Jaehaerys Targaryen
Aegon and Helaena's son and heir, a small boy in a castle of knives.
A soul of House Targaryen, born at King's Landing.
The fuller tale
Season Two
Unable to find Aemond, they take the head of Helaena's boy Jaehaerys while his mother watches: the green court's grief now matches the black's. Otto turns Jaehaerys's funeral into a procession through the streets ÔÇö grief as statecraft, 'Rhaenyra the Cruel' on every crier's lips.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Murdered by Blood and Cheese (S2┬ÀE1)
Blood and Cheese came over the Red Keep's walls for Aemond and found the nursery instead. They made Helaena choose between her sons, took the head of the heir while his mother watched ÔÇö a son for a son, Daemon's debt paid in the smallest coin.
On the page. A son for a son ÔÇö Blood and Cheese (F&B, ch. 3)
Blood and Cheese, a butcher and a ratcatcher, took the Red Keep's secret ways with Mysaria's map and Daemon's gold. They made Queen Helaena choose; she named Maelor, and they took Jaehaerys instead. 'A son for a son' ÔÇö the Dance's cruelest page.
In the show, two hired men ÔÇö a disgraced gold cloak called Blood and a rat-catcher called Cheese ÔÇö slip into the Red Keep by secret ways to claim a green child's life for Lucerys's death. They find the royal nursery instead of Aemond's chambers, and force Queen Helaena to choose between her sons before taking Jaehaerys's head while his mother and twin sister look on.
Fire & Blood's account agrees on the essentials and adds the detail that most haunts later chroniclers: Helaena, given the impossible choice, names her younger son Maelor first, and the killers take Jaehaerys anyway ÔÇö whether from cruelty, confusion, or simple miscommunication in a terrified household is a question the book leaves unanswered, filing it as the single ugliest page in the entire history of the Dance.
Their chapters, book by book
Fire & Blood ÔÇö The Dance of the Dragons 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
Both tellings agree on the essential horror of Jaehaerys's death; they differ mainly in how the assassination is staged and narrated. The show dramatizes Blood and Cheese's intrusion directly, with Helaena forced to choose in real time on screen. Fire & Blood relays the same crime through Mushroom's lurid account, contested in places by Eustace's more restrained version ÔÇö the sources disagree on small details of the killers' methods but not on the outcome.
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.