This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3 and Fire & Blood.
House of the Dragon hasn’t exactly shied away from making changes to its source material (George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood), but a fairly significant change to Rhaena Targaryen’s story in recent episodes has rightfully caused fans to ask what is happening to the character and where this is all going.
For those who don’t know, a major plotline in House of the Dragon Season 3 sees Rhaena Targaryen tame and ride the dragon known as Sheepstealer. The identity of Sheepstealer’s rider remains a secret to many, though Daemon recently learned the truth and decided to lie to Queen Rhaenyra about it in order to protect Rhaena. This may all lead to some pretty incredible events, though we won’t get into too much detail about those here due to both potential spoilers and the possibility the show may make further changes to Rhaena’s story.
The bigger talking point at the moment is the fact that Rhaena never rides Sheepstealer in Fire & Blood. That honor belongs to a young girl named Nettles who is able to tame Sheepstealer after feeding it captured sheep and slowly forming a bond with the wild creature. Nettles’ role in Fire & Blood is actually quite substantial from there, which naturally raises some questions about both why the character was cut from the show and why the most significant aspect of her character was given to another major player.
Well, in an interview with IGN, House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal explained the decision to make such a major change by hinting that the changes will eventually play into the much larger story involving Daemon and Rhaenyra’s relationship.
“We knew that Sheepstealer’s rider, that character causes extreme strife for Daemon and Rhaenyra’s relationship. And that was sort of the place that we started in,” Condal says. “And it felt like pairing a wild dragon with a lady of noble blood that then becomes somewhat feral herself, which is a very interesting story to tell that helped keep us at the core of where we wanted to take Rhaenyra and Daemon’s relationship.”
So, in essence, it seems like Condal felt that Sheepstealer playing such a big role in a major relationship between existing characters made it easier to justify simply incorporating the dragon into a consolidated version of that story rather than having to introduce an entirely new character. According to Condal, that change also allowed the writers to dodge some of the thornier elements of Nettle’s storyline that didn’t quite work with their adaptation.
“It did not feel like, to us, an infidelity story [between Daemon and Nettles] was someplace that we wanted to go with Daemon and Rhaenyra given everything they had been through to this point.” Condal explains. “I think the audience really wants to see this couple work out, but they both have inextricable natures to them that they can only get so far away from. And we see that playing out with Daemon over the course of the season. But I think more interestingly for Daemon is for the first time, he’s doing something very self-interested, but he’s doing it in the name of protecting his daughter, which we haven’t really seen from him to date. It shows a more mature Daemon that’s still Daemon… And this is going to be a story that continues to obviously unfold, and evolve, and play out over the course of the season. We’ll have ripple effects that take us all the way into the end of The Dance of the Dragons.”
That last line is quite interesting as it again raises questions regarding the future of Rhaena, Daemon, and Rhaenyra. At least it should be entertaining to watch that dynamic play out in the series’ much-improved third season.
