Rhaenys Targaryen
The Queen Who Never Was: the Old King's eldest grandchild, passed over twice for being a woman. Rider of Meleys, the Red Queen — half the realm's best claim and all of its best judgment, married into the richest fleet afloat.
A soul of House Targaryen, born at King's Landing, sworn to The Blacks — the Queen's Party.
The fuller tale
Season One
In The Heirs of the Dragon — 'The Queen Who Never Was.' She has made her peace with it. Mostly. The Old King's council at Harrenhal chose Viserys over Princess Rhaenys — a woman would sit no throne. The realm remembers. The lords of the realm, Corlys and Rhaenys among them, kneel and swear to Rhaenyra Targaryen, first of her name. 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 Lord of the Tides — Backs Rhaenyra's sons for Driftmark — for Laena's daughters' sake. In The Green Council — Has the whole green court under Meleys' jaws — and chooses not to start the war herself. Rhaenys is locked in her chambers, courted for Meleys — and escapes with Ser Erryk through the crowds being herded to the Dragonpit. Aegon II is crowned before the mob with the Conqueror's crown and blade — until Meleys bursts through the pit floor, and Rhaenys, with the greens at her mercy, spares them and flies to Dragonstone.
In The Black Queen — Holds the Gullet for Rhaenyra — the realm's finest admiral answers to a queen at last.
Where they stand. King's Landing, Driftmark and Dragonstone.
Season Two
In The Red Dragon and the Gold — Flies to a small castle's defense and into the war's first dragon-fall. Rhaenys and Meleys answer Rook's Rest; the trap closes: Aegon comes half-drunk on Sunfyre, and Aemond brings Vhagar for both dragons. Rhaenys, clear of the fight, turns Meleys back into Vhagar's teeth rather than run. The Queen Who Never Was dies a queen's death.
Where they stand. Rook's Rest.
Their story
Rhaenys Targaryen carries a title the realm invented for her specifically: the Queen Who Never Was. The Old King Jaehaerys's eldest grandchild and by primogeniture his obvious heir, she is passed over twice — first at the Great Council of 101 in favor of her cousin Viserys, on the frank and stated grounds that the realm will not accept a queen, and a second time, more quietly, whenever her own name resurfaces in the decades that follow. She does not curdle into bitterness so much as harden into an unusually clear-eyed patience.
Her marriage to Corlys Velaryon joins her wronged royal blood to the realm's greatest self-made fortune, and together they build Driftmark into a seat that rivals the crown's own court — High Tide, filled with treasures from Corlys's nine voyages, becomes a genuine power center rather than a consolation prize. She raises two dragonriding children, Laena and Laenor, and delivers, across four decades of court business, some of the era's coldest and most reliably correct counsel.
The moment the histories return to again and again is a smaller one: cornered in the Dragonpit on the morning of Aegon's usurpation, with Rhaenyra's claim effectively stolen out from under her while she and Corlys are physically present in the city, Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys have the opportunity to burn the greens' entire coronation where it stands. She chooses not to, and rides away instead — not from weakness, every account agrees, but because starting the war herself, in that room, was never actually her decision to make on Rhaenyra's behalf.
Her hour, when it comes, is one she walks into with full knowledge of the arithmetic. Answering the greens' ravens at Rook's Rest — a trap set to draw out and destroy any dragon that responds — Rhaenys arrives to find not one dragon waiting but two, Aegon on Sunfyre and Aemond on Vhagar. She could disengage; every reading of the moment agrees she has the option. Instead she turns Meleys back into the fight rather than leave the sky, and the field, to the greens uncontested.
What she accomplishes in that single, deliberately chosen engagement reshapes the entire war: Meleys wounds Sunfyre badly enough to eventually kill him and burns Aegon himself half to ruin, taking the greens' king functionally out of the conflict for its remainder before Vhagar's far greater size and age finally bring the Red Queen down. It is, by any tactical measure, one of the most consequential single actions any combatant takes in the whole Dance.
Both tellings agree on the verdict: the Queen Who Never Was dies as she lived, refusing to run from a fight that was never legally hers to fight, and the fuller record's judgment — offered with something unusually close to reverence for a chronicle this cynical about everyone else — is that Rhaenys Targaryen was, by temperament and by conduct alike, the best monarch the Dance of the Dragons never crowned.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Fell at Rook's Rest, refusing to run (S2·E4)
The Queen Who Never Was answered Rook's Rest's ravens and flew into a trap set for any dragon that came. Clear of the fight, she turned Meleys back into Vhagar's teeth rather than leave the sky to them — and fell with her Red Queen, refusing to the last to run.
On the page. Fell at Rook's Rest with Meleys (F&B, ch. 4)
At Rook's Rest the Queen Who Never Was met two dragons laid in ambush. Meleys the Red Queen locked jaws with Sunfyre and near killed the king before Vhagar broke them both. Rhaenys died as she had lived — owed a crown, paying its price anyway.
Both tellings put Rhaenys's death at Rook's Rest, and both agree on its essential shape even where they differ on detail. In the show, Rhaenys and Meleys engage Sunfyre directly, wounding Aegon's dragon badly and Aegon himself nearly fatally, before Vhagar — vastly larger, ancient beyond any dragon then flying — closes on the Red Queen from above. Rhaenys has a clear window to flee; she turns to fight instead, and Vhagar's jaws take Meleys out of the sky in a single, devastating strike, rider and dragon falling together into the battlefield below.
Fire & Blood's account agrees on the outcome and disputes some of the choreography — Mushroom's version has Rhaenys actively pressing the attack out of fury rather than tactical necessity, while Eustace frames her engagement as reluctant and honorable. Both sources agree that her death, whatever the exact sequence, took Sunfyre and Aegon effectively out of the war for its middle stretch, and both sources agree that she died owed a crown the realm never gave her, and paid its price regardless.
Their chapters, book by book
Fire & Blood — The Dance of the Dragons 2 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The show stages Rhaenys's Dragonpit restraint as a deliberate, almost mythic beat — Rhaenys and Meleys looming over Aegon's coronation with the power to end the war in its first hour and visibly, consciously choosing otherwise, a scene invented for the series to dramatize what the book only implies was possible. Fire & Blood is considerably more matter-of-fact about the same morning, treating her presence and restraint as one detail among many rather than as a staged confrontation, and gives Rook's Rest itself in sparer, more contested terms — Mushroom and Eustace disagree on tactical particulars the show resolves cleanly on screen.
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.