Are the Targaryens in House of the Dragon fireproof or not?
[Ed note: This story contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2, episode 5.]
Following a brief tease, House of the Dragon season 2, episode 5 confirms that King Aegon II Targaryen survived the Battle at Rook’s Rest. Yet the middling monarch is still badly hurt, nursing the kind of gnarly injuries you’d expect from the Game of Thrones franchise. He’s got broken bones, busted insides, and burns — lots of burns. Which might have you thinking: Wait, aren’t Targaryens fireproof?
Maybe, and maybe not. It depends on which version of the canon we’re talking about. George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels are pretty clear on the subject, but Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are decidedly muddled. And thanks to all this conflicting intel, the truth about Targaryens’ fire immunity is more tangled than dragon tails in an overcrowded hatchery. We’ve done our best to untangle it below!
Nope. According to Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire tomes, Targaryens are resistant to fire — and far less temperature-sensitive than the average person — but not invulnerable to it. Admittedly, this isn’t spelled out in the books themselves, but Martin cleared things up in a post shared on the Citadel fansite way back in November 1998.
“[S]ome fans are reading too much into the scene in Game of Thrones where the dragons are born — which is to say, it was never the case that all Targaryens are immune to all fire at all times,” he wrote. It’s as definitive a statement as they come, and tracks with what Martin shows us in the A Song of Ice and Fire books.
Sure, there’s Daenerys Targaryen’s “fire cannot kill a dragon” quote in A Game of Thrones, after her brother (and self-proclaimed dragon) Viserys dies from having molten gold poured on his melon. But Dany isn’t being literal — she’s throwing her brother’s hollow bravado back in his now-gilded face. What about when Daenerys emerges from Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre unscathed (bald scalp not withstanding) later in the same book?
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