Laena Velaryon
Corlys and Rhaenys's daughter, rider of Vhagar ÔÇö the greatest dragon of the age answering to the Sea Snake's girl. Wed to Daemon in his exile years, mother of his twin daughters.
A soul of House Velaryon, born at Driftmark.
The fuller tale
Season One
Corlys and Rhaenys offer Viserys their daughter Laena, aged twelve; the king chooses Alicent Hightower instead, and the Sea Snake leaves court cold. In The Princess and the Queen ÔÇö Chooses a dragonrider's death over a mother's. In Pentos, Laena Velaryon's second labor goes the way of Aemma's ÔÇö she walks to Vhagar instead and commands her own pyre: 'Dracarys.' Laena is given to the sea at Driftmark, all the realm's dragons and grievances gathered on one island for a funeral.
Laena's daughters and Rhaenyra's sons fall on him in the yard; knives and fists in the dark, and Lucerys cuts out Aemond's eye.
Where they stand. King's Landing, Driftmark and Pentos.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Chose dragonfire over the birthing bed (S1┬ÀE6)
Her second labor in Pentos went the way of Queen Aemma's, and Laena Velaryon refused the knife. She walked out of the birthing chamber to Vhagar, laid her hand on the old queen's snout, and gave the command herself: Dracarys. A dragonrider's death, on her own terms.
On the page. Died of childbed at Driftmark (F&B, ch. 1)
Dead of childbed at Driftmark in 120 AC, delivered of a malformed son who lived an hour. The histories say she rose from her bed when the end was close and walked to Vhagar, meaning to die a dragonrider ÔÇö and fell on the way. The year of the Red Spring had begun.
In the show's telling, Laena's second labor in Pentos fails as catastrophically as Aemma's once did, and rather than submit to the same ending, she leaves the birthing bed, finds Vhagar, and gives the command herself ÔÇö a dragonrider's death, chosen and completed on her own terms.
Fire & Blood records her dying of childbed complications at Driftmark in 120 AC, delivered of a malformed son who survives barely an hour. The histories note that as her strength failed, she tried to rise and reach Vhagar, meaning to die as a rider rather than a mother in labor ÔÇö but did not make it, dying on the way. The year is remembered afterward as the Red Spring, the first of the losses that begin the slide toward war.
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
The show gives Laena's death a deliberate, almost ceremonial staging ÔÇö she walks from the birthing chamber to Vhagar's side and commands the dragon herself, dying by chosen fire rather than by the childbed's slow failure. Fire & Blood's account is considerably less certain about her agency in the moment: the book records her rising from her sickbed and attempting to reach Vhagar as death closed in, but has her collapse and die of the birth itself before completing the journey ÔÇö a difference between a controlled death and a desperate, failed one that changes the entire emotional register of her ending.
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.