In George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book Fire & Blood, Ser Alfred Broome continues as a loyal Black but stays at Dragonstone when Rhaenyra eventually takes King’s Landing. Although King Agegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) escapes, the throne is finally Rhaenyra’s and she names Ser Robert Quince (a character we haven’t yet met) as the castellan of Dragonstone over an enraged Broome. Rhaenyra is eventually betrayed by her dragonseeds, the King’s Landing dragonpit is stormed, and she’s forced to sell her crown to flee back to Dragonstone. She’s met by Ser Alfred Broome at Dragonstone but is unaware that Aegon II is hiding on the island.
Martin’s “The Rise of the Dragon” chapter mentions how the hiding Greens were able to find allies among the Dragonstone garrison, including Ser Alfred, thanks to promises of a lordship, land, and wealth. During the Fall of Dragonstone, there’s a fight between Aegon II’s dragon Sunfyre and Baela Targaryen’s (Bethany Antonia) Moondancer. Ser Alfred personally kills Ser Robert but is stopped from taking out Baela. He then leads the party to meet Rhaenyra when she lands on Dragonstone, with the former being surprised to see the charred corpse of Ser Robert.
With her Queensguard slain, Rhaenyra is taken before Aegon II and fed to Sunfyre in one of the Dance of the Dragon’s most iconic moments. As for Ser Alfred, he remains loyal to Aegon II for the rest of the war. Don’t worry, he meets a suitably grisly end when he’s eventually shoved off a drawbridge and left to writhe in agony for days atop iron spikes. All these events are still a long way off, and it looks like season 2 might not even get as far as the famed Battle of the Gullet. Still, House of the Dragon is good at foreshadowing, like a season 1 Easter egg teasing Rhaenyra’s fiery demise. Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) made a throwaway reference to Rhaenyra’s end in Game of Thrones season 4, while the increased focus on Ser Alfred has us confident it’ll play out in a similar way.
Ser Alfred Broome’s betrayal is the kind we’ve seen several times in the source material and the live-action Game of Thrones, like Petyr Baelish betraying Ned Stark as a power move or Walder Frey executing the Red Wedding because Robb Stark broke his oath. Ser Alfred Broome selling Rhaenyra out to the Greens because she doesn’t make him castellan of Dragonstone seems even more trivial, so expect him to become Public Enemy No. 1 if this twist makes it into the series. At least Vhagar won’t be the most hated character anymore.
As House of the Dragon continues to heat up, the in-fighting only gets worse, and there are betrayals on both sides. Broome might be a minor character for now, but assuming that showrunner Ryan Condal stays close to the source material with Rhaenyra’s fate, he’s someone we should all be keeping our eyes on as one of the Seven Kingdom’s most brutal betrayers and Rhaenyra’s very own Judas.
