House of the Dragon spoilers: What Game of Thrones can teach us

This is the episode where Stannis, attempting to march on Winterfell to fight House Bolton, is blinded by a violent snowstorm that could cause his army to freeze to death. Convinced the only way to appease the gods is to sacrifice his own daughter, he eventually burns her alive, hoping it will clear a path to victory. It’s a clever bit of foreshadowing — we hear about the Targaryens destroying their own legacy by turning in on themselves, which Stannis essentially does when he sends his only child to the big fireplace in the sky (his wife, Selyse, dies by suicide shortly after, and Stannis is killed by Brienne of Tarth in the season five finale, wiping out the Baratheon line until bastard Gendry is legitimised in the show’s final season).

Still, for light foreshadowing, the scene where Shireen discusses the Dance is pretty heavy on details regarding how the fight between the Targaryen family plays out.

Potential House of the Dragon spoilers to follow.

SHIREEN: It’s the story of the fight between Rhaenyra Targaryen and her half-brother Aegon for control of the Seven Kingdoms. Both of them thought they belonged on the Iron Throne. When people started declaring for one of them or the other, their fight divided the kingdom in two. Brothers fought brothers. Dragons fought dragons. By the time it was over, thousands were dead. And it was a disaster for the Targaryens as well. They never truly recovered.

This suggests that Rhaenyra (played by Milly Alcock and Emma D’Arcy) and her (yet unseen) half-brother Aegon will be the primary factions vying for control over the Seven Kingdoms. Shireen doesn’t remark quite how long the war goes on for — but points to the futility of the two groups fighting. The Targaryen family is just as weak to their dragon's firepower as their enemies are, and as soon as they started fighting, it was essentially a race to the bottom. This is something echoed in House of the Dragon’s first episode, when Viserys urges Rhaenyra to keep the family united if it wishes to survive.

Going further back through the original series, there are more specific details about the people killed during the war, remarked upon by Joffrey Baratheon, no less. While giving Maergery Tyrell a personal tour of King’s Landing in season three, he shows her where several of Westeros’ previous monarchs were buried.

JOFFREY: Rhaenyra Targaryen was murdered by her brother, or rather his dragon. It ate her while her son watched. What's left of her is buried in the crypts right down there.