If you’ve been watching House of the Dragon and felt a little lost about the history behind all this conflict, you’re not alone. The show jumps into the middle of a civil war that has deep roots, multiple competing claims to the throne, and decades of bad decisions leading up to the breaking point. To understand why Rhaenyra and Alicent are at each other’s throats, why Aemond is so unhinged, and what the Dance of the Dragons actually is, we need to go back in time and understand the events that made this war inevitable.
What Exactly Is The Dance of the Dragons?
The Dance of the Dragons is the name historians give to the Targaryen civil war that tears apart the realm roughly a couple of centuries before the events of Game of Thrones. It’s essentially the story of what happens when a royal family with access to giant fire-breathing lizards decides to wage war against itself.
The name comes from a romanticized idea that the conflict is somehow elegant or beautiful—a “dance” between great dragons and noble houses. In reality, it’s absolutely brutal. Thousands of regular people die. The economy collapses. Villages get burned to nothing. Dragons incinerate armies. It’s medieval warfare amplified to apocalyptic levels because you’ve got literal weapons of mass destruction involved.
The civil war starts because of a fundamental problem: King Viserys I had a daughter first (Rhaenyra), then later had a son (Aegon II). By the laws of succession that most of the realm’s nobles prefer, the son should inherit the throne. But Viserys named his daughter as heir. When he dies, both sides claim the throne is rightfully theirs, and neither side is willing to back down. That’s the spark. Everything else is just fuel on the fire.
The Road to War: Decades of Bad Decisions
You can’t understand why the Dance of the Dragons happens without understanding the stupidity and stubbornness that came before it. This is where House of the Dragon’s Season 1 becomes important. King Viserys spent years trying to hold the realm together while these two factions basically grew more and more resentful of each other.
Rhaenyra was named heir because Viserys decided that she was the right choice. She’s his daughter, she’s intelligent, she’s capable, and he loved her. But a lot of the realm’s lords didn’t support this decision because, frankly, they didn’t think a woman should sit on the Iron Throne. In Westeros, there’s this weird thing where women can technically inherit and rule, but most people would prefer a male heir if one’s available. It’s not legally impossible for Rhaenyra to be queen. It’s just that a lot of people don’t want her to be.
So when Viserys remarried and had a son with his new queen (Alicent), those nobles who were uncomfortable with Rhaenyra as queen started circling. Alicent was actively encouraged by her father Otto Hightower to push Aegon’s claim. Alicent believed (or was convinced to believe) that Viserys actually wanted Aegon to be king. Whether that’s true is literally one of the key questions the show has been wrestling with.
The tension kept building over years. Rhaenyra and Alicent went from being friends to bitter enemies. Aemond grew up resentful and ambitious. Aegon grew up with a sense of entitlement but without real preparation for kingship. And Viserys, instead of making hard decisions, just kept trying to make everyone happy, which meant nobody was actually happy except possibly him, and even he had constant headaches (literally—he gets sick and dies).
By the time King Viserys died, both sides had been preparing for this conflict for years. They’d been building alliances, moving armies into position, and getting more and more convinced that the other side was going to betray them. It was like watching two people standoff, both increasingly sure the other is about to pull a knife, until somebody finally does.
The Succession Crisis
When Viserys dies, the realm faces a choice. Rhaenyra was clearly named as his heir. Many lords swore oaths to support her succession. But Alicent claims that on his deathbed, Viserys told her he wanted Aegon to be king. Was he talking about the succession, or was he just delirious and talking about their son in some abstract way? Nobody knows. The source is literally Alicent, who has a vested interest in claiming he said that.
This is the crucial moment. In any reasonable scenario, there would be negotiation. Rhaenyra has a claim and oaths sworn to her. Aegon has a claim through male preference and the support of the capital and the crown. You’d think they could work something out. Maybe Rhaenyra becomes queen and Aegon becomes heir? Maybe they make some kind of political marriage between their children? Maybe somebody negotiates a compromise?
But instead, the Greens (Team Aegon) decide to immediately crown Aegon as king without giving Rhaenyra or her family a chance to negotiate or contest the succession. They just do it. Coronation happens, and suddenly Rhaenyra is out in Dragonstone with her family, hearing that her throne has been stolen and the new king is her brother, a guy she already doesn’t trust.
The Blacks (Team Rhaenyra) decide this is a declaration of war. They’re not going to accept this. They’re going to fight for what they see as rightfully theirs. And once both sides commit to that, there’s no turning back. You can’t un-declare war against your sister.
The Players and Their Dragons
The Dance of the Dragons is, at its core, a story about dragons and the people who ride them. Let’s break down the major players and their dragons because understanding the military balance is crucial to understanding how the war plays out.
Team Black (Rhaenyra’s side) has numbers on their side. They have multiple dragons: Caraxes (ridden by Daemon), Syrax (ridden by Rhaenyra), Meleys (ridden by Rhaenys), and several younger dragons being ridden by Rhaenyra’s children and the assorted dragonseeds. They also have the Vale, the North, and several other major houses that support Rhaenyra’s claim.
Team Green (Aegon’s side) has the capital, the Reach, the Stormlands, and other important regions. More importantly, they have Vhagar, ridden by Aemond. Vhagar is the largest and oldest dragon alive. She’s massive, incredibly strong, and has centuries of experience. Vhagar is basically the dragon equivalent of an Apache helicopter facing off against a lot of smaller planes. She’s not faster or more nimble than the other dragons, but she’s big, strong, and experienced.
The game theory of the war is interesting. The Blacks have more dragons, which means more firepower overall. But the Greens have Vhagar and control of the capital, which means defensibility and political legitimacy. If the Blacks can win quickly by overwhelming the Greens with dragon superiority, they win. If they can’t, and the war turns into a grinding conflict, the Greens have the advantage of position and resources.
How The War Escalates
The Dance of the Dragons doesn’t start with one huge battle. It escalates gradually, with both sides trying different strategies and the situation getting increasingly desperate and brutal.
Early on, there are skirmishes and raids. Dragons are used for reconnaissance and small-scale strikes. Towns burn. Supply lines get disrupted. The economic damage starts accumulating immediately because, with multiple factions controlling different regions, trade becomes impossible.
Then there are the major battles. Both sides try to use dragons in coordinated assaults on key positions. Some of these battles involve multiple dragons fighting at once, which is visually spectacular but also incredibly destructive. When you have five dragons fighting in the same location, there’s basically nothing left.
The war also gets personal and vicious. Aemond, in particular, starts making reckless decisions based more on personal grudge than military strategy. He’s out for revenge and willing to do literally anything to achieve it. The conflict becomes less about military victory and more about mutual destruction.
One of the brutal aspects of the war is that it devastates the common people far more than it hurts the nobles. The Riverlands, sitting roughly in the middle of the conflict, get absolutely destroyed. Villages burn. Crops get destroyed. People starve. The great lords get to wage war with their dragons while the smallfolk deal with the consequences.
The Prophecy of the Ice and Fire
One element that’s really important to understanding the Dance of the Dragons is the idea of prophecy and destiny. In the wider Targaryen history, there’s this prophecy about a hero who will be born amidst salt and smoke, with a fiery sword and the blood of the dragon. The Targaryens have been obsessed with this prophecy for generations, and some scholars think the Dance of the Dragons is, at least partly, the result of this obsession.
Both Rhaenyra and the Greens think they’re the ones who the prophecy is talking about. They think they’re destined to rule. They think they’re the ones who will save the realm from some coming darkness. This gets mixed up with their very real, very legitimate claims to the throne, and it makes both sides even more intractable and impossible to negotiate with.
People will do absolutely insane things if they’re convinced they’re destined to do them. They’ll commit atrocities. They’ll kill innocents. They’ll destroy the realm itself. That’s part of what makes the Dance of the Dragons so tragic—it’s not just a war fought for power and succession. It’s also a war fought because both sides are convinced they’re playing out some kind of historical destiny, and that makes them even more dangerous and unstable.
The Legacy and The Consequences
The Dance of the Dragons basically destroys the Targaryen dynasty’s ability to rule effectively. By the time the war is over, there are far fewer dragons left alive. The family’s prestige is damaged. The realm is exhausted. And most importantly, the idea that the Targaryen monarchy is invincible is shattered.
From the perspective of the wider Game of Thrones timeline, the Dance of the Dragons sets up everything that comes later. It weakens the Targaryens so much that, when they face challenges in later centuries, they don’t have the strength to meet them. It creates trauma and divisions within the family that never fully heal. And it proves that dragons, as powerful as they are, aren’t enough to guarantee absolute power.
The civil war also proves that the common people will only tolerate so much chaos and destruction before they start looking for other options. By the end of the Dance, a lot of people are desperate for stability, which is part of why various noble families start consolidating power and pushing back against Targaryen rule. Nobody wanted another Dance of the Dragons, so everybody started thinking about how to make sure one never happened again.
The Human Cost
At the end of the day, the Dance of the Dragons is about the human cost of civil war and the destructiveness of political ambition. Thousands of soldiers die. The economy collapses. Families are destroyed. A bunch of noble titles and claims to power result in massive suffering for people who never asked to be part of this conflict.
That’s the tragedy at the heart of House of the Dragon as a series. It’s not just about dragons and thrones. It’s about watching smart, capable, interesting people destroy themselves and everyone around them because they can’t let go of pride, ambition, and resentment. Rhaenyra deserves better. Alicent deserves better. Aemond deserves better. And the millions of ordinary people in Westeros definitely deserve better.
The Dance of the Dragons is the story of how and why none of them got better. It’s history as tragedy, and it’s the foundation for everything that happens in both House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones.
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