Rhaenyra's Suspicion of Nettles and Order to Kill Her

Rhaenyra’s Suspicion of Nettles and Order to Kill Her marks a decisive rupture between Rhaenyra Targaryen and one of her dragonriders. With the war already dividing allies from suspected traitors, Rhaenyra came to believe that Nettles threatened not only her cause but her marriage to Daemon Targaryen. Her response—ordering Nettles killed and Addam Velaryon seized—set off a chain of defections that weakened her position at Maidenpool.

Wartime suspicion

Nettles and Addam were among the dragonseeds whose service gave Rhaenyra’s side access to riders beyond the established royal family. That dependence became more precarious after Hugh Hammer and Ulf White went over to the enemy. Their defections prompted members of Rhaenyra’s council to ask whether Addam and Nettles might also turn against her. Their concern drew upon the dragonseeds’ shared status as people of bastard birth, rather than evidence that either had betrayed the queen.

Lord Bartimos Celtigar urged that the two riders be seized before they could bring their dragons to the other side. Ser Luthor Largent, Ser Lorent Marbrand, and Ser Torrhen Manderly supported mistrust or caution. Lord Corlys Velaryon and Grand Maester Gerardys opposed that course. Gerardys argued that there was no proof against either rider and that judgment should wait for evidence. Corlys defended Addam as a true Velaryon and worthy heir to Driftmark; he also reminded the council that Nettles had fought valiantly in the Battle of the Gullet. The opposing accounts made Nettles’ service itself part of the dispute: it could be cited in her defense, but, as Celtigar pointed out, previous service had not prevented other dragonseeds from defecting.

Rhaenyra did not immediately accept the council’s calls to act. Instead, she sought the view of Mysaria, her mistress of whisperers in all but name. The choice mattered: the queen turned to a source associated with secret intelligence at a moment when her advisers were divided over the difference between suspicion and proof.

The accusation and the order

Mysaria told Rhaenyra that Nettles had betrayed her by sharing Daemon’s bed and might bear his child. The claim changed the question in the queen’s eyes. Nettles was no longer merely a dragonrider whose loyalties required verification; she had become, in Rhaenyra’s view, a threat within her own household and to her relationship with Daemon. Rhaenyra also rejected the idea that Nettles had won a dragon through her own standing or ability, attributing the bond to sorcery instead.

Rhaenyra then ordered Luthor Largent to take twenty gold cloaks to the Dragonpit on Rhaenys’s Hill and arrest Addam for questioning. For Nettles, she sent a separate command to Lord Mooton: he was to kill her, whether she was encountered at table or in bed. The orders thus treated the two riders differently. Addam was to be detained and interrogated; Nettles was to be killed outright. Rhaenyra’s stated reasoning joined political suspicion to personal distrust: while Daemon remained, in her judgment, under Nettles’ influence, she believed she could not rely on him.

The order against Nettles depended on Lord Mooton carrying it out, but Maester Norren intervened before it could be enforced. The surviving account does not establish exactly what Lord Mooton decided after receiving the queen’s letter. It does record Norren finding Daemon and Nettles at supper and showing them the message. His warning gave them knowledge of the danger and the chance to leave before the order could reach them.

Flight from Maidenpool

At dawn, Daemon helped Nettles saddle Sheepstealer for one final flight. Before mounting, she followed her usual practice of feeding the dragon, giving him the largest black ram in Maidenpool. Norren’s account describes her riding leathers as bloodstained from the slaughter and her cheeks as tear-stained. No farewell passed between her and Daemon. As Sheepstealer rose, Caraxes screamed, and Nettles turned toward the Bay of Crabs. She was never seen again at court or castle.

Nettles’ departure ended her immediate presence in Rhaenyra’s court, but it did not restore the queen’s trust in Daemon. He returned to the castle only long enough to break his fast with Lord Mooton, then announced that he was flying to Harrenhal to face Aemond alone. His departure followed the rupture with Nettles and carried him away from the queen’s reach. The evidence connects these events in sequence, without resolving every part of the private relationship that had provoked Rhaenyra’s order.

Consequences and significance

The attempt to arrest Addam failed because he had been warned in time to escape on Seasmoke. Luthor returned to the Red Keep and accused Corlys of treachery; Corlys was bound, beaten, imprisoned, and left to await trial and execution. Rhaenyra also turned against Gerardys, whose defense of the dragonseeds made him suspect in her eyes. She spared him imprisonment but dismissed him from her council and sent him back to Dragonstone. Her action against Nettles therefore widened into punishment and suspicion directed at the people who had spoken for the riders.

Norren recognized that revealing the queen’s letter could expose him as a traitor, but Lord Mooton refused to surrender him. That night, Rhaenyra’s quartered banners came down from Maidenpool’s gates and Aegon II’s golden dragons were raised in their place. The change of allegiance followed the failed arrest, the treatment of Corlys, and the disclosure of the order against Nettles. Rhaenyra’s suspicion had been intended to prevent betrayal; instead, its consequences helped produce the political break she feared.

The episode also turns on a contrast between two ways of judging loyalty. Gerardys and Corlys pointed to the absence of proof and to the dragonseeds’ actions in Rhaenyra’s service. Mysaria supplied an intimate allegation, and the queen treated it as sufficient grounds for an irreversible command. Nettles’ own voice and account of the relationship are absent from the surviving narrative; the evidence of her final departure comes through Maester Norren. The relationship is thus presented through the suspicions, warnings, and decisions of others, while its outcome is unmistakable: Rhaenyra’s attempt to control the danger drove Nettles from her side and helped turn Maidenpool against her.