What to expect for Helaena in House of the Dragon Season 3 based on the book

At the end of House of the Dragon Season 2, Helaena Targaryen made it clear she does have visions. She knows what will happen to Aegon and Aemond. She didn’t say what would happen to her, though.

It’s a tragic tale for Helaena based on the book. The problem is the book has already considerably changed things for her story. This could have a serious knock-on effect for how things play out for her moving forward.

Let’s take a look at Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin, though. It’s worth looking at how things could play out based on the book. Yes, this means some spoilers for the story.

Helaena Targaryen faces more loss and heartbreak in Fire & Blood

In the book, Helaena goes through a series of traumatic events. We start with the murder of Jaehaerys, which we saw in House of the Dragon Season 2. This is much bigger in the book, though. She has to choose between her two sons, and she ends up watching the murder of the son she chooses to save. Blood and Cheese were ruthless.

Helaena actually goes mad from this and she isn’t seen outside of her room after this. Of course, that’s not what happened in the show. We’ve seen Helaena be sad but not mad after the death of her son.

In the book, there is more tragedy, though. When Rhaenyra gets into King’s Landing, Alicent is able to arrange for Jaehaera and Maegor (the other son) to be smuggled out of the city to protect them. While Jaehaera is saved, Maegor ends up being ripped apart by the smallfolk as they all want the reward for returning him to King’s Landing.

This leads to Helaena killing herself in her grief. However, some of the people of King’s Landing believe that she was murdered instead. We don’t know the full truth.

Will Helaena be killed in House of the Dragon Season 3?

It is hard to see the show follow the same storyline for Helaena. She isn’t drowning in her grief over the loss of Jaehaerys, and she doesn’t have Maegor. It’s not like Jaehaera can be killed because of the huge knock-on effect that this would have. So, it means that Helaena has no real reason to kill herself.

The only option would be to kill her. Could Rhaenyra send someone to take Helaena’s life? That doesn’t make sense based on everything we’ve seen of Rhaenyra so far. Rhaenyra was heartbroken to hear that Helaena lost a son. She’s an innocent in all this, so I couldn’t see Rhaenyra ordering Helaena’s death.

Someone else would need to order her death. This could be Daemon again, but with what he’s seen, that doesn’t make sense. Maybe it could be someone within the smallfolk to make it look like Rhaenyra, or maybe Criston Cole has decided to take that step. Either way, the only realistic way to deal with Helaena in the story is to have her killed, and that’s going to be disappointing. Changing the Blood and Cheese moment changed too much for Helaena’s story.