House Targaryen

Helaena Targaryen

Life: 109 AC
House: Targaryen
Titles: Princess · Queen consort
Allegiance: House Targaryen
Seat: King's Landing (the Red Keep)
Culture: Valyrian (Targaryen)
Religion: The Faith of the Seven
Notable for: Dragonrider of Dreamfyre; a scattering of odd, riddling remarks later readers have combed for portents

A gentle queen whose family the war tested cruelly — the chronicle keeps what becomes of her veiled for readers not yet there.

Helaena Targaryen was Alicent Hightower's second child and only daughter, wed to her full brother Aegon II in the custom the dynasty had never fully abandoned, and by every account that survives her a gentler and more retiring presence than either her mother's court or her husband's war much rewarded. She rode the dragon Dreamfyre, kept mostly to her own chambers and children, and left behind a scattering of odd, riddling remarks that later readers have combed for portents the Citadel is careful to call retrospective rather than confirmed — a queen remembered, fairly or not, more for a handful of strange sentences than for anything she is recorded to have actually done.

Key events

109 ACBorn the second child and only daughter of Viserys I and Alicent Hightower.
122 ACWed her full brother Aegon Targaryen, following the dynasty's custom of sibling marriage.
c. 123-129 ACBears three children — Jaehaerys, Jaehaera, and Maelor — and keeps mostly to her own chambers, away from her mother's court and, later, her husband's war.
130 ACIs cornered with her children by the killers known as Blood and Cheese, and forced to choose which of her sons will die.
130 ACNames her youngest son, Maelor, thinking the demand a bluff; the killers murder her eldest, Jaehaerys, instead.
130 ACDies within the same year, by her own hand according to the account the Citadel finds likeliest, not long after her son's murder.

Reading the character

Helaena is one of the Dance of the Dragons' clearest illustrations of how little agency the war's women were often afforded even at the very center of the conflict — a queen who by every account preferred her children and her own quiet company to any of the ambitions swirling around her, and who is nonetheless handed the single cruelest choice the entire war produces. Nothing in her recorded life suggests she wanted any part of the fight her marriage placed her at the heart of.

The odd, riddling remarks later readers have mined for prophecy say more, perhaps, about the Citadel's appetite for retrospective meaning than about Helaena herself, who left behind vastly less testimony than the men fighting around her did. What the record does make clear is a woman whose story is really about what war does to the people who never asked to be combatants in it.

The arc of Helaena Targaryen

This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.

Helaena's ordinary life ends when the hired killers known to history only as Blood and Cheese corner her and her three children in the Red Keep and demand, as payment for a nephew's death her husband's brother had dealt, that she choose which of her own sons will die in his place. She names her youngest, thinking — or hoping — the demand a bluff; the killers murder her eldest instead. What was left of Helaena did not recover from the choice she was forced to make or the son she lost regardless of it, and within the same terrible year she was dead herself, by her own hand according to the account the Citadel finds likeliest, though rumor at the time laid the death at other doors entirely.

Where the books leave Helaena Targaryen: died in 130 AC at twenty-one, falling — by the account most chroniclers favor, though not the only one on record — from a window of Maegor's Holdfast not long after the murder of her young son Jaehaerys

These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.

Sourcesfire-and-bloodthe-princess-and-the-queen

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Who is Helaena Targaryen?

The daughter of Viserys I and Alicent Hightower, wed to her brother Aegon II, whose life was shattered by the murder of her son during the Dance of the Dragons.

Is Helaena Targaryen alive?

No — the chronicle need only say that the choice the killers called Blood and Cheese forced on her was one she never recovered from; the particulars are treated in her veiled record.