The fight for the Iron Throne continues on House of the Dragon season 3, but that’s not the only drama ahead. While the Blacks and Greens will battle it out some more, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) also has her marriage to worry about.
In the most recent episode, “Tumbleton,” Rhaenyra tries to gather as much information as possible about her new number one enemy, Ormund Hightower (James Norton), all while growing a tiny bit suspicious of her husband, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith).
After Rhaenyra learns the news that Ormund’s army has taken Tumbleton, a town nearby to King’s Landing that swore allegiance to her, Daemon returns to the city claiming to have gotten vengeance. He presents his wife with a burnt head, saying he found the man who rode the wild dragon Sheepstealer into the Battle of the Gullet, indirectly killing Rhaenyra’s son, Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett). And while Rhaenyra was adamant on finding the person responsible, she’s understandably disappointed Daemon didn’t bring him back alive. Something’s fishy about all of this.
Daemon and Rhaenyra, book vs show
Of course, we know that Daemon is lying; it’s his daughter Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell) who’s claimed Sheepstealer, and after he learns this in episode 4, he decides to cover for her. In the source material, George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, it’s the dragonseed Nettles who claims Sheepstealer. This beloved character from the book has been removed from the show altogether, with the writers more or less combining her storyline with Rhaena.
It’s a bit weird, considering it’s rumored Daemon and Nettles have an intimate relationship in the book, but showrunner Ryan Condal is confident in this decision.
In the most recent episode of House of the Dragon, Daemon discovers Rhaena hiding out in a cave in the Vale, and she convinces him to lie for her. She is clearly regretful about what happened at the Gullet, and does not want Rhaenyra finding out it was her. Daemon argues that Rhaenyra would be understanding—which I do think is true; at the very least, she wouldn’t kill her stepdaughter—but Rhaena doesn’t want to hear it. Expressing how overlooked she felt growing up for not having a dragon, Rhaena guilts her father, and he takes the easy way out.
Spying a sheep herder nearby, Daemon kills the man, bringing back his charred skull to King’s Landing so it’s unrecognizable. He tries to explain with as simple an explanation as possible, but Rhaenyra wants the details. This is the person she believes had a hand in the murder of her son, and she needs to know everything to feel closure. But she’s not going to get it, of course, because it’s a lie.
While speaking to IGN, Condal shed light on the decision to have Daemon deceive Rhaenyra like this, referencing Daemon and Nettles’ relationship in Fire & Blood and its impact on his marriage with Rhaenyra.
“We knew that Sheepstealer's rider, that character causes extreme strife for Daemon and Rhaenyra's relationship. And that was sort of the place that we started in,” Condal shared. “We felt in season 2 that we were telling the story of the dragonseeds pretty completely and robustly in terms of all the different walks of life that come to riding dragons. And it felt like pairing a wild dragon with a lady of noble blood that then becomes somewhat feral herself, which is a very interesting story to tell that helped keep us at the core of where we wanted to take Rhaenyra and Daemon's relationship.”
Of course, most book fans wouldn’t agree that excluding Nettles entirely is telling the story “pretty completely and robustly,” even if Condal is only talking about representing different types of people, but it is interesting to hear him explain the dynamic between Rhaena and Sheepstealer.
As for why it couldn’t have been Nettles to come between Rhaenyra and Daemon, Condal explained:
“It did not feel like, to us, an infidelity story [between Daemon and Nettles] was someplace that we wanted to go with Daemon and Rhaenyra given everything they had been through to this point. I think the audience really wants to see this couple work out, but they both have inextricable natures to them that they can only get so far away from. And we see that playing out with Daemon over the course of the season.”
It’s true that from the start, House of the Dragon has romanticized Rhaenyra and Daemon’s relationship. Of course, there’s their troubling power dynamic, plus the fact that they’re uncle and niece, but overall, most of the fandom does root for them. In season 1, I wondered if that would last when Nettles entered the picture, but of course, that’s a moot point now.
Daemon’s lie should have major consequences
Instead, Daemyra fans now have to deal with Daemon lying. But as Condal points out, this time it’s not just for himself, but to help someone he cares for.
“But I think more interestingly for Daemon is for the first time, he's doing something very self-interested, but he's doing it in the name of protecting his daughter, which we haven't really seen from him to date. It shows a more mature Daemon that's still Daemon,” Condal continued. “And I think that was the thing that we were really attracted to. And this is going to be a story that continues to obviously unfold, and evolve, and play out over the course of the season. We'll have ripple effects that take us all the way into the end of the Dance of the Dragons.”
No matter his intentions, however, Daemon’s lie is a massive one. Rhaenyra and Daemon have butted heads in the past, but if/when this comes to light, I don’t know how Rhaenyra will move past it. She’s the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms now, and, unfortunately, she doesn’t have many people she can fully trust. That puts her in a very difficult position, and if she finds out Daemon deceived her in this major way, I don’t know if she can afford to forgive him. Perhaps that’s what Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) is hoping for.
Rhaenyra and Daemon have come a long way, and though Daemon is finally in a place where he’s fully committed to Rhaenyra being queen, that doesn’t mean their relationship is perfect. I’m eager to find out what’ll happen if this deception comes to light, and I very much hope it does. Condal teases the “ripple effects” from this bad decision, so I don’t think Daemon will be able to get away with it.
We’re onto the second half of the season now, and there are many choices the characters won’t be able to come back from. Stream new episodes of House of the Dragon every Sunday night.
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