House Royce
The bronze-armored Royces of Runestone, First Men blood older than the Andals ÔÇö proud, stubborn, and owed better than the marriage the crown gave their lady.
The fuller tale
The Royces of Runestone carry First Men blood older than the Andals who eventually settled the Vale around them, bronze-armored and proud of a pedigree that predates most of the mountain lords who now nominally rank above them ÔÇö We Remember is not sentiment so much as a standing claim to seniority.
The houseÔÇÖs entanglement with this eraÔÇÖs great quarrel runs through a single unhappy marriage: Rhea Royce, heiress of Runestone, wed to Daemon Targaryen at a point in his career when a rich bride was worth more to him than a happy one, and a match neither party pretended to want. She rules Runestone in her own right for years afterward while her husband is elsewhere, entirely unbothered by his absence and, by most accounts, glad of it.
Rhea dies before the Dance itself begins, in a riding accident at Runestone that frees Daemon to marry first Laena Velaryon and later Rhaenyra ÔÇö a death convenient enough, at exactly the moment it happens, that suspicion follows Daemon for the rest of the story regardless of what actually happened on that mountainside, whispered about by enemies who need no proof and believed by no one who ever much liked him to begin with.
The page and the screen
Fire & Blood keeps Rhea RoyceÔÇÖs death technically accidental and leaves the suspicion around it as background rumor, one more unproven accusation in a long list Daemon accumulates over his career. The show stages the scene with enough visual suggestion ÔÇö Daemon present, the fall convenient, his reaction more calculating than grieved ÔÇö that the audience is nudged considerably closer to certainty of his guilt than the bookÔÇÖs more deliberately unresolved version ever allows.
