More than a year has passed since House of the Dragon premiered as the very first spinoff of Game of Thrones. This series is packed full of Targaryens and their dragons, and dragon-on-dragon warfare is inevitable in Season 2. As a Game of Thrones fan and Fire & Blood reader, I enjoyed House of the Dragon’s first season and have been trying to wait patiently for Season 2. Still, thinking back on the series, I realized there i one Daemon detail that still drives me crazy.
George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood is actually a fascinating book, as the volume is a fictional history of the Targaryen dynasty. It’s filled with accounts by different people with different loyalties, biases, and motivations, so there are conflicting accounts of events, such as the different versions of what happened between Rhaenyra and Daemon that led to his second banishment. But the show changed one point from Fire & Blood that never had conflicting accounts, and it concerns Daemon's first wife: Lady Rhea Royce.
Spoilers ahead for George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood.
What Happened In The Show
Daemon had nothing good to say about his wife in the early episodes of House of the Dragon, preferring to spend his days in King’s Landing rather than back in the Vale with Lady Rhea Royce, whom he called his “bronze bitch.” His jibes about his wife were certainly mean-spirited, but it wasn’t until Viserys cited Daemon’s marriage as a reason why he couldn’t marry his own niece – Targaryens, am I right? – that viewers had reason to start thinking that Daemon might take a trip up to the Vale with a bloody goal.
Rhea Royce appeared only in Episode 5, and she was actually pretty awesome when she unexpectedly encountered her husband. As a Fire & Blood reader, however, I knew not to get my hopes up to see much of her. When Daemon showed up while she was alone on a ride, she took some verbal shots at him before figuring out that Daemon’s plan wasn’t to kill Rhaenyra and replace her as heir, but to marry Rhaenyra… which meant he needed to be a single man.
Mere moments later, Daemon reached for the horse, the horse threw Rhea and landed on her, and she broke her neck. She was still conscious and alert, although unable to move. Daemon turned to leave her, but picked up a rock when she accused him of being unable to “finish” and called him “craven.” While the episode spared viewers from seeing it, we learned later that Rhea Royce had her skull smashed as well as her neck broken.
Daemon murdered his wife and then immediately flew to King’s Landing to try and marry his niece, where he would inform his late wife’s cousin that he intended to claim his inheritance of Runestone.
What Happened In Fire & Blood
In fairness to HOTD, some of the show's version of Rhea Royce’s death does match with the one and only account from Fire & Blood, but there are some very important differences that paint a very different picture of Daemon Targaryen. So, let’s consult what exactly George R.R. Martin said about the incident in the book that inspired House of the Dragon:
A year later, in 115 AC, there came a tragic mishap, of the sort that shapes the destiny of kingdoms: the ‘bronze bitch’ of Runestone, Lady Rhea Royce, fell from her horse whilst hawking and cracked her skull upon a stone. She lingered for nine days before finally feeling well enough to leave her bed…only to collapse and die within an hour of rising.
In the text, Rhea Royce did fall from her horse and crack her skull on a stone, but there’s no mention that she was murdered by Daemon or anybody else. She apparently even rallied enough to leave her bed, which suggests that she would have been alert enough before she died to reveal if there'd been foul play. Fire & Blood continued:
A raven was duly sent to Storm’s End, and Lord Baratheon dispatched a messenger by ship to Bloodstone, where Prince Daemon was still struggling to defend his meagre kingdom against the men of the Triarchy and their Dornish allies. Daemon flew at once for the Vale. ‘To put my wife to rest,’ he said, though more like it was in the hopes of laying claim to her lands, castles, and incomes.
Daemon is recorded as fighting in the Stepstones when his wife was dying and ultimately died. While one could argue that the person recording the history might not have known if Daemon went to the Vale to kill his wife, the mention that he probably just wanted to claim her lands proves that the account didn't exactly go out of the way to make him look good. Fire & Blood wrapped up the tale:
In that he failed; Runestone passed instead to Lady Rhea’s nephew, and when Daemon made appeal to the Eyrie, not only was his claim dismissed, but Lady Jeyne warned him that his presence in the Vale was unwelcome.
On the whole, the big change from book to screen is that Daemon murdered his wife instead of being far, far away and fighting his war in the Stepstones at the time. The result is that show Daemon looks completely despicable, while book Daemon just looked slimy for trying to claim Rhea’s holdings.
Why Daemon Killing His Wife Bugs Me
Daemon is hardly a shining hero in Fire & Blood, but he’s also much more morally gray in George R.R. Martin’s original version… to start, at least. He was a hero to some and villain to others, beloved and reviled. He was definitely the main antagonist on the side of the blacks – a.k.a. the supporters of Rhaenyra's claim to the throne – just as Aemond was the main antagonist on the side of the Hightower greens.
But House of the Dragon Season 1 went very hard on Daemon as a villain with relatively few redeeming qualities. War crimes and mayhem in battle are to be expected in a show like this, but unlike the book, he was portrayed as a neglectful father, ignored Rhaenyra while she was in agonizing labor, choked her shortly thereafter, and wanted to go to war immediately. But show turning him into Rhea Royce’s killer was the first big instance of removing shades of gray from him.
Ahead of the Targaryen civil war breaking out, Daemon was more interesting as a character whose moral scale could tilt one way or the other without hitting either extreme to make his actions later that much worse. Considering what is almost certainly going to happen early in Season 2, Daemon starting out more gray would've made what he does next pack even more of a punch.
What It Means For Season 2
If you’ve read Fire & Blood, you can probably guess that I’m referring to Blood and Cheese, which is one of the most despicable acts of the Dance of the Dragons. In House of the Dragon, after Daemon killed his wife and his villainous actions through to the Season 1 finale, Blood and Cheese doesn’t feel like a huge escalation for him.
It’s going to be awful – and I can’t imagine HOTD leaving Blood and Cheese out – but I don’t think many fans will watch it and be shocked to their core that Daemon would do such a thing. He’s missing the nuance that will make his later actions so much more impactful. Even if he had no love for Rhea Royce, she was his wife; now, he already has a history of murdering family members.
Plus, I see Daemon killing his wife as one of many ways that the show is going the extra mile to make the greens look better than they did in Fire & Blood. Notably, HOTD has blackened Daemon far more than the book at this point in the timeline, while also changing Aemond killing Lucerys into a tragic accident instead of murder. Daemon deliberately retaliating with Blood and Cheese is going look even worse, while Aemond – who should more or less be Green Daemon – doesn't look as bad.
Daemon murdering Rhea Royce was already despicable no matter which way you look at it, and starting him out as such a villain means we won't get to see what the war turns him into as much as we otherwise would have. On the Game of Thrones scale, he seems closer to Cersei Lannister than Jaime Lannister, and that shouldn't be the case yet.
All in all, Daemon might be my favorite character from Fire & Blood, but not because he's good. He's so interesting because of where he starts, how far he falls, and how his story ends. (And he gets a really, really, really cool death.) His worst actions in the book are indefensible; they're also a product of the war, not before it begins.
Would Daemon killing his wife bother me as much if I hadn't read Fire & Blood? Probably not, and maybe I'll be able to move on once Season 2 premieres. House of the Dragon was able to keep filming when the WGA writers strike began, but Season 2 was never expected any earlier than 2024, and George R.R. Martin said back in July that the second season was half done. For now, you can always just revisit Season 1 streaming with a Max subscription.
