Helaena Targaryen: The Madness of Knowing the Future

One of my favorite characters in “House of the Dragon” is Helaena Targaryen, and I’m loving how the show presents her attempts to deal with her prophetic abilities.  It’s one of the few shows, books, movies, etc., that I’ve seen really portray the madness of knowing the future in a way that I think is realistic.

Around 20 years ago, I joined a group of experimenters with, let’s say, the esoteric realm.  This group of scientists, New Agers, witches, medical personnel, and military privately took on different short projects including things like interviewing someone who was supposedly possessed (got to use my journalism skills!), participating in exorcisms, attending healing circles,  and practicing remote viewing.   This was part of my research into subjects I planned to include in my Secret Lives of Librarians series of novels in which books to guide humanity through the next extinction event are written and guarded by a secret order of witches in libraries around the world, with the help of the securlar “Historical Society” as well as trained librarians and warriors. Lots of overlap in their participation!

One of the cool things I learned about through this group of experimenters was the story of a particular group of people long ago who reportedly saw “all time as now.”   They could, according to our research, recall memories of their entire lifespan as well as other visions of the future outside of their own lives.  They could “remember the future” events they would live though just as surely as they could remember past events they’d lived through.  They knew how they would die and who would betray them, and yet, they still flourished.

How? I wondered.  How?

I’ve thought a lot about this, which I guess is evident if you’ve read any of the books in the Secret Lives of Librarians universe, particularly those in the Witch Out of Time Mystery-Thrillers within the Librarian universe.  In my fictional world, the gift of omnipresence is offered upon initiation into the Daeganean priesthood.   Most do not accept it because they go mad from knowing too much, much like we see Helaena Targaryen so overstimulated, over agitated, and overwhelmed and unable to distinguish dream from reality.

In “House of the Dragon,” not all Targaryens have the gift—or curse—of prophecy but the “Dragon Dreamers” do.  In some cases, like with Helaena Targaryen’s father, Vicerys I, have had only one dream, or vision.  (I can’t recall if that happened in the show, book (Fire and Blood), or both. Others were bigger “dreamers,” like Daenys Targaryen, who warned her father of the Doom of Valyira.  Helaena Targaryen, however, seems to be a walking oracle because she sees not just her future but all the way to Danaerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, and the Night King. This is obvious if you freeze images of Helaena’s chamber and study what she’s scribbled on the walls.   By the way, Danaerys also has dreams.  I’ve heard it suggested that the Targaryens’ dragon dreams are related to their dragon bonds; that’s not a concern within the Order of Daegan.

(I’m just realizing that there are a lot of AE names in this post.  My books aren’t at all related to George R.R. Martin’s stories—I’ve just always liked the two vowels together in a name!)

The way Helaena Targaryen’s psychic abilities overwhelm her is much how I envisioned my own fictional characters “knowing too much” of their future.   I have Lilah encounter this in The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks when Raven brushes his bind rune tattoo (a sign of his membership in the priesthood) against the scar on her wrist and she sees everything at once, including Charlie’s real intentions and flashes of the future.

I pulled myself out of the vision, shut it down, shoved it away while dragging in a loud gasp. Raven had given me this gift so I could see the truth behind Charlie’s actions—know why he was feeling what he felt instead of guessing at it and always blaming myself. I couldn’t do this, though. It wasn’t a gift I wanted. It was too overwhelming, and I had to believe in Charlie. — Lilah in The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks

In Altered Destiny, the first book in the Witch Out of Time Mystery-Thrillers, Veronica was born with the gift of knowing.  Okay, maybe not born with it.  She’s a “walk-in” and had the gift of knowing in her past life but instead of dying in that life, she left her body to save her lover, and was ritually prevented from returning.  When the binding was released a thousand years later, she walked into the body of a dying child and grew up knowing her entire future in this newest incarnation … until her mortal enemy uses magic to shift Veronica’s timeline to prevent her from leading the Daeganean priesthood when the coming pole shift occurs. At the start of this series within the Secret Lives of Librarians universe, only Veronica and her adversary have the gift of knowing and know that they’ll live to see the apocalypse and how it happens—or were to live that long until the adversary starting playing around with timelines.

So Queen Helaena Targaryen’s visions and madness makes complete sense to me, especially when the rat-catchers break into her chamber.  She doesn’t fight it.  She’s resigned to what happens next.  Because she knows what’s coming.

This is the part that intrigues me:  if you knew (remembered) what happens next in your life or that the person you love will betray you and how, would you still choose them?  If you knew exactly how you would die, would you take action to avoid it?

If you see the future, how much is too much? If you knew what’s coming—and that you couldn’t change it—how could you go on?