House of the Dragon returned for the sophomore season on Sunday, June 16, and delivered a sensational premiere. Due to what was shown in the final 15 minutes of it, the viewers now want to know why Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban) saved her daughter Jaehaera. Partially based on George R. R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon revolves around the brutal civil war between the two factions of the House Targaryen. Season 2 begins with the war becoming inevitable following the murder of Crown Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen. After killers sent by Daemon Targaryen enter the room of the sleeping children, Helaena saves her daughter, making the viewers wonder why.
Here is what we believe was Helaena’s reason for saving Jaehaera.
Why Did Helaena save Jaehaera Targaryen in the House of the Dragon Season 2 premiere?
Helaena has the prophetic ability known as dragon dream, which only a few members of the Targaryen family have manifested over the centuries. Earlier in the episode, Helaena tells Aegon that she is more worried about the rats than the dragons. This indicates that she knows about a ratcatcher and a Gold Cloak member (Cheese and Blood) who will infiltrate the Red Keep and kill her son. Following this thread of logic, we can presume she also knows what the war will do to her family and the dragons. Realizing that she can’t stop fate’s wheel from turning, she takes the child she can save from the killers and leaves, while her other child is being killed.
Additionally, the episode’s title is A Son for a Son. Daemon sends Blood and Cheese to kill Aemond as an act of revenge for Lucerys’ death. However, it is implied that the killers were told to find other targets if they failed to locate Aemond. Jaehaera is a girl, but because of how she and her brother are dressed, Blood and Cheese fail to tell them apart and force Helaena to direct them toward her son.
In the books, Jaehaera is never in danger as the killers ask Helaena to choose between Jaehaerys and her other son, Maelor, who doesn’t appear in the show. After Helaena picks Maelor to die, Blood and Cheese kill Jaehaerys and depart anyway. In Maelor’s absence, Jaehaera serves as one of her mother’s prospective choices.
Will Jaehaera Targaryen sit on the Iron Throne?
If the series follows Martin’s book in this aspect, Jaehaera Targaryen will never sit on the Iron Throne. However, she will become the queen and first wife of Aegon III Targaryen, one of the surviving children of Daemon and Rhaenyra, as part of the peace process between the two warring factions.
However, Jaehaera’s life isn’t happy and she doesn’t live for very long. In the books, both she and her husband are deeply traumatized by the war. Two years after her wedding, Jaehaera purportedly dies by suicide after jumping from her window and being impaled on the spikes below, eerily in the same manner as her mother. Some believe that Lord Unwin Peake, who was the Hand of the King at the time, orchestrated Jaehaera’s death as he wanted his daughter to become the queen.
