Helaena Targaryen’s Prophecies Are One of ‘House of the Dragon’s Most Interesting Deviations From the Book
Helaena definitely called it.
House of the Dragon’s second season is finally here and bloody civil war within House Targaryen is expected to cover countless betrayals and deaths involving both various members of the royal family and their beloved dragons.
Possible spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2 and George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood ahead
The show, of course, heavily draws inspiration from Game of Thrones’s lore as well as George R.R. Martin’s 2018 novella, Fire & Blood. Most notably, Martin has also taken a more hands-on approach with the adaptation of his work this time around and so, each liberality that the showrunners have taken can be construed to have been made with his blessing.
Among the biggest but most interesting—and arguably the best—of these changes are the ones made with Alicent and Viserys’ daughter, Helaena.
Targaryen Dreamers in ‘House of the Dragon’
Now, in the book, Helaena is more of a quiet and subtle character. The same could be said for her counterpart on House of the Dragon, however, viewers have been quick to notice an important ability of hers: She appears to be a dreamer.
The seemingly hereditary ability of members of the House of the Dragon to see into the future have been mentioned many times throughout the show’s first season. There is, of course, the recurring theme of Aegon the Conqueror’s dream which he left secretly written in the catspaw dagger that also happens to foreshadow the primary conflict in Game of Thrones. King Viserys also made mention of the greatest and perhaps first dreamer in their line: Daenys Targaryen, who had seen the fall of Valyria. Upon her advice, her father relocated their entire family together with their dragons to Dragonstone, despite snide remarks and laughs they received from other lords and ladies in Old Valyria. Twelve years later, Valyria did fall and the Targaryens became among the last of the world’s dragonriders.
There is no explicit mention of Helaena having prophetic abilities in the source material and so the slight deviation has proven quite interesting and has left fans quite literally hanging onto her every word.
“He’ll have to close an eye.”
After being relentlessly teased for not having a dragon, Aemond was presented with the “pink dread” by his brother Aegon and Rhaenyra’s children, Jaecerys and Lucerys. As we all know, the “dragon” turned out to be a pig with makeshift wings, which upsets a then young Aemond who seeks comfort from his mother. In the background, we see a young Helaena examining a millipede in her hands and her simultaneously uttering, “He’ll have to close an eye.” just as Alicent assures Aemond that one day, he’ll get a dragon of his own. In the next episode, we actually do see Aemond lose an eye after Lucerys cuts him for stealing Vhagar.
“The last ring has no legs at all.”
Now this comment goes a little unnoticed. It was made during the same scene where she foreshadows Aemond losing his eye, all while still studying the same millipede. The show is currently set to run for at least four seasons and so we probably have to wait a couple of years for this one to play out but it could either pertain to one out of two things: Bran Stark or Helaena’s husband and brother, Aegon II.
In Game of Thrones, Bran Stark loses his ability to walk after suffering a fall in its first season. Somehow, somewhere down the line, in season eight, he ends up on the Iron Throne and is heralded as “Bran the Broken,” making him quite literally, the “last ring” with “no legs.”
If we’re to interpret this using House of the Dragon’s context exclusively, though, it just might be a foreshadowing of Aegon’s fate, which I think is more probable considering that the line before that was meant for Aemond. Again, this is a potential spoiler warning for the next seasons of the show: at the height of the Dance, Aegon finds himself in a battle against Baela in Dragonstone, where both of their dragons end up falling from the sky. Aegon saves himself by jumping off of his dragon’s back and survives but with the price of his legs shattering, leaving him pained and broken for the remainder of his life.
“Beware the beast beneath the boards.”
This line from episode eight left the theory mill churning day and night, especially considering how frantic Helaena was as she kept saying it over and over throughout the episode, even swatting her mother’s hand in the process. The reveal would turn out to be a little more on the nose but just as unexpected and badass as we would hope with Princess Rhaenys quite literally bursting from beneath the Dragon Pit together with her dragon Melys.
Many fans, however, have theorized that this line may also be a foreshadowing of Blood and Cheese, which we can probably expect to happen sometime in season two, based on the trajectory of the timeline of the series so far. The event is probably one of the most heartbreaking and downright devastating things to happen throughout the course of the Dance and primarily involves Helaena, her children, and a pair of hired assassins called Blood and Cheese who navigate the tunnels of the Red Keep to get to them.
“Hand turns loom; spool of green, spool of black. Dragons of flesh, weaving dragons of thread.”
Helaena makes this prophecy in episode seven during Laena Velaryon’s funeral. In the same episode, we see later on that Rhaenyra and Daemon decide to get married to strengthen Rhaenyra’s claim to the Iron Throne (and, well, probably because the tension has been brewing for years). It’s essentially her describing everything going on behind the scenes between the two factions—the spools of green, of course, refer to Otto and Alicent Hightower—as the inevitable question of Viserys’ succession is continuously put to the test as he grows weaker and weaker.
“It is our fate, I think, to crave what is given to another. If one possesses a thing, the other will take it away.”
At the outset, this one feels like another throwaway line but seemingly summarizes almost every character on the show. First, we have Alicent and Rhaenyra’s relationship, where it could be argued that Alicent’s holier-than-thou gig mostly stems from bitterness and regret that she didn’t get to follow her heart like her old friend-turned-stepdaughter. There’s also the envy between Aemond and Aegon, where both know that the former is much more suited but it is the latter who has the birthright.
“I’m afraid. Not the dragons, the rats.”
The first prophecy that Helaena makes in the second season of House of the Dragon tragically anticipates what will happen at the end of that same first episode—the murder of her son Jaehaerys at the hands of Blood and Cheese. Helaena tells her brother-husband Agon that she’s scared, and Aegon tries to reassure her that King’s Landing is safe as long as Vhagar is there to protect it. But Helaena is not thinking of the dragons of Team Black—she’s thinking of the rats, because Jaehaerys’s death will be caused by a rat catcher who knows the secret passageways of the Red Keep better than anyone else.
There’s another bit of prophecy in this scene, even though it’s not spoken aloud. As she talks with Aegon—who of course dismisses her because that’s her Cassandra-like fate—Helaena’s embroidering something that many fans pointed out looked suspiciously like a funeral shroud. As if her prophetic dreams move her body as well as her mind and she’s dealing with the aftermath of Blood and Cheese before it even happened.
“Aegon will be king again. He’s yet to see victory. He sits on a wooden throne”
Helaena has remained a criminally underused character in season two, but she came back with a vengeance in the season finale to put Aemond in his place—proving once more that theory that you might be an unhinged dragonlord that burns people left and right but your older sister will never really be afraid of you.
During her dialogue with Aemond, after he has tried to convince her to join the fight on top of her dragon Dreamfyre, Helaena gives him two prophecies—yes, there are actually two there, even though the one that concerns Aemond specifically is definitely the most explicit of the two. However, Helaena also talks about Aegon, saying that he will be king again and he will see victory once more. Those who have read Fire & Blood know very well that this is not the end for him and that he will indeed seem to win a very pyrrhic victory before the actual end of the Dance.
And then there’s the line about the wooden throne. While Helaena might be referencing the wooden crate in which we see Aegon escape together with Larys, it’s more likely she’s referring to the seat from where Aegon will hold court once he returns. Fire & Blood tells us that with his injuries too severe to climb the steps to the Iron Throne Aegon used to have a simpler, wooden chair carried out in front of it so that it would make sitting down easier.
“You were swallowed up in the Gods Eye and you were never seen again”
The second half of Helena’s sentence to Aemond in the season two finale might be her clearest and least cryptical prophecy to date. While all her previous visions left something up to interpretation, this one is pretty straightforward—she explicitly tells Aemond he will die in the Gods Eye, never to return. Maybe it’s because she has actually gotten a stronger grip on her dragon dreams than she previously had, which is why she can see—or maybe just articulate what she sees—what will happen in such an unmistakable way.
Because Aemond being swallowed up by the Gods Eye is very much what happens—his duel with Daemon, both princes on dragonback, takes place in the skies above Westeros’s largest lake, on whose shores Harrenhal is built. Both Vhagar and Caraxes die in the clash, as do Aemond and Daemon—the latter driving his sword into Aemond’s eye. Both Aemond and Vhagar disappear beneath the surface of the Gods Eye, where their remains are presumed to have remained ever since.
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