House of the Dragon

regarding the starks. at the start both sides call their perspective banners but neither really consider calling on the north because winter is around the corner and the north is so large it would take years for the starks to call their banners and march south in the snow. Well rhaenyra does decide to call on winterfell. 2 years later the winter wolves arrive, these are 2k old men who would not survive the winter, the ones who would "go out hunting" when the snows were piled high, to die and give their families 1 less mouth to feed and a better chance of surviving the winter. They are 100% suicide pact soldiers who volunteer to lead every single vanguard. They meet up with riverrun troops (riverun never called their banners) and go ham on the scattered and splintered troops of the greens. Eventually they all die.

Nearly everyone is dead at this point by the way. Years of war has lead to most lords both high and low dying, their heirs, their heirs heirs, etc. The lords of virtually every single house are infant sons or nephews. The time period after the war is called the time of regents because mothers and aunts and shit rule on behalf of their infant sons. Most of the commoners are women, old men and green boys as well, all the men have marched off for one lord or another and died.

All the Targaryens, shit everyone in the cast of this show are dead except aegon II (alicents first born) and a 9 year old aegon III (rhaenyra and daemons 1st born). Aegon II is and has been king for the duration, but his wife & children are dead and he was horribly wounded (and went in to hiding) early on in the fighting. His small council poisons him and puts Aegon III on the throne to be ruled by a regency (them).

Finally cregan stark arrives, but the war is over. But its dead of winter, him and his 10k men also all came here to fight a war and die but the war is over and there is no one left to fight. So he names himself hand of the king, executes everyone involved with all the betrayal and backstabbing, the small council grand maester high septon, literally everyone. They all decide to take the black except the clubfoot (the strong who murdered his father/brother in the show, the one who loves alicent or whatever), so in stark tradition cregan cuts off the clubfoots head with ice, then marches on everyone who hasnt bent the knee and forces everyone to, appoints a regent and then fucks off and marches home.

Many years later viserys (aegon IIIs little brother, rhaenyra and daemons 2nd born son) turns up having been the captive of a lysene pirate prince.

See when the war started rhaenyra had sent her two youngest sons by ship to the free cities to keep them safe, the ships were attacked. Aegon flew away on his dragon back to westeros but viserys had been captured and living in lys the whole time. This is like a decade later ao i doubt theyll even cover the return.

anyway, of the current cast only alicent, corlys, and aegon III survive the war, and aegon on the show is the toddler, maybe 3 years old? Corlys dies a year later of old age, alicent lives for many years, aegon III is king. Edit: well daemon and laenas daughters live too, one becomes a silent sister or something i forget.

Oh and by cast im including dragons, btw. The sole surviving dragon hasnt hatched yet. Well there is another one who fucks off to live in the mountains with its rider but they are never seen again, though they are worshipped by the hill tribes for a while