Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 finale of House of the Dragon.
In the wake of House of the Dragon's final episode of Season 2, the wait has officially begun for Season 3 to continue the stories of the increasingly twisted Targaryen family tree. By the time the final credits rolled, three of the riderless dragons in House of the Dragon had been claimed by dragonseeds, with Rhaena presumably on the verge of claiming the wild dragon in the Vale. The forces of the Blacks and the Greens were marching and/or sailing towards war, all setting up a huge Season 3 premiere.
But more than a day after the finale, I find myself thinking back to a much more minor moment from the episode and how it may have debunked a rumor from George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood that he never gave a definitive answer for. And that is regarding Corlys Velaryon and the two bastard boys of Hull.
New Background On Alyn And Addam Of Hull
House of the Dragon hasn't really played it coy in Season 2 about who the father of Alyn and Addam of Hull is, with even Rhaenys pointing them out to her husband shortly before her emotional death. Corlys is clearly their bio dad, with Addam being more or less okay with his status as the Sea Snake's bastard. Alyn, on the other hand, had quite a speech for Corlys in the Season 2 finale. He said:
You want to help me? Is this the help you offer after all these years? A reminder to be grateful? Do you know what it was like for us? To grow up fatherless, to be sneered upon as bastards, never sure of the bread to feed us? Do you know what hunger does to a boy? What grief does? Or shame? I sold fish in the market from cold dawn until sunset, putting by coppers to stave off the winter and I watched the man who sired me walk past with his son and heir with a fur around his shoulders. Choosing sweetmeats to eat after supper by the fire. And now that boy is dead, and his sister before him, and the heir that took his place.
By the look on his face, Corlys clearly had not packed up his baggage to go on this guilt trip with Alyn! Honestly, with how much has happened since Season 1, it feels like the deaths that Alyn referred to – Laenor, Laena, and Lucerys – happened a very long time ago. Alyn also wasn't done with his speech to the Sea Snake:
And now, now, now you remember I live! Now you wish to suddenly to scatter the crumbs of your favor. I am an honorable man and I will serve you because I must. But if it is all the same, I will decline any offers of help. If I survive this war, I will continue as I began, alone.
To add insult onto injury for Alyn, only he of the two brothers seems to have inherited the white hair of the Targaryens and Velaryons, as his dragon-riding brother Addam has dark hair. All in all, this was an emotional scene between a father and his unacknowledged bastard son, and gave Abubakar Salim the chance to show off some acting range opposite Steve Toussaint, but really didn't tell us much of anything we didn't know or couldn't have guessed... regarding the show, anyway.
The situation with these two bastard brothers is a lot stickier in George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, and Alyn's wording in his allusion to Laenor seems to settle a rumor from that fictional Targaryen history book.
What George R.R. Martin Wrote In Fire & Blood
Spoilers ahead for Fire & Blood through the dragonseeds portion of the chapter called "The Dying of the Dragons – The Red Dragon and the Gold."
Just as how Addam being able to claim Seasmoke seemed like a subtle clue that Laenor had truly died somewhere off-screen based on the rules of dragonriders from George R.R. Martin's written works after faking his death in Season 1, the latest allusion to Laenor is a lot more meaningful when it comes to Fire & Blood than just Alyn taking Corlys on a guilt trip in the show.
In the book, Addam did indeed claim Seasmoke, and the book describes the dragonseed as a boy "whose origins remain a matter of dispute amongst historians to this day." He and his brother were the bastard sons of Marilda, who gave birth to Addam at the age of 16 and Alyn when she was "barely 18." By their looks, it was clear that the boys were bastards with Valyrian blood, but Marilda didn't claim the identity of their father until the call went out for dragonseeds.
And she didn't claim that Corlys was their father, but Laenor. Martin writes:
They had his look, it was true, and Ser Laenor had been known to visit the shipyard in Hull from time to time. Nonetheless, many on Dragonstone and Driftmark were skeptical of Marilda's claim, for Laenor Velaryon's disinterest in women was well remembered. None dared name her a liar, however... for it was Laenor's own father, Lord Corlys himself, who brought the boys to Prince Jacaerys for the Sowing. Having outlived all of his children and suffered the betrayal of his nephews and cousins, the Sea Snake seemed more than eager to accept these newfound grandsons.
The tale that Laenor was the father of Addam and Alyn was recorded in Fire & Blood in-universe by Grand Maester Munkun and Septon Eustace, but the cruder court fool Mushroom presented a different theory: that they "had been sired not by the Sea Snake's son, but by the Sea Snake himself." The text reads:
Lord Corlys did not share Ser Laenor's erotic predispositions... and the Hull shipyards were like a second home to him, whereas his son visited them less frequently. Princess Rhaenys, his wife, had the fiery temperament of many Tagaryens, Mushroom says, and would not have taken kindly to her lord husband fathering bastards on a girl half her age, and a shipwright's daughter besides... Only after the death of Princess Rhaenys did Lord Corlys at last feel able to bring his bastards safely forward.
In the book as in the show, Corlys is clearly the much more likely candidate to have fathered the bastards, but Laenor was not ruled out. It's a different story in House of the Dragon, all thanks to Alyn recalling when he saw Corlys walking Laenor through the market when both sons were just boys. In the show, Laenor simply wouldn't have been old enough to be believable as a possible father for Addam and Alyn.
Therefore, just like how House of the Dragon settled the rumor of what happened with Daemon and Rhaenyra that led to his second exile back in early Season 1, the HBO series seemingly settled that the father of Addam and Alyn is unquestionably Corlys, with the Sea Snake not having the option of trying to sell that the young men were the product of anything other than an affair with a commoner while married to Rhaenys.
Will this matter in the long run of the series? Probably not, since everybody amongst the Blacks and the Greens probably has much bigger concerns as of the end of Season 2 than Corlys siring a pair of bastards with no different candidate as their bio father. Plus, it's pretty clear at this point that show canon and book canon diverged a while ago. Still, as a Fire & Blood reader, I enjoy getting these moments of debunking and settling.
And who knows? Maybe I'll reread Fire & Blood over the course of hiatus to see if I missed anything while watching House of the Dragon Season 2. If the break between seasons is similar to what it was last time, we may not get Season 3 until 2026. Either way, you can revisit the first two seasons of HOTD and all eight seasons of Game of Thrones streaming with a Max subscription. Plus, there are many other upcoming viewing options that you can find on our 2024 TV schedule now.
