What Game of Thrones spin-offs explain the history of Westeros before the original series?

## The short version: start with House of the Dragon

If you want an actual released TV spin-off that fills in Westerosi history before Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon is the answer. It is set roughly two centuries earlier—HBO has also used the more exact comparison of 172 years before Daenerys Targaryen’s birth—and adapts the Targaryen history in George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood. Instead of beginning with the Starks, Lannisters, and Baratheons, it takes viewers back to a time when House Targaryen still rules from the Iron Throne and has many dragons. The show is specifically about the Dance of the Dragons, a Targaryen family civil war. That event matters enormously to the world of Game of Thrones: it devastates the ruling family, destroys much of their dragon power, and leaves a dynasty that never fully gets back what it lost. So it explains Targaryen history rather than all of Westeros from the beginning.

## What House of the Dragon teaches you

House of the Dragon makes the original show’s Targaryen backstory feel much less abstract. In Game of Thrones, viewers hear that the family once conquered the continent with dragons, then fell apart long before Robert Baratheon took the throne. House of the Dragon shows one of the biggest reasons why. King Viserys I Targaryen names his daughter, Rhaenyra, as his heir, but powerful people around him expect his son Aegon II to rule instead. Once Viserys dies, those rival claims explode into war. The point is not simply that the family is cruel or unstable; it is that its system of succession is weak when tradition, gender, personal ambition, and dragons all pull in different directions. Rhaenyra and Aegon II each have supporters who believe their side has the better legal or moral claim. The war turns a private family dispute into a continent-wide disaster.

## Best episodes for the history lesson

For the foundations of the conflict, House of the Dragon Season 1, Episode 1, “The Heirs of the Dragon,” is essential. It opens on the Great Council, where the realm chooses Viserys over Rhaenys Targaryen, then shows why the question of a woman inheriting the throne never really goes away. Viserys naming Rhaenyra heir becomes the central political fault line. Season 1’s later time jumps can be a little dizzying, but Episodes 6 through 10 bring the adult generation into focus: Rhaenyra’s children, Alicent Hightower’s children, the competing court factions, Viserys’s death, and the formal split between Rhaenyra’s Blacks and Aegon II’s Greens. Season 2 moves beyond court plotting and into the wider war, showing how dragon battles and noble alliances tear through Westeros. It is the clearest screen version of why dragons became rare by the time Daenerys arrives.

## A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms fills in a later gap

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is the other major prequel to know about, although the supplied announcement-era information lists it as produced or planned rather than a show with aired episodes. It is based on Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas and takes place about a century before Game of Thrones—well after the Dance of the Dragons and after the main line of dragons has died out. Its heroes are Ser Duncan the Tall, usually called Dunk, and his young companion Egg. Egg is secretly Prince Aegon Targaryen, the boy who will eventually become King Aegon V. Where House of the Dragon is about royal succession and giant dragon warfare, Dunk and Egg is a more ground-level piece of Westerosi history. Their travels can show what ordinary knights, smallfolk, lords, and hedge knights deal with under later Targaryen rule. It connects the dragon-dominated past to the less magical, more politically fragile Westeros of Game of Thrones.

## Aegon’s Conquest would cover the beginning of the dynasty

The most obvious missing chapter is Aegon I Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros, and a project about it has been reported in development. If it is made, it would be set around 300 years before Game of Thrones and tell the story people in the original series constantly refer to: Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys, arriving with their dragons and forcing most of the continent under one crown. That is the event behind the Iron Throne, King’s Landing, and the political idea of the Seven Kingdoms. It would likely be the spin-off best suited to explaining how the Targaryens became rulers in the first place. But it is important not to talk about it as if it already exists. Development reporting is not the same thing as an HBO series order or a completed show. There is no established episode list, finished screen story, or confirmed released canon for Aegon’s Conquest in the material provided.

## What no spin-off has covered yet

No released HBO series fully explains the truly ancient history of Westeros: the Children of the Forest, the Age of Heroes, the building of the Wall, the first Long Night, or the earliest Night’s Watch. Fans sometimes say there was already a Long Night prequel, often calling it Bloodmoon, but that is misleading. HBO made a pilot starring Naomi Watts that was set thousands of years before Game of Thrones, then declined to turn it into a series in 2019. Since it was never released as a regular show, it is not a watchable part of the TV franchise’s story. For those eras, the fuller lore still lives mostly in Martin’s books, especially The World of Ice & Fire and the histories around the main novels. Also, House of the Dragon should not be treated as a perfect visual version of Fire & Blood: that book presents disputed in-universe history, and the HBO show makes its own continuity choices.