All the houses in House of the Dragon — and the characters you need to know

polygon.com:

By the end of Game of Thrones, most fans had developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the various noble houses, who ruled them, where their seat lay, and who they were allied with. But with House of the Dragon taking place 200 years prior to Game of Thrones, those of us who decided to skip reading George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood are pretty much starting from scratch. There are a few familiar houses in the mix — most obviously House Targaryen, with a few others to come — but for the most part, House of the Dragon is populated by houses that we didn’t get to see in Game of Thrones.

To help you keep track of the various houses — and how they fit into the ongoing political schemes and upcoming war — we’ll be updating this guide throughout the season.

[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for House of the Dragon episode 2.]

“Fire and Blood”The royal house of Westeros. Their ancestral seat is Dragonstone, though they rule out of King’s Landing. Their sigil is a red three-headed dragon over a black field.

The entire show is about House Targaryen, so this is probably the one house you don’t need help keeping straight (or at least we’d hope). We’ll still go over the bullet points here, though, just in case.

When House of the Dragon begins, Viserys I Targaryen is King of Westeros after a Great Council had voted for him to succeed his grandfather Jaehaerys. Following the death of his wife Aemma Arryn and their newborn son, Baelon, Viserys named his daughter Rhaenyra as his heir, displacing his brother, Daemon Targaryen, from the line of succession. Viserys later chooses to marry Alicent Hightower, creating a crisis of succession that sets off the first Targaryen civil war, known as the Dance of the Dragons.

“We Light the