Everything Season 1 of House of the Dragon has been preparing us for is finally happening. Yes, the Dance of the Dragons, which is the Targaryen civil war, is finally upon us ahead of the Season 1 finale. In George R.R. Martin’s source material, Fire & Blood, Rhaenys sits on the black council of Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy).

Rhaenys’s life has been defined by getting spurned in the line of succession over the Iron Throne because of her gender, which inspired her nickname, the Queen Who Never Was.

However, Viserys rectifies this, in a way, by naming his daughter, Rhaenyra, as his heir, fixing decades of gender inequality. When Rhaenyra marries Rhaenys’s son, Laenor, their Velaryon children (in name, although likely not in blood) will also rectify the line of succession as Rhaenys’s descendants. When Rhaenyra proposes that her sons marry Daemon and Laena’s daughters, that’s the final nail in solidifying Rhaenys’s loyalty to the blacks.