Daeron Targaryen is a major character in George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood book, on which the Max TV series House of the Dragon is based. But since the show’s beginning, his absence has puzzled viewers, leading them to believe the character had simply been cut from the show. We may finally have an answer as to why he isn’t in the show.
Related: Spoilers ahead for more differences between the books and House of the Dragon.
If you’re unfamiliar with the source material, Daeron Targaryen, aka Daeron the Daring, is the fourth and youngest son of King Viserys I (Paddy Considine) and Lady Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke). He played a significant role in the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, fighting for his half-brother Aegon II Targaryen. Daeron was a dragon rider, riding the dragon Tessarion, known as the Blue Queen.
Daeron didn’t get a mention in the show’s first season—even during the scenes with his siblings. But, in season 2, his name gets dropped during a tense conversation between Alicent and her scheming father Otto Hightower as they plan their next move.
“The Hightowers still have strength and you have a son there who will take more kindly to instruction. Daeron may yet help us in weeks to come,” Otto says. With season 2 well and truly underway, we finally have an answer as to where Daeron has been.
Daeron Targaryen isn’t in House of the Dragon simply because he hasn’t been cast yet—with the show’s renewal for a third season, that’s likely when we’ll get our first look at him.
“Daeron has not been cast yet. I’ve said he’s a character in the show, but at this point in the story, he’s in Oldtown where he was warded off as a young child. So we don’t have a point-of-view character in that world yet and there is no dramatic reason to go there. This happened all the time in medieval times, particularly in the high nobility,” showrunner Ryan Condal explained to Variety in late June 2024.
Image: HBO.
“You would take your youngest children and ward them off to other places, so they grow up away from court and learn things and have their own place and station in the world. We know he’s not yet a dragon rider, but he’s had a dragon born to him. So he will come to the narrative and have a role to play, just as he does in the book — we’re just not there yet in the storytelling.”
Related: Take a look at the House of the Dragon family tree
Taking to his blog, the book series author Martin himself explained why Daeron was absent from the hit MAX show and it all boiled down to the time parameters of television.
“Do I wish we’d had more time to explore the relationship between Rhaenyra and Ser Harwin, the marriage of Daemon and Laena and their time in Pentos, the birth of various and sundry children (and YES, Alicent gave Viserys four children, three sons and a daughter, their youngest son Daeron is down in Oldtown, we just did not have the time to work him in this season), and everything else we had to skip? Sure. But there are only so many minutes in an episode (more on HBO than on the network shows I once wrote for), and only so many episodes in a season,” he wrote.
House of the Dragon is available to stream on MAX, with new episodes dropping each Sunday night.
