Will Daemon Targaryen Get Greyscale in House of the Dragon Season 2?
In the world of Westeros, greyscale is a disease that resembles super leprosy. It is sometimes fatal, leaving the flesh stiff and dead, cracked like stone, and often resulting in hideous scarring.
In particular, the Crabfeeder, who appeared in the early episodes of House of the Dragon, was a victim of slowly progressing greyscale.
The actor who played him, Daniel Scott-Smith, explicitly confirmed this, in case the Crabfeeder's hideous appearance was not enough of a clue. And greyscale is said to be fairly easily transmitted from person to person through mere skin-to-skin contact, sometimes even through objects touched by an infected person.
This is where one of the more recent fan theories comes from.
You see, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith ), who personally killed Crabfeeder, not only touched the body, but was sprayed with Crabfeeder's blood while being wounded himself. It stands to reason that he could be infected with the horrible disease, the symptoms of which could appear at any time.
There are holes in this theory, of course. For one thing, Daemon still shows no signs of greyscale many years after the encounter. While the nature and effects of fantasy diseases tend to be vague, greyscale should appear relatively quickly, perhaps within months. It is unlikely that it lay dormant for that long.
Second, there is the counter-theory that in addition to their remarkable heat tolerance, the Targaryen family is also blessed with immunity to infectious disease. Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones even says, "We are untroubled by the pestilences that afflicted common men," apparently referring to the greyscale that swept the world in the days of Old Valyria.
But then again, unlike his namesake king in House of the Dragon, Daenerys' older brother was not intelligent or knowledgeable, so he could have been talking nonsense. Daenerys' own condition at the end of A Dance With Dragons would seem to contradict the idea of Targaryen immunity to infection.
And third, while George Martin 's books on which House of the Dragon is based are presented as unreliable narratives written by biased people, none of the narrators mention Daemon Targaryen getting greyscale at any point, even though they had no particular reason to conceal that fact.
So most likely the showrunners filmed the scene of Daemon dragging the Crabfeeder's dismembered body out into the open just because they thought it would be cool, not because they wanted to infect Daemon with a deadly disease, and they will continue to ignore the stated properties of greyscale in subsequent seasons.