The entire Game of Thrones series is one big spoiler due to all the chaotic and horrifically incestuous events in House of the Dragon taking place hundreds of years before the events of the book. In other words, we are fully aware of everything that will happen in HOTD, including To Rhaenyra Targaryen final moments.
The good news is that it won’t happen right away. The bad news is that she’s not exactly dying in her bed of old age. No doubt what you’re about to read contains SPOILERS, so fasten your seatbelts. However, if you’ve watched Game of Thrones, you’re already spoiled by…
Joffrey fully revealed how Rhaenyra died
The incident occurs in episode 4 of season 3. When Joffrey Lannister is relaxing with Margaery Tyrell in the episode “And now his watch is ended,” he cheerfully mocks “Rhaenyra Targaryen she was slaughtered by her brother, or rather his dragon. As her son watched, it swallowed her. Her remains are buried in the crypts just below.
Like, okay, Joffrey, calm down!
Shireen also provides some spoilers “Dance of Dragons”, Game of Thrones Season 5 Episode 9. In her own words, it tells the story of the struggle for power in the Seven Kingdoms between Rhaenyra Targaryen and her half-brother Aegon. Each of them believed that the Iron Throne belonged to them.
Their conflict split the kingdoms in half as individuals began to declare allegiance to one or the other. The brothers fought each other. Dragons engaged in battle. When it was finished, many had died. It was also a disaster for the Targaryens. They never really came back.
So what *specifically* is going on with Rhaenyra?
Her half brother Aegon II he is said to have slaughtered and eaten her, according to Fire & Blood, the source novel for George RR Martin’s House of the Dragon. Sibling behavior at its finest!
When King Viserys dies, Rhaenyra and her “uncle-husband”, Prince Daemon, fight over the right to succeed him. This is problematic because Queen Alicent urgently wants her eldest child, Aegon II, to follow her as monarch. This brings us to “Dance of Dragons” a long and brutal battle for the Iron Throne that Shireen summarizes above.
What’s the good news for the members of Team Rhaenyra? She eventually managed to sit on the throne for about a minute. Unfortunately, by the time she arrives in King’s Landing, there is great discontent and rioting, culminating when Princess Helena—Aegon II’s adored sister-wife of the “little people”—gets hitched.
When Rhaenyra finally manages to escape King’s Landing and returns to Dragonstone, she finds that she has been tricked, all of her loyal supporters have died, and Aegon II has arrived. Not good, as her opening remarks to him seem to be, “Dear brother, I thought you were gone.”
Aegon deliberately orders his dragon Sunfire to consume Rhaenyra in front of her last living child, Prince Aegon the Younger, which only makes matters worse. According to Fire & Blood:
“Sunfire, as they say, initially didn’t seem interested in the offering until Broome stabbed the queen’s chest with his dagger. The smell of blood woke the dragon, who sniffed at Her Majesty, then doused her in a stream of flame so sudden that Ser Alfred’s cloak caught fire as he jumped away. Rhaenyra Targaryen had time to raise her head to the sky and scream one last curse at her half-brother before Sunfire’s jaws closed around her, tearing off her arm and shoulder.’
Final lines:
Rhaenyra Targaryen is killed and eaten by Aegon II’s dragon in the books. After Rhaenyra stole King’s Landing from Aegon and sat on the Iron Throne for six months, the town’s small townspeople rose up against her after tax increases and the death of Aegon’s wife and sister, Helena Targaryen.
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