House Of The Dragon's Biggest Missing Character Changes Game Of Thrones Lore In A Sad Way

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of "House of the Dragon."

Both "Game of Thrones" and "House of the Dragon" have cultivated fascinating relationships with their respective source material. The former infamously outpaced the publication of author George R.R. Martin's fantasy series titled "A Song of Ice and Fire," flying off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote once it exhausted the books at its disposal and forced to build the rest of its runway in midair flight ... and, yeah, you remember how that ended. The latter, meanwhile, came with the baggage of a thoroughly unconventional book to adapt. "Fire & Blood" is the furthest thing from a traditional novel, instead chronicling the feats of the Targaryen dynasty in Westeros from the perspective of an in-universe historian. Reliant on fictional secondhand sources and a mix of conjecture and personal bias, the author paints a broad portrait of historical events centuries after the fact. This, in effect, gave showrunner Ryan Condal and his writers all sorts of artistic license to put their own spin on the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons and add all sorts of material that aren't found in the pages of the book.

Amid these clever and inventive adaption changes, however, season 2 has brought a certain controversy into the spotlight — not by adding onto Martin's lore, but by excluding one important character from the ongoing dragon-rider drama. The absence of a mysterious figure known only as Nettles has been the source of some serious consternation among book readers for quite some time now. With the latest episode, we've received even more confirmation that this individual's narrative function has been combined with Rhaena Velaryon (Phoebe Campbell). Although an understandable choice, this change alters series lore in subtle but important ways.

Who has the power and ability to claim dragons? That question has been hanging heavy over the heads of Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) and Team Black for the past few episodes now, culminating in the Queen's desperate ploy to win over a new handful of dragon riders to her cause. Her son Jacaerys (Harry Collett) is none too pleased by this turn of events, pointing out that every person of diluted Targaryen blood who claims a dragon further weakens "pure" Targaryens in the eyes of the world. They are, after all, meant to be the "blood of the dragon." But the book "Fire & Blood" refutes this notion by including one last missing piece: a young, common-born nobody known only as Nettles who ends up claiming the dragon named Sheepstealer for herself ... despite possessing no apparent ties to the Targaryen line.

This girl goes on to play a surprisingly significant role in the war that follows, yet "House of the Dragon" has all but confirmed that this will be embodied by Rhaena Velaryon, Daemon Targaryen's (Matt Smith) forgotten daughter who has recently stumbled upon signs of a rogue dragon in the Vale. So far, we've met dragon-riders such as the Velaryon sailor Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), the blacksmith in King's Landing known as Hugh (Kieran Bew), and the drunken commoner Ulf (Tom Bennett), who claims to be a bastard-born half-brother of Viserys and Daemon. Despite their bastard origins, all appear to have various ancestries dating back to the Targaryen line, which ought to put Jace's concerns to rest.

But Nettles represents a total wild card, challenging the very notion of Targaryen supremacy – and her exclusion from this storyline might end up reinforcing a very divisive theme.

Imagine if nuclear weapons were sentient and had the ability to choose their own targets, and you'd come close to understanding the full ramifications of unleashing dragons in a bloody war of succession. That indecipherable bond shared by a dragon and its rider has risen to the forefront in "House of the Dragon," raising questions over whether Targaryens truly have a divine right to rule as a result of the godlike flying creatures at their disposal. If the series continues on this trajectory, the answer would seem to be an uncomfortable "Yes." Between all four of these dragon riders, they each have Targaryen or Velaryon blood flowing through their veins, deeply implying that that's the main reason why they're worthy of being chosen by their respective dragons.

But George R.R. Martin's introduction of Nettles in "Fire & Blood" completely upends all those (frankly eugenic) preconceptions. In the book, this absolute nobody of a lowborn character arrives out of the blue to claim the dragon Sheepstealer for herself, fight in the war on Rhaenyra's side, and prove that anyone with a certain amount of boldness and cleverness can ride a dragon and write their names in the history books. Although it makes a lot of sense to give such a critical role over to someone we're already familiar with in the adaptation, Rhaena's backstory as a daughter of both a Targaryen (Daemon) and a Velaryon (Laena, played by Nanna Blondell in season 1 and in several dream sequences/hallucinations throughout season 2) waters down that crucial point.

With one more episode to go, the series could still end up surprising us even with this major change. We'll find out when the finale airs on HBO and Max August 4, 2024.