Rhaegar Targaryen
The Mad King's eldest son and heir, a melancholy, book-loved prince and peerless warrior whose abduction of Lyanna Stark set the realm on fire.
A soul of House Targaryen, born at Dragonstone.
The fuller tale
Season Seven
Gilly reads past a footnote that unmarries Rhaegar Targaryen ÔÇö and no one at the table hears it.
How it ends for them
Slain at the Trident, before the story ÔÇö before this story begins.
Rhaegar died before the story opens, and his death is the hinge the whole era swings on. At the ford of the Trident he met Robert Baratheon in the press of battle ÔÇö the wronged betrothed and the prince who wronged him, close enough to single combat that the songs treat it as one. RobertÔÇÖs warhammer staved in the princeÔÇÖs breastplate, and the rubies that adorned it were scattered into the shallows; men were still diving for them years later, and the crossing has been called the ruby ford ever since. The books add that Rhaegar died with a womanÔÇÖs name on his lips ÔÇö and that Robert went to his own grave decades later still killing him nightly in his dreams.
Both tellings agree on the aftermath: the royal army broke, the capital fell within the fortnight, and everything Rhaegar had guarded ÔÇö his father, his wife, his children by Elia ÔÇö was dead before the moon turned. Only the secret at the Tower of Joy survived him, carried out of Dorne wrapped in Ned StarkÔÇÖs cloak.
Their chapters, book by book
A Dance with Dragons 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The show and the books diverge sharply on the machinery of the Lyanna affair. In the showÔÇÖs seventh season, Gilly stumbles on a septonÔÇÖs record of an annulment ÔÇö RhaegarÔÇÖs marriage to Elia dissolved and a secret wedding to Lyanna performed in Dorne ÔÇö which makes Jon not merely RhaegarÔÇÖs son but his trueborn heir, ahead of Daenerys in the succession. The published books contain no annulment and it is hard to imagine the Faith granting one to a princess who had borne two royal children; readers who expect the novels to legitimize Jon generally look instead to the Targaryen precedent of taking more than one wife. The books also keep Rhaegar physically offstage forever ÔÇö he exists only in memory and in DaenerysÔÇÖs visions at the House of the Undying ÔÇö while the show eventually stages him at his wedding and at the Tower of Joy, casting him with a deliberate, much-remarked resemblance to Viserys.
Book Rhaegar is also a far more developed prophecy-driven figure: the Summerhall birth, the harp, the phrase about the three heads of the dragon, and his conviction about the prince that was promised are all novel material the show trims to almost nothing. What the show keeps is the emotional core ÔÇö RobertÔÇÖs obsession, BarristanÔÇÖs fondness, and the reveal that the rebellionÔÇÖs founding story was wrong.