Daemon Targaryen
The Rogue Prince: rider of Caraxes and bearer of Dark Sister, commander of the City Watch, King of the Narrow Sea for a fortnight, and the most dangerous man in Westeros by broad consent. His brother can neither keep him nor be rid of him.
A soul of House Targaryen, born at King's Landing, sworn to The Blacks ÔÇö the Queen's Party, The City Watch.
The fuller tale
Season One
In The Heirs of the Dragon ÔÇö Gold cloaks at his back, a crown in his eye, and a toast he will never live down. At the heir's tourney, Daemon fights like the war the realm hasn't had in a lifetime ÔÇö while Queen Aemma dies in the birthing bed, and baby Baelon a day after her. Daemon toasts 'the heir for a day' in a pleasure house; Viserys strips him of the succession and sends him from court. In The Rogue Prince ÔÇö Steals an island, an egg, and every scene.
Daemon takes Dragonstone with his gold cloaks and steals a dragon's egg ÔÇö the one meant for Baelon's cradle. Spurned by the throne, Corlys brings his fleet to Daemon: a war for the Stepstones, fought without the king's leave. In Second of His Name ÔÇö Wins a three-year war with one unforgivable, unbeatable lie. Viserys finally sends aid; the letter's arrival shames Daemon into fury ÔÇö he beats the messenger with his helm.
Daemon rows to the Crabfeeder's line under a peace banner, feigns surrender, and butchers a path until Craghas is cut in half beneath Caraxes. In King of the Narrow Sea ÔÇö Gives back a crown to keep a grievance. Crowned 'King of the Narrow Sea' by his victorious army, Daemon sails home ÔÇö and lays the driftwood crown at his brother's feet. Rhaenyra tires of suitors counting her castles; Daemon shows her the city instead ÔÇö Flea Bottom, a mummer's farce about her succession, a pleasure house.
In We Light the Way ÔÇö Widowed by his own hand, and refused a Velaryon bride for his trouble. Daemon calls on his wife at Runestone. Lady Rhea Royce falls from her horse; the stone that ends her is in her husband's hand. In The Princess and the Queen ÔÇö A husband and father in Pentos, almost at peace ÔÇö until the pyre. In Driftmark ÔÇö Grieves a wife, frees a 'dead' man, and weds the heir to the throne.
Rhaenyra and Daemon wed on Dragonstone's shore in the old Valyrian way ÔÇö over a fresh corpse in Laenor's clothes, while Laenor rows for Essos, alive and free. In The Lord of the Tides ÔÇö Crowns his brother with his own hands; uncrowns Vaemond with Dark Sister. Rhaenyra and Daemon come back to a changed Red Keep ÔÇö Otto restored as Hand, Alicent ruling a king kept swimming in milk of the poppy. Viserys drags himself to the Iron Throne, half a face and half a body, to hold the succession for his daughter one last time; Daemon picks up the fallen crown.
In The Black Queen ÔÇö Chokes his queen over a dream he was never told, then brings her the worst news in the world. Ser Erryk Cargyll arrives with a stolen crown; Daemon sets Viserys's crown on Rhaenyra's head on the shore of Dragonstone. The painted table counts its strength: the Vale, the North, the riverlands to win; thirteen dragons to the greens' four ÔÇö and Daemon wants them flying now.
Where they stand. King's Landing, Dragonstone, The Stepstones, Runestone, Pentos and Driftmark.
Season Two
In A Son for a Son ÔÇö Buys vengeance in the city he once policed ÔÇö and doesn't specify enough. Daemon buys two ratcatchers ÔÇö Blood and Cheese ÔÇö and sends them into the Red Keep for 'a son for a son.' In The Burning Mill ÔÇö Wins Harrenhal with a landing, then starts losing to the castle itself. Daemon flies Caraxes to Harrenhal and takes the greatest castle in Westeros without a blow; Ser Simon Strong yields it with supper.
In The Red Dragon and the Gold ÔÇö Fights the only enemy Caraxes can't burn: Harrenhal, and himself. Daemon holds a ghost-ridden Harrenhal, dosed by Alys Rivers's draughts, dreaming of everything he broke. In Regent ÔÇö Crowns himself in dreams while the rivers wait for him to wake. Daemon's Harrenhal dreams deepen; the riverlords test him, and Willem Blackwood's brutality against the Brackens does his recruiting.
In the riverlands, Daemon lets the Blackwoods loose on Bracken lands ÔÇö and learns that terror recruits enemies faster than banners. In The Queen Who Ever Was ÔÇö Sees the dream at last, and kneels to it ÔÇö the rogue prince, done running. At Harrenhal, Daemon's visions end in the one that matters ÔÇö the Song of Ice and Fire ÔÇö and when Rhaenyra lands, he kneels: her king consort, her army, hers.
Where they stand. King's Landing, Dragonstone and Harrenhal.
How it ends for them
On the page. Fell with Caraxes and Vhagar above the Gods Eye (F&B, ch. 6)
The Rogue Prince's last flight ended the Battle Above the Gods Eye: he leapt from his own dragon to kill Vhagar's rider, and went into the lake with both. His body was never found ÔÇö which the singers, and one witch of Harrenhal, have made much of since.
The series has not yet flown Daemon to his ending; as of its current seasons he remains alive and at war. Fire & Blood does not spare him that wait.
Above the Gods Eye, in the war's most storied single combat, Daemon on Caraxes meets his nephew Aemond on Vhagar ÔÇö the collision the whole Dance has been building toward. The dragons lock together in the air; Daemon, in the boldest and most reckless act even he ever attempted, leaps from his own dragon's back onto Vhagar's to reach Aemond directly, driving Dark Sister through the prince's remaining eye as both riders fall. Caraxes and Vhagar go into the lake locked together, and Daemon goes with them. Fishermen and singers alike swear the bodies were never recovered ÔÇö a silence the book treats less as mystery than as the kind of ending Daemon Targaryen would have chosen for himself, unrecoverable and endlessly argued over.
Their chapters, book by book
Fire & Blood ÔÇö The Dance of the Dragons 3 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The show compresses Daemon's decades of pre-Dance restlessness ÔÇö the City Watch years, three marriages, a driftwood crown ÔÇö into a tight character study of a man perpetually one grievance from treason, while giving him invented interiority Fire & Blood never bothers with: visions and hauntings at Harrenhal, a fraught, half-poisoned marriage to Rhaenyra played out in real time, a much more overt hand in commissioning Blood and Cheese. The book, narrated at a chronicler's distance and stitched from conflicting testimony, keeps Daemon more opaque and more mythic ÔÇö a man whose true motives at Harrenhal, in the Stepstones, and in his final flight above the Gods Eye are relayed secondhand, disputed by Mushroom and Eustace alike, and never fully resolved even by Archmaester Gyldayn.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.