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Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 1, and the relevant Fire & Blood story. The premiere ends with the murder of Jaehaerys Targaryen, the young son of Aegon II and Helaena. Daemon sends the assassins Blood and Cheese to kill Aemond in revenge for Lucerys’s death. Unable to find Aemond, they enter Helaena’s rooms and kill Jaehaerys instead.
Who are Blood and Cheese, and who do they kill?
Blood and Cheese are the two men Daemon recruits to carry out a killing inside the Red Keep. Blood is a member of the City Watch; Cheese is a ratcatcher familiar with the castle’s hidden routes. Their assignment, as the episode presents it, is to find Aemond Targaryen.
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Aemond is not where they expect him to be. The pair come upon Queen Helaena and her young twins, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera. Helaena identifies Jaehaerys as the boy. She gets away with Jaehaera, but the assassins kill Jaehaerys. He is the child who dies in the Season 2 premiere.
Why is Aemond Daemon’s target?
Aemond killed Lucerys, Daemon and Rhaenyra’s son, at the end of Season 1. Daemon’s plan is retaliation, but it also has a military purpose: Aemond is a dragonrider bonded to Vhagar, the largest dragon in the conflict. Showrunner Ryan Condal told TV Guide that the plan is meant to avenge Lucerys and remove Aemond, and therefore Vhagar, from the war.
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Did Daemon order them to kill a child if Aemond was missing?
The episode does not show Daemon answering Blood and Cheese when they ask what to do if they cannot find Aemond. That omission leaves the precise backup instruction uncertain. Condal told TV Guide that Daemon did say something, and interpreted the exchange as suggesting an instruction to bring a head and a “son for a son.” He also said he did not believe Daemon sent them with the express initial intent to murder a child. That is Condal’s interpretation; the episode itself does not establish exactly what Daemon said.
What changes from the book?
Fire & Blood presents the events as a history of the fictional Targaryen dynasty, with some accounts and motives open to dispute. The show and book depict the killing differently; the adaptation does not settle every ambiguity in the historical account.
| Story element | Season 2, Episode 1 | Fire & Blood account |
|---|---|---|
| Recorded target or order | Aemond is Daemon’s intended target; the episode does not reveal the precise contingency instruction. | The recorded order is “An eye for an eye, a son for a son.” |
| Children present | Helaena’s twins, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera. | The twins and their younger brother, Maelor. |
| Helaena’s forced decision | She identifies which twin is the boy. | She is made to choose which son to spare, and selects Maelor. |
| Who is killed | Jaehaerys is killed after Helaena identifies him. | Jaehaerys is killed despite Helaena’s choice of Maelor. |
Maelor is absent from the episode’s timeline, so Helaena’s dilemma changes: instead of choosing between sons, she is forced to identify the boy among her twins. The series also makes Aemond the target of the stated plan, whereas the book’s recorded order calls for a son. Both versions end with Jaehaerys dead, but the circumstances and the choice forced on Helaena are different.
Condal acknowledged the adaptation choice in a press roundtable, telling Den of Geek, “The sequence in the book is wonderful and is a great version of the story.”
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The scene initially follows Blood and Cheese through the castle as they search for Aemond. Once they reach Helaena and the children, the viewpoint moves from the intruders to the mother forced to confront them. Condal explained the intended effect to TheWrap on June 16, 2024: “The hope is that you kind of follow these two goons on a mission … and you go into their point-of-view, and then the third act twist is that the POV passes over to Helaena, one of our existing known characters and then you experience the awful things to come through her eyes.”
That shift makes the ending’s horror less about the mechanics of the assassination than Helaena’s brief, devastating choices: identify her son, escape with her daughter, and leave Jaehaerys behind.
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