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How Is Daenerys Targaryen Related to Rhaenyra and Daemon?

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Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from Fire & Blood and potential spoilers for future seasons of House of the Dragon.

Even by Westeros standards, House Targaryen is not a normal family. But after the appearance of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) in Daemon’s (Matt Smith) vision sequence in House of the Dragon Season 2, casual viewers might wonder just how connected are these two branches of the Targaryen tree? They both belong to the same noble house, of course, but are they even in the same bloodline? And Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), where does she fit? The answer, full of spoilers for the rest of the story of House of the Dragon, is not so simple.

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Daemon Doesn’t Know Who Daenerys Is in His Vision

Daemon’s vision is filled with nods to the future of House Targaryen and Westeros as a whole — there are even White Walkers there. But the most surprising part of it is when he sees Daenerys with her three dragons. The vision is plucked directly from the Season 1 finale of Game of Thrones, when Daenerys grabs her three petrified dragon eggs and walks into Khal Drogo’s (Jason Momoa) funeral pyre. When the fire is spent, only Dany remains, unburnt, with her three children having miraculously hatched.



















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Collider Exclusive · Game of Thrones Personality Quiz
Which Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To?
Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Baratheon · Tyrell

Five great houses. Five completely different answers to the same question: how do you hold power in a world that will take it from you the moment you stop paying attention? Eight questions will determine where your loyalties — and your nature — truly lie.

🐺Stark

🦁Lannister

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🐉Targaryen

🦌Baratheon

🌹Tyrell

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01

Someone powerful is acting dishonourably and everyone knows it. What do you do?
In Westeros, the answer to this question has ended more than one great house.





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02

What is the source of your power?
Every house endures because of something. What is it for yours?





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03

Who do you truly fight for?
Strip away the banners and the words. The honest answer tells you everything.





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04

How do you deal with your enemies?
A house’s method reveals its character as clearly as its words ever could.





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05

What kind of ruler do you believe in?
Westeros is full of answers to this question. Most of them end badly.





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06

You suffer a devastating loss. How does your house respond?
How a house handles defeat tells you more about it than how it handles victory.





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07

Which of these truths about Westeros do you most believe?
Every house has a philosophy. This is yours.





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08

The Iron Throne is within reach. What do you do?
The answer reveals not just your ambition — but your character.





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The Maester Has Spoken
Your House Is…

Your answers point to the great house whose words, values, and way of surviving in Westeros match your own. Bend the knee — or don’t. That’s very much up to you.

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Winterfell · The North

🐺 House Stark
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Winter is Coming — and you have always known it. You prepare not out of fear but out of duty, because the people who depend on you deserve someone who takes the long view.

  • You lead with honour even when it costs you, because you understand that a reputation built on integrity is the only one worth having.
  • Your loyalty to family and people runs deep — not as sentiment but as a code that doesn’t bend when things get difficult.
  • The North endures because Starks endure — not by being the cleverest players in the game, but by being the kind of people others are willing to follow into the cold.
  • You are that kind of person. The pack survives. The lone wolf dies. You already know which one you are.


Casterly Rock · The Westerlands

🦁 House Lannister
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You understand the game — its rules, its exceptions, and exactly when the rules become the exception. You play it without illusions and without apology.

  • You are sharper than most people realise, and you have learned to use that gap to your advantage.
  • A Lannister always pays their debts — and you always keep your word, because your word is an instrument of power, and instruments must be kept in working order.
  • You love your family with a ferocity that sometimes blinds you, and you know it, and you do it anyway.
  • The lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep. Neither, in the end, do you.


Dragonstone · The Iron Throne

🐉 House Targaryen
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You carry a sense of destiny that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore — the feeling that you are not simply participating in the world but meant to reshape it.

  • You are capable of extraordinary things, and you know it, and that knowledge is both your greatest strength and your most dangerous quality.
  • Fire and blood are not just words to you — they are a philosophy about what change requires and what it costs.
  • The Targaryens at their best were transformative rulers who broke chains and defied the limits of what anyone thought possible.
  • At your best, so are you. The dragon has three heads. You are one of them.


Storm’s End · The Stormlands

🦌 House Baratheon
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You are a force — direct, powerful, and difficult to ignore when you enter a room or a conflict. You do not negotiate with challenges. You meet them.

  • Ours is the fury — and yours is a kind of intensity that commands attention, respect, and occasionally fear from those who underestimate what’s behind it.
  • You value strength and straight dealing. You’d rather know where you stand in a fight than navigate a web of courtly whispers.
  • The Baratheons built their house on the back of one of the greatest military victories in Westerosi history — and then struggled with what came after.
  • The lesson of your house is that winning is not the end of the story. Governing is. You are learning that too.


Highgarden · The Reach

🌹 House Tyrell
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You understand that power does not always announce itself — that sometimes it arrives with flowers, good wine, and a smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.

  • Growing strong is your house’s motto, and you live it: patiently, strategically, always investing in the relationships and resources that will matter most when it counts.
  • You are charming by choice and calculating by nature — a combination that makes you one of the most effective players in any room you enter.
  • The Tyrells fed King’s Landing and shaped its politics without ever sitting on the Iron Throne — and they were arguably more powerful for it.
  • You know that the person who controls the food controls the kingdom. And you always know where the food is.

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Crucially, this part of Daemon’s visio comes after he sees the dying of the dragons in Westeros — primarily caused by the current civil war. Daenerys hatching her three dragons is a sign that dragons will rise again. With the Others a constant and legitimate threat, the dragons are needed to fight them. Daemon understands that, for the world to have a fighting chance, the Targaryen who needs to sit on the Iron Throne must be his wife, Rhaenyra.

Although Daemon doesn’t know who Daenerys is, the audience are fully aware of her identity and the fact that she is one of the last members of the once great house. Due to the nature of his vision, he has no idea if this event takes place in a few years or centuries in the future. To him, Daenerys could be anyone.A future daughter, a granddaughter, or even a great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter — which just happens to be the truth.

Daenerys Is a Direct Descendant of Daemon and Rhaenyra’s Line

In order to understand how Daenerys is related to Daemon and Rhaenyra, we must wade into spoiler territory by exploring George R.R. Martin‘s Fire & Blood. It’s no secret that Rhaenyra dies at the end of the Dance of the Dragons. Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) says as much in Game of Thrones when he reveals that she was eaten by Aegon II’s (Tom Glynn-Carney) dragon, Sunfyre. Daemon is also destined for a deadly confrontation against Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) at Harrenhal. Although they die, Daemon and Rhaenyra’s two sons eventually end up ascending to the Iron Throne after the fighting is done. Aegon III becomes king, but when two sons, Daeron I and Baelor I, leave no heirs, it’s his brother (and Daemon and Rhaenyra’s youngest son), Viserys II, who inherits the throne.

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Through Viserys II, the Targaryen line continues, from his terrible son, Aegon IV (“the Unworthy”) to Aegon V aka Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms who is Daenerys’ great-grandfather and Rhaenyra’s great-great-great-grandson to the Mad King, Aerys II (David Rintoul), Daenerys’ father. In total, Daenerys Targaryen is eight generations removed from Rhaenyra Targaryen, making Rhaenyra Daenerys’ great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. It’s important to point out, however, that this is following Fire & Blood, since Game of Thrones removed Jaehaerys II, who is Aerys II’s father in the books, from its lore, according to Maester Aemon (Peter Vaughan) in Season 1. Unless some retconning takes place, in the show franchise, Daenerys is just seven generations removed from Rhaenyra.

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