Game of Thrones only had two Tagaryens, and one of them didn’t last very long (RIP Viserys). Yet this ancient family ruled Westeros for centuries before Robert had his little tantrum and overthrew the Mad King. The fantasy series House of the Dragon explores the time when the Targaryens were at their most powerful in the build-up to the civil war that will ruin them.
So far, we’ve met a whole host of Valyrian bastards (and not in the Jon Snow sense), including Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen, Aemond and his dragon Vhagar, as well as the Viserys I with more on the way. Yet one Targaryen seems to have been cut from the TV series.
Daeron Targaryen, Viserys and Alicent Hightower’s youngest son, appears to have been dropped from the show. In the book Fire and Blood, Daeron is born shortly after Rhaenyra’s son, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, and the two shared a milkmaid because Viserys thought it would heal the enmity between his wife and daughter.
Spoilers, it didn’t. And Daeron, like Aegon and Aemond, grew up to hate his nephews. Or at least the book version did because Daeron hasn’t appeared in the show yet, and at this point, he’s unlikely to. There’s been no casting announcement for the character, nor did he make an appearance at Laena’s funeral.
So unless Viserys and Alicent are even worse parents than we thought, and they left Daeron at home in King’s Landing, we can presume, like so many Game of Thrones characters, he’s been consigned to the writer’s room waste paper basket, exorcised from the series.
This is a bit of a shame because Daeron’s one of the more mysterious Targaryens. Known as Daeron the Daring, he was a brave warrior who fought in the Dance of the Dragons. When Rhaenyra’s forces captured King’s Landing, the Queen considered Daeron one of the greatest threats to her reign because, as far as she knew, he was the last of Viserys’ sons (Aegon II was actually alive).
Daeron would eventually lose his life in the Battle of Tumbleton. The exact manner of his death is unknown. He was either killed by an anonymous knight who got lucky with his blade or crushed by his burning tent.
The strange thing is his body was never found, and, as such, a few white-haired men crawled out of the woodwork claiming to be the fallen prince and the rightful heir to the throne. These men were all deemed pretenders by the Maesters, but we all know we can’t trust those grey rats.
The decision was likely made to remove Daeron because, as cool as he is, you can easily merge his character with Aemond and keep the House of the Dragon cast slimmed down. We also love the pretenders claiming to be him, but while that works in a history book, it’d be a bit obvious in a TV show that the men claiming to be Daeron were just random blokes.