As House of the Dragon's penultimate season fades into the rearview, fans will have to ask themselves the all important question of how to stay satiated on Westeros for the next two years until season 4 premieres. While we'll certainly have more on the TV front next year, thanks to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and updates to watch out for for the Aegon's Conquest movie, fortunately there's an even better way to bide the time: revisiting the books.
I've been whiling away the time since the Battle of Tumbleton aired by revisiting George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, the latter half of which forms the basis for House of the Dragon. While the Dance of the Dragons civil war is obviously the most prominent part of the book, it's filled with other interesting periods of Targaryen history as well, including the wars and governance of Aegon the Conqueror; the tumultuous reigns of his sons, Aenys and Maegor the Cruel; the long reign of Jaehaerys the Conciliator and more.
The Dance is the most dramatic part of the book, but that's not to say those other sections lack for it either. There are plenty of deaths, betrayals, and mysteries woven into the first century of the Targaryen dynasty, before the Great Council of 101 AC named Viserys heir to the Iron Throne. And as it happens, a close read of Fire & Blood reveals that some of these earlier storylines did in fact make their way into House of the Dragon, just reworked to fit the narrative of the show.
Such is the case for House of the Dragon's most horrific scene, which stunned viewers when it first premiered all the way back in 2022 and remains one of its most difficult to watch to this day. Consider this a trigger warning that we'll be discussing traumatic births.
Aemma Arryn's death happens to another queen in Fire & Blood
Yes, I'm talking about the forced cesarean operation that led to the death of Aemma Arryn (Siân Brooke) and her infant son, Baelon Targaryen. House of the Dragon used this awful sequence as a way to shock viewers in its series premiere, driving home the idea that at this time in Westeros, a woman's battlefield was the birthing bed.
As Aemma labors to bring her and King Viserys' (Paddy Considine) son into the world, it becomes clear that something is terribly wrong. The maester informs Viserys that the labor will not succeed, and that their only choices are to allow Aemma and the baby to die, or to try to save the baby by using a dangerous technique to cut the newborn out, which will kill Aemma in the process. Viserys makes the heartwrenching decision to proceed with the operation. Aemma is held down against her will, the baby is removed, and she is killed just as the maester predicted. Moments later, it's revealed that something is wrong with the baby as well, and we hard cut to Aemma and Baelon's funeral.
Few moments in House of the Dragon feel quite so tragic as this. At the time that the show aired, there was much discussion about the fact that the show added this fate in for Aemma, while the book does not go into detail about the specifics of her death during labor. It seemed an especially cruel addition.
However, the idea of a character dying from a medieval C-section does in fact pop up elsewhere in Fire & Blood. Two generations before Viserys and Aemma were born, their grandfather Jaehaerys the Conciliator witnessed such a death: that of his mother, the Dowager Queen Alyssa Velaryon. (No, not Daemon and Viserys' mother Alyssa; this is a different one, who was that Alyssa's namesake.)
Who was Alyssa Velaryon and how did she die in Fire & Blood?
Alyssa Velaryon was the daughter of Lord Aethan Velaryon and Lady Alarra Massey, who married Aenys Targaryen — the second king of Westeros. Aenys and Alyssa's reign was fraught with unrest, and when he died from the stress of the realm collapsing around him, it paved the way for his tyrannical brother, Maegor the Cruel, to claim the Iron Throne. Alyssa and her five children survived her husband; their stories are woven through decades of subsequent lore as the Targaryens warred with one another and re-unified the Seven Kingdoms in the aftermath.
When Maegor eventually followed his brother to the grave and Alyssa's youngest son Jaehaerys the Conciliator was crowned, she served as Queen Regent until he came of age to rule himself. She was aided by Lord Rogar Baratheon, who served as Hand of the King. The two eventually married, and after Jaehaerys ascended the throne and a fair amount of drama ensued, they went back to Storm's End together. There, Alyssa and Rogar were shocked when she became pregnant not once, but twice; Alyssa was in her 40s at the time, and assumed she would not have any more children.
The first birth passed without incident. Rogar and Alyssa's eldest child was named Boremund Baratheon, and he became the Lord of Storm's End in due time. But Alyssa never fully recovered from Boremund's birth, and when the time came to deliver another child, something went wrong a full moon's turn before she was due. Jaehaerys and his sister-wife, Good Queen Alysanne, flew to their mother's side on their dragons, arriving to find her in horrific pain with Rogar sitting a drunken vigil outside her room.
There, they were all confronted with a terrible truth: Alyssa would not survive. Rogar was forced to make the exact same choice Viserys did in the show, and he chose the same, condemning Alyssa to a bloody end in an attempt to save his child. However, due to the opaque nature of Fire & Blood as an unreliable history, there are conflicting accounts as to whether she regained consciousness, gave the operation her blessing, or passed away in her sleep. No matter how you look at it, Alyssa's demise is presented in a less brutal manner than Aemma's death in House of the Dragon.
Unlike in the House of the Dragon premiere, Alyssa and Rogar's child survives — and it isn't a boy, as Rogar believed, but a girl. Named Jocelyn Baratheon, the last child of Alyssa Velaryon would eventually grow into a woman renowned throughout the realm. She married King Jaehaerys' eldest son, Aemon, and became the queen-in-waiting. Their own child, Rhaenys Targaryen a.k.a. the Queen Who Never Was, is a major figure in the show, and for good reason. The Great Council of 101 AC passing over Rhaenys' claim to the Iron Throne for that of her younger cousin Viserys is the inciting incident of the Dance of the Dragons civil war, and the very first scene of the series.
House of the Dragon has often played fast and loose with adapting Martin's work for the screen, but at other times it contains surprisingly faithful deep cuts that reinforce the show's relationship with its source material. Aemma Arryn's death is one such instance. At first glance, it is a terrible, brutal decision meant to shock television audiences, which turned a moment that is glossed over in the novel into a horrifically traumatic scene that effects everything which comes after. But comparing it side by side with Fire & Blood, it becomes clear that while Aemma's death didn't contain quite the same horror, that horror does exist in Martin's Westeros; it was simply reserved for another queen, who we will more than likely never see on screen in her own right.
No doubt House of the Dragon will reveal more of these multilayered surprises in its fourth and final season, which is due to begin pre-production this fall and start filming in early 2027. That leaves plenty of time for a Fire & Blood re-read to unearth more secrets like this one, and be as prepared as possible for the dragons' final dance.
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