HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ Drops a ‘Game of Thrones’ Bombshell: What is the Song of Ice and Fire?

Oh, so that’s why George R.R. Martin‘s original Game of Thrones books are collectively called A Song of Ice and Fire! HBO‘s Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon premiered tonight with a supersized episode full of the sex, politics, gore, and lore GoT fans have come to love, but it ended with a major reveal. While Game of Thrones fans have long known the story of Aegon the Conqueror, the first Targaryen ruler of Westeros, we’ve never known why he set out to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. Turns out Aegon had a vision of the White Walkers coming to end mankind and knew that only a Targaryen with a dragon could save humanity.

House of the Dragon is set about 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones. The Targaryens have ruled over Westeros for about one hundred years, but the current king Viserys (Paddy Considine) is concerned about the family’s future. When his wife Aemma (Sian Brooke) dies giving birth to a son who soon perishes thereafter, Viserys has to decide if he will name his clever and fiery daughter Rhaenyra (Milly Alcott) as his heir, bucking tradition, or leave the realm to his polarizing (and often violent) brother Daemon (Matt Smith).

The first episode of HBO’s House of the Dragon ends with Viserys forcing the lords of Westeros to swear fealty to Rhaenyra. However, there’s a problem. The realm had already rejected a potential queen in favor of Viserys. Meaning, Westeros is a straight up patriarchy that doesn’t want to put its faith in a female ruler, no matter how capable she is.

Nevertheless, Viserys is so confident in Rhaenyra he reveals the major family secret that is passed down from monarch to monarch: Aegon the Conqueror’s apocalyptic vision of the future known as The Song of Ice and Fire. So what exactly is The Song of Ice and Fire and how does this one House of the Dragon scene blow up everything we know about the Targaryens, Jon Snow (Kit Harington), and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke)? Here’s what you need to know…

House of the Dragon Premiere Ending Explained: What is the Song of Ice and Fire?

At the end of House of the Dragon Episode 1, Viserys has a little chat with Rhaenyra in front of the enshrined skull of Aegon the Conqueror’s deceased dragon, Balerion the Dread. Viserys tells Rhaenyra that she will be his new heir. This scene between father and daughter is intercut with scenes of Alicent (Emily Carey) comforting Rhaenyra, Daemon escaping with his lover Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) on his dragon Caraxes, and the noble lords of the realm swearing fealty to Rhaenyra as chosen heir. Then Viserys drops some nuclear level bits of lore on us:

“There’s something else that I need to tell you. It might be difficult for you to understand, but you must hear it,” Viserys says. “Our histories, they tell us that Aegon looked across the Blackwater from Dragonstone, saw a rich land ripe for the capture. But ambition alone is not what drove him to conquest. It was a dream.”

“Just as Daenys foresaw the end of Valyria,” Viserys says, referring to the Targaryen ancestor whose Cassandra-esque vision of the Doom of Valyria inspired the Targaryens to move to Dragonstone in the first place, “Aegon foresaw the end of the world of men. It is to begin with a terrible winter gusting out of the distant North.”

At this point, the show cuts to the current reigning Stark in Winterfell swearing his fealty to drive the connection home.

“Aegon saw absolute darkness riding on those winds and whatever dwells within will destroy the world of the living. When this great winter comes, Rhaenyra, all of Westeros must stand against it. And if the world of men is to survive, a Targaryen must be seated on the Iron Throne. A king or queen strong enough to unite the realm against the cold and the dark,” he continues.

“Aegon called his dream The Song of Ice and Fire. This secret, it’s been passed from king to heir since Aegon’s time. Now you must promise to carry it.” Boom!

So we now know that Aegon the Conqueror foresaw the rise of the White Walkers and the threat they posed to the world 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones. The whole reason the Targaryens took control of Westeros was to position a descendent, say a Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen, to unite the realm and fight back the darkness with the help of dragons. Although we don’t know what happens in George R.R. Martin’s version of events, it is Jon and Dany who rally a coalition and a couple of dragons to defeat the White Walkers in the show Game of Thrones.

It’s worth noting that House of the Dragon was co-created by Martin and he has way more say in its storytelling than he did with Game of Thrones. So we can safely assume that Aegon’s prophetic vision is canon.

What we don’t know is if Rhaenyra succeeded in sharing this secret to the next generation. After all, House of the Dragon is the story of how the Targaryens self-destructed. Did this sacred game of telephone from ruler to heir break down after the events of House of the Dragon? Or do we now understand Jon and Dany’s respective fathers better?

How Does House of the Dragon Change What We Know About The Targaryens? Mad King Aerys, Prince Rhaegar Theories

Now that we know that the Targaryen rulers had forewarning about the White Walkers, it potentially reframes the actions of the Mad King Aerys and Prince Rhaegar.

There’s been significant theorizing that Mad King Aerys’s obsession with wildfire had something to do with using it as a weapon against a foe like the White Walkers. There was even speculation that when Aerys was muttering “Burn them all!” during the fall of King’s Landing, the mentally unwell man was having visions of the Others, not Robert Baratheon’s forces, taking the city. I’ve always thought these theories were overly generous to a character canonically known to be abusive and tyrannical, but perhaps they were right on the money. Maybe Aerys was thinking of The Song of Ice and Fire?!

Now I still think there’s two little hiccups here. Even if Rhaenyra succeeded in sharing Aegon’s secret with the next generation, a future Targaryen king, Baelor the Blessed, burned every scrap of magical family lore he could fine. So obsessed was he with the Westerosi faith of the Seven, he built the Sept of Baelor that Cersei (Lena Headey) blows up in the show. We also know from the books that the Targaryens lost a lot of their family history after the Dance of the Dragons. So I don’t know if Aerys was privy to this secret. However, I’m positive his scholarly son Rhaegar was.

In Martin’s A Clash of Kings, Daenerys has a vision of her brother Rhaegar naming his newborn son Aegon. He says, “He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.” Later, in Martin’s A Storm of Swords, Ser Barristan Selmy tells Daenerys that her eldest brother was “bookish to a fault…until Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him.” After that he showed up for practice in the yard with the master-at-arms, declaring, “‘I will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.'”

Rhaegar was obsessed with the prophecy of “the prince who was promised” and the impending long night. The question is did he learn about this from his father or, more likely, discover a long-forgotten scroll with the secret written upon it? Either way, Prince Rhaegar at least got the message and took Aegon’s prophecy to mean that he had to sire three children, which resulted in him pursuing Lyanna Stark, kicking off Robert’s Rebellion, and leading to the birth of Jon Snow.

Anyway, while we still have a lot of questions about which Targaryen knew what, at least we finally understand why the series, as a whole, is called A Song of Ice and Fire.