Who wins the Greens vs Blacks war in House of the Dragon? The books settled it long ago
House of the Dragon is still mid-war — season 3 wraps on August 9, 2026, with a fourth and final season to come. George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, published in 2018, is not mid-anything. The Dance of the Dragons has an ending on the page, and it's been sitting there the whole time.
Book spoilers from here, obviously.
The short answer
Neither side gets a clean win. Both figureheads die — Rhaenyra in 130 AC, Aegon II about six months later — and the Iron Throne passes to Rhaenyra's son, Aegon III. So the Blacks win the succession. The Greens win the argument. The dragons lose everything.
How each side loses its leader
Rhaenyra goes first. Betrayed and captured on Dragonstone, she's fed to Aegon II's dragon Sunfyre while her young son Aegon the Younger is made to watch.
Aegon II outlasts her by half a year and wins nothing with it. With Cregan Stark's northern army marching south and no way to hold the capital, his own councilors poison him in his litter — a peace offering with a body attached.
What happens to everyone else
- Daemon and Aemond — kill each other above the Gods Eye, Caraxes against Vhagar. Neither dragon survives it either.
- Helaena — takes her own life in 130 AC, months after the murder of her son.
- Corlys Velaryon — survives the whole thing and serves on Aegon III's regency council.
- Alicent — outlives her sons and dies of a winter fever in captivity in 133 AC.
- Otto Hightower — executed after Rhaenyra takes King's Landing.
The show has already rearranged some of these — Criston Cole, for one, just met a different end in season 3 — but the top of the board hasn't moved.
So who actually wins?
Dynastically, the Blacks. Aegon III marries Aegon II's daughter Jaehaera, merging the claims, and every Targaryen after him — down to Daenerys — descends from Rhaenyra. Politically, the Greens: the war's precedent against a woman on the throne gets cited in Westeros for generations. And practically, nobody. The fighting kills most of the dragons, and the species limps on until the last one dies in 153 AC, under a king so scarred by the war he's remembered as the Dragonbane.
Will the show change it?
It can change the route — Nettles is already gone, the Gullet came early — but not the destination. Game of Thrones described Rhaenyra's death on screen back in 2013, when Joffrey recites it to Margaery. HBO spoiled its own prequel nine years before it premiered. The ending was never the secret.