New dragon riders in House of the Dragon have a curious link

Key Takeaways

Three dragons have been claimed by new riders.
All the new dragon riders have featured expanded roles from the books that inspired them.
Dragons in House of the Dragon show pattern of selecting riders with family connections to their previous riders.

House of the Dragon’s last few riderless dragons are finally finding riders.

The back-half of House of the Dragon’s second season has focused on Rhaenyra Targaryen trying to find riders for the Black faction’s riderless dragons. In episode seven, we see her efforts pay off with three dragons finding new riders, with Hugh Hammer claiming Vermithor, Ulf White claiming Silverwing, and Alyn of Hull claiming Seasmoke.

With the final episode upon us, we thought it’d be a good time to round up everything we know about the new dragon riders. One of the most exciting parts of adapting the source material for House of the Dragon is fleshing out stories that didn’t exist in the original text. House of the Dragon is based on books that were written as if they’re actual Game of Thrones history books, written by maesters over 100 years after the events of the war. So, going into the series, even book readers didn’t know a lot about these low-born characters who would become dragon riders. In doing this, House of the Dragon has filled out, and changed some of these characters. They’ve also given us a clue into each character’s connection to the Targaryen family tree, which highlights an interesting pattern in how dragons choose a new rider.

House of the Dragon

A Game of Thrones prequel series centered around a Targaryen civil war that takes place 170 years before the events of the original series.

Creator: Ryan Condol and Miguel Sapochnik
Starring: Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Rhys Ifans
Genre: Fantasy
Number of Seasons: 2
Number of episodes: 17

Hugh Hammer

A Targaryen prince turned blacksmith

HBO

Hugh Hammer is one of the more interesting characters in season two. He’s been our main conduit to how the civil war is affecting smallfolk in King’s Landing. We’ve seen him lose his daughter, as the Greens refused to pay him for his work forging weapons as a blacksmith. Now he’s the rider of the second-largest dragon in the world.

“She used to tell me I was no different to her brother’s boys, Viserys and Daemon.”

He’s the only one of the new riders whose connection to the Targaryen dynasty has been explained by the show, with the reveal that his mother is Saera Targaryen. Saera was one of the daughters of King Jaehaerys. We know this thanks to a line Hugh said in episode seven to his wife Kat, “She used to tell me I was no different to her brother’s boys, Viserys and Daemon.” Viserys and Daemon are both the sons of Baelon, one of King Jaehaerys’ sons. Baelon had two sisters, with one of them standing out as the obvious choice for Hugh Hammer’s mother — Saera Targaryen.

Saera Targaryen had a small group of followers at court that became embroiled in scandal. She eventually admitted to her father that she had slept with three different suitors, while also “corrupting” some of the other girls at court. After learning of this, Jaehaerys sends his daughter to join the Faith and become one of the silent sisters (the creepy silent ladies who attend to dead bodies). Saera escaped and disappeared from Westeros history until Hugh revealed her to be his mother. Now her son is riding her father’s dragon. Although Hugh is a bastard, he would’ve had nearly as much a claim to the throne as Viserys had, as they were both King Jaehaerys’ grandsons.

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Alyn of Hull

Seasmoke’s new rider

HBO

Seasmoke sought out and chose Alyn of Hull as his new rider at the end of season two’s sixth episode, then in the seventh episode we saw him pledge his allegiance to helping Rhaenyra claim the Iron Throne. Before Alyn, Seasmoke belonged to Laenor Velaryon, Rhaenyra’s first husband who fled King’s Landing in season one. He also happens to be Alyn’s half-brother, as they share a father.

Alyn, along with his brother Adam, are both bastards of Corlys Velaryon, the lord of Driftmark. While Alyn and Adam’s mother is dead in the show, she was alive during this time period in the books. She was a shipwright and captain from Hull named Marilda.

One other interesting change the show made in the most recent episode came when Corlys was discussing the boys’ mother with Adam, indicating that Alyn’s ability to mount Seasmoke came from some connection to the Targaryens on their mother’s side. In the books, Velaryons are known to have Targaryen blood. They are from Valyria, like the Targaryens, and share many of the typical Targaryen traits like silver hair and purple eyes. The two houses were allies before the Targaryens even took over Westeros, with multiple marriages between them occurring before and after Aegon’s conquest. So it’s kind of odd for Corlys to suggest he has no Targaryen blood.

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Ulf White

A King’s Landing bottom-feeder turned dragon-rider

HBO

Ulf is another character we’ve learned more about from the shows than what was present in the books. We’ve seen him throughout season two drinking at a pub in King’s Landing before responding to Rhaenyra’s appeal for dragon riders and claiming Silverwing. Silverwing belonged to Good Queen Alysanne, King Jaehaerys’ wife.

The Ulf we’ve met on the show seems much different from his book counterpart. In the books, he’s portrayed much more devilishly, but all the accounts of him are from sources who wouldn’t have actually known him. The show’s version of Ulf seems to have a little bit more kindness and less of a hunger for power. We’ll see if that continues now that he has a dragon though. One interesting detail the show added to Ulf, is that he claims to be the bastard child of Baelon Targaryen. It’s a detail that some book readers didn’t like, because Baelon is often described in the books as a paragon of nobility and honor, kind of like a Targaryen Ned Stark. This might shine some light on how these new dragon riders ended up with their dragons though. Baelon’s other sons were Viserys and Daemon.

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The small detail connecting the dragon riders to their dragons

Are dragons following their own rules of inheritance?

HBO

So we’ve now seen three low-born Targaryens claim dragons. Each new rider shares a close family connection with the dragon’s previous rider. Hugh’s grandfather, King Jaehaerys, is Vermithor’s former rider, while Alyn of Hull’s half-brother, Laenor, is Seasmoke’s former rider. If we can believe that Ulf is actually Baelon Targaryen’s son, then that means he’s claimed his grandmother’s dragon. This seems to suggest that dragons look for a rider close to their previous rider in the Targaryen family tree. Hugh and Ulf would technically be the next in line for Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s dragons, as they’re both the couple’s last living grandchildren that don’t have dragons. Daemon is the only other surviving grandchild of the old king and queen. And if Seasmoke wanted someone similar to his former rider, a half-brother in Alyn of Hull is pretty close. There’s one other example in the show of a dragon selecting a new rider with a close relation to their old rider, Daemon’s dragon Caraxes. Daemon claimed the dragon immediately following the death of his uncle Aemon.

The one dragon who seems to disregard this is Vhagar, but she’s now had four different riders dating back to her original rider, Visenya, over 130 years before the events of the show. Her last rider was Daemon’s old wife, Laena Velaryon, which should’ve made Laena’s daughter Rhaena the obvious choice to claim Vhagar, but Aemond swooped in and claimed her before Rhaena. Now it’s possible that Vhagar has spent 130+ years around Targaryens, and is just comfortable with humans so whoever tried first would’ve been successful. But Aemond and Rhaena both share the same amount of DNA with Vhagar’s former riders. Her second rider, Baelon, was both Aemond and Rhaena’s grandfather.

This all suggests that dragons really are bonded not just to the Targaryen house, but the original Targaryen that claimed them.