How Does Rhaenyra Targaryen Die in George RR Martin's Books?
Rhaenyra fans, brace yourselves for spoilers.
House of the Dragon covers the events of the Dance of Dragons, a devastating civil war between the two branches of the Targaryen dynasty: the Blacks, who support Queen Rhaenyra, the eldest child of the late King Viserys, and the Greens, who support King Aegon II, Viserys' eldest male child and Rhaenyra's half-brother.
Season 1 covered the build-up to the war, which really started at the end of the last episode.
And if you thought that this war was going to end with one side or the other winning and living happily ever after, you weren't paying attention to what kind of show you were watching.
So it is pretty much a given that the leaders of both sides will not survive the coming conflagration.
Yes, the show had previously deviated from George Martin 's books in order to spare one or two characters, but to disappear quietly and leave everyone thinking you're dead would be completely against Rhaenyra Targaryen's character. Besides, her death in the books was a spectacular one, with numerous witnesses, so without some literal magic it simply cannot be presented as a fake-out.
How did she die, you ask? At one point during the war, Rhaenyra and her forces managed to take King's Landing. However, Rhaenyra proved to be a poor ruler – perhaps unsurprisingly, given that in the show she shows little interest in the actual business of governing – and the people rose up against her.
After an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Dragonstone, she and her son Aegon the Younger were captured and brought before Aegon II.
In the books, Aegon II was less despicable than in the show, but he was never the nicest of guys, and at the time he was embittered by the death of pretty much his entire family, including his wife and children. And basically everyone else in King's Landing was baying for Rhaenyra's blood. So he fed Rhaenyra to his dragon, Sunfyre, and made Aegon the Younger watch. Yes, we've already seen