4 Game of Thrones: The Mad King play revelations that rocked the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom to its core

The knights have taken to the stage for the great tourney at Harrenhal, and things may never be the same for diehard fans of A Song of Ice and Fire. While it's been over 15 years since George R.R. Martin published the last mainline installment in the saga, A Dance with Dragons, we live in an age that is overflowing with other media for those who want to remain immersed in Westeros. This year alone HBO debuted a new Game of Thrones prequel series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and is currently airing the third season of its other prequel show, House of the Dragon.

Meanwhile, the Royal Shakespeare Company has just premiered its brand new stage play: Game of Thrones: The Mad King. This play details the events that led up to Robert's Rebellion, including the great tourney at Harrenhal where the likes of Rhaegar Targaryen, Robert Baratheon, Ned and Lyanna Stark, Elia Martell, and a number of other massively important figures gathered in the months leading up to the war. The Mad King himself, Aerys Targaryen, was also present, of course; had he not been, it's entirely possible that the eventual bloodshed might have been avoided.

The Mad King was scheduled to begin early preview showings on July 20, but ended up canceling its first string of dates while some of the final technical hiccups were worked out for the highly ambitious production, which runs around 4 hours and incorporates extensive puppetry, large set changes, and more. But at last, the debut preview showing happened on July 28, marking the first time the play had ever been run through in its entirety, according to Variety.

It went over beautifully, earning a standing ovation from the crowd. But more importantly for those of us at home, some of the audience members have started sharing what they saw there...and it's pretty earth-shattering stuff. I'd even go so far as to say that it sounds like Game of Thrones: The Mad King is giving fans the most new information about Martin's series since HBO's television show ended.

Though I haven't seen it myself, like many others in this fandom I've been reading all these first-hand accounts with my jaw on the floor. From answers to long-running mysteries to new information about characters that totally recontextualizes them and their relationships, this thing sounds like an absolute bombshell for the fandom.

Let's run through four major reveals that have come out of these first showings of Game of Thrones: The Mad King. A massive shoutout to @got_onstage, who compiled numerous audience member accounts into one easy-to-parse thread on X, and set the fandom on fire in the process. Follow them to keep up to date on all the latest news about the play.

1. The Knight of the Laughing Tree

The grand tourney at Harrenhal happens deep into the reign of Aerys Targaryen, after he's earned the nickname of the Mad King and started alienating people across the realm with his instability and cruelty. Into this breach comes Rhaegar Targaryen, his eldest son and heir to the Iron Throne, who is cut from cloth much closer to AKOTSK's Baelor Breakspear than his father. Conspiring with Lord Walter Whent, Rhaegar funds a grand tourney at Harrenhal which spans 10 days, as a front for an informal Great Council that aims to depose his father and place him on the throne instead.

There's a ton of drama that happens at the tourney, but one mystery which has endured is the Knight of the Laughing Tree. This mystery knight shows up to defend the honor of the crannogman Howland Reed. We get hints about who this knight is in the books, but now we know for sure: none other than Lyanna Stark, Ned Stark's younger sister.

This also explains why the Mad King was never able to figure out the identity of the Knight of the Laughing Tree. After she participated in the lists, Lyanna was able to shed her armor and reassume her regular identity among the guests of the tourney, with Aerys Targaryen none the wiser.

2. The three heads of the dragon

Much of the story of Game of Thrones: The Mad King centers around the doomed love of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, but this version of the tale plays out much differently than it did on Game of Thrones. Rather than annulling his marriage to Elia Martell, Rhaegar's wife actually encourages his and Lyanna's coupling. Elia is a character who is given new dimensions by the play, where it's revealed that she is a political schemer who is primarily concerned with keeping Dorne's grip on power in the Seven Kingdoms secure.

According to accounts from those who've seen the play, Elia cites Aegon the Conqueror and his two wives, saying Rhaegar could follow a similar path with one wife for politics (Elia) and one wife for love (Lyanna). Even more, Lyanna and Elia exchange letters by raven after Rhaegar spirits Lyanna away to the Tower of Joy, where she eventually gives birth to Jon Snow.

This also dramatically changes one key scene during the tourney itself, where Rhaegar names Lyanna as the Queen of Love and Beauty and Elia furiously storms off. It was always assumed that Elia's anger was because of her embarassament over Rhaegar's infidelity of the heart. But the play paints it very differently, since Elia is already aware of Rhaegar's feelings for Lyanna. Instead, she had planned to have Rhaegar name her Queen of Love and Beauty as part of a political maneuver to solidify their position in front of all the lords they were hoping to win to their cause against Aerys. Rhaegar acted for love, and upset those plans in the process, which frustrated Elia in the moment but seemed to do no real long-term damage to their marriage.

All told, it pains a much more cordial relationship than we've ever expected from Martin's writing — though that is almost certainly because we've never gotten any sort of in depth look at Rhaegar, Lyanna, or Elia before this play.

3. The dragon dreamer and the greenseer

Another fascinating element the play introduces is the idea that Rhaegar Targaryen has dragon dreams. The books do hint at this, but the play really pulls back the curtain, depicting Rhaegar's dreams on stage with extensive puppetry. Like his ancestor Aegon the Conqueror's prophetic dream that features in House of the Dragon, Rhaegar dreams of the future...and in particular, Lyanna Stark, who he sees playing a crucial role in the birth of The Prince That Was Promised.

On the flip side we have Lyanna, who also has spiritual dreams. It's hinted that she possesses the gift of a greenseer, like her nephew Bran Stark one day will. That makes a lot of sense, considering how many supernatural gifts we see manifest in the Stark children — especially in the books, where it's not just Bran warging or having meaningful dreams, but Arya and Jon as well.

These dreams align in ways that bring Lyanna and Rhaegar closer together, both as a couple and in their unified goal to fulfill The Prince That Was Promised prophecy by having a child. They also crop back up at a terrible time: according to those who've seen the play, Rhaegar gets a vision on the Trident right as he comes face-to-face with Robert Baratheon. The fact that Rhaegar's mind is in multiple places plays a role in his loss to Robert, who is far too ferocious an opponent to face with anything other than utter focus and determination.

4. Ashara Dayne

To date, the A Song of Ice and Fire books have never confirmed Jon Snow's parentage, but the signs are most certainly there. However, there are plenty of rumors about who the bastard's child might be, with one of most prominent being that he was sired by Ned Stark and Ashara Dayne. The daughter of a Dornish noble house, Ashara is a character we never learn very much of in the books, outside the fact she may or may not have had an affair with Ned — and that she leapt from a tower to her death after her brother, Ser Arthur Dayne, was killed at the Tower of Joy and his Valyrian steel sword Mourning returned to their family. Her body was never found, swallowed by the sea.

It should come as no surprise that the play sheds a ton of light on who Ashara is, much like it does for Lyanna, Rhaegar, and Elia. And it turns out no, she did not have an affair with Ned, though she is reportedly painted as a somewhat stereotypical example of Dornish promiscuity. Instead, she gets together with Ned's older brother Brandon at Harrenhal. There's a brief reference during a Barristan Selmy chapter in A Dance with Dragons to a man dishonoring Ashara at the Harrenhal tourney. Now we seemingly know who that man was, though Barristan's perception of it being dishonorable may not match with Ashara's own, since the play seems to paint her as having genuine affection for Brandon.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Ashara Dayne is that she is also the lover of Elia Martell herself. It's well-recorded that she served as Elia's lady-in-waiting, but the play portrays them as secret lovers, with Ashara, not Rhaegar, filling the role of Elia's true love. While this may not have massive implications for the politics of the realm, it tells us a great deal about Elia and Ashara that we never would have guessed at from the books alone, unless some later chapter in The Winds of Winter one day reveals their past.

Is the Game of Thrones: The Mad King play canon?

One important question fans might have about all this new information is whether it's actually canon to George R.R. Martin's books, or its own adaptation, similar to the HBO series. After all, we do get a few things in this play that directly contradict the HBO show, such as the fact that Elia and Rhaegar do not annul their marriage. So what's the deal?

Elio García over at Westeros.org has a pretty good explanation for what should and shouldn't be considered canon from the play, and I'm of a mind with it. The long and short is that playwright Duncan Macmillan used all the published Song of Ice and Fire material, as well as conversations with Martin himself, to craft the play, which answered some of the long-simmering questions readers have had for close to three decades now. These would be high level things, like the identity of the Knight of the Laughing Tree or the motivation behind Lyanna and Rhaegar's secret relationship. However, many of the smaller details — perhaps even things like Ashara and Elia's dynamic — are the sort of things the play might have had to build out to make for a more comprehensive drama fit for the stage.

This means that Game of Thrones: The Mad King almost certainly contains material Martin considers canon. But the play itself is an adaptation of that material, meaning that on its own it is not part of the same canon as the books.

At the end of the day, George R.R. Martin has the writing style of a "gardener," not an "architect." That means that nothing is truly set in stone until he actually writes it into his books, because everything is subject to change as he works on it and feels out what makes the most sense in a given scene or storyline. So while we can — and certainly should — take some of the revelations from Game of Thrones: The Mad King to heart, we'll only know just how closely they mesh with A Song of Ice and Fire itself once Martin weighs in, either in interviews or more published material. Until then, our watch continues, and any bits of information we can glean from something like this new production are extremely welcome.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King is currently running at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon until September 26, 2026. For more information and tickets, visit the RSC's website.

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