When Game of Thrones begins, the White Walkers are basically considered folklore. They threatened Westeros once, but that was a long time ago, and there’s a huge wall of ice between them and the rest of the world.
And then, of course, it ends up that White Walkers are very real and pose a terrible danger to humanity. But everyone is squabbling so much that it’s hard to unite them to stand against this new threat. Through the efforts of characters like Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen and Arya Stark, the White Walkers are finally neutralized.
That brings us to House of the Dragon, the new Game of Thrones prequel set some 200 years before the original show. In the first episode, King Viserys I Targaryen reveals a secret to his daughter Rhaenyra: Aegon the Conquerer, the first Targaryen king of Westeros, foresaw the White Walker apocalypse coming 100 years ago, and forged the Seven Kingdoms in part because, if he didn’t, the divided country would surely fall to the approaching menace, and the rest of humanity swiftly after that. Targaryen rulers have passed this knowledge down to their heirs ever since.
Targaryens knew about the White Walkers for centuries
We also see that Viserys has the dagger that Arya Stark will use to stab the Night King centuries later, so there’s quite a lot of connective tissue. However, this brings up a question: why didn’t we hear any of this on Game of Thrones?
Well, probably because the knowledge was lost. And we’ll probably see it get lost on this show. Without spoiling much, thing on House of the Dragon get very bloody and contentious, and it’s not hard to believe that characters could get taken off the board before they have a chance to pass this information down to their heirs.
Eventually, the information is rediscovered, possibly by Daenerys Targaryen’s older brother Rhaegar, who at one point in his life went into a library uninterested in battle, and came out deciding he needed to be a warrior. But he died fighting against Robert Baratheon, so again, the information was lost by the time we got to the start of the story.
It was George R.R. Martin’s idea for Targaryens to know about the White Walkers
If you’re wondering, the idea of the Targaryens passing this knowledge down through the generations came from George R.R. Martin. “It’s mentioned here and there—in connection with Prince Rhaegar, for example ,” Martin said in a recent interview. “I mean, it’s such a sprawling thing now. In the Dunk and Egg stories , there’s one of Egg’s brothers who has these prophetic dreams, which of course he can’t handle. He had become a drunkard because they freaked him out. If you go all the way back to Daenys the Dreamer, why did she leave? She saw the Doom of Valyria coming. All of this is part of it, but I’m still two books away from the ending, so I haven’t fully explained it all yet.”
Just to make sure no one comes at him for violating canon, House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal made sure people know that this idea came from Martin. “A lot of them said I committed A Song of Ice and Fire heresy,” he said, “but I did tell them: ‘That came from George.’ I reassured everybody.”
We’ll see how this develops over the course of the season.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels