Warning: This article contains SPOILERS. House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 3, “Rhaenyra Triumphant,” was largely focused on the queen who provided the installment with its title, but its biggest twist was focused on another character: Daeron Targaryen. The youngest son of Viserys Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, who had been sent to ward at Oldtown many years earlier, is handed over to Team Black after Daemon Targaryen forces Ormund Hightower to surrender. Or so it seems.
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The Daeron that Ormund gave up was a fake, a boy whose hair had been dyed, and who had been threatened into playing the part. The jig is up when Alicent comes to see him, at which point Rhaenyra, in rather comical fashion, realizes that this is actually an imposter. The twist is a show invention, rather than something that exists in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, and one that’s used as a springboard for another change, with Ormund taking Tumbleton. However, while it might not be in that book, there are two notable examples of “fake” versions of major characters in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, which didn’t make it into Game of Thrones.
Game Of Thrones Gave A Fake Arya Stark Story To Sansa Instead
In A Storm of Swords, via the point of view of Jaime Lannister, we learn that the Boltons have found Arya Stark – who had been missing since Ned Stark’s execution – and intend to marry her to Ramsay, thus consolidating their hold on the North after the deaths of Ned, Robb, and, ostensibly, Bran and Rickon. Jaime meets the girl and immediately casts doubt upon her identity, though also realizes there may not be anyone in the North who can dispute it.
However, there is one such person: Theon Greyjoy. It’s not until his POV chapters in A Dance with Dragons – released 11 years after A Storm of Swords – that we learn the girl is actually Jeyne Poole, Sansa Stark’s childhood friend and the daughter of Winterfell’s former steward. Jeyne/Arya and Ramsay are married at Winterfell, and she is confined to his chambers, where he performs horrific acts upon her, until eventually Theon is able to help her escape, with both of them making it out of Winterfell alive.
Game of Thrones changed this considerably: instead of a fake Arya, it’s the real Sansa who is sent to Winterfell to marry Ramsay, with a scheme plotted by Petyr Baelish (at the same point in the books, Sansa is still in the Vale, and remains there heading into The Winds of Winter). This was a means of streamlining the narrative considerably – there is an entire Mance Rayder subplot within Winterfell that was also cut – and a decision to keep the focus on a main character. Unfortunately, it was also a controversial one, with the show depicting Ramsay’s sexual assault of Sansa on the wedding night and focusing on Theon’s reaction to it sparking a backlash.
Game Of Thrones Cut The Books’ Big Targaryen Twist
In A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion Lannister sails on a ship to Volantis with a sellsword named Griff and his son, Young Griff. However, it’s later revealed that Young Griff is actually Aegon Targaryen, the firstborn child of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell, and the heir to the Iron Throne. It was believed that Aegon had been brutally murdered as a baby by Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane at the end of Robert’s Rebellion, but apparently he was switched with another child, and raised in secret in Essos as the perfect prince who would one day return to take his rightful crown.
Or was he? One of the more widely believed theories is that Aegon is actually a fake – dubbed fAegon – and is a pawn in Varys and Illyrio Mopatis’ schemes, wherein they aim to put an imposter on the Iron Throne, even if he is not aware of this. Daenerys’ story in the books has warnings and prophecies that foreshadow this, telling her to beware the “mummer’s dragon,” and a vision of a “cloth dragon” swaying on a pole, which are commonly seen as signs of him being a fraud.
Even more, though, is the implausibility of it: that Varys was able to pull off such a switch, and knew that the infant would be killed in such a way to leave him unrecognizable, certainly stretches credulity, especially with the twist coming fairly late in the game. That said, it might not affect the outcome too much, because what matters is what people will believe. In The Winds of Winter, Aegon has already reached Westeros; there’s a good chance that by the time Dany finally returns home, she’ll find another Targaryen has beat her to the Iron Throne, perhaps setting up a new civil war.
This was also cut completely by Game of Thrones, which could be another sign that he’s a fake, and won’t be a part of the endgame (though that’s not to say he won’t have any importance: if Dany destroys King’s Landing facing him, it should work better). Again, it’s clear this was to condense things, as the show was narrowing in on Jon Snow and Dany as its two most important characters and trimming a lot from A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.
Jon is particularly relevant there: considering they knew they had another secret-Targaryen-son-of-Rhaegar twist coming up, they obviously wanted to keep their powder dry for that and avoid confusing audiences too much (even going so far as to give Jon the real name Aegon).
Whether Young Griff really is Aegon or not, though, he’ll have a major part in the books, and while the fake Daeron twist in House of the Dragon isn’t on the same level, it was surely at least partially inspired by this storyline – and probably wouldn’t exist on-screen if the Aegon one had been done by Game of Thrones.
New episodes of House of the Dragon Season 3 release on Sundays at 9 pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.
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