Who is Alyn of Hull? New House of the Dragon season 2 character explained

We're days away from the premiere of House of the Dragon season 2, and battle lines are being drawn across the realm. Set roughly 200 years before Game of Thrones, HBO's spinoff about House Targaryen is poised to cover a horrific civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, when rival branches of the family tore their dynasty apart over who should sit the Iron Throne. On the one side, we have Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and her Black faction; on the other, King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) and his Greens. Who will emerge triumphant?

Well, this is a Game of Thrones show, so the chances that anyone will get a clear-cut victory seem slim. And it won't just be Targaryens at war in the coming weeks. Season 2 of House of the Dragon is poised to introduce a bevy of new characters who will fight for one side or the other, bolstering their chances of victory and sharing in the crushing defeats.

One of those characters we know we'll see in season 2 is Alyn of Hull, played by Raised By Wolves and Assassin's Creed Origins veteran Abubakar Salim. Both Alyn and his brother Addam of Hull play a major role in George R.R. Martin's novel Fire & Blood. With the new season looming, let's take a minute to go over everything we know about Alyn of Hull. There will be MILD SPOILERS for Fire & Blood ahead as we discuss Alyn's origins; but don't worry, we won't go spoiling too much about his role in the war to come.

Who is Alyn of Hull in Fire & Blood?

In Fire & Blood, Alyn of Hull and his brother Addam of Hull are bastards with some intriguing ties to House Velaryon. At one point in the war, Rhaenyra finds herself with more dragons than she has riders, and decides to put out a call to the masses: anyone who can mount a dragon and fight for her in the war will be given lands and titles. People come from all walks of life to try and claim one of the beasts, many of them failing in spectacularly bloody ways.

These prospective dragonriders become known to history as the dragonseeds. In the book, both Alyn and his brother Addam of Hull enter the picture during the "sowing of the dragonseeds," when Rhaenyra puts out her call for dragonriding hopefuls.

In the book, these two characters are teenagers, with Alyn being around 16 years old and Addam a year younger. They originate from Driftmark, the home of House Velaryon, and their mother was a woman nicknamed Mouse, a shipwright's daughter who went on to captain her own trading vessel. Both Alyn and Addam helped with the family ship business, meaning they were accomplished sailors even at their relatively young age.

It's rumored that both Alyn and Addam are the illegitimate children of Laenor Velaryon...but since many in the realm know that Laenor was actually gay, few believe it. What seems far more likely — and what Fire & Blood strongly implies — is that Alyn and Addam are actually the bastard children of Laenor's father, Corlys Velaryon. It's Corlys himself who brings Alyn and Addam to court in order to have them take their shot at taming a dragon. Which of them succeeds we won't spoil here; you'll just have to watch the season for that! But suffice to say that both Alyn and Addam of Hull go on to have a large impact on the Dance.

How is Alyn of Hull different in House of the Dragon than the book?

While we don't know how all the details about how Alyn's story will play out, there are already a couple of notable differences in the way the show is portraying the character compared to the book. The largest of those is the character's age. As mentioned earlier, Alyn is a teenager in the book; in the show, he's an adult. We don't know the exact age difference, but it's significant enough that it will alter how the character's backstory plays out on screen.

The largest way that will manifest that we know of is that, in House of the Dragon, Alyn of Hull fought in the Velaryon fleet during Corlys' campaign against the Triarchy in the Stepstones. We don't know yet if this means his origins helping his mother on her merchant vessel have been totally scrapped, or if he just went on to join Corlys Velaryon's war once he'd grown. But either way, the show's version of Alyn of Hull will be an older, more seasoned character who has seen combat. There are a lot of options for how House of the Dragon could lean into that to make Alyn an even more fascinating character than he is in the novel.

We'll find out more about how the series is bringing Alyn and his brother Addam to life when House of the Dragon season 2 premieres on HBO and Max on June 16.

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