put it very bluntly.”
And so, the pale looking Velaryons became noble black seafarers (but still with silver-grey hair), led by Lord Corlys (Steve Toussaint), who had the nickname Sea Snake after his favorite ship and who has sailed further out than any other man.
Toussaint describes his character as someone who “knows he has power, and he knows that they need him… He's this fearless guy. He's very rich now. He likes people to see that he's rich.”
Although a more open attitude towards diversity might have been the trigger to the drastic shift in the appearance of the Velaryons’ leader, neither Condal nor Sapochnik wanted this change to look like an afterthought or even a tokenism. For decades people of color have been limited to the roles of pirates, slaves or mercenaries in fantasy films and the two showrunners wanted to change this, but in a meaningful way.
In looking for ways to achieve this, Condal got help from the source itself: during one of his conversations with Martin, he learned that even the author himself had once when conceiving the world of Fire & Blood toyed with the idea of making the Velaryons black conquerors. Though Martin didn’t follow through with this concept in the final novel, the idea stuck with Condal and he and Sapochnik elaborated on this to create the Lord Corlys, which the audience will get to see in the House of the Dragon.
As Condal remarks: “Once we had that idea, it just felt like everything fell into place.”
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