Daemon Dies First, But Rhaenyra’s Fate in ‘House of the Dragon’ Is Far More Horrifying

The question of which half of ‘House of the Dragon’s‘ central power couple meets their end first is one that book readers have long known the answer to, but show-only viewers are only now beginning to grapple with as the series pushes deeper into the Dance of the Dragons. Both Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen are doomed, but the order and manner of their deaths could not be more different.

Both Daemon and Rhaenyra die in the same year, 130 AC, meaning the gap between their deaths is a matter of months rather than seasons. Yet those months matter enormously to the emotional and narrative weight of the story. According to the source text, Daemon dies during the fifth moon of 130 AC, while Rhaenyra follows in the tenth month of the same year, meaning she outlives her husband by exactly five months.

Daemon’s Death at the Battle Above the Gods Eye

Daemon challenges his bloodthirsty nephew Aemond to a battle at the cursed castle of Harrenhal, and the legendary event that follows is known as the Battle Above the Gods Eye. It is one of the most anticipated sequences still to be fully depicted on screen, and ‘House of the Dragon’ has spent considerable time planting seeds for it. Daemon waits at Harrenhal for fourteen days while challenging Aemond to the duel, slashing the weirwood tree in the castle on each of the first thirteen days until Aemond finally answers on the fourteenth.

Aemond and Daemon talk briefly before mounting their dragons, and Aemond tells Daemon that he has lived too long. Daemon replies simply that on that much they agree, accepting his death if it means taking Aemond and Vhagar down with him. What follows is a sky battle for the ages.

As the two dragons claw and tear at one another above the lake, Caraxes locks its jaws into Vhagar’s neck, and Aemond’s fatal mistake is strapping himself into his saddle, giving Daemon the opening to leap from his own dragon’s back and strike a deadly blow.

While the two dragons grapple in the air, Daemon leaps from his saddle and drives Dark Sister, the Valyrian steel sword of his ancestor Visenya Targaryen, into Aemond’s blind eye. Both dragons then crash into the Gods Eye lake, with Caraxes managing to crawl back to the shore before dying there. Vhagar’s carcass is found years later with Prince Aemond’s armored corpse still chained to her saddle, Dark Sister thrust through his eye socket. Daemon’s body, however, is never recovered.

The Mystery Surrounding Daemon’s Missing Body

Although official records place Daemon’s death in the Gods Eye, the fact that a body was never found has kept theories of his survival alive for centuries within the fiction. George R.R. Martin wrote ‘Fire and Blood’ as an in-universe history compiled from conflicting sources, which leaves deliberate room for ambiguity on this point.

The theory most favored by romantics holds that Daemon survived the fall into the lake and chose to live the rest of his days in secret with Nettles, the young dragonseed with whom he had grown close during the war, rather than return to Rhaenyra.

Since Daemon’s body was never recovered from the Gods Eye, singers say he lived to spend the rest of his days in secret with Nettles, though most historians dismiss this and believe his body was simply carried away by currents or consumed by the lake.

The show, which has made it clear through Harrenhal’s prophecy that Daemon will “die in this place,” seems to be steering firmly toward the tragic version of events. Both Matt Smith and Ewan Mitchell’s characters are such magnetic forces on screen that the Battle Above the Gods Eye is expected to be one of the most incredible sequences ‘House of the Dragon’ has ever produced.

How Rhaenyra Targaryen Dies After Daemon

Rhaenyra’s death, arriving five months after Daemon’s, is a different kind of horror entirely. It is not a warrior’s end on dragonback but a betrayal, a public execution dressed up as a mercy. After briefly retaking King’s Landing and ruling for a period, Rhaenyra is driven out by riots and a loss of key alliances, and she attempts to negotiate with her half-brother Aegon II, even offering to sell back her claim to the throne in exchange for safe passage out of Westeros. Aegon does not honor that arrangement.

Rhaenyra flees to Dragonstone believing it will be safe, but her ancestral seat has already been secretly taken by Aegon II with the help of Ser Alfred Broome. She is promptly captured and brought before Aegon and his dragon Sunfyre. Aegon has Rhaenyra put to death in the courtyard while her only surviving son is forced to watch, with Sunfyre burning her and then devouring her.

The book describes Sunfyre as not initially taking interest until a dagger drew blood, after which the dragon bathed Rhaenyra in flame before tearing off her arm and shoulder. It reportedly takes Sunfyre only six bites to entirely devour her, leaving behind only her left leg below the shin.

The deaths of both Daemon and Rhaenyra are enormous blows to the Blacks, yet the war still rages on even after they are gone, with Cregan Stark arriving with Northern forces in fulfillment of a promise made earlier in the conflict.

What This Means for the Show Going Forward

Given that ‘House of the Dragon’ season three is confirmed to begin with the Battle of the Gullet, most analysts expect Rhaenyra to take King’s Landing and rule before the season concludes, placing her death likely in season four or later.

The show has been careful about the pacing of its biggest book moments, and neither death feels imminent in the immediate term. The Battle Above the Gods Eye is set up in the season three premiere, with the Gods Eye referenced directly in an exchange between Daemon and Oscar Tully, placing the Greens in position near the lake while Aemond and Criston retake Harrenhal.

Daemon’s death, poetic and spectacular, is the kind of exit that will define a series. Rhaenyra’s, by contrast, is designed to devastate. The climax of their deadly fight against Aemond and the eventual fate of Rhaenyra both rank among the moments readers are most looking forward to seeing adapted on screen, and it is easy to understand why. The Dance of the Dragons earns its name in blood, and the two characters at its center do not get to burn together as Rhaenyra once dreamed they would.

Whether the show chooses to preserve the ambiguity around Daemon’s body or give viewers a definitive answer is the question that will define one of the most emotional arcs in ‘House of the Dragon’ history, so how do you think Matt Smith should play that final moment above the Gods Eye?