When Is House of the Dragon Set in the Game of Thrones Universe?
It’s been 1,183 days since the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones left King’s Landing in a smoldering heap of rubble and seared flesh. All these months later and HBO’s House of the Dragon returns to the Westeros capital, seemingly rebuilt and flourishing. The Targaryens sit atop the Iron Throne (which looks even cooler), dragons circle the city without citizens cowering in terror, and the 7 Kingdoms once again find themselves on the edge of a succession war.
While House of the Dragon is obviously a prequel series to Game of Thrones, it’s not immediately clear how prequel the prequel prequels.
We’re still many generations away from Daenerys Targaryen, a presence that looms over the yet-to-be-destroyed city. (Daenerys is a distant descendant of Princess Rhaenyra, who we meet flying over the city on her dragon, an image not dissimilar to Daenerys' Kings Landing entrance.) In fact, the framing of the show’s King’s Landing sequences feels like intentional references to the fate of the capital. It’s a dramatic irony that pervades the opening episode—the ultimate downfall still centuries away.
When Is House of Dragon Set?
The Westeros timeline is broken into two periods—Before Conquest (BC) and After Conquest (AC). Date 0 corresponds with Aegon I’s landing in Westeros, beginning the Targaryen Conquest. (This is how the family comes to power.)
The events of House of Dragon take place in AC, though some characters will speak of BC times, including events like the Doom of Valyria, a Pompeii-like event that almost killed all the dragons. That was -100 BC. (Here’s a helpful family tree and timeline of House Targaryen, though it may contain spoilers for House of the Dragon.)
The first episode of the series picks up in 112 AC (after a first scene prelude in 101 AC) , during the reign of Viserys I.
This is almost 200 years before the first episode of Game of Thrones, which opens in 298 AC.
The events of the rest of the series, however, are likely to take place between 129-131 AC. The series is reported to draw from author George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood (2018), which outlines the history of House Targaryen. In particular, the series will follow events detailed in the latter half of Martin’s book, which includes the civil war “Dance of the Dragons.” The war is a war of succession involving Princess Rhaenyra.
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