“House of the Dragon” Season 3 kicking off with The Battle of the Gullet has catapulted it into the highest echelon of battles seen in the HBO franchise, but not every skirmish gets its due.
The second episode of Season 3 finds Daemon (Matt Smith) celebrating a major win thanks to his Riverlands army teaming with their new Stark allies. The soldiers around the campfires are referring to the battle as a Fishfeed, which is sure to perk up the ears of book readers. Although it was glossed over, the Fishfeed was actually one of the bloodiest battles of the Targaryen civil war.
This is far from the first time “House of the Dragon” or “Game of Thrones” cut around major battles in the various wars the franchise has chronicled. Often this comes down to budget concerns, but if fans are riding high from Battle of the Gullet, there have been plenty of fights left on the cutting room floor.
Below are breakdowns of the biggest battles “House of the Dragon” and “Game of Thrones” could not make time for during the show’s run for one reason or another.
House of the Dragon
The Battle of the Burning Mill
The Battle of the Burning Mill is lightly featured in Season 2, Episode 3 and is considered to be the first true skirmish of The Dance of the Dragons civil war. It sparked off due to two families — the Blackwoods and the Brackens — finally acting on their generations-long feud with one another.
The Blackwoods and Brackens feud has only grown stronger with Westeros being divided on whether Aegon (Team Green) or Rhaenyra (Team Black) should be on the Iron Throne. The Blackwoods are Team Black and the Brackens Team Green; so when a land border dispute devolves into shouting about which person the other family supports, a fight breaks out and leads to the first bloody moment of what would be the coming war.
The battle signified that the Blacks had much more power and support through Westeros, despite reputation damaging moments like Blood and Cheese than Aegon and the Greens thought.
The Fishfeed
The Battle by the Lakeshore – which came to be known as The Fishfeed by people who talked about it later – earned its infamy in The Dance of the Dragons for being the bloodiest land battle during the entire war. We only see the aftermath of it in Season 3, Episode 2 of “House of the Dragon.”
The bloody affair was mostly fought by a contingent of Lannisters (in support of Aegon) and Starks with other northmen (who arrived after being convinced by Jace to side with Rhaenyra). The Lannisters were met on the shores of the God’s Eye Lake by Roderick Dustin — known during the war as Roddy the Ruin — and 2000 of his Winter Wolves mounted units. The Winter Wolves charged on the Lannisters numerous times and took hellish casualties themselves in their victory.
Game of Thrones
The Battle of the Green Fork
The Battle of the Green Fork is, like the next entry on this list, one of the first major military conflicts in the War of the Five Kings, which breaks out in the wake of King Robert Baratheon’s death. It is a battle between the Lannister forces and northern armies in the Riverlands, and it is one that the Lannisters’ soundly win, with Tyrion leading his clan of Vale mountainmen into combat.
The battle is briefly featured in “Game of Thrones” Season 1, Episode 9. However, the HBO series skips over the entirety of the Battle of the Green Fork when Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) is knocked unconscious. The outcome is largely the same, with Tywin (Charles Dance) begrudgingly celebrating the deaths of 2,000 northmen while also learning that Robb Stark (Richard Madden) willingly split his army’s forces in order to divert the Lannisters’ focus. Despite being a loss for the northern forces, the Battle of the Green Fork directly sets up Robb’s capture of Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in the next battle on this list.
The Battle of Whispering Wood
The Battle of Whispering Wood is one of the first major battles in the War of the Five Kings in “Game of Thrones.” Only the aftermath celebrations for a young Robb Stark and the true spoils of the clash – the capture of Jaime Lannister – is seen toward the end of Season 1.
In the books, Robb used a small force led by his uncle The Blackfish to lure Jaime out of siege that his forces are holding them in. The over-eager Kingslayer charges out to take the legendary fighter and the small force with larger – though importantly not complete – force of his own. The Blackfish’s army manages to pull Jaime and his forces all the way to where the rest of Robb’s forces are lying in wait. It served as a decisive win for the young Stark that managed to earn more trust to his side. Jaime’s capture also led him to being eventually escorted by Brienne of Tarth back to King’s Landing which sent him on his own redemptive character arc.
The Battle of the Camps
Riverrun is technically besieged two times in George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” novels. The second appears, in part, in “Game of Thrones” Season 6 when Jaime Lannister travels to the besieged House Tully stronghold to secure it for House Frey in return for their help with the Red Wedding. However, that moment is not the first time that Riverrun is besieged by the Lannisters in Martin’s novels.
Early in the War of the Five Kings, Jaime leads his host of westermen against Riverrun, a move which allows him to briefly capture Ser Edmure Tully (Tobias Menzies). After then laying the groundwork for a siege of Riverrun, Jaime is ambushed and captured by Robb Stark in the Battle of the Whispering Wood. Robb has Jaime’s scouts and outriders killed, which leaves his siege forces outside Riverrun unaware of their commander’s defeat and the northerners’ approach.
Robb’s forces subsequently overrun the three camps of westermen left outside Riverrun by Jaime. The pivotal victory allows the riverlords of the Riverlands to join their forces with the Starks’ and their fellow marching northerners. It is then in the Great Hall of Riverrun during a gathering between the northmen and rivermen there that Rob’s war council also proclaims him the King of the North. This battle is just straight-up not shown in “Game of Thrones,” with Robb’s coronation instead coming in the middle of a, frankly, random forest.
The Siege of Riverrun
“Game of Thrones” brings more of the Siege of Riverrun to life in its sixth season than most of the other entries on this list, but the conflict itself is shrunk down from its book version and only the edges of it are truly shown in the HBO show. Unfolding in the aftermath of the Red Wedding, the Siege of Riverrun is led by the combined Lannister and Frey forces in an attempt to remove House Tully from its ancestral seat and remake it as a new House Frey stronghold.
Ser Brynden Tully, a.k.a. The Blackfish (Clive Russell), the uncle of Lady Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), leads the Tullys’ defense of Riverrun. The Tully defense is eventually broken by Jaime Lannister, who treats first with the Blackfish before threatening Lord Edmure Tully (Tobias Menzies) so terrifyingly that the latter ends up surrendering Riverrun.
“Game of Thrones” Season 6 adapts parts of the siege, including Jaime’s pivotal meetings with both the Blackfish and Edmure, but it skips over most of the actual military conflict itself. Additionally, while the HBO version of the siege ends with the Blackfish’s death, Edmure helps him escape in the books before the Lannisters can take Riverrun.
The Sack of Highgarden
George R.R. Martin has not written the Sack of Highgarden yet. In fact, we do not even know if there is going to be a Sack of Highgarden in his “Song of Ice and Fire” novels. “Game of Thrones” nonetheless skips over the pivotal military conflict in its seventh season. That season’s third installment, titled “The Queen’s Justice,” culminates with Jaime taking a page out of Robb Stark’s playbook by luring Daenerys’ (Emilia Clarke) forces into taking the Lannister stronghold of Casterly Rock while he leads the bulk of his Lannister forces against Daenerys’ strongest Westerosi ally at the time, the Tyrells.
Tyrell matriarch Olenna (Diana Rigg) watches from within Highgarden’s walls as the Lannister forces amass outside, but “The Queen’s Justice” abruptly cuts from the Lannisters’ surprise arrival to Jaime marching confidently through the captured castle’s walls. We do not see the battle itself, only the aftermath, which includes Olenna drinking poison offered to her by Jaime. Having secured a painless death, Olenna then ends “The Queen’s Justice” with the confession that it was her who poisoned Jaime’s son, Joffrey.
It is a pivotal moment in “Game of Thrones,” one which wipes the Tyrells completely off the board, and yet it is a battle that the HBO series still breezes past as quickly as it can.
“House of the Dragon” Season 3 airs Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
