That Character's 'House of the Dragon' Fate Might Be Sealed

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The following story contains major spoilers for both House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 4, and some of George R. R. Martin's Fire & Blood book.

WOW. WELL. NOW that sure was something, wasn't it? For as much as HBO's original Game of Thrones made its name on politicking that sometimes almost felt like the intersection of Aaron Sorkin and William Shakespeare, it was the show's major battle episodes—think "Blackwater," "Battle of the Bastards," etc.—that really allowed the show to put a couple exclamation points into the history book.

To this point, we've only gotten a taste of that in Thrones's prequel series, House of the Dragon, but things drastically change at the midway point of season 2, in "A Dance of Dragons." To put it simply and bluntly, the season-long simmer toward war finally overflowed in an absolutely epic and lengthy sequence that involved classical warfare and a battle of fire-breathing dragons in the sky. And yes, there were major casualties.

The second half of "A Dance of Dragons" is entirely made up of a battle at Rook's Rest that begins simply with the Black and Green armies taking each other on, traditionally, on the ground. Rhaenys (Eve Best), then shows up on the back of her dragon, Meleys, seemingly in position to control the field. But the problem was that the Green army knew they were coming—Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) signaled to the sky, and Aemond (played by Ewen Mitchell, on the back of Vhagar) and Aegon (played by Tom Glynn-Carney, on the back of Sunfyre) showed up, and we got our first absolutely incredible bit of airborne dragon warfare.

Aemond, it turned out, was a man scorned after being humiliated by his brother in the brothel in episode 3. While he and Aegon were ostensibly on the same side, he used Vhagar's considerable size, strength, and firepower to blow Aegon (and Sunfyre) out of the sky—and to then absolutely demolish Rhaenys and Meleys. Rhaenys, known throughout the realm by the cruel nickname of "The Queen Who Never Was," came to a definitive and certain death.

Aegon, however, is more of a question. At the end of the episode, Cole awakens from being briefly knocked out to look for his king; he finds Aemond next to him, surrounded by Sunfyre's unmoving body, as Aegon himself lies still on the ground. What the hell?

Is Aegon II Targaryen dead in House of the Dragon?

We're going to first start with what the show tells us, and then get into what we know from the show's source material, George R. R. Martin's Fire & Blood.

Based on what we see in the episode, Aegon looks pretty dead. He got a face full of Vhagar's fire breath, and landed on the ground with at least some measure of considerable impact. He's lying still on the ground and does not look great. However, when Cole found them, Aemond's blade was drawn—this could imply that Aegon was alive but in bad shape, and that his duplicitous brother was considering a mercy killing.

House of the Dragon hasn't always followed Fire & Blood 100% literally—just look at the story of Ulf from last week's episode—but that text offers us some more details on Aegon's fate than the end of this episode (without venturing too far into the future, for the sake of spoilers).

In Fire & Blood, Aegon survives (and in the book, he and Sunfyre were maimed not by Aemond and Vhagar, but rather by Rhaenys and Meleys)—but is indeed in bad, bad shape. After the battle, Aegon suffers several broken bones and severe burns to more than half of his body, including his armor melting into his arm; he would take a full year to recover, almost always sleeping and barely allowing anyone to disturb his rest or company, and took so much milk of the poppy that he became virtually insane.

We'll see if House of the Dragon changes anything else from the text—the show has already changed the source of Aegon's injuries—as season 2 continues.

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