What did Alys Rivers mean when she said Harrenhal is "cursed"? (Daemon's dreams explained)

Daemon Targaryen has been having some very trippy dreams on House of the Dragon. In the third episode of the show's second season, "The Burning Mill," Daemon (Matt Smith) arrived at the ruined castle of Harrenhal. There he encountered a number of important figures in the Dance of the Dragons, including the castle's castellan, Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale), and an unassuming woods witch by the name of Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin).

Later that night, Daemon woke after having a terrifying dream in the Godswood of the castle, with Alys standing behind him to deliver a cryptic prophecy that he will "die in this place." What gives? Can't a dragonrider just have a vacation in a ruined castle in peace?

The fourth episode, "The Red Dragon and the Gold," shed some light on what exactly is going on with Daemon and his dreams. The episode begins right at the top with Daemon having yet another dream where he beheads a young Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock). Later, he awakens from a different dream after chasing an apparition of himself who is wearing Aemond's eye patch deep in the castle of Harrenhal. This time, when he comes to, he's not in the Godswood; he's in Alys Rivers' workshop in the heart of the castle.

Alys explains a few things to Daemon about why he's been having these dreams, saying that Harrenhal has been "cursed since its first stone was laid," and that the cruel man who built it, Harren Hoare (otherwise known as Harren the Black), cut down a grove of weirwoods which used to grow where the castle now stands. Daemon tries to brush this off as a superstition, but Alys calmly informs him that the very bed he's been sleeping in was carved out of one of those felled weirwoods.

So what exactly does this mean for Daemon? And what does Alys mean when she says that Harrenhal is "cursed"? Is that just referring to the weirwoods...or is there something even more horrible in Harrenhal's past? Let's strap into our dragon saddles and take a trip back in Westeros' history to the reign of one of its most terrible kings: Harren the Black.

The dark history of how Harren the Black built Harrenhal

Despite its decrepit appearance, Harrenhal is actually newer than many other castles in Westeros. Harren the Black's grandfather, Harwyn Hoare, was a king of the Iron Islands who expanded his kingdom dramatically by conquering the Riverlands. House Hoare ruled over both the islands and the Riverlands in the years that followed, with both Harwyn and his son, Halleck Hoare, spending the majority of their reigns putting down various rebellions across the Riverlands. Despite their power, House Hoare never had a proper stronghold in the Riverlands...until Harren the Black.

Determined to build a castle that would put all others to shame, Harren the Black poured 40 years into the building of Harrenhal. As Alys Rivers mentioned in House of the Dragon, he chopped down a grove of weirwoods which had stood for thousands of years and used their sacred wood to build everything from beds to beams and rafters. But even more horrifying, Harren built Harrenhal using a vast army of slaves he'd captured. Thousands died building the castle, all in the name of Harren's dream of having the biggest fortress in the land.

Harren's satisfaction was destined to be short-lived. The very day that the last stone was laid on the castle of Harrenhal, Aegon Targaryen launched his campaign to conquer Westeros. Harrenhal had been built to be impregnable, but that didn't account for dragons. After Harren refused to bend the knee to the Targaryens, Aegon descended on the castle in the middle of the night on his dragon, Baelrion the Black Dread, and put it to the flame. The fires which consumed Harrenhal burned so hot that they melted the castle into the ruin which we've come to know through Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, and wiped out Harren Hoare's entire bloodline.

So we have a castle which required the blood of thousands of innocents to build, sitting atop a desecrated grove of ancient weirwoods, which was then utterly destroyed as soon as it was completed in an act which ended the line of the famously cruel king who constructed it. Is it any wonder Alys says that Harrenhal is cursed?

Is Alys Rivers causing Daemon's dreams, or is it Harrenhal itself?

That brings us to House of the Dragon, and Daemon Targaryen's recurring, spooky dreams. For the past two episodes, Daemon has been seeing apparitions from his past and strange portents; most notably, young Rhaenyra Targaryen has been appearing to taunt him with dark truths.

When we first see Daemon dream, he wakes up to find himself and Alys Rivers in the Godswood of the castle. From that, it's easy to assume that Alys might be behind Daemon's visions. But in "The Red Dragon and the Gold," the woods witch sheds more light on his predicament, and it's bigger than her.

Daemon Targaryen is sleeping in a bed made from a felled weirwood, and while Alys doesn't explicitly spell out what that does to a person's mind, we've seen enough examples of weirwoods bestowing prescient visions or "weirwood dreams" throughout Game of Thrones and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books to recognize the similarities. These trees are often associated with Bran Stark, but since some Targaryens also have varying degrees of natural prescience, it would seem weirwoods can have a strong effect on them as well. I'm thinking of Daenys the Dreamer, who foresaw the Doom of Valyria; Aegon the Conqueror, who dreamed the Song of Ice and Fire; or even Brynden Rivers, the man known as Bloodraven, a Targaryen bastard who lived during the time of Dunk and Egg and later went on to become the Three Eyed Raven that tutored Bran beyond the Wall. Daemon has never displayed such talents, but put him and his ancient Valyrian blood in a weirwood bed, and the results are speak for themselves.

There's also the question of what was in the concoction that Alys made Daemon drink. She licks something that looks like blood off her fingers as she makes it, however it is very possible that it's not blood at all, but something which has been established in the books to look very similar: weirwood paste, a hallucinogenic made from the processed sap of a weirwood tree. Bran takes some of this during his time with the Three Eyed Raven in A Dance with Dragons, and it opens up his visions even more.

Daemon was already having strange dreams but was still functioning normally while awake. Then, Alys gave him weirwood paste and sent him on a tripped-out vision quest where he's unable to even tell the waking world from the dreaming, as we saw during his meeting with Willem Blackwood where he was confronted with the specter of his late wife, Laena Velaryon.

The question now becomes: how much longer will these visions haunt Daemon? Will they keep him bound up in Harrenhal, plumbing the depths of his own mind rather than helping Rhaenyra in her war effort?

We'll find out in the next episode of House of the Dragon, but if the trailer is any indication, Daemon may finally be ready to shake the cobwebs free of his mind and set out into the Riverlands on his dragon Caraxes. Woe to any Bracken who stands in his way.

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