book review house made of dawn

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To call this first novel ""strongly lyrical"" and ""evocative,"" as the publishers do, though the description is an accurate...

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HOUSE MADE OF DAWN

by N. Scott Momaday ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 5, 1968

To call this first novel ""strongly lyrical"" and ""evocative,"" as the publishers do, though the description is an accurate one, may be to give it the kiss of death. We are probably more willing to admire this kind of ""fine"" naturalist writing (by a young American Indian, a poet and a scholar) than to really enjoy it. It is doubtless this part of the novel, however, including a section on eagle trapping and bear hunting, which drew praise from Yvor Winters as ""one of the great short pieces of prose in English."" The general theme of the book is the disintegration of a young ""longhair"" Indian named Abel who is unwilling and unable to adapt himself to the white man's 'notions of ""civilization."" Momaday's writing, when dealing not only with natural phenomena but with characters, is detailed and explicit (this includes the young man's sexual encounters) and one's sympathies are aroused in a general way but we remain, finally, uninvolved in his tragedy.

Pub Date: June 5, 1968

ISBN: 0072434201

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION

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House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

• Publication Date: July 1, 1999
• Paperback: 198 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
• ISBN-10: 0060931949
• ISBN-13: 9780060931940
• About the Book
• Reading Guide (PDF)
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N. Scott Momaday, 1968. From the Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Courtesy of Momaday.

The first work I ever read by a Native author was N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain , in an undergraduate English literature seminar. Although I am a Native person and a voracious reader, I’d grown up under the influence of Southern Christian teachers who warned their students against paganism. Perhaps that is why they never assigned us anything by Momaday, whose novels, set in Jemez Pueblo and the Navajo Nation as well as Los Angeles and San Francisco, tell of witches and traditional medicine women, sacrilegious preachers and alcoholics. Reading James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha in high school made me wary of literary depictions of Native people. My discomfort became avoidance, until my second year of college, when the syllabus of “Literature of the West” included The Way to Rainy Mountain .

I remember feeling confused, excited, and curious, and then as I began to read, delight overtook me. The sense of place in Momaday’s work is so immediate and gripping that upon finishing the book, I wrote an essay arguing that people are formed by their relationship to the landscape. When I later read Momaday’s first novel, House Made of Dawn , I was shocked to find that the author had made nearly the same argument in a postscript:

Both consciously and subconsciously, my writing has been deeply informed by the land with a sense of place. In some important way, place determines who and what we are. The land-person equation is essential to writing, to all of literature. Abel, in House Made of Dawn, must exist in the cultural and physical context of Walatowa, just as Stephen Dedalus, say, must be fashioned in the mold of Dublin.

House Made of Dawn , with its lyric passages evoking the land, recalls John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath . The Navajo narrator Ben Benally’s conversational descriptions of Abel’s cultural dislocation and struggle against assimilationist attitudes in Los Angeles seem to echo Nick Carraway’s narration in The Great Gatsby. Yet Ben and Abel are Native characters, and this virtuosic novel is also a container for the high oral tradition of Kiowa and Navajo songs. As Momaday once put it, “I grew up in two worlds and straddle both those worlds even now. It has made for confusion and a richness in my life. I’ve been able to deal with it reasonably well, I think, and I value it.” After House Made of Dawn won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, the Native American Renaissance began, in part because Momaday’s syncretistic method—using English-language literary conventions to represent distinct and sovereign peoples—showed readers the vastness and complexity of the Native world.

Momaday did not publish another novel for more than twenty years. His second, 1989’s The Ancient Child , follows a Kiowa painter named Set, living in San Francisco, who travels to Oklahoma for the first time after the death of his grandmother; it ends outside of Lukachukai on the Navajo Nation. The language Momaday uses here is simpler and more direct than the heavily wrought passages in House Made of Dawn , yet it has an enigmatic, absurdist quality I relished: “God’s boredom is infinite,” Set says at one point.

While in Oklahoma, Set meets a nineteen-year-old medicine woman named Grey, someone who “had never to quest after visions.” Grey gives Set an old medicine bag, and his connection to the sacred objects within the bundle sets off an identity crisis, only resolved by his excruciating metamorphosis into a bear. This medicine bundle belongs to Set, and Grey is insistent that he have it as they attend a ceremonial dance. The dance reminds me of the ones at my ancestral tribal district in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Growing up, Momaday spent time on Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo reservations, and he is wonderfully adept at depicting commonalities among different Native experiences. He conveys a sense of community and kinship in rituals, food, and dance in a way I found moving.

Through characters like Grey, Momaday offers readers a beguiling mixture of sacredness and irreverence. Grey has lines like, “I like to see the sun rise and set, I like to hear birds singing and horses farting, wind and water running, and I like to feel hot and cold, hard and soft.” She also has smutty sex that wouldn’t be out of place in a Charles Bukowski novel. She dreams of being Billy the Kid’s lover, and their imaginary trysts are as humorous as they are intense. This combination of fantastical plot, poetic style, and traditional Indigenous worldviews makes Momaday’s fiction unlike any other.

When I read The Ancient Child , I thought of other Native artists like Set who had returned from cities to their tribes. Some I knew thought tribal traditions were near dead or even totally lost, but I didn’t believe that. In the way that Grey wove literature out of her fantasies of Billy the Kid, I was mesmerized by dreams and wanted to write about mine as an expression of old, Indigenous ways of knowing. In one scene of The Ancient Child , Set studies a drawing in order to paint Grey’s face, and she tells him: “Only a few of the women paint their faces now. This is how the grandmother painted hers.” Face painting is now considered taboo by some Native people. I appreciate Momaday’s anti-assimilation attitude and his bravery in including traditions like face painting and sacred medicine bundles in his work.

Momaday’s novels have inspired many writers I admire, including Brandon Hobson and Louise Erdrich, who earlier this year became the second Native American author ever to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. When Erdrich’s award was announced, not long after Momaday received the Hadada, I decided to revisit House Made of Dawn , the first Native-authored work to win a Pulitzer. I typed out his sentences to see what they felt like on my fingers. I wondered, How had I missed Momaday in my years of reading as a teenager?

Momaday’s greatest contribution as a novelist has been to indigenize the American literary canon. As he wrote in 2020, “My writing is supported by considerable experience. In Arizona I have seen the Navajo Yeibichai and heard the haunting chants of the mountain gods. In Moscow I have seen numerous commuters reading books of poetry on the Metro … In Siberia I have heard the Khanty songs of the bear ceremony. And in London I have heard the words of Shakespeare and Ben Johnson.” His aesthetic is inclusive, encompassing European and American realism as well as traditional Native orality, bridging contemporary American life.

The Ancient Child and House Made of Dawn are mysterious, disturbing, beautiful, haunting, and instructive books. They contain lines I carry in my heart, because they are words capable of changing those who read them, instilling a permanent sense of the endurance of Native American people:

Their invaders were a long time in conquering them; and now, after four centuries of Christianity, they still pray in Tanoan to the old deities of the earth and sky and make their living from the things that are and have always been within their reach; while in the discrimination of pride they acquire from their conquerors only the luxury of example. They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting. —N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn

Chelsea T. Hicks’s writing has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books , McSweeney’s , The Believer , The Audacity , Yellow Medicine Review , Indian Country Today , and elsewhere. She is an incoming Tulsa Artist Fellow and a recent graduate from the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a 2016 Wah-Zha-Zhi Woman Artist featured by the Osage Nation Museum, a 2016 and 2017 Writing by Writers Fellow, and a 2020 finalist for the Eliza So Fellowship for Native American women writers. She is an enrolled citizen of the Osage Nation, and she belongs to Pawhuska District.

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Book review: House Made of Dawn

House Made of Dawn  by N. Scott Momaday. Highly recommended.

“There was a house made of dawn,” and N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel begins with his Tano protagonist, Abel, “alone and running,” yet “he seemed almost to be standing still, very little and alone.” He may leave to fight the white man’s war in Europe. He may seek solace in the arms of a white woman or two. He may be sent to prison for a crime that he sees as a necessity. He may end up attempting to work in the industrial world. Yet Abel cannot run from the seemingly boundless, stark land or the traditions with which his spirit is bound. The land, as enigmatic as he is, is there at the beginning and there at the end. It is the constant in his life from and to which he runs. In biblical terms, it is the alpha and omega of his being.

I first learned of  House Made of Dawn  from an excerpt in  American Indian Literature: An Anthology  (revised) edited and introduced by Alan R. Velie, in which Abel encounters the “white man,” an albino Native who, although he appears only briefly in the novel, is one of modern literature’s most compelling characters. Without saying a word, he emanates a vague menace with every look and motion. “Above the open mouth, the nearly sightless eyes followed the old man [Abel’s grandfather] out of the cornfield, and the barren lids fluttered helplessly behind the colored glass.” You will never forget the white man. “A man kills such an enemy if he can.” The white man sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

Nor will you forget Abel’s struggles, with his heritage and its expectations, with alcoholism, with his own body, with his own desires, his inability to find his place at home or in the modern white world, and with his emotional and physical pain.

There is the dichotomy of the prevalent Catholic faith, which finds itself oddly interwoven with Native belief in strange ways, as in the feast of Santiago held in Abel’s town. The conflict comes to a head in Tosamah, Priest of the Sun, who reveals that “In the beginning was the Word” is all that we need to know of the essential Truth. But by adding and dividing and multiplying the Word, the white man subtracts the Truth — the Truth that eludes Abel. Tosamah says of his grandmother, “She had learned that in words and in language, and there only, she could have whole and consummate being.”

House Made of Dawn  is much like the life and land it portrays — mysterious and unyielding. There is little action here, but there is a mental and emotional landscape that is, like the backdrop, seared on the minds and hearts of those who experience it. Even the world cannot kill the Word and the rich inner life of a Tano.

26 February 2002 Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

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House Made of Dawn

N. scott momaday, everything you need for every book you read..

House Made of Dawn employs a nonlinear narrative to follow its protagonist, Abel , as he navigates coming of age as a Native American man in a changing society. The story opens with Abel running along an empty Southwestern landscape. It then shifts back in time to July 20, 1945, as Abel returns from World War II to Walatowa, his home in the Jemez Pueblo . He is greeted by his grandfather Francisco , his only remaining relative. Coming home sends the addled, lonely Abel into a spiral of memories about his childhood in Walatowa as he struggles to reconnect with his homeland and community. These memories include the deaths of Abel’s mother and brother when he was a child.

A white woman named Angela St. John employs Abel to cut wood for her at her house near the reservation. She is struggling with her own mental health issues surrounding her pregnancy, and she finds herself at once irritated and aroused by Abel’s stoic demeanor. Angela and Abel begin a sexual relationship. Around the same time, Abel is ritually beaten during a ceremony by an albino man. Abel later stabs the albino man to death, though the narrator provides no insight into Abel’s reasoning.

In January 1952, a Kiowa priest named John Big Bluff Tosamah presides over a Pan-Indigenous peyote congregation in Los Angeles. His sermons reference the Bible, but he rejects Catholicism and other trappings of settler colonialism. He emphasizes the importance of the oral tradition, which he believes white people can never truly grasp after generations of cheapening and corrupting the power of words. Interspersed with his sermon are Abel’s confused recollections of his murder trial, his prison sentence, and his sexual relationship with his social worker Milly .

The narration then shifts to the first-person perspective of Ben Benally , who is Abel’s friend and roommate after Abel is released from prison and relocated to Los Angeles. After meeting each other at work in a factory, Ben tries to help Abel adjust to urban life. Unfortunately, Abel’s reserved nature and occasionally violent temper prevent him from making a life for himself the way Ben has done.

Abel quits his job when his supervisor becomes too controlling, and he ends his friendship with Tosamah when the priest laughs at Abel one too many times for being “uncivilized.” Abel finally snaps after a corrupt policeman named Martinez bullies and beats him in an alley. Abel decides to get revenge on Martinez, only for Martinez to beat him even more brutally. Abel ends up in the hospital, where Ben looks after him and Angela pays him a visit. She has given birth to a son since she last saw Abel, and she tells her son stories about a hero based on Abel.

Abel decides to return to his reservation. The night before he leaves, he and Ben attend a party with other local Native Americans to celebrate Abel’s last night in Los Angeles. At the party, Abel sings the traditional Navajo songs that Ben taught him, including one about a “house made of dawn.”

Abel returns to Walatowa at the end of February 1952. Francisco is dying, and Abel forces himself to push through his alcoholism and the remaining pain from Martinez’s attack to care for his grandfather. As Francisco dies, he reflects on his life in Walatowa, speaking in a jumbled mix of Spanish, English, and Jemez about meaningful experiences throughout his life. In his last memory, Francisco recalls losing stamina in a race but continuing to run despite being out of breath.

After Francisco dies, Abel prepares his grandfather for burial and performs a ritual over the body. He then wakes the priest, Father Olguin , and demands he bury Francisco. Abel walks to the edge of town, where he sees a distant group of runners as the sun rises. He starts to run alone across the landscape, revealing the context of the opening scene of the book. Abel continues to run despite his exhaustion, and as he takes in the beauty of the natural world, he sings the song of the house made of dawn.

House Made of Dawn

76 pages • 2 hours read

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Summary and Study Guide

The novel House Made of Dawn , by N. Scott Momaday, was first published in 1968. Heralded as a major landmark in the emergence of Indigenous American literature, the novel won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. House Made of Dawn blends fictional and nonfictional elements to depict life on an Indigenous American reservation like the one where Momaday grew up.

This guide uses an eBook version of the 2018 First Harper Perennial Modern Classics (50th Anniversary) edition.

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Abel is the young protagonist of House Made of Dawn . After serving in World War II, he returns to Walatowa (also called Jemez), the small town in New Mexico where he grew up. The war has traumatized Abel, and he drinks so heavily that he barely recognizes his grandfather when he returns to his grandfather’s farm. He stays with Francisco , his grandfather, and visits the local priest, Father Olguin. Through the priest, Abel meets Angela , a young white woman who has come to the area to visit the local mineral springs. After Abel does chores for Angela, such as chopping wood, she initiates a romantic affair with him. Angela is unhappy and hopes that an affair with Abel will distract her.

The return to Walatowa prompts Abel to reflect on his childhood. Francisco raised him after the deaths of his mother and his older brother, Vidal. In the community, Francisco was known as a hunter and a practitioner of Indigenous American spiritual traditions. Francisco is now old, and his lame leg prevents him from hunting. Meanwhile, Abel’s traumatic experiences in the war have severed any connection he once felt to his ancestors’ spirituality. Angela promises Abel that she’ll help him leave Walatowa and find work elsewhere. His animal-like qualities fascinate her. Their affair helps Abel realize that his return to Walatowa hasn’t gone well. He no longer recognizes the town as home. While participating in a traditional ceremony, he’s embarrassed by a local man named Juan Reyes. To the locals, Reyes is an Indigenous American man and an albino known as the “white man.” Abel decides that Reyes is a witch and stabs him after drinking heavily in a bar. The police arrest Abel and send him to jail—and he’s found guilty of murder.

More than six years after the incident outside the bar, Abel is released from prison as part of a program to relocate Indigenous American people. In Los Angeles, he meets a group of Indigenous American men led by a priest named Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah. Reverend Tosamah refers to himself as Priest of the Sun and tells stories about the Kiowa people. He mocks Abel for his inability to integrate into the modern world, calling him a longhair. Abel meets Ben Benally when both work at the same factory in Los Angeles. Like Abel, Ben was raised on a reservation. When Abel meets a white social worker named Milly, they develop a romantic relationship, but Abel continues to struggle with alcohol addiction. One day, he wakes up on a beach after a night of heavy drinking. His body is badly beaten, but he doesn’t remember what happened. As he lies on the beach, a rush of memories overwhelms him. He thinks about his experiences of the war, his time in prison, and his relationship with Milly. When he finally picks himself up off the beach, he stumbles back to the small apartment that he and Ben share.

Ben helps Abel catch a train from Los Angeles back to New Mexico. The perspective switches to Ben, who gives an account of Abel’s life in California as he understands it. Abel’s time in the city has been marked by pain. Reverend Tosamah mocked Abel on numerous occasions, particularly during a game of cards when many other Indigenous American men were in attendance. Abel wanted to fight back against his tormenter but was too drunk. He slipped further into alcohol addiction, spending two days drinking so heavily that he missed work. He sobered up long enough to go to his place of employment, where his boss wasn’t pleased to see him. After being harassed for missing work, Abel quit the job. The loss of the job made Abel’s problems worse. He drank even more, spending most of his days inebriated. Desperate for money, he asked for loans from Milly and Ben. He spent the days lounging around the apartment in an angry, drunken haze. Eventually, Ben decided to act. He became frustrated with his roommate’s behavior and threw him out. During this time, a police officer named Martinez was hassling Abel. Martinez was corrupt; one night, he stole money from Abel and beat him with his nightstick. Abel decided to take his revenge. However, he was too inebriated to fight, and Martinez beat him so badly that he had to go to the hospital. Ben visited Abel in the hospital and called Angela to ask her to visit Abel to lift his spirits, as he helped her many years before.

Abel returns to Walatowa once again. By now, Francisco needs his help. Abel takes care of his dying grandfather. As they sit together, Francisco tells stories from his own life. In one story, he hunts a bear as a young man. On a rare venture out of the house, Francisco leads Abel to a place where their people once held an annual tradition called the race of the dead . He tries to convince Abel of the importance of remaining spiritually connected to their people’s past. Francisco dies, and Abel prepares his body for the burial. On the day of his grandfather’s death, Abel remembers the story his grandfather told him about the tradition their ancestors practiced called the race of the dead, in which a man waits until dawn and then runs as fast as he can while singing songs for both himself and his ancestors. The race of the dead takes place that morning. By joining with the other runners, the race helps Abel feel as though he’s reconnecting at last with his people and discovering his place in the world, though he lacks the in-depth understanding of his race that belonged to Francisco.

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A special 50th anniversary edition of the magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning classic from N. Scott Momaday, with a new preface by the author. A young Native American, Abel has come home from war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his grandfather's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world-modern, industrial America-pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, claiming his soul, and goading him ...

- New York Times Book Review

"Dazzling....Momaday [is] an important voice in American letters."

- Los Angeles Times

"Authentic and powerful...Anyone who picks up this novel and reads the first paragraph will be hard pressed to put it down."

- Cleveland Plain Dealer

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Screen Rant

8 likely house of the dragon theories that smartly break grrm's book canon for season 2 & beyond.

House of the Dragon has already made careful changes to the book. Some very plausible theories suggest even more differences in season 2 and beyond.

MAJOR SPOILERS Ahead for Fire & Blood, which House of the Dragon is based on.

• Jacaerys Velaryon and Cregan Stark could venture beyond the Wall, further connecting House of the Dragon to White Walkers.
• Rhaena Targaryen's dragon may arrive earlier in the series, changing the timeline from the original book story.
• Expect to see Rhaenyra Targaryen in more combat scenes as the show aims to emulate Daenerys as a warrior queen.

There are many theories about book changes for House of the Dragon , some of which are plausible enough to play out in future seasons. The first season of the acclaimed drama saw the build-up toward the Dance of the Dragons, a civil war between rival factions of House Targaryen who sought control over the Iron Throne. The House of the Dragon season 1 ending saw the final straw of war's inevitability, leading to all-out conflict in season 2. Rhaenyra Targaryen and Aegon II Targaryen both believe themselves to be the rightful monarch, and the country will be devastated by it.

House of the Dragon season 2 will air on HBO and Max on June 16, 2024.

The HBO series, which serves as a prequel to Game of Thrones , is based on the book Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin. However, unlike the books Game of Thrones adapts, Fire & Blood is composed as a fictional historical text, establishing a theme of historical interpretation for the TV series . House of the Dragon season 1 already saw several book changes , such as Laenor Velaryon surviving, Rhaenys Targaryen's escape from King's Landing, and the incorporation of the Aegon's Dream prophecy, tying the series directly to Game of Thrones .

With these changes in mind, many more ambiguities throughout Fire & Blood can be interpreted differently by the TV show . The book raises questions about perspective and trustworthy narration, while the TV series offers a visualization of what actually happened in the fictional universe. House of the Dragon season 2's trailers have provided glimpses of what's to come, with some book changes already apparent. The new season is just two months away, with anticipation building for the action-packed Targaryen bloodbath to come.

9 Jacaerys & Cregan Stark Will Venture Beyond The Wall

Jacaerys velaryon's trip north could be an excuse for more white walker connections.

One reveal from the House of the Dragon season 2 black trailer is that Jacaerys Velaryon, Rhaenyra's eldest son, will visit the Wall. He's guided there by Cregan Stark, Lord of Winterfell and a future ally for Rhaenyra. This is already a book change, but theories suggest Jacaerys and Cregan will venture even further North, going beyond the Wall . This is highly plausible in the TV series, especially if HBO is viewing the Game of Thrones property as a fictional universe, where exploring this avenue could provide fruitful connections to the original series.

As mentioned, House of the Dragon has already connected the series with Game of Thrones through the Aegon's Dream prophecy. Therefore, briefly exploring the mythology of White Walkers through Jacaerys and Cregan doesn't seem like a stretch. Given the dissatisfaction many audiences felt with Game of Thrones season 8's handling of the White Walkers, examining them more in future spinoffs is a very likely possibility.

8 Rhaena Targaryen's Dragon Will Arrive Faster (Or She'll Claim A Dragon)

Rhaena targaryen's dragon isn't born until a year into the war in the book.

Rhaena Targaryen, daughter of Daemon Targaryen and Laena Velaryon, is confirmed to be part of the House of the Dragon season 2 cast of characters . This is surprising, given that in Fire & Blood , she's shipped off to the Vale to go in hiding with Rhaenyra's youngest son, Joffrey Velaryon. Unlike her sister Baela, who rides Moondancer, Rhaena hasn't bonded with a dragon in House of the Dragon season 1 . Her book dragon, Morning, isn't birthed until well into the Dance of the Dragons. The trailers have already indicated Baela's expedited dragonriding, so it could happen to Rhaena too.

Rhaena Targaryen's dragon could be born in between seasons, or the show could simply introduce Morning and declare that the dragon had been there the whole time. That way, Rhaena can support her twin sister in the war directly on dragonback, or at least work toward doing so at a faster rate than in the book. The other option is that she'll claim one of the many riderless dragons available at the start of House of the Dragon season 2.

7 Laenor Velaryon Will Return (But Not As Addam Of Hull)

Laenor velaryon's survival in season 1 teases his return.

Laenor's survival in House of the Dragon season 1 had many audiences guessing at the possibility of his return. One theory that's now null suggested that Laenor was actually Addam of Hull, a dragonseed (bastard of Valyrian descent) who will appear in season 2. Reasons for this theory were that Addam of Hull is depicted in the book as a Velaryon bastard, and he ends up bonding with the dragon Seasmoke, who was previously ridden by Laenor in the War of the Stepstones in season 1.

Addam of Hull has already been cast for House of the Dragon , however, indicating that the character is, in fact, someone new. Still, it's not impossible that Laenor could return to fight for Rhaenyra , especially given that his parents, legal children, and nieces are at risk in the war. Laenor proved himself to be a brave warrior, and though he may be living a happy life across the Narrow Sea, the news of a country-wide war could be enough to bring him back despite the inevitable complications.

6 Rhaenyra Targaryen Will Appear In More Combat

Rhaenyra and syrax don't see much battle in fire & blood.

Rhaenyra Targaryen is the lead representative of the Black faction in the Dance of the Dragons, but she doesn't really fight in the war in the book . Daemon Targaryen is the primary war-wager, leading their side into conquests in the Crownlands and beyond, joined by Rhaenys and other dragonriders. Because of Rhaenyra's inactivity, her dragon, Syrax, is essentially sedentary and unpracticed at riding for years before its death.

Daenerys Targaryen was an enormously popular character in Game of Thrones due to her ferocity as a warrior queen, something that House of the Dragon will want to emulate with Rhaenyra.

This is something that could very plausibly be changed in HBO's adaptation. Daenerys Targaryen was an enormously popular character in Game of Thrones due to her ferocity as a warrior queen, something that House of the Dragon will want to emulate with Rhaenyra. It's less likely that she'll directly alter any of the prominent upcoming battles, but seeing her take flight on Syrax on more than one occasion to help her side is very possible .

4 Aemond Is The Father Of Helaena's Children (& Not Aegon)

Season 1 hinted at aemond being the father of king aegon's heirs.

A popular theory surrounding House of the Dragon's current monarch suggests that Aegon isn't actually the father of his children . The Aemond is the father theory suggests that Aegon's younger brother is the one who's been infatuated with their sister, giving birth to the Seven Kingdoms' future heirs. There are many personality traits of the brothers that could point to this, from Aegon's indifference toward the realm and his sister to Aemond's desire for power and to be the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms himself.

Aemond Targaryen isn't the nicest guy, but House of the Dragon season 1 goes out of its way to demonstrate his tenderness toward Helaena. While one should be kind to their sister, Aemond even goes as far as to suggest that Alicent should've had him marry Helaena instead of Aegon. Aemond also seems more threatened by Jacaerys dancing with Helaena in episode 8 than Aegon does. This theory could have enormous implications for Aegon's lineage.

3 The Maesters Are Manipulating The Dance Of The Dragons

Theories suggest the maesters have been trying to turn targaryens against each other.

The role of the Maesters has already been questioned heavily in House of the Dragon season 1, as many audiences suspected them of interfering with King Viserys's medication, leading to his demise. Maesters like Pycelle in Game of Thrones have been depicted as dodgy, manipulative fellows, but this grand maester conspiracy implies a much more meticulous theme about their role in Westeros. The maesters have been known to have conflicts with Targaryen kings before and after the Dance of the Dragons, but civil war is the perfect opportunity for them to intervene.

A country ruled by a mystical power such as dragons is far less susceptible to the influence of logic

The maesters have more power in a country ruled by science and logic , allowing them to cast their will by whispering in the ears of unsuspecting rulers. However, a country ruled by a mystical power such as dragons is far less susceptible to the influence of logic. If the maesters were truly involved in slowly poisoning Viserys to start a civil war, it would play out to their advantage as dragons and Targaryens kill each other off by the masses, leveling the playing field for other houses and organizations in Westeros.

2 Daemon Survives The Battle At The God's Eye

Daemon's death is ambiguous in fire & blood, leading to theories of survival.

Daemon Targaryen has oddly become a fan-favorite character in House of the Dragon despite being one of the worst human beings depicted on the show. For that reason, his final battle with Aemond above the God's Eye and Harrenhal will be a massive spectacle, likely in the third or fourth season. Fire & Blood describes their duel vividly, though the aftermath is subject to ambiguity. Daemon is presumed dead, but his body is never found . In George R.R. Martin's universe, no confirmed body could mean a million different possibilities.

Many fans have theorized that Daemon Targaryen survives the battle and then goes to live out his days in hiding. The common opinion suggests he goes into hiding with his last love , Nettles, another dragonseed from the book. More outlandish theories have even suggested Daemon disappeared, traveled north, and became the Night King. That last part sounds rather unlikely, but seeing him survive could be possible, given TV fans' affinity for the character.

1 Larys Strong Is A Greenseer

Larys strong could have the powers of greensight, helping him gather information.

Another mystical House of the Dragon theory examines the possibility that Larys Strong is a Greenseer. Greensight has already been shown in Game of Thrones by characters like Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven, which allows them omniscience. This would make Larys Strong incredibly powerful, so it's one of the more unlikely theories, but some interesting reasons make it at least worth discussing. First, House Strong, like House Stark, is descended from the First Men , indicated by their short, straightforward family names (other examples being Reed and Glover).

Larys Strong grew up near Harrenhal and the Isle of Faces, which is known for being a mystical location inhabited by Green Men who tend to the weirwoods. Larys's upbringing and blood tie him to the possibility, but his impeccable ability to acquire information has many suspect him of at least being a warg. Viewers also noticed House of the Dragon added a weirwood tree to King's Landing, which is never mentioned in the books, which would aid him.

House of the Dragon

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Taking place about 172 years before the events of Game of Thrones , House of the Dragon tells the tale of the rise of the Targaryens, the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria. The popular HBO spinoff show first starred Milly Alcock and Emily Carey as Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower before they were replaced by Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, who play the older versions of the characters. Also starring in the series is Matt Smith (Prince Daemon Targaryen) and Paddy Considine as Rhaenyra’s father, King Viserys Targaryen.