The Battle of the Honeywine was the turning point that rescued Ormund Hightower from an encirclement in the Reach and brought Daeron Targaryen, the youngest of Alicent Hightower’s sons, into the war as a dragonrider. With the Hightower host on the verge of defeat, Daeron’s arrival on Tessarion reversed the battle and gave the Greens a victory that reverberated across the bay to Dragonstone.

Background and Forces

A fortnight after the fighting on Dragonstone, Ormund Hightower found himself trapped between two armies. Thaddeus Rowan, Lord of Goldengrove, and Tom Flowers, the Bastard of Bitterbridge, advanced from the northeast with a large force of mounted knights. At the same time, Alan Beesbury, Alan Tarly, and Owen Costayne joined forces to cut off Ormund’s retreat toward Oldtown. Their armies converged on the banks of the Honeywine, attacking from front and rear as the Hightower lines began to collapse.

The converging armies left Ormund with little room to recover from a defeat. The account presents the battle as a crisis narrowly averted: his force was not simply challenged in the field but caught between enemies intent on closing off both its advance and its retreat.

Daeron’s Arrival

As Ormund’s lines crumbled, a shadow passed over the battlefield and a dragon’s roar rose above the clash of arms. The dragon was Tessarion, the Blue Queen, cobalt and copper; Daeron rode her. Fifteen years old, he was Ormund’s squire and the youngest of Queen Alicent’s three sons. He was also remembered as having once been milk brother to Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, linking the two sides of the conflict through a past intimacy that the war had overtaken.

Daeron’s arrival changed the balance of the battle. With Tessarion in the field, Ormund’s soldiers went on the attack while the queen’s forces fled. The sudden reversal rested on the intervention of a young prince and his dragon at the moment when Ormund’s defeat seemed imminent.

Victory and Recognition

By the end of the battle, Rowan was retreating north with the remains of his army. Tom Flowers had been killed, Beesbury and Tarly had been captured, and Costayne was dying from a wound inflicted by Bold Jon Roxton with Orphan-Maker. Ormund’s army had moved from the brink of defeat to victory, while its opponents had lost commanders, prisoners, and ground.

Ormund celebrated with a feast for Daeron, serving aurochs and strongwine, and knighted him with the Valyrian longsword Vigilance. He named the prince Ser Daeron the Daring. Daeron modestly credited Tessarion for the victory, saying, “My lord is kind to say so, but the victory belongs to Tessarion.” The recognition marked a change in his role: the gentle, soft-spoken squire had become a celebrated participant in the war.

Consequences

News of the defeat reached Dragonstone, where despondency had settled over Rhaenyra’s court. Lord Bar Emmon suggested that the time might have come to submit to Aegon II, but Rhaenyra refused. Having lost two sons, she appeared to draw strength from grief; Jacaerys’s death had hardened her, and the defeat at the Honeywine reinforced her resolve to use her remaining dragons, whatever the cost, to remove Aegon from the Iron Throne or die trying.

The battle therefore had consequences beyond the losses on the field. Daeron’s intervention gave Ormund’s cause renewed strength, while the news sharpened Rhaenyra’s determination rather than persuading her to yield. The Honeywine became a point of contrast between a victory won through the sudden arrival of a dragon and a queen’s decision to answer defeat with still greater force.