A Guide to the Targaryen Family Tree (Because You Will Need One)

Let me be honest: the Targaryen family tree is a mess. Not in a bad way—in a specifically intentional way that mirrors the entire point of House of the Dragon. The Targaryens are obsessed with blood purity, which in practice means they marry each other with alarming frequency, creating a family tree that looks less like a tree and more like a tangled ball of yarn that a cat has played with. If you’re sitting down to watch House of the Dragon and realize you’re constantly asking “wait, who is that person related to again?”, you’re not alone. This guide exists to help you navigate the chaos.

The thing to remember is that House of the Dragon takes place about 200 years before the events of the original Game of Thrones, so if you’re familiar with those characters, pretty much everyone here is a very distant ancestor. Daenerys Targaryen? She’s not even a twinkle in anyone’s eye yet. But the bloodlines, the feuds, and the fundamental Targaryen obsession with power and dragons are all present and accounted for. Let’s break down the key players.

The Generation of Conflict: Viserys and Alicent

King Viserys I Targaryen is where this entire story really begins. He’s the well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual king who tries to thread an impossible needle: keeping his kingdom peaceful while dealing with an increasingly fractious family. His greatest mistake is trying to be liked, trying to make everyone happy, and failing to make the hard decisions that a king sometimes needs to make. When he marries Alicent Hightower—a woman half his age, daughter of the ambitious Otto Hightower—he sets in motion the events that will tear his family apart.

Alicent, for her part, is fascinating because she’s neither purely a villain nor purely a victim. She’s a woman trying to survive in a world that limits her options, and she’s making the best of a situation that was clearly designed to trap her. Her marriage to Viserys gives her something she lacked: power and influence. The problem is that she uses it to secure her children’s positions, not realizing that in doing so, she’s creating a faction that will eventually wage war against her stepdaughter.

Viserys’s first wife, Aemma Arryn, gave him his first child and heir apparent: Rhaenyra. She dies in childbirth, which is about as brutal a setup as you can get for the rest of the story. If Aemma had lived, or if Rhaenyra had been born a boy, the entire conflict might have been prevented. But she didn’t, and Rhaenyra wasn’t, so here we are.

Rhaenyra’s Claim

Rhaenyra is the eldest child of Viserys and Aemma, and Viserys names her his heir, making her the first woman ever to be named the direct successor to the Iron Throne. This is a radical act in a patriarchal society, and it makes Rhaenyra simultaneously powerful and deeply vulnerable. She’s brilliant, capable, and absolutely certain of her right to rule, but she’s also constantly undermined by a society that fundamentally doesn’t believe women belong on the throne.

The shock of Rhaenyra’s position is part of what drives the entire war. When Viserys has children with Alicent—first Aegon, then Helaena, then Aemond—he never officially removes Rhaenyra as his heir. But he also never publicly recommits to the decision, which leaves the question hanging in the air. This ambiguity is the entire problem. Viserys is too weak to make the hard choice either way, and the result is chaos.

Rhaenyra’s marriages are important to track. Her first husband, Laenor Velaryon, is a closeted gay man from one of the most powerful houses in Westeros. Together they have three sons—though sharp-eyed viewers will notice they look suspiciously Lannister-blonde rather than properly Targaryen. These children are officially legitimate, but everyone whispers about it. After Laenor dies (in circumstances that are deliberately ambiguous), Rhaenyra marries her uncle Daemon, because if the Targaryens have one defining trait, it’s that they have no qualms about incest.

Daemon: The Rogue Prince

Daemon Targaryen, Viserys’s younger brother, is perhaps the most electrifying character in the show. He’s a talented military commander, a passionate lover, a man who never met a rule he didn’t want to break, and increasingly throughout the series, a man whose grip on sanity is tenuous at best. Daemon is the kind of character who could either save the Targaryen dynasty or destroy it, and probably both.

Daemon’s first marriage, to Rhea Royce, is a disaster. They hate each other, and he essentially abandons her, running off to fight in the Stepstones with his loyal followers. After Rhea’s convenient death, Daemon marries Laena Velaryon, a strong-willed woman from another major house. They have two children together—Baela and Rhaena—before Laena dies in childbirth. By the time Daemon marries Rhaenyra, he’s already been married twice and has his own complicated family situation going on.

What makes Daemon fascinating is that he’s simultaneously one of the most capable people in the realm and potentially the most dangerous. His loyalty shifts based on his mood and what he wants, and his ambition is essentially unlimited. As the series goes on, we see him become increasingly unmoored, making decisions based on paranoia and trauma rather than strategy. It’s a tragic arc for a character who seemed so confident early on.

The Green Children: Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond

Alicent’s children with Viserys are the other faction in this war. Aegon II is the eldest son and, in the minds of many lords, the more legitimate heir, even though his older sister Rhaenyra was technically named heir first. Aegon is a spoiled man-child who didn’t want the crown and is completely unprepared for the responsibilities it brings. He’d rather drink, whore, and enjoy the benefits of being a prince than actually do the work of being a king.

Helaena is the middle child and arguably the most sympathetic of the lot. She’s deeply strange in a way that suggests she might be smarter than everyone around her—her prophetic visions hint at greater understanding of events than she has any right to possess. She’s married to Aemond, her brother (see: Targaryen incest, part of the whole deal), and she seems to exist in a state of quiet desperation, trying to hold her fractured family together through sheer force of will.

And then there’s Aemond, the youngest, the one with the massive white-blond eyepatch over an empty eye socket where his older nephew took his eye as a child. Aemond is the most dangerous of the Green children—intelligent, ambitious, and carrying a massive chip on his shoulder about his eye. He’s also the one who inevitably becomes the tip of the spear of the Green faction, the one willing to actually go to war. He’s a brilliant dragonrider and a terrible person, which makes him infinitely more interesting than if he were just one or the other.

The Velaryon Connection

The Velaryon family, one of the most powerful houses in Westeros, is deeply embedded in this conflict through marriage. Laenor Velaryon marries Rhaenyra; his father Corlys Velaryon is a legendary admiral and explorer. The Velaryons have dragons of their own—not many, but they have them—and their support is crucial to both sides. This family helps ground the story in the larger realm, reminding us that the Targaryen war doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Other houses have their own interests and their own reasons for picking sides.

The Hightower Influence

Otto Hightower, Alicent’s father, is perhaps the real architect of the Green faction’s rise to power. He’s the Hand of the King, which gives him access and influence that nobody else possesses. He’s playing the long game, positioning his daughter and grandsons for power, making allies, and slowly working toward a coup that he’s convinced himself is justified because it’s in the realm’s best interests. Otto is a masterclass in how to justify terrible decisions through pragmatism.

Tracking the Dragons

One of the trickiest parts of the Targaryen family tree is keeping track of who has which dragon. Dragons are passed down through families, and knowing who rides which dragon tells you a lot about who has power and who doesn’t. Viserys has Balerion—or rather, he had Balerion until the dragon died and was stuffed and mounted in the Red Keep. Rhaenyra has Syrax, a big golden dragon. Aegon has Sunfyre, who is beautiful and also kind of useless in combat. Aemond has Vhagar, who is absolutely massive and absolutely terrifying. Daemon has Caraxes, a fearsome beast. These dragons become weapons in the war, and understanding who has what tells you about the balance of power.

The Bottom Line

The Targaryen family tree is complicated because it’s supposed to be. It mirrors the dysfunction of the dynasty itself—incestuous, complicated, full of conflicting claims and justified grievances on all sides. Nobody in this family is purely right or purely wrong; they’re all doing what they think is best, and they’re all making catastrophic mistakes in the process. That’s what makes following the family tree worthwhile—it’s not just about who’s related to whom; it’s about understanding how these relationships have created a powder keg that’s about to explode into civil war.

Keep this guide handy, maybe bookmark it, and don’t feel bad if you need to reference it while watching. The Targaryens are confusing on purpose, and that confusion is part of what makes them such compelling television.