House of the Dragon season 3 episode 4 “Tumbleton” did little to help Rhaenyra Targaryen's (Emma D’Arcy) growing paranoia.
She has been having a nightmare of a first week at work, between an empty coffer, Corlys Velaryon's (Steve Toussaint) condemnation, and Daemon Targaryen's (Matt Smith) lie about Sheepstealer’s rider. As if things weren’t bad enough for her, now she possibly has a new line of succession contender to worry about.
Because Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban) is pregnant.
At one point in episode 4, we see Helaena struggling to dress herself in the background as Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) sits on a couch and reads a book. Moments later, Rhaenyra visits their room to return Alicent’s father Otto’s (Rhys Ifans) ring.
After Rhaenyra leaves, Helaena, now dressed, approaches her mother, and Alicent offers to help her with her robe. But something stops the dowager queen in her tracks.
Helaena refuses to let Alicent take a closer look at her belly, and the two share a look of dread, knowing fully well what it could mean for Helaena to bear another child, now that the two Green queens are captives of the Blacks.
Helaena’s pregnancy “a major complication,” says showrunner Ryan Condal
In a recent conversation with IGN, House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal weighed in on the gravity of the revelation.
“Helaena being pregnant is a major complication for her given the fact that she's literally in Rhaenyra's shadow and her captive,” Condal said. “And if that child is a boy, it's going to be very problematic for both Rhaenyra, and for her, and for Alicent.”
“So it felt like a way to keep alive certain threads in the book in a way that sort of suited the plot, I think, and the story that we're telling here in our version, our adaptation of The Dance of the Dragons,” he explained.
Fans had been speculating about Helaena’s pregnancy since the release of this season’s teaser trailer back in April. In a split-second moment in the 2-minute clip, Helaena is seen screaming, her hair sticking to her sweat-dampened face.
Many viewers theorized that it was a childbirth scene. Some argued that it could be a vision, a visual from one of her dragon dreams.
In episode 2 of this season, Helaena studies a caterpillar on a leaf when Alicent approaches her in the garden before Rhaenyra arrives in King’s Landing. Helaena tells Alicent, “This is strange; it isn’t the season.”
Some viewers saw this as a foreshadowing of something going wrong as well, given that Helaena often speaks in riddles.
In the show, after the High Septon refused to crown Rhaenyra without concrete proof of King Aegon II Targaryen's (Tom Glynn-Carney) fate, the Blacks spread the word that both he and his dragon, Sunfyre, are dead.
In reality, Aegon II is very much alive, albeit burnt and disfigured, and currently hiding in Rook’s Rest with Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), who somehow manages to appear helpful and suspicious at the same time. Sunfyre could also be alive if Aegon’s instinct is to be believed, although the dragon is currently unresponsive and looks like he is in deep sleep.
Now that Helaena is pregnant, the whole situation certainly gets a lot more complicated, especially if the yet-to-be-born baby is the character most fans believe he is.
HBO and Condal could be heeding George R. R. Martin’s ominous warning
Online theories suggest that Helaena is pregnant with Maelor Targaryen, the third child of her and her brother-husband Aegon II in George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood.
In the book, Aegon II and Helaena have three kids, not two: twins Jaehaerys and Jaehaera, and the youngest, Maelor, who is a two-year-old toddler during the Dance of the Dragons and plays a crucial role in the “Blood and Cheese” sequence in season 2.
The book version of the devastating tragedy sees assassins Blood and Cheese ask Helaena to choose whether they kill Jaehaerys or Maelor, to claim "a son for a son" in response for the death of Rhaenyra's child Prince Lucerys. She decides to give up Maelor, as Prince Jaehaerys was King Aegon II’s heir, but Blood kills Jaehaerys instead.
The incident leaves Haelena traumatized and in a catatonic state for the rest of her life, and she is pushed past the edge when Maelor is killed in a mob at the Blacks-held Bitterbridge after Rhaenyra takes King’s Landing. She takes her life by jumping out of her window.
In the show, Helaena is asked to point out which of the twins was the boy and is relieved from the guilt of choosing one of her children to die.
Martin previously expressed his discontent about the decision to remove Maelor, especially from the “Blood and Cheese” sequence and the catalyst he later plays in Helaena’s death.
In 2024, after watching the second season’s premiere episode, “A Son for a Son,” Martin wrote on his blog, “As I saw it, the ‘Sophie’s Choice’ aspect was the strongest part of the sequence, the darkest, the most visceral. I hated to lose that. And judging from the comments online, most of the fans seemed to agree.”
He also wrote that Condal had initially assured him Maelor would be born later in the show, but it was later decided that he was “never going to be born at all.”
Referring to Maelor’s absence as a “Butterfly” effect, Martin wrote: “In Ryan’s outline for season 3, Helaena still kills herself… for no particular reason. There is no fresh horror, no triggering event to overwhelm the fragile young queen.”
“There are larger and more toxic butterflies to come, if HOUSE OF THE DRAGON goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for seasons 3 and 4,” the author ominously concluded.
It could be that HBO and Condal are taking Martin’s warnings to heart and writing Maelor into the story after all.
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