For those far from the United Kingdom, the stage play Game of Thrones: The Mad King has sparked far more than curiosity.

For decades, we have known this story through the fragmented memories of those who survived it. For Robert Baratheon, Rhaegar Targaryen kidnapped Lyanna, the woman he loved, and started a war. For Ned Stark, everything remained buried beneath promises, guilt, and silence. To Targaryen admirers, Rhaegar was the perfect prince who might have saved the realm from his own father. To the rest of Westeros, Robert was the hero who overthrew the Mad King and ended a dynasty that could no longer govern.

The truth, as almost always happens in A Song of Ice and Fire, appears to be far more complicated. Accounts from those who have already seen the play must still be treated with caution, especially because this is a theatrical adaptation and not an automatic confirmation of what George R. R. Martin intends to reveal in the books. Even so, the full picture is fascinating because it does not merely alter a few minor episodes: it changes the meaning of practically everything we thought we knew.

The Rebellion ceases to be merely the story of a man trying to rescue a kidnapped woman and becomes the tragedy of an entire generation that confused love, duty, politics, and prophecy until it destroyed its own world. Now that this version exists, it is difficult not to imagine that it may eventually become the basis for the series fans have requested most since A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms received its adaptation: Robert’s Rebellion, finally told from the beginning.

Before Lyanna, Robert had already lost everything

The play devotes considerable time to Robert Baratheon’s youth and to a tragedy the books mention but never explore in depth: the death of his parents. Steffon Baratheon and Cassana Estermont had been sent by King Aerys II to the Free Cities to find a bride of Valyrian descent for Prince Rhaegar. The mission was unsuccessful and, on their return, when the Windproud was already within sight of Storm’s End, a storm destroyed it in Shipbreaker Bay.

Robert watched his parents die and could do nothing to save them. In the play, the experience leaves him with profound trauma, marked by recurring nightmares of drowning and episodes in which he screams about the tide, as though he were still watching the ship being smashed against the rocks. In an especially cruel gesture, Aerys later gives him a model of his parents’ vessel: a box filled with water and floating pieces of wood.

Robert’s youth, therefore, becomes far more painful than the image of the smiling, invincible warrior preserved in the memory of the Seven Kingdoms. He remains charismatic, strong, and capable of defeating practically any man in combat, but he already carries a loss he has never been able to process. This does not absolve the adult Robert of his mistakes, violence, or irresponsibility, but it helps us understand his impulsiveness, his destructive relationship with alcohol, his constant need for war, and, above all, his inability to endure further loss.

Lyanna did not create Robert’s wound, but she eventually became the name he gave to all the pain that came before her.

Harrenhal was not merely a tournament

The great Tourney at Harrenhal has always been treated as one of the most mysterious moments in the recent history of Westeros. It was where the realm’s leading Houses gathered, where the Knight of the Laughing Tree appeared, and where Rhaegar won the joust only to place a crown of blue roses in Lyanna Stark’s lap before his wife, Robert, and the entire realm.

The play brings one of the readers’ oldest debates to an end by confirming that Lyanna was the Knight of the Laughing Tree, the mysterious figure who entered the lists to defend Howland Reed’s honor. The revelation reinforces something the story has so often tried to erase: Lyanna was not at Harrenhal merely to be chosen by Rhaegar. She was already acting on her own, confronting more powerful men, and directly interfering in the events that would change Westeros.

Full Guide to Game of Thrones and Westeros

The tournament was also part of a plan to remove Aerys from the Iron Throne. Rhaegar already had the support of several Houses and of men close to him, including Arthur Dayne and Oswell Whent, but he needed to attract more allies, especially among the Great Houses. Harrenhal would therefore function as a political meeting disguised as a celebration.

For the uninitiated, the realm was already living under enormous strain. Aerys II Targaryen, increasingly paranoid, cruel, and unstable, had turned the Iron Throne into a threat to the very nobles meant to sustain it. His son and heir, Rhaegar, was regarded by many as the possible alternative to his father, but he was also deeply involved with an ancient prophecy about the promised prince and believed that his family would play a decisive role in saving the world. At that point, he was married to Elia Martell, with whom he already had two children, while much of the realm was growing increasingly dissatisfied with Aerys and silently waiting for change.

There is also a detail very characteristic of George R. R. Martin: Rhaegar allegedly diverted money from the royal treasury and sent it to the Whents through Oswell to finance the event, which would explain how a House that no longer possessed such wealth managed to stage a tournament on that scale. Aerys’s unexpected arrival compromises the plan, but Elia Martell, Rhaegar’s wife, insists that the strategy continue. Rhaegar was supposed to win, crown his own wife Queen of Love and Beauty, and present the realm with the image of the future royal couple that would replace the Mad King.

Rhaegar wins, but crowns Lyanna. Remembered for decades as one of the first signs of the tragedy, the gesture ceases to be merely a romantic or prophetic moment and also becomes the instant in which Rhaegar abandons a carefully constructed political strategy, publicly chooses personal feeling, humiliates Elia before everyone, and jeopardizes the plan to remove Aerys from power.

The play also gives Robert an important victory at Harrenhal, placing him in combat against Oberyn Martell and Gregor Clegane. It is after this triumph that Ned leaps into his arms, demonstrating the almost brotherly intimacy between them. This is a considerable departure from the published material, but it helps establish Robert as the great warrior of his generation even before the Rebellion begins.

Rhaegar knew exactly who his father was

Aerys was not unaware of his son’s conspiracy. In the play, father and son confront each other, and the king offers Rhaegar his own neck so that the prince may kill him. When Rhaegar draws back, Aerys mocks him and calls him a coward.

The scene matters because it denies Rhaegar any possibility of claiming ignorance. He knew his father posed a threat to the realm, was preparing to replace him, and found himself with a direct opportunity to act, yet he could not go through with it. His failure is no longer merely the consequence of a misread prophecy or an impulsive love, but also of a political hesitation that would cost thousands of lives.

Rhaegar knew Aerys was no longer capable of ruling and intended to replace him on the Iron Throne, but he could not confront him at the decisive moment. Even though he recognized his father’s madness and cruelty, he was unwilling to become a kinslayer and carry the dishonor of spilling his own family’s blood. Instead of acting directly, he tried to orchestrate a political transition, but hesitated for too long and went to war before he could accomplish it.

Rhaegar, Lyanna, and the true Song of Ice and Fire

Rhaegar is introduced singing in High Valyrian, and the music is said to be the literal Song of Ice and Fire, a composition connected to the prophecy that haunts his family. It is this song, rather than merely his beauty, title, or the fascination inspired by the prince, that captures Lyanna’s attention and leads her to seek him out during the feast.

The connection between them begins less as instant passion than as a kind of recognition. Lyanna also has dreams and a sensitivity connected to the ancient powers of the Starks. She is presented as a greenseer, capable of communicating with Rhaegar through dreams and sharing visions of the future. Together, they even see Daenerys and her dragons.

This is where the play makes one of its greatest reversals. For years, we imagined Rhaegar as the man obsessed with a prophecy who persuaded a young woman to abandon her family and fiancé. The new version turns Lyanna into an active participant in that interpretation and, at certain moments, perhaps even more committed than he is to the idea that the two of them are part of a greater destiny.

Rhaegar loses faith, while Lyanna appears to recover it and restore his belief. After learning of her father’s and brother’s deaths, she feels guilty but begins to believe that so much destruction must serve some purpose. It is a profoundly human response: when confronted with unbearable suffering, she seeks a narrative that will make it less absurd and more bearable.

Lyanna concludes that their child may be the Prince That Was Promised. Their relationship, therefore, is born neither solely of love nor solely of prophecy. The two elements begin to feed off each other. Rhaegar and Lyanna love each other, but they also believe their love is part of a larger plan, and the tragedy lies precisely in that conviction.

Elia Martell was not a passive victim

Perhaps no character is transformed as much by the play as Elia Martell. In the books, we know she was gentle, intelligent, and physically delicate, but her existence is almost always narrated through the violence inflicted upon her. Elia remains the abandoned wife, the mother whose children were murdered, and the woman raped and killed by Gregor Clegane.

In the play, however, she becomes one of the story’s central political players. Her marriage to Rhaegar is cordial, and the two share trust and intimacy, although Elia understands the union primarily as a political alliance and prioritizes the Martells’ position in the realm. She takes part in the plan to remove Aerys from the throne, and a significant part of the strategy was apparently devised by her.

At the same time, Elia is the one who tries to restrain Rhaegar’s prophetic obsession, insisting that dreams should not dictate political decisions. She wants her husband to act like a future king, gather allies, and overthrow Aerys intelligently. When Rhaegar crowns Lyanna at Harrenhal, Elia is furious and leaves the stands, which prevents her later tolerance of the young Stark from turning her into a convenient saint in her husband’s love story.

Elia is wounded and humiliated. Rhaegar’s gesture, even if motivated by love, destroys a carefully organized strategy and publicly exposes his wife. Later, however, Elia and Lyanna develop a relationship of their own and exchange letters by raven. Elia even considers the possibility of Rhaegar having two wives, like Aegon the Conqueror, reconciling a political union with one founded on love.

One of those letters, however, is intercepted by Varys. That is how he discovers Rhaegar’s location and arranges for Gerold Hightower to be sent to find him. The detail gives dramatic purpose to the correspondence between Elia and Lyanna and explains how the Crown manages to locate the prince after his disappearance.

Even so, there is no secret marriage between Rhaegar and Lyanna in the play, nor is his union with Elia annulled. This makes the story quite different from the HBO series, which turned Jon into the legitimate heir by revealing a clandestine marriage. In the play, Jon remains the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, but the question of his legitimacy is unresolved, perhaps because it ultimately matters less than the burden his origins might represent.

Ashara Dayne and the loves History erased

The play also gives Ashara Dayne a new story. She became involved with Brandon Stark, conceived his child, and gave birth to a stillborn baby. At the same time, Ashara and Elia were lovers, sharing a relationship far deeper than anything indicated in the books.

Ashara loved Elia and also Brandon. During a dance with Ned, she speaks naturally about the possibility of loving more than one person. It is a significant change and probably one of the choices most clearly created for the theatrical adaptation. In the books, Ashara’s connection to Brandon is only a suspicion, while her possible romance with Ned has fueled debate since the saga began. I believed in it myself as Ned’s tragic love story, not the one involving Catelyn, but the one he shared with Ashara.

The play rearranges these relationships to bring Ashara closer to Elia and give both women more complex emotional and political lives. Ashara’s suicide is not shown, just as Ned is not seen returning Dawn directly to her. He merely orders that the sword be returned to House Dayne.

Lyanna did not hate Robert

The relationship between Robert and Lyanna is also given more nuance. She does not love him, but neither does she hate him. She recognizes his charisma and shows him affection, especially when trying to comfort him over the trauma of the shipwreck. They even kiss, but Lyanna bites him to end the kiss and push him away.

The scene helps us understand the intensity of Robert’s later obsession. Lyanna was not merely an unknown woman he transformed into a fantasy without any real contact between them. There was affection, perhaps even some attraction, but she did not want the life Robert and their families had planned.

Lyanna sought something beyond becoming a lord’s wife and the mother of his children. Rhaegar represented love, mystery, music, knowledge, and destiny, while Robert represented a life that had already been decided by other people. She chooses Rhaegar, and that choice does not need to turn Robert into a villain to remain devastating.

Aerys turns the crisis into war

However grave Rhaegar and Lyanna’s mistakes may be, Aerys is the one who turns the scandal into war. When Brandon Stark arrives in King’s Landing demanding that Rhaegar come out, Aerys arrests him and summons Rickard Stark. The king murders them both monstrously: Rickard is burned alive, while Brandon dies trying to reach a sword to save him.

The play shows these deaths onstage, adapting the violence to the resources of the theater. From that moment on, any possibility of resolving the crisis politically disappears. When Aerys demands that Jon Arryn surrender Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon, the Lord of the Vale refuses and calls his banners, formally beginning the Rebellion.

Rhaegar and Elia were already conspiring to remove Aerys; had the coup taken place sooner, the war might have been avoided. Instead, the realm becomes trapped between a mad king, an absent prince, and families now fighting for their own survival.

Robert and Rhaegar might have been friends

One of the play’s most painful choices is to give Robert and Rhaegar a moment of closeness at Harrenhal. The two speak and connect through grief, making their later confrontation even more tragic. Robert does not merely kill a symbol or a man he never knew, but someone with whom he shared a moment of vulnerability and who later came to represent everything he believed he had lost.

At the Trident, Rhaegar experiences a dragon dream in the middle of the battle. The vision is presented onstage through puppetry, including a huge dragon and a tiny figure of the prince standing before it. Distracted by prophecy, Rhaegar becomes vulnerable, allowing Robert to strike him.

After the first blow, Robert continues to hammer his body repeatedly, consumed by rage. In the books, Rhaegar dies beneath Robert’s warhammer, and his rubies scatter into the river. The play transforms that victory into an almost ritualistic act of destruction in which Robert tries to eliminate not only his opponent, but everything he believes he lost because of him.

Rhaegar does not speak any woman’s name before he dies, nor is he given a grand farewell. He simply dies, perhaps one of the production’s harshest and most coherent choices. The man who spent his life searching for meaning in prophecy ends it reduced to the immediate brutality of war.

Jon and Daenerys beneath the same comet

The play creates a direct parallel between Jon and Daenerys. On the same night, beneath a red comet, Rhaegar conceives Jon with Lyanna while Aerys conceives Daenerys with Rhaella. The difference between the two scenes could not be more brutal.

Jon is born from a relationship of love, although one surrounded by irresponsibility, secrecy, and blood, while Daenerys is born from violence. Rhaella appears marked by her husband’s abuse, and Elia and Ashara try to prevent her from being taken to Aerys. Even so, the queen submits, speaking of the duty that has been imposed upon her throughout her life.

Rhaella then curses the gods. If she conceives a child, she says, it will not be the son Aerys desires, but a vengeful daughter who will bring back the dragons and burn the kingdoms. The line gives Daenerys an almost mythical origin, tied to her mother’s suffering and the desire to see the violence endured by the family transformed into vengeance.

The play does not confirm whether Jon or Daenerys is the Prince That Was Promised. Both are conceived beneath the comet, leaving the interpretation open. It could be Jon, it could be Daenerys, it could be both, or perhaps neither corresponds exactly to what Rhaegar and Lyanna imagined. As always with George R. R. Martin’s prophecies, the danger lies less in the words than in the certainty of those who believe they have understood them.

The fall of King’s Landing

The taking of King’s Landing follows the story in the books in broad terms. Tywin Lannister arrives, feigning loyalty and gains entry to the city while his men begin the sack. Jaime kills Aerys before the king can burn King’s Landing with wildfire and takes his seat on the Iron Throne.

The play, however, places Robert in the hall alongside his men, while Tywin and Cersei enter from the other side. This contradicts the chronology of the books, in which Ned arrives first and finds Jaime sitting on the throne. Robert, wounded at the Trident, only appears later.

We also see Cersei persuade Jaime not to leave the Kingsguard after breaking his oath by killing Aerys. She convinces him to remain so that the two of them can continue being together and their future children can occupy the Iron Throne, transforming their incest not merely into forbidden passion, but into a dynastic project.

The Tower of Joy

At the Tower of Joy, Arthur Dayne kills almost all of Ned’s men after Oswell Whent’s death, until the confrontation is reduced to the two of them. Howland Reed, who had been knocked down by Gerold Hightower, recovers and attacks Arthur from behind, slitting his throat. Arthur still tries to fight, but Ned delivers the final blow.

The scene preserves the essence of the version suggested by the books and shown by HBO: Ned never defeated the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms alone. Dawn, the ancestral sword of House Dayne, is given an almost supernatural glow, although there is no confirmation that it possesses any magical power. It is a visual solution that highlights the legendary weapon and heightens the mythical dimension of the confrontation.

Inside the tower, Lyanna is dying after giving birth to her son. She asks Ned not to tell Jon about Rhaegar, their love, or the prophecy, insisting that the boy should have the right to choose his own fate.

That request profoundly changes her story. Lyanna spent part of her youth believing that her life and her child were bound to a prophecy, but in the end, she appears to understand the burden that belief imposed on everyone. She does not want Jon to grow up imprisoned by the same narrative that consumed Rhaegar and helped destroy their generation.

Lyanna also asks to see Winterfell one last time. She is not ready to die and loves Rhaegar until the end, but she feels that, with his death, some part of her has also disappeared. She is not a heroine celebrating her own sacrifice, but a terrified young woman who longs for home and has finally become aware of the cost of the decisions she made.

Ned’s secret and Benjen’s knowledge

Benjen knows that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna’s son, which helps answer one of the saga’s oldest questions: why Ned’s younger brother never appears to investigate the boy’s origins and why he joins the Night’s Watch so early.

According to the play, Benjen helped Lyanna and Rhaegar escape and would therefore carry some of the guilt for the destruction of his own family. His decision to go to the Wall can be interpreted as duty, flight, or penance, perhaps a combination of all three.

Bran also appears indirectly at the Tower of Joy. As in the series, he watches the past alongside Bloodraven and calls out to Ned. Ned hears the voice but does not understand where it comes from. His inclusion connects the play to the saga’s present and reinforces the idea that this entire story continues to be watched and reinterpreted by the next generation.

Ned and Robert: brothers divided by morality

Ned and Robert’s friendship is presented as deep and genuine. After Robert’s victory at Harrenhal, Ned leaps into his arms; after Lyanna’s death, Robert collapses sobbing into his friend’s embrace. These moments help explain why Ned continues to love Robert even after witnessing his decline as king.

Ned does not see only the irresponsible monarch he will encounter years later, but the young man who was practically his brother. Even so, they begin the new reign divided by a moral difference that cannot be ignored.

Ned condemns the murder of Elia and her children. When Robert orders the deaths of Viserys and the infant Daenerys, he even kneels before his friend and begs him not to kill children. The man willing to lie for the rest of his life to protect Jon can never accept that innocents should be punished for their parents’ crimes.

Robert, by contrast, turns fear and loss into a desire for extermination. The Rebellion ends, but his vengeance continues, sustained by the conviction that only the complete destruction of the Targaryens can restore some sense of security to him.

“Jon Snow”

The play ends in Winterfell’s godswood, with Ned standing before Catelyn and carrying his sister’s son, the child he will have to present as the result of an affair that never happened. After kings, coups, prophecies, tournaments, dragons, romances, and massacres, the final line is simply: “Jon Snow.”

It is a powerful ending because it reduces the grandeur of the entire war to an intimate decision. Ned chooses to protect a child, destroy his own reputation, hurt Catelyn without being able to explain why, and carry alone a truth that could start another war.

The Rebellion topples a dynasty, but its true conclusion lies with that boy hidden in the North and with the silence of a man willing to be considered dishonorable to keep him alive.

What the play changes from the books and the series

In the books, the Rebellion remains shrouded in mystery. We know that Rhaegar probably intended to remove Aerys and that Lyanna did not seem to love Robert, but almost everything is told by people who did not know the full story or reconstructed it many years later.

In the HBO series, Rhaegar and Lyanna loved each other, married in secret, and had Aegon Targaryen, the legitimate heir to the Iron Throne. The play presents another version, in which there is no secret marriage, Jon is not named Aegon, and Elia is not legally cast aside.

Lyanna ceases to be merely a young woman in love and becomes an active participant in the prophecy, as well as being confirmed as the Knight of the Laughing Tree. Rhaegar does not act only because of destiny, but chooses love over political duty and draws back when allowed to confront Aerys directly. Elia takes part in the plan to overthrow the king, tries to prevent her husband from becoming lost in dreams, and remains in contact with Lyanna. Robert is already deeply traumatized before he loses her. Benjen knows the secret, Ashara and Elia are given a relationship absent from the published material, Jon Connington disappears, and part of his function is transferred to Oswell Whent. The chronology of Robert’s arrival in King’s Landing is also altered.

The central events remain the same: Aerys murders the Starks, Jon Arryn rebels, Robert kills Rhaegar, Jaime kills Aerys, Ned finds Lyanna, and takes Jon to Winterfell. What changes is the lens through which those events are viewed.

A war in which everyone believed they were right

The simplest version says Robert started a war for love. The Targaryen version claims that a usurper destroyed a dynasty. The romantic version argues that Rhaegar and Lyanna sacrificed everything for a forbidden passion. The play appears to reject all these simplifications.

Rhaegar loved Lyanna, but humiliated Elia, plotted a political coup, and disappeared while the realm collapsed. Lyanna chose Rhaegar, but tried to turn the deaths of her father and brother into part of a grand destiny because acknowledging the absurdity of that tragedy may have been unbearable. Robert suffered profound losses, but converted his pain into violence and began justifying the murder of children. Elia saw the political reality more clearly, although she also tried to keep her family at the center of power. Ned won a war and spent the rest of his life protecting innocents from the consequences of that victory.

Perhaps this is the true story of Robert’s Rebellion: not a war caused by a single lie, but by several incompatible truths. A man loved a woman who did not love him in the same way; that woman wanted to choose her own life; a prince believed he could save the world; a wife tried to save the realm; a king destroyed everyone around him; and a prophecy offered far too much meaning to people who could no longer bear reality.

The result was a war that overthrew a dynasty, killed thousands, and left a child hidden in the North. In the end, however, Lyanna appears to understand what Rhaegar never could: a prophecy may point toward a path, but it should not take possession of a life. That is why her final wish is not for Jon to save Westeros, fulfill a mission, or claim a throne, but for him to have the freedom she herself sought and never fully found, choosing his own fate.

And yes, all of this could become the basis for a future HBO series. Shall we bet on it?