‘House of the Dragon’ Boss Explains Rhaenyra Book Change and Daenerys Parallel (Exclusive)

Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) reached a point of no return in the House of the Dragon Season 3 finale, and she was pushed there by grief, a determination to reject the realm’s insistence that a woman can’t rule, and a desperate need to give her grief meaning. The finale drew parallels between Rhaenyra and her descendant, Game of Thrones‘ Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), through a scene made for the series. Co-creator Ryan Condal says the comparisons weren’t necessarily intentional but rather the result of textual themes throughout George R.R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire franchise. Warning: House of the Dragon Season 3 finale spoilers ahead.

In the August 9 finale, after the High Septon was murdered for refusing to anoint her rule after Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Sunfyre’s so-called resurrections, Rhaenyra decided to defend her birthright by telling her subjects about Aegon the Conqueror’s dream, known as the Song of Ice and Fire. Rhaenyra called herself “the Prince That Was Promised” in High Valyrian in front a crowd of subjects, telling them that an existential threat in the north — and namely, her knowledge of it contrasted with Aegon’s ignorance — made her the prophetic chosen ruler of Westeros and their only hope of survival, not validation from the realm’s religious leaders.

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Rhaenyra’s shift into tyrannical behavior echoes Daenerys’ arrival in King’s Landing in the final season of Game of Thrones, but there are some key differences. Daenerys destroyed King’s Landing with her dragon after Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), combined with years of fighting for the throne, pushed her to a breaking point.

“I think that’s wonderful if people draw parallels between this and the original series,” Condal told journalists in a finale press conference. “For sure there’s going to be mirroring and echoes and reflections across the two series, and people will see things that are either intentional or subliminal, and I will just say that I think this is one of those existential themes that goes across this entire universe, which is the draw of the Iron Throne: what it does to a person in its thrall, or the people that are trying to get to it.”

“The big difference between Rhaenyra and Daenerys is that Daenerys only got to the Iron Throne at the very end after she had destroyed the city,” Condal continued. “Rhaenyra goes through this experience of having the throne, trying to hold it, and being, in a way, turned and changed by it, altered by the experience. So, I think they’re very different things, but the parallels do call to the greater themes of the A Song of Ice and Fire universe, which is pride and power, how power corrupts, how far it corrupts, and it can change good people into corrupted people. It can take corrupted people and make them real villains, and other people, like Viserys [Paddy Considine], that [it] can simply just destroy. And that is, to me, is where [the parallel] exists. Those reflections exist on a thematic level.”

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Condal explained how the format of Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon‘s source material, allows for creative liberties in his adaptation, such as Rhaenyra’s “Prince That Was Promised” speech. Fire & Blood is an historical record of the Targaryen civil war, but the point of the collected histories is that they are told by different people and there are details lost to time.

Rhaenyra’s speech is “something that is certainly not in the book, and it’s not in the history, but there is a bunch of talk about how Rhaenyra became very despotic, and became a tyrant at the end, and was very unpopular with the people.”

“So, we saw it as this could just be something that happened, and there was disagreement over exactly what it was, so it didn’t make the historical record,” Condal continued. “My glib toss-off from the historians is, oh, well, Targaryens say crazy s**t all the time. But so much of their existence is this self-aggrandizement. And for the people, for the stonemasons standing there in the crowd just looking up at this, it could just sound like somebody trying to make something of themselves, because they have no idea of all the quote-unquote real history that went into Rhaenyra making that speech.”

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The last time Rhaenyra spoke to a crowd of her subjects on the streets of the city, she was humble and handing out bread and other resources for her starving people, saying that she was the true heir of her father’s peaceful legacy. The finale speech contrasts that by showing Rhaenyra declare herself not as a servant of the people, but as her people’s only hope for a peaceful future, which are decidedly different attitudes.

“We wanted something that felt like a real seismic change, a sea change in Rhaenyra’s relationship to her people,” he said. “She’s seen the death of their religious leaders. She’s standing outside of the church of the faith of most of the people standing there, as a member of a totally different faith, this old Valyrian faith of dragons and fire gods and blood magic, and pronouncing herself this chosen one, the leader that is going to take them through the fire and out of the darkness.”

Condal said the speech was “so tremendously, virtuosically performed by the great Emma D’Arcy.”

There’s no coming back from what happened in the finale for Rhaenyra. Helaena’s (Phia Saban) suicide has locked Rhaenyra into the path of force and violence she chose when sending Daemon (Matt Smith) into battle in Tumbleton and ordering Alyn (Abubakar Salim) to murder the High Septon. House of the Dragon is now heading into its final season, set to premiere in 2028, which Condal says will be the biggest season of the entire series.

House of the Dragon, Season 4 Premiere, 2028, HBO; Seasons 1-3, Streaming Now, HBO Max