What Happened to Silver Denys in “Fire & Blood”?

Rhaenyra quickly eliminated many of the illegitimate Targaryens in search of a dragonrider in House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 7. One of those Targaryens was Silver Denys.

Don’t worry if you missed it. The only reason a lot of people are aware that Silver Denys was in the story is due to social media buzz. The character wasn’t explicitly named in the series, and the storyline differed from the book.

Silver Denys was among those who attempted to claim Vermithor at Dragonstone. His storyline is more expansive in the book, and he tries to claim a different dragon there, not Vermithor.

In Fire & Blood, Rhaenyra doesn’t call everyone to Dragonstone in the same way. She instructs those with Targaryen blood to attempt to claim dragons but doesn’t have them all try to claim Vermithor at the same time.

There are three wild dragons in Westeros: Grey Ghost, Sheepstealer, and Cannibal. Sheepstealer and Cannibal are the ones involved in Silver Denys’s storyline.

Denys attempts to claim Sheepstealer, the wild dragon dwelling around the Vale. We have seen this dragon presumably in House of the Dragon. At the end of the second season, Rhaena comes across Sheepstealer, which doesn’t happen in the books.

Sheepstealer tears Denys’s arm off. As his sons try to stop the bleeding, Cannibal swoops in and kills them all. This marks the end of that lineage, which may or may not descend from Maegor the Cruel.

This change in the TV adaptation does not significantly affect the books. The alteration does not impact who ends up with dragons. The shift of Rhaena going after Sheepstealer is the more significant change, and it is viewed negatively by some fans.