House of the Dragon: Mourning Jacaerys of House Targaryen and Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone

One of my favourite characters in Fire and Blood, the Jacaerys that we saw in House of the Dragon was rather different, but with the season three opening, my heart is still broken. Jacaerys stans, this is our place to grieve.

A few years back, I wrote of how the Battle of the Gullet was for me House of the Dragon’s Red Wedding. I had compared Jace Velaryon to Game of Thrones’s Robb Stark, a dutiful son and heir, not the military genius that Robb was, but a gifted diplomat, who might have ruled fairly and well had his life not been cut brutally short. With his mother Queen Rhaenyra lost in grief over the death of young Prince Lucerys, Prince Jacaerys took over leadership of Team Black. One of his fateful decisions was to send his brothers Prince Aegon and Prince Viserys to Pentos for their safety whilst the war raged on. The ships carrying and escorting the princes ran into the massive Triarchy fleet. Young Prince Aegon barely escaped whilst holding on to his dragon Stormcloud. Prince Viserys, whose egg had not yet hatched, was captured.

With his baby brother in danger, Prince Jacaerys leapt onto his dragon and flew into battle alone. Team Black dragons later joined him – and the bloody battle was a victory for Corlys Velaryon’s forces – but for big brother Jace, more than being part of Team Black’s aerial bombing run, he was there to find Viserys. He flew low as he searched, and Vermax was struck by a crossbow bolt. Jace survived the fall into the sea as his dragon died, but he was hit by multiple arrows from Myrish crossbowmen. It was an emotional death by a young man who carried the guilt of his brother Lucerys’s death; playing messenger had been his idea. Desperate not to lose another sibling, he flew recklessly, at that moment a brother first more than the heir to the throne, and he died. 

Would I have wanted to watch Jacaerys’s emotional search for Viserys as the Battle of the Gullet raged? Yes, of course, but the show went a different way, and it had its merits. For one thing, Jace’s complicated relationship with his mother Rhaenyra was fleshed out in the show, so that his later action of locking her up in her chambers did not come out of nowhere (not that I liked this scene, I actually disliked it very much, but I would like to keep this post about Jace and will refrain from further comment). Was Jace like the other men around Rhaenyra, dismissive of her and her leadership because she was a woman? Jace was a product of his time and environment, so it is difficult to dismiss that there was an element of misogyny in him. At the same time, Rhaenyra has not exactly been a good leader. Jace was right to be suspicious of Alicent and frustrated with Rhaenyra’s baffling trust in her old friend.  

When Jace asked Baela to join him in battle, the scene gave the impression of a teenager thinking he could do better than the grownups, and his supportive girlfriend joining him to try and keep him out of trouble. Looking at it from another point of view, however, both Jace and Baela knew their position in the line of succession. At peacetime, perhaps Jace could inherit as Rhaenyra’s chosen successor, with Baela, dragonrider and daughter of Prince Daemon Targaryen and Lady Laena Velaryon, by his side as his wife. At war, however, there was little chance that the realm would rise in support of Harwin Strong’s bastard son. Rhaenyra needed to live to win the war. In the unforgiving calculus of Westerosi politics, Rhaenyra's life mattered more than Jace's.

Jace believed the battle was a ruse to lure Rhaenyra out into the open. Rook’s Rest was an open wound for these two kids; the death of Princess Rhaenys still lingered in their minds. Jace was not entirely wrong in his calculation that the two of them could win the battle for Rhaenyra. Baela was a specially gifted dragonrider, and their initial dragon bombing run did help Corlys Velaryon’s outnumbered troops. 

These were Triarchy troops, however; they were not strangers to fighting dragons. Corlys Velaryon and Daemon Targaryen warred against them for years. Daemon’s Caraxes and Laenor Velaryon’s Seasmoke routinely did dragon bombing runs. When Vermax and Moondancer arrived, they did not panic. One of the best elements of this House of the Dragon episode was the weapon Sharako Lohar used to shoot Vermax. Not only was he hit, there was heavy weight attached that held the dragon down and prevented him from flying off. Baela and Moondancer swooped down and cut the rope to free Vermax, a particularly awesome display of Baela’s dragonriding prowess. 

Then, Rhaena arrived on Sheepstealer, the wild dragon she only recently started riding. I am writing this a few minutes after having seen the first episode of the third season, I have not seen the rest of the season. I hope this Rhaena storyline has a good pay off, because if it does not, nope, we're not going there, it is the start of a new season and we will try to stay as positive as possible. 

Rhaena riding Sheepstealer meant that she took the place of popular book character Nettles, who may or may not have Targaryen blood but who claimed a dragon by patiently feeding him sheep every day. Initially, it looked like Rhaena just wanted to take Sheepstealer back to Dragonstone, but when she saw the fight, she urged her dragon out to help. We saw especially in the first season how dragons and dragonriders spent time together, how the dragons were taught commands in Valyrian. We also saw how the dragon bond did not guarantee the dragon obeying the rider at all times. Most memorably, Vhagar was annoyed by young Arrax’s little flame and gave chase, and though Aemond tried to stop him, Vhagar killed Arrax and his rider Lucerys. 

Once Sheepstealer started burning ships, Rhaena could not get him to stop, so that both Triarchy and Velaryon ships fell prey to his fire. Baela tried to intervene on Moondancer, and when Jace saw what was happening, he urged his own dragon Vermax to go and help. He did not attack when he realised the rider was Rhaena, and Sheepstealer gave chase, despite Rhaena’s desperate pleas. With both Vermax and Jace distracted by Sheepstealer’s pursuit, neither of them noticed the bolt that hit Vermax and pulled him down a second time.  

Baela on Moondancer tried to dive again, but she, too, came under attack. With Vermax sinking and unable to fly, Jace was forced to unbuckle himself from his dragon. Notice how calm he was when he was in the water; that was a young man raised by Laenor Velaryon, fire and salt and sea. He swam up and held on to a piece of floating wood, and it was there that arrows hit him. Prince of Dragonstone, heir to the Iron Throne, another good man gone too soon. 

As soon as the episode ended, I wanted to write a little bit, because writing is usually how I process emotional moments in stories that I love. Jace's death was certainly not poorly done, but I felt it was a missed opportunity. With the addition of Rhaena in the Battle of the Gullet, Jace’s story became less about Jace and more about the dangerous unpredictability of dragons, and a Targaryen princess who has long resented feeling ignored for not being a dragonrider. I’m not saying either of these two narrative points are not worth exploring. I just feel disappointed that there was an opportunity to make the end of Jace’s arc about Jace, and it wasn’t. Consider how big brother Jace flew low on his dragon desperately searching for Viserys, aching with guilt at the thought that he caused another brother’s death. Now consider what we got in this episode. 

It’s a recurring issue with House of the Dragon’s writing, that it tends to hammer into points that it has already made in the past, as though it expects its audience to have forgotten it, and hammer it in a way that does not necessarily improve the tale. Jace was the second Targaryen prince and second of Rhaenyra’s sons to have perished because a dragonrider could not control their dragon. We have seen this film before, with Aemond and Vhagar, and sweet Lucerys and young Arrax. Dragons are dangerous and they don’t always listen to riders, got it. If we are to continue exploring this aspect of dragon riding, can we at least get a new narrative around it?

Whilst Jace’s death was not completely accidental – the men of the Triarchy were targeting him and Vermax – Rhaena’s part in it was accidental. In the same way that Aemond’s was in Lucerys’s death. Even Prince Jaehaerys’s death was not shown as intentional; Prince Aemond was the initial target. What is it with House of the Dragon and these oops deaths of princes?

There are plenty of positives in ‘Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood’, and schedule permitting, we will expand our House of the Dragon coverage. I just wanted to do a quick post and say goodbye to Prince Jacaerys. I have my complaints, clearly, but I will always be grateful that we the fans were given a chance to see on screen these characters we loved from the books. Jacaerys did his best to be a good man and a good prince in an unforgiving time. He and Baela were one of the show’s healthiest couples; they talked to each other, supported each other, and they probably would have ruled well together. Thank you, Harry Collett, you breathed life into Jace and gave us a prince whose impact should be felt in the coming episodes. Here’s hoping for an entertaining third season of House of the Dragon! 

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