Helaena was too good for “House of the Dragon”

Since the first season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” we’ve watched Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban) grow from an eccentric child preoccupied with insects and murmurings of dreams — shrugged off as nothing more than oddities by the adults who occupy the Red Keep in King’s Landing — to becoming an adult with a tremendous power that she was wise to mainly keep to herself.

The only daughter of Viserys (Paddy Considine) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke), Helaena was a dreamer in more than just the flibbertigibbet sense, receiving flashes of things to come — her brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) losing an eye, Rhaenys’ (Eve Best) dragon Meleys crashing her brother/husband Aegon’s (Tom Glynn-Carney) coronation, hired assassins posing as rat-catchers breaking in to kill her baby son — and though these premonitions could have been a considerable help to those around her, they mainly fell on deaf ears until she herself fell to her death in the Season 3 finale, at which point it was too late. But the joke’s on everyone but Helaena because in taking her undervalued gifts and goodness with her, she’s removed herself from the fray as the only one with the knowledge that power is an ugly thing to die for, but an even uglier thing to live for.

(Ollie Upton/HBO) Emma D’Arcy in “House of the Dragon”

In the fight for the Iron Throne, the Targaryens and anyone from the Hightower line with a drop of lineage blood in the game are neck and neck in a battle to out-dragon and out-incest the other. Helaena, having a Hightower mother but a Targaryen last name, has empathy for both sides, as she does for any of the other tools and pawns of war; the dragons killed in battle, the horses destroyed by enemies, the caterpillars outside the castle that feed on toxic plants but are not toxic themselves.

“They eat the leaves of the nightshade, but that would be death for you or me . . . It’s a puzzle,” she warns her daughter Jaehaera in a Season 3 episode. And Jaehaera, who actually listened to Helaena’s warnings when few others did, has at least this to remember her mother by: feasting on poison may fortify you, for a while, but it will only bring harm to everyone around you. Dark-mode Rhaenyra would have been wise to heed this warning when it was delivered the second time.

Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.
Sign up here

(Ollie Upton/HBO) Phia Saban in “House of the Dragon”

In the Season 3 finale, held prisoner by Rhaenyra and refusing to eat, despite being pregnant with what’s presumed to be her brother/husband’s child, Helaena talks of a rare beetle which can only be seen in the summer, which she’ll never see again.

“There’s a beetle that emerges on the cusp of summer. It has lots of colors. Blue, gold, purple. It looks like a turtle,” she tells a befuddled Rhaenyra. “You can only find it in King’s Landing. It sustains itself on the waste of other creatures. It’s beautiful.”

Hearing this, Rhaenyra is, once again, just sitting there thinking this lady is nuts and very much not picking up on the “you’re trash” goodbye speech that her half-sister is delivering, so Helaena makes it clearer.

“All the things you care about are ugly. This place is ugly. You, yourself . . . ugly.”

Having already made up her “F this” mind that she’d rather throw herself out of a window than live one more day as Rhaenyra’s pawn, Helaena drives the sentiment home with: “You think life is nothing more than not being dead?”

Removing herself from the game board, Helaena is free. No more subsisting on poison. No more having her warnings be ignored. The Targaryens F’d around, but now they’re gonna find out. Sometimes dreams do come true.

(Ollie Upton/HBO) Sonoya Mizuno and Phia Saban in “House of the Dragon”

Like the fragile butterflies that flitter around Alicent after Helaena’s death, she was too good for all of this nonsense. Too pure for endless battles over a damn chair. 

Amid struggles for dominion, making the choice to pack it up and take her power with her — a truly useful power, at that, even more so than dragonfire, I’d argue — Helaena’s “no thanks” refusal to participate exhibits a level of nobleness and bravery the others will never live to even come close to. Refusing to fight is, often, the biggest fight.

During a press conference for “House of the Dragon” reported on by Variety, Emma D’Arcy spoke of the character Helaena, saying, “She’s maybe the only character who has a proximity to power, but remains kind of uncontaminated . . . I think her death condemns Rhaenyra to the path she’s chosen. There’s no way back after that.”

Loyal, love to be steered. Allegiance to suffer, only to serve. Helaena saw through all of it, and what she saw but had yet to say, well, she took that to her grave.