10 of the Wildest ‘House of the Dragon’ Fan Theories We Know (So Far)

House of the Dragon is a weird show, filled with vague prophecies and long, messy family trees. Complicating things further is how the show’s source material, Fire & Blood, is told from a historian’s perspective a hundred years after the fact. The narrator doesn’t know for sure everything that happened, which means there are so many opportunities for the showrunners to throw in surprise reveals that could eventually count as fan canon.

The show’s constant creative liberties make things even wilder: Some things have been changed so much that not even the unreliable narrator element from the book could fully explain the deviations. The result is a show where nearly anything could happen, with a fandom that’s been given full permission to let their imaginations run wild. Ahead, you’ll find lots of spoilers, but also 10 of the show’s most exciting, prominent fandom theories so far.

1. There’s a Grand Maester conspiracy to undermine the Targaryens from the inside. 
2. Laenor Velaryon will return.
3. Daemon survives his climactic battle with Aemond.
4. Rhaenyra won’t become the Mad Queen on the show.
5. Alys Rivers and Melisandre are possibly the same person.
6. Aemond and Alys’s kid is an ancestor of the Starks.
7. Helaena’s death is fueled by revenge, not grief.
8. Nettles won’t be on the show, only Rhaena.
9. Rhaenyra won’t meet the same grisly fate she does in the book.
10. The show takes place in an alternate timeline.

Warning: There are many spoilers ahead about Fire & Blood and the series.

There’s a Grand Maester conspiracy to undermine the Targaryens from the inside. 

The specifics of this theory tend to vary from fan to fan, but one thing is clear: House Hightower—to which Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Otto (Rhys Ifans) belong—controls Oldtown, the city where the Citadel, where the maesters are trained, is located. (Maesters are scholars and healers, often from noble birth, who serve the lords and ladies throughout Westeros.)

While it’s pretty apparent that the Hightowers have ulterior motives throughout the events of House of the Dragon, it’s easier to miss the possible ulterior motives of Fire & Blood’s narrator himself, Archmaester Gyldayn. The Archmaester (along with the rest of the maesters) is often accused by fans of being anti-Targaryen, anti-dragon, and anti-magic in general, even years after the events of Fire & Blood (and thus, the age of dragons) have passed. Fans have presented this as one of the many signs that the maesters of Oldtown are actually secretly scheming and plotting against the Targaryens, and potentially may have even poisoned the family’s last remaining dragons, as a way to take away their power. Some believe this conspiracy is the real reason why the Targaryens slowly continue to decline after the Dance of the Dragons wraps up. 

Season 3 will introduce Daeron Targaryen, Alicent’s third son with King Viserys, who was basically raised by the maesters of Oldtown. It means the show might have the chance to shed some proper light on this theory once and for all. 

Laenor Velaryon will return.

One basic rule of any fandom is that unless a character has been undeniably killed on-screen, fans will always speculate about their survival and potential return. Folks don’t like ambiguous loose ends, which is why some fans still insist that Syrio Forel from Game of Thrones is still alive, even to this day.

The same applies to Laenor Velaryon (John Macmillan), Rhaenyra’s first husband, who faked his death in Season 1 and fled to Essos. This is as close to a happy ending as any character in HotD is likely to get, but is it really the last we’ve seen of him? Although fans initially speculated he’d return as a sort of streamlined version of Addam of Hull (which didn’t happen; Clinton Liberty plays the role), there’s still an opportunity for Laenor to return to the story in some capacity. If he does, it will likely be through some sort of interaction with Addam’s brother Alyn (Abubakar Salim), who shares Laenor’s love for the sea. 

Daemon survives his climactic battle with Aemond.

Similar to Lucerys Velaryon’s death in Season 1, the demise of Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) in the book is technically never confirmed on the page. The bodies of Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), his dragon Vhagar, and Daemon’s dragon Caraxes are all discovered after the battle, but Daemon himself is never found.

Westerosi historians assume he must have died, but until fans get official confirmation, who’s to say he hasn’t gone the way of Season 1 Laenor, escaping Westeros to live a peaceful life outside the burdensome game of thrones? Even if Daemon intentionally abandoning his sons, Aegon and Viserys, and his daughters, Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) and Baela (Bethany Antonia), is hard for some fans to believe, it’s possible.

Rhaenyra won’t become the Mad Queen on the show.

Assuming the show broadly follows the book’s events, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) will successfully invade King’s Landing early into Season 3. However, this isn’t as exciting to Rhaenyra fans as you might expect because the book version of Rhaenyra quickly proves herself to be a mediocre queen. She’s overly paranoid, wracked with grief over the deaths of so many loved ones, and seemingly unconcerned with the plight of the smallfolk. These flaws all lead to a violent riot in King’s Landing, which results in the storming of the Dragonpit and the deaths of many dragons (including her own, Syrax), leaving her with no choice but to flee and return to Dragonstone. 

Her supposed cruelty and incompetence lead to the smallfolk calling her “King Maegor with Teats,” a reference to a previous Targaryen ruler famous for his reckless brutality. But was that title accurate, or was it just another example of the narration out to get her? Given how much kinder the show has portrayed Rhaenyra so far, many fans believe the show will make her into a more sympathetic queen. She’ll still likely be bad at the job, but fans suspect her worst offenses as queen will be omitted or toned down.

Alys Rivers and Melisandre are possibly the same person.

Introduced in Season 2, Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) is a mysterious witch who lives in Harrenhal and uses her discreet powers to kill a well-protected lord for Daemon’s personal gain. This storyline is familiar to fans of Melisandre (Carice van Houten), who killed Stannis Baratheon’s brother Renly in Season 2 of Game of Thrones through a similar brand of magical trickery. 

Rivers’s fate is never fully explained in Fire & Blood, as the book ends before it can wrap her storyline up. This has led many fans to speculate that she never dies at all, that she leaves Harrenhal and doesn’t return to Westeros until over a hundred years later, this time in the guise of a red priestess. It’s one of the least likely theories to come true—many have criticized the idea for making the world of Westeros feel a little too small—but then again, wilder things have happened in ASOIAF.

Aemond and Alys’s kid is an ancestor of the Starks.

Another major event fans can expect in Season 3 is Aemond One-Eye’s sacking of Harrenhal. Shortly after claiming the castle, he gets seduced by Alys and makes her his “wife.” The narrator of Fire & Blood takes this romance mostly at face value, but reading between the lines, it seems clear that Alys actually hates Aemond for destroying her home and killing her family members. She subtly sends him off to his death in the Battle Above the Gods Eye against Daemon, and soon after, she becomes the so-called Witch Queen of Harrenhal. Aside from her magical gifts, her young Targaryen son by Aemond becomes her main claim to power. 

So, what happens to Alys and Aemond’s son? He is a character in the book, and some fans theorize he becomes the founder of House Whent, a house of vague origins that has largely died out by the start of A Game of Thrones. It means he’d be a direct ancestor of Catelyn Tully Stark, a Whent on her mother’s side. Jon Snow’s secret Targaryen heritage was given a lot of importance throughout the original series, yet it’s possible the rest of the Stark children have some dragon blood inside them, too. 

Helaena’s death is fueled by revenge, not grief.

Another tragic moment we can expect on the show will involve Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban). In the book, she dies by suicide after throwing herself out of a tower window about six months after Rhaenyra’s forces invade King’s Landing. It’s commonly assumed (by both readers and the characters in the book) that she does the tragic act out of profound grief, still reeling over the death of her eldest son, Prince Jaehaerys, at the hands of Blood and Cheese early in Season 2. Well, that or she was murdered at the bequest of someone like Rhaenyra or Larys Strong (Matthew Needham).

An alternative theory, however, is that Helaena’s death by suicide is far more calculated and intentional than readers initially assumed. As TV Helaena’s established as someone who could see the future, what if she throws herself off the tower specifically because she knows the damage it will cause for Rhaenyra, who’s in control of King’s Landing at the time? This is a pivotal moment where Queen Rhaenyra’s brief reign seems destroyed from within, and it would be cool if the typically passive Helaena got a chance to help make it happen.

Nettles won’t be on the show, only Rhaena.

In the penultimate episode of season 2, viewers watched as Hugh the Hammer (Kieran Bew) and Ulf the White (Tom Bennett)—two men of lowborn birth—each claimed a dragon, a feat Addam of Hull had also achieved in the previous episode. The “dragonseeds,” as these men are called, are the illegitimate offspring of Targaryens or those of strong Valyrian descent (like the Velaryons). In Ulf’s case, he claims on the show to be the bastard son of Prince Baelon Targaryen, father of Daemon and King Viserys. Though it isn’t confirmed in the book, the show also seems to suggest Saera Targaryen—Prince Baelon’s disgraced little sister and a trueborn daughter of the old King Jaehaerys (who rode Vermithor, the Bronze Fury)—is Hugh’s biological mother, which some fans think makes a lot of sense.

But they’re not the only ones who claim a dragon. If the show were sticking to the book, an upcoming storyline would feature Nettles, a lowborn bastard girl of unknown lineage who mounts a wild dragon (Sheepstealer) after cleverly bringing him lots of sheep, his favorite meal, and getting him to trust her. Nettles joins Rhaenyra’s side of the war, and she and Daemon end up having a surprisingly sweet relationship—although it’s speculated that Daemon starts cheating on Rhaenyra with her. Lady Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) sure seems to think so; in Fire & Blood, she persuades a paranoid Rhaenyra to order Nettles’s death because of it. (Daemon refuses to carry the order out.)

It’s been all but confirmed on the show that Nettles’s basic role in the story will instead go to Rhaena, Daemon’s second daughter from his second marriage to Laena Velaryon. This leads to one obvious, uncomfortable question: Will the relationship between Rhaena and Daemon become romantic? Typically we’d say no, as parent/child love is the one form of incest that even the Targaryens aren’t cool with. Still, after Daemon’s sex dream with his mother, Alyssa Targaryen, earlier in Season 2, we can no longer say for sure. Fans can only hope that Daemon and Rhaena’s relationship will be a bit more wholesome than the book’s counterpart—and that the moment Rhaena finally claims a dragon will be epic.

Rhaenyra won’t meet the same grisly fate she does in the book.

Fire & Blood ends Rhaenyra’s journey on a very tragic note: After Daemon’s death in the Gods Eye and the riot in King’s Landing, she retreats back to Dragonstone, but she’s in for a big surprise. Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), who flees the capital right before her initial invasion, finally reveals himself after over a year in hiding, and his forces take her captive. She’s ultimately burnt alive and then eaten by his dragon, Sunfyre, who somehow manages to make it to Dragonstone. And it all happens right in front of her own son, no less, who is forced to watch helplessly as his mother gets devoured.

It’s a pyrrhic victory for Aegon II, as the rest of his short reign is pretty miserable—especially once Daemon’s daughter Baela reunites on Dragonstone with her dragon, Moondancer, and reminds him of the real meaning of the family’s motto. But that doesn’t make Rhaenyra’s horrific death any less upsetting. In the show, however, Aegon casually mentions that Sunfyre died in the Battle of Rook’s Rest, along with Meleys and Rhaenys (Eve Best), the Queen who Never Was. It’s technically possible he’s exaggerating, or he’s just got his facts wrong, but many fans have taken it as a potential sign that the show doesn’t intend to give us the same endgame. 

Perhaps the HotD writers have listened to the feedback from Season 8 of Game of Thrones, in which Daenerys Targaryen also seemed to “go mad” and was killed shortly afterward, and decided not to follow the same path. While that is how George R.R. Martin closes out Rhaenyra’s story in the source material, maybe they’ll allow Rhaenyra to have a better ending or one that’s not quite so grim. 

The show takes place in an alternate timeline.

One of the most controversial moments in the Season 2 finale was the brief glimpse of Daenerys in Daemon’s mystical vision at the weirwood tree in Harrenhal. It’s a moment that seemingly cements her as the prophecized Princess That Was Promised, which would be great and all ... if not for how bitter many fans still are about how that story wrapped up on GoT.

But what if that’s not how this story ends in HotD’s timeline? Maybe this is the version of Westeros where things go a tiny bit better for the female Targaryens involved, and where neither Daenerys nor Rhaenyra snap and need to be put out of their misery by the narrative? Or perhaps this show is creating its own canon, separate from GoT and perhaps even ASOIAF, in which Daenerys’s fall from grace might be averted. Given that George R.R. Martin still hasn’t finished writing ASOIAF, some even speculate that Martin could be changing his planned ending for the books (and that HotD’s showrunners know something we don’t on that front).

Of course, it’s likely that HotD will ultimately end in tragedy, as that usually is the George R.R. Martin way. But it’s nice that there’s still room for some fans to hope things will turn out differently. It might make it sting harder in the end if the theories are wrong, but at least now, some of their doomed faves still have a fighting chance.

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