House Of The Dragon: How Does Alicent Hightower Die In The Book?

Contains spoilers for "Fire & Blood" by George R.R. Martin and Seasons 1-2 of the HBO adaptation "House of the Dragon"

By the end of George R.R. Martin's book "Fire & Blood," everyone's dead after Targaryens are pitted against one another in the bloody civil conflict known as the Dance of the Dragons. So what happens to the defacto leader of the Green faction, Alicent Hightower — played by Olivia Cooke on the HBO adaptation of Martin's book, "House of the Dragon" — after she loses the Westerosi capital of King's Landing to her enemy, former friend, and Black faction matriarch Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy)?

As the Dance of the Dragons winds down, Alicent's remaining child (and son and heir) Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney on the series) is poisoned — by his own forces after he refuses to surrender, no less! — and Rhaenyra's surviving son Aegon III is crowned. Here's what Martin says of Alicent's bitter end:

"She had outlived all of her children and spent the last year of her life confined to her apartments, with no company but her septa, the serving girls who brought her food, and the guards outside her door. Books were given her, and needles and thread, but her guards said Alicent spent more time weeping than reading or sewing. One day she ripped all her clothing into pieces. By the end of the year she had taken to talking to herself, and had come to have a deep aversion to the color green."

Martin then notes that in her final days, Alicent gained some lucidity — though she keeps talking about not her husband King Viserys I (Paddy Considine), but the king before him, Jaeherys. Ultimately, she passed peacefully: "The Stranger came for her on a rainy night, at the hour of the wolf."

What precisely happened to Alicent in the conclusion of the Dance of the Dragons to drive her to this point? Well, there's the death of all of her children, for one. We've covered Aegon II, poisoned by his own apparent allies, but there's also his brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell on the show), sister and wife Helaena (Phia Saban), and the youngest child Daeron (who's away, on "House of the Dragon," in Oldtown). Aemond dies fighting his own uncle Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), Helaena takes her own life after the deaths of her own sons, one of which we saw play out in the Season 2 premiere of "House of the Dragon," and Daeron dies during the war in the Battle of Tumbleton. As Martin writes, Alicent had to be locked away:

"The murder of the last of her sons had turned Alicent's heart into a stone. None of the regents wished to see her put to death, some from compassion, others for fear that such an execution might rekindle the flames of war. Yet she could not be allowed to take part in the life of the court as before. She was too apt to rain down curses on the king, or snatch a dagger from some unwary guardsman. Alicent could not even be trusted in the company of the little queen; when last allowed to share a meal with Her Grace, she had told Jaehaera to cut her husband's throat whilst he was sleeping, which set the child to screaming."

Ultimately, Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall on the series) suggests that Alicent be "gently" imprisoned for her own safety; she remains there until her death.

So who is Alicent Hightower in the context of both the Dance of the Dragons and its television adaptation "House of the Dragon?" When we first meet Alicent as a teenager, she's played by Emily Carey and is best friends with her future enemy Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock in her younger years), but that all changes when Rhaenyra's father King Viserys I Targaryen tragically loses his wife Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke) and his male heir during childbirth. Viserys officially anoints Rhaenyra as his true heir, but he also marries Alicent and has those four aforementioned children with her.

When Alicent and Rhaenyra grow up and become Olivia Cooke and Emma D'Arcy, they're bitter enemies, with Alicent frequently remarking on the fact that Rhaenyra's kids don't look like her white-haired husband (they are, in fact, out of wedlock) and Rhaenyra deeply resentful that Alicent immediately had a son that could supplant her. On Viserys' way out of the world, he whispers, to his wife, about "Aegon," but he means Aegon the Conqueror and his prophecy, not their son. Unfortunately, Alicent doesn't know about Aegon the Conqueror's prophecy, so she takes Viserys at his word and installs her son as King Aegon II, skipping Rhaenyra in the line of succession and kicking off the civil war in earnest.

You can watch Alicent — and experience her fate for yourself — on "House of the Dragon," which is streaming on HBO Max.