House of the Dragon Circles Back to a Major Issue Game of Thrones Was Never Able to Resolve

With three episodes in, House of the Dragon ’s season 2 is finally starting its way towards the grand battle between the Blacks and the Greens, and the just released third episode proved there was no way for the divided family to reconcile yet.

Having shown an unexpected encounter between Rhaenyra and Alicent in King’s Landing, House of the Dragon brought up a forgotten, yet pretty much important prophecy for the Targaryens’ future, an issue addressed several times in the show’s predecessor Game of Thrones but eventually never clarified.

Ironically, House of the Dragon may not have an exact answer either.

House of the Dragon Remembers The Prince That Was Promised

The second season’s episode 3 ending features a conversation between Rhaenyra and Alicent in a sept located in King’s Landing, during which the prophecy of The Prince That Was Promised resurfaces for the first ever time since Game of Thrones, though there’s so far no sign of any clarification for the long-standing unresolved issue.

Trying to talk Alicent into reconsidering the war and make peace before the feud will cause more deaths, Rhaenyra tells her about the legend that suggests Aegon the Conqueror had a vision of one of his future heirs aka The Prince That Was Promised taking Westeros out of darkness and bringing eternal peace, presumably after winning the fight with the White Walkers.

Rhaenyra’s words make Alicent realize that all this time she was delusional about King Viserys’ last words thinking that he was talking about their son Aegon as his rightful heir, but it would already be too late for her to confess and stop the war.

Though Game of Thrones repeatedly mentioned the prophecy throughout its run, it never made things clear regarding who The Prince That Was Promised actually was, yet it still seems like not a single character would meet all the criteria.

According to the legend, the real hero should be born amidst salt and smoke beneath a bleeding star, revive the dragons’ kin and use a sword named Lightbringer to defeat the darkness. Given that the prophecy is initially translated from Valiryan which has no gender for the word “prince,” the hero could be anyone – a man or a woman.

All at different times, these conditions were met by several characters: Daenerys Targaryen in fact woke her three dragons, and Arya Stark used Aegon’s dagger to kill The Night King, but both of them still don’t fit for two other criteria.

Considering all the requirements that The Prince That Was Promised needs to meet, so far there’s no potential character to be named so in House of the Dragon, and the answer to the intriguing question is George R.R. Martin’s personal secret that he might reveal in his long-awaited sixth book The Winds Of Winter (if it ever arrives which is also a complicated question).

Now that it’s been more than 10 years since Game of Thrones’ author dropped his latest novel, it’s safe to say we’re more likely to see who The Prince That Was Promised really is in House of the Dragon’s following seasons or the franchise’s other spinoffs.