Did Daemon Targaryen Seal His Fate in House of the Dragon?

In the recent episode of House of the Dragon season 3, Daemon Targaryen has made the choice to tell the queen a bad lie that could possibly come back to bite him in the ass. Queen Rhaenyra demanded for the death of the person who rode the mystery dragon back in episode 1 of season 3. She views this person as the one responsible for getting her son killed, and asked Daemon to take care of this job.

Daemon does actually find the culprit and freaks out when he learns that it was actually one of his children, Rhaena, responsible for bringing a wild dragon to a battle. He attempts to plead with her and even throws in the possibility of the queen forgiving her, since she is his daughter, but she refuses to return home.

Rhaena tells Daemon that he constantly ignored her in the past, because she was one of the few Targaryens that did not have a dragon. She proceeds to leave with Sheepstealer, her dragon, and Daemon watches her go, looking defeated.

Until he spots a random man that had seen both Daemon and Rhaena, including their dragons.

Daemon gets the idea to execute this man, and to pretend that a man was responsible for getting her son killed. Rhaenyra is angry at first, because she wanted to see this person killed in front of her, to get closure for what she lost. Daemon leaves the room looking a bit stressed out, as one of Rhaenyra's council members asks him who he had killed to trick the queen, seeing through his dangerous scheme.

I felt kind of sorry for Daemon here. He knows that he is betraying the queen by lying to her about something so major, but he refuses to put his daughter in danger. Even though his love for his children is so odd and a bit broken, he does care about them in his own way. It's also sad how his other daughter, Baela, is aware that her sister was responsible, but even she refuses to tell the queen.

I feel that this protective side of Daemon could lead to a possible bad outcome for his character.

From the last episode of Rhaenyra becoming the queen, she has yet to process her grieve of losing her son, making her come off a bit unstable. I think she is going to break fully at some point, because the war is only getting worse for her and her allies. I predict that Rhaena is somehow going to show up back in the show with her wild dragon, leading to Rhaenyra finding out and losing her mind.

I really can't predict if she will kill Daemon or not, but judging from what we have already seen of her anger and resentment in season 3, I don't think it's going to end well for Daemon. Depending on her mood, she could either kill her husband, or possibly exile him from King's Landing. Or maybe she will have him removed from her council, because she won't be able to trust him anymore.

It also doesn't help that Daemon never told Rhaenyra about his plan to hire an assassin to sneak into the kingdom back in season 2 to have Aemond killed, for the death of her first son. This plan backfired so bad on Daemon when an innocent kid got killed instead, and it led to a sort of rift between them for the last season.

I can't imagine Rhaenyra's reaction with this really bad lie, but whatever is going to happen, it won't be good for Daemon.

Thank you for reading!

Emy Quinn