Is Helaena Pregnant? House of the Dragon Sets Up Her Missing Child 2 Years After GRRM’s Complaint

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 4. After all the talk about him being cut, could House of the Dragon actually be including Prince Maelor Targaryen after all? In the show’s source material, the book Fire & Blood, Maelor is the third child of Aegon II Targaryen and Helaena Targaryen. During the events with Blood and Cheese, Helaena is forced to choose between her two sons – the other being Jaehaerys – and Maelor is the one she picks to die. However, Blood and Cheese kill Jaehaerys instead, leaving the queen sick with grief and guilt.

This played out rather differently in the show, with Maelor omitted entirely from the Blood and Cheese scene and Season 2 as a whole. This eventually led to George R.R. Martin’s criticisms of House of the Dragon Season 2, where he addressed the prince’s absence in a since-deleted blog post, calling out the “toxic” butterfly effect it would have. He noted that showrunner Ryan Condal had originally planned for Maelor to be in Season 3 instead, but then that changed and he was being fully cut from the show, which would have a major impact on Helaena’s story, and a knock-on effect from there. Now, though, things may be changing again.

House Of The Dragon Teases Helaena Targaryen Being Pregnant

Helaena isn’t featured much in House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 4, but there is a telling scene between her and Alicent later in the episode. Her mother takes stock of her appearance, and Helaena moves to cover herself up, not allowing Alicent to touch her and looking concerned, and Alicent in turn looks shocked. The implication from both of them is that she is pregnant, something that’s had a couple of other teases already.

Going back a couple of episodes, the second installment of Season 3 had Helaena make a strange comment when seeing a caterpillar, saying, “It’s not the season.” Given that she is the show’s most prophetic character, then you cannot simply take anything she says at face value. There are several possible readings into what she meant: that episode wasn’t in the right season, because it should’ve been the Season 2 finale; that the timing wasn’t right for Rhaenyra to become queen; or, perhaps, that Helaena is pregnant, which is both literally the wrong season since Maelor should’ve been born before now, and bad timing, because Aegon having another heir when Rhaenyra has taken the throne would likely mean the child has to die.

There is reason to suspect that it’s the last option, and the show is having some meta fun with this. After all, Martin called out the toxic butterflies. And what’s one of the creatures that a caterpillar turns into? It’d be petty if that really was the meaning, but also, admittedly, rather funny. As if that weren’t enough evidence, though, the trailers basically already told us Helaena is pregnant, with a shot that sure does look like her giving birth.

Why Is Maelor Targaryen Being Introduced Now?

The notion of Helaena being pregnant raises a few questions, including when it happened – it seems like it must have been after Blood and Cheese, since if she were pregnant then, you’d think the show would’ve raised it, and there were no plans for Maelor in Season 3 at that point based on the outlines Martin had seen. But it also needs to have been before the Battle at Rook’s Rest, since Aegon would not have been capable of getting her pregnant after that, with his member exploding “like a sausage on a spit.” (Unless, of course, the child is Aemond’s, but I think time for that particular theory has since passed.)

Warning: Major book SPOILERS from this point on.

Still, there’s enough wiggle room to explain it, so the bigger question is why now? Ultimately, Maelor only has two major moments in the narrative. The first is Blood and Cheese, which has gone. The second is his death. During the fall of King’s Landing, Maelor is smuggled out of the capital, and eventually ends up at the town of Bitterbridge, which is loyal to Rhaenyra. His disguise is uncovered, and the townspeople brutally murder him, and slay the knight who was defending him. Technically, that is still possible, but there are a few issues:

• Rhaenyra has already taken King’s Landing, when Maelor is taken out before she arrives.
• Maelor is smuggled out of King’s Landing by Larys Strong, who has already left with Aegon. His sister, Jaehaera, is also taken to safety, but she’s still there in House of the Dragon Season 3.
• Maelor is accompanied on this journey by Rickard Thorne, who bravely dies trying to protect him. Season 3 had him arrested in the throne room and locked in a dungeon.

At this point, it would be a whole new narrative, and you’re introducing a baby – he’s around two in the book – simply to kill him off. Which, again, isn’t beyond the realm of possibility, but it seems very unlikely it’s going to happen after being smuggled out of King’s Landing. And that has another effect, or, as Martin calls it, more “toxic butterflies,” because the death of Maelor leads to Helaena taking her own life, which now won’t happen in the same way. Indeed, in Martin’s blog post, he wrote that Season 3’s outline had her killing herself for no real reason.

So, how can the show introduce the idea of Maelor, and still have him serve as the instigator of Helaena’s death, without all the time and narrative effort it’d take (which it doesn’t have) to do the Bitterbridge story? The most likely answer to me is that Maelor dies during childbirth, and this eventually leads to her suicide. Perhaps it will be combined with a vision of Jaehaera’s death in the future as well, but this would seem to be the major reason you’d include the pregnancy at this point, because the rest of the story has been done or simply wouldn’t work.

Whether that’s a good idea or not does ultimately depend on the execution, and Season 3 has been strong so far, so deserves some faith. It’ll no doubt be divisive if that’s the route it goes down, and the show has already had Aemma Arryn die in childbirth and Rhaenyra have a stillborn daughter, but it depends on how it’s done. What happens, though, it seems like we’re getting a Maelor story after all, though Martin probably won’t be writing a blog post about this one.

New episodes of House of the Dragon Season 3 release on Sundays at 9 pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.

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