- This article is about the daughter of Rhaegar Targaryen, for the sister-wife of Aegon I Targaryen see Rhaenys Targaryen (sister of Aegon I)
- "House Clegane was built upon dead children. I saw them lay Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys before the Iron Throne."
- ―Thoros of Myr
Rhaenys Targaryen, is an unseen character in Game of Thrones. She is deceased when the events of the series begin and she is not expected to appear in the series.
Biography
Background
Rhaenys, her mother, and her brother before Ser Gregor Clegane
Rhaenys Targaryen was the daughter of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell. She had a younger brother, Aegon.[1] House Targaryen was deposed as the ruling house of Westeros during Robert's Rebellion. Rhaegar was killed during the fighting and Elia and both their children were killed soon afterwards during the Sack of King's Landing.[2]
Season 3
Thoros of Myr reminisces how he witnessed Gregor Clegane presenting the bodies of Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys before the Iron Throne.[3]
Family tree
Template:House Targaryen family tree
In the books
In A Song of Ice and Fire, Rhaenys is the daughter of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell and died in the Sack of King's Landing. Varys talks about her with the imprisoned Eddard Stark as an example of how the innocent suffer in times of uprising. She was four years old and had a small black kitten she named "Balerion", after the mighty dragon of Aegon the Conqueror.
No one knows what happened to her cat Balerion. It is implied that it survived the downfall of the Targaryens and lived out the next fifteen years in the Red Keep during the reign of Robert Baratheon. When Arya Stark is ordered by Syrio Forel to chase cats around the Red Keep to train her in agility (which occurs in the TV series in "Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things") one of the cats she encounters is an incredibly old black cat who is mean to the entire Baratheon household, as well as the Lannisters. Once, when Tywin Lannister was visiting the Red Keep for a feast, the black cat jumped onto the table and snatched a roast quail right out of Tywin's fingers. This may very well be Rhaenys' cat Balerion, angered at the new residents of the castle who are responsible for the death of his original owner.
After King's Landing was seized by the Lannister forces, she was found by Ser Amory Lorch hiding under the bed of her father Rhaegar. While Gregor Clegane killed her baby brother and mother, Lorch killed Rhaenys by stabbing her about fifty times. Even Tywin considered that deed overly brutal (not the murder itself, but the manner in which it was done). He asked Lorch why killing a four year old girl required so many thrusts, and Lorch answered that she kicked him and would not stop screaming. Tywin commented that if Lorch had half the brain a turnip has, he would have calmed Rhaenys with a few sweet words and used a soft silk pillow to smother her.
See also
References
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