Rhaenys Targaryen (daughter of Rhaegar)


 * This article is about the daughter of Rhaegar Targaryen. For other characters who share the same name, see: Rhaenys Targaryen (disambiguation).

"House Clegane was built upon dead children. I saw them lay Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys before the Iron Throne."

- Thoros of Myr

Rhaenys Targaryen, is an unseen character in Game of Thrones. She is deceased when the events of the series begin and she is not expected to appear in the series.

Background
Rhaenys Targaryen was the daughter of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Princess Elia Martell. She had a younger full-brother, Aegon, and a younger paternal half-brother, Jon Snow. For mysterious reasons, Rhaegar allegedly abducted Jon's mother Lyanna Stark, sparking a Rebellion that ultimately deposed House Targaryen as the ruling house of Westeros. Rhaegar was killed by Robert Baratheon, who was Lyanna's betrothed, at the Battle of the Trident. Soon afterwards, Rhaenys and Aegon were brutally murdered along with their mother by Gregor Clegane during the Sack of King's Landing.

Season 3
Thoros of Myr reminisces how he witnessed Gregor Clegane presenting the bodies of Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys before the Iron Throne.

In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Rhaenys is the daughter of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell and died in the Sack of King's Landing. Varys talks about her with the imprisoned Eddard Stark as an example of how the innocent suffer in times of uprising. She was three or four years old when she died, and took after her mother in appearance with the classic Dornish features of black hair, dark eyes, and olive skin.

Rhaenys had a small black kitten she named "Balerion", after the mighty dragon of Aegon the Conqueror. Varys commented about it sadly, "Rhaenys liked to pretend he was the true Balerion, the Black Dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters taught her the difference between a kitten and a dragon quick enough, the day they broke down her door." No one knows what happened to the cat after she died: it is implied that it survived the downfall of the Targaryens and lived out the next fifteen years in the Red Keep during the reign of Robert Baratheon. When Arya Stark is ordered by Syrio Forel to chase cats around the Red Keep to train her in agility (which occurs in the TV series in "Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things") one of the cats she encounters is an incredibly old black cat who is mean to the entire Baratheon household, as well as the Lannisters. Once, when Tywin Lannister was visiting the Red Keep for a feast, the black cat jumped onto the table and snatched a roast quail right out of Tywin's fingers. This may very well be Rhaenys's cat Balerion, angered at the new residents of the castle who are responsible for the death of his original owner.

After King's Landing was seized by the Lannister forces, Rhaenys was found by Ser Amory Lorch hiding under the bed of her father Rhaegar. While Gregor Clegane killed her baby brother and mother, Lorch killed Rhaenys by stabbing her about fifty times. When Robert arrived in the capital her body was presented at his feet, and it looked nearly hacked to pieces. Even Tywin considered that deed overly brutal (not the murder itself, but the manner in which it was done). He asked Lorch why killing a two or three year old girl required so many thrusts, and Lorch answered that she kicked him and would not stop screaming. Tywin commented that if Lorch had half the brain a turnip has, he would have calmed Rhaenys with a few sweet words and used a soft silk pillow to smother her.

The TV series simplified events so that Gregor Clegane killed both of Elia's children, without the involvement of Amory Lorch.