This post contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon season three, episodes three and four. If you want to avoid them like dragonflame for now, you can check out our coverage of episode two instead.
History will not exactly remember Alicent Hightower as a great mother, but when it came to her son Daeron, even she recognized an impostor. Ormund Hightower gave Daemon Targaryen a fake dragonrider when the Lord of Oldtown “bent the knee” in House of the Dragon‘s third episode of season three. The Green host then went on to sack Tumbleton in the Reach with the aid of the real Daeron. So who is this still unseen child of Viserys and Alicent whose mere existence was already a major problem for Queen Rhaenyra? The Realm is about to find out.
Alicent and Viserys had four children together. The three oldest, Aegon, Aemond, and Helaena have all been major figures on House of the Dragon. The couple’s fourth child, their third son Daeron, made his first appearance on the show in disguise and without being named in the season three premiere. Daeron appeared with dyed brown-haired as Ormund’s squire.
On the show, Daeron is 16 years old, slightly aged up from the source material. He (normally) boasts the same distinctive Targaryen features as his father and siblings, not the Hightower brown he’s hiding under. In episode three, Alicent revealed she had only seen her youngest once in the past five years, which explains why she previously asked her brother Gwayne what her own son is like. Viserys and Alicent had sent Daeron to live in Oldtown as a ward of Lord Hightower.
In the books, Daeron had mostly lived in King’s Landing, not leaving for Oldtown until he was 12. Before that, his father Viserys desperately tried to form a bond between Daeron and his oldest grandson Jace since they were so close in age. They even shared a wet nurse as babies. Viserys’ efforts did not work. At all. Daeron hated Rhaenyra’s boys as much as his older brothers did.
On House of the Dragon, Daeron has lived almost all of his life on the far side of the Realm. We did not see him training with Jace and Luke together as Aegon and Aemond did. Over the last few years on HBO’s series, the distance between mother and son had grown larger. Daeron had sent his mother fewer and fewer letters, to the point she didn’t even feel like she knew him. That was probably best for him. The young man Gwayne described couldn’t have sounded any more different than his monstrous brothers.
He’s stalwart. Clever. As adept with his lute as he is with his sword. And a feature in the fancies of many a young lady, I’ll wager. (long pause) He’s kind.
He’s also an inexperienced dragonrider of Tessarion, a young, stunning dark cobalt dragon known as The Blue Queen. As the people of Tumbleton learned, Daeron’s lack of experience did not prevent him from taking to the sky to help his uncle take the city. Tessarion is not very big, but she is strong enough to fight. A dragonkeeper, seemingly assigned to look after Tessarion, said the Green force took the city and locked the gates with Daeron and Tessarion safely inside.
(You might be asking, “Would a dragon calmly let an impostor sit on its back?” House of the Dragon makes up its own dragon lore when it wants/is convenient, so it doesn’t matter.)
Rhaenyra was not sure what Ormund hoped to accomplish with this betrayal after falsely bending the knee to her. Tumbleton is a market town in the eastern half of the Reach. It’s not that far from King’s Landing, but it’s not as though a single dragonrider on one of the war’s smallest dragons can compete with Rhaenyra’s collection of massive dragons. She already has two giant ones keeping an eye on it thanks to Hugh and Ulf. But one thing the Queen who now sits on the Iron Throne now knows is that Daeron’s existence is more than just a risk to her rule. She has no idea just how true that is, either.
In episode four of House of the Dragon, we got an idea of what Westeros’ newest uber-villain is planning. Ormund Hightower, a supremacist highborn snob, hates House Targaryens and their dragons. He wants them both destroyed. He also wants Daeron to rule as king over his corrupted brothers in House of the Dragon. They were not raised in the “light of the Seven.” Ormund wants to use Daeron, the boy he raised like a son, to save Westeros from foreigners with tainted blood who used dark magic to subjugate the Realm. The angry, determined, cunning, unethical Ormund is so dedicated to what he believes is Daeron’s divine right that he made the otherwise kind boy kill an innocent man to teach him a horrible lesson about power.
Rhaenyra had to worry about Daeron merely because he existed. But now that we know that scared young man is being manipulated by his evil uncle, who hates all dragons, all of House Targaryen has reason to worry about Tumbleton.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He knows Tessarion would have eaten that poor impostor. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
This post originally published on July 5, 2025.
The post The Real Story Behind HOUSE OF THE DRAGON’s Daeron Targaryen Revelation appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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