How did Rhaenyra and Daemon find out about Lucerys’ fate in ‘House of the Dragon?’

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon, and its source material, Fire and Blood.

That was one heck of a cliffhanger to cap off the first season of House of the Dragon, but there’s one little detail that the gnarly finale seemed to leave by the wayside which may have left some of us scratching our heads.

Consider this paragraph your second and final spoiler warning before we dive into the nitty-gritty details of the House of the Dragon finale. Go watch it and come back later if you’re yet to see it.

To recap, both Lucerys and Aemond’s dragons, Arrax and Vhagar, respectively, went a little bit rogue during the dogfight after the delivery of Lucerys’ message. In short, Arrax decided to throw a stream of well-placed flames in Vhagar’s face, Vhagar wasn’t having it, and with one fell swoop, or in this case, chomp, disintegrated Arrax and Lucerys into a stream of fleshy chunks.

We then cut to a shot of Rhaenyra and Daemon hearing the news, and the episode ends with Rhaenyra giving the camera a menacing look, signaling that this pretty much means war.

The question on everyone’s minds is, how the heck did the news travel so fast? Are the Targaryens telepathic? Fret not, because George R.R Martin’s Fire and Blood, serving as the source material for House of the Dragon, has answers for you. 

How Rhaenyra and Daemon got the news

Fire and Blood’s explanation is simple – three days following the aforementioned chomping, Arrax’s head and Lucerys’ corpse washed up beneath the cliffs of Storm’s End, where the deceased prince had initially gone to deliver his message from Queen Rhaenyra. However, this is all the detail that Fire and Blood divulged about the death. 

From there, we’re left to fill in the gaps ourselves, but presumably, the remains were discovered by someone at Storm’s End who then passed the message on to Dragonstone via raven. It’s at this point that House of the Dragon picks up and we get that final shot of Rhaenyra on the warpath.