‘House of the Dragon’: Princess Rhaenys Targaryen is ‘the Queen Who Never Was.’ Here’s her backstory, and ‘the most important woman in Game of Thrones.’
A week ago, the internet was abuzz with theories after a character from Game of Thrones was named as female. The character was called Rhaegar Targaryen and she had never been introduced. For those unfamiliar with the story of a Targaryen, it was King Aegon II, who died in a brutal battle against the wildlings in the fifth book of the series, A Feast for Crows. According to the internet, her name was an homage to the Star Wars series.
But this isn’t the first time a Game of Thrones character has been given a name that may not exactly be female. The character that has dominated the Internet’s attention was Princess Rhaenys, from the third book of the series A Storm of Swords. The internet was already buzzing about the name.
It wasn’t until Rhaegar Targaryen’s name was revealed that people started to question whether or not she was a woman.
“[The name] didn’t appear until Rhaegar Targaryen was introduced, which means she wasn’t mentioned yet,” writes Kami Garcia at Vox. “But the internet’s reaction to her name was a direct reaction to the way she was introduced: a character played by a guy, not a girl.”
The internet started to react to Rhaegar’s name because it wasn’t a woman’s name.
Rhaegar’s name was first described in the A Game of Thrones book A Dance with Dragons: Tyrion Lannister spoke about how he had a “ravenous appetite for dragons,” but he couldn’t “find a better name for [him].”
He gave a name to a character in the series. Here’s where it gets interesting. Tyrion was the only female actor who received a mention during the book. But the internet isn’t known for being kind to female actors. The character that started the controversy was her name. After the backlash started, the author of the book, George R.R. Martin, wrote a blog post explaining that Rhaenys was a woman