Game Of Thrones: Is The Night King A Targaryen?
Does he have some fire to go with all that ice?
Warning: contains major spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3.
Who is the Night King? It's a question that's felt extremely pertinent to Game of Thrones ever since Season 5, when the leader of the Army of the Dead raised his hands, raised the dead, and stared down Jon Snow. It only increased in importance after Season 6, when Bran had a vision of the Children of the Forest turning... someone into the Night King.
Now, in Season 8 Episode 3, titled The Long Night, the Night King has finally, fully stepped onto the battlefield, and there's a hint that he might be a Targaryen. Wait, what?
There's one moment in The Long Night that has led to this question being asked: Daenerys, atop Drogon, faces down the Night King and, uttering 'dracarys', has her biggest dragon rain down holy hell upon the ruler of the White Walkers. The music swells, Dany thinks she's killing him, and then the flames fade away and the Night King stands there, completely unharmed.
Given that the Night King is one of only three people we've seen ride a dragon, with the other two being Targaryens, this new evidence lends more credence to the idea that he's a Targ too. Except, well, he probably isn't.
Read More: Game Of Thrones Season 8 Breakdown: What 'The Long Night' REALLY Means
Looking at dragon riding first, it's not true that only Targaryens can ride a dragon. Countless Valyrians did it, many before the Targs themselves. But even that likely doesn't matter too much: Viserion isn't a dragon, he's a wight. The Night King has complete control over the dead, and the 'deadness' of Viserion supersedes the 'dragonness' of him.
More importantly, where this episode is concerned, is the idea of Targaryens being impervious to fire. Which, well, isn't the case. If you think back to Season 1, Jon Snow burns his hand pretty badly when killing the wights at Castle Black. The Tragedy at Summerhall, which took place around 40 years before the events of the show, killed a number of Targaryens in a fire, including King Aegon V. The show has made Daenerys completely immune to fire, while George R.R. Martin has been rather insistent that the pyre scene where she hatched the dragons was a unique, magical moment, and that Targs - while some are resistant to heat - aren't immune to fire. There's little evidence to suggest fire kills White Walkers - in Hardhome, we see one simply walk through flames - even if dragonfire is more powerful. Since the Night King was created by dragonglass, however, there's a connection there that presumably means even that doesn't harm him.
Perhaps bigger than that, though, is quite simply the timeline. The Targaryens didn't arrive in Westeros until just over 300 years ago and, as far as we know, didn't exist as a house until roughly 126 years before then. So they go back approximately 400-450 years, while the first Long Night, which happened some 8,000 years ago (it could be fewer, but even a couple of thousand years doesn't make much of a difference here). That leaves around 7,500 years between the creation of the Night King and the rise of Targaryens.
The Age of Valyria did follow shortly after the Long Night, which would likely include people who'd be ancestors of what would become House Targaryen, but still that's after, not before. There's no basis for Valyrians being in Westeros prior to then, which means it'd be VERY difficult for the Night King to be a Targaryen. It's not completely impossible, because there are plenty of gaps in that history, but it's much more logical that the Night King was just part of the First Men who the Children were fighting against - likely a Northerner, perhaps even a Stark - rather than a Targaryen.
It doesn't matter much now that he's dead, of course, but it's one of the many things the prequel series should clear up.