If you’ve been paying attention to House of the Dragon season two, you’ll have clocked that the show has introduced a seemingly unimportant character named Hugh, a blacksmith. He’s unassuming, but you just know from the way the camera lingers on his face that he’s going to play into something larger as House of the Dragon carries on. Well, thankfully – we’ve got a lot of lore from the books on who this mysterious character might actually be if the show takes from the source material. Here’s a guide to what you need to know about Hugh the blacksmith in House of the Dragon.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Pre warning

We first meet him when a lot of the common folk are speaking to Aemon Targaryen. Hugh the blackmith is amongst them and is seen asking for an advance payment on the weapons he’s been smithing. We see Hugh again later on talking with his wife about the food costs and the money asking, and then later on again as the two try unsuccessfully to get out of King’s Landing when the unrest begins.

In the books, Hugh is actually a dragon rider who gets recruited for his huge physical strength. This happens because Jacaerys in the Fire and Blood book puts out a call for dragonriders who will if they can be successful in mounting a dragon get rewarded with land and glory. Hugh mounts the dragon Vermithor.

We’ve actually already met Vermithor in the season on finale of House of the Dragon – it’s that massive dragon that Daemon met underneath Dragonstone.

In the books, Hugh actually eventually demands to sit on the Iron Throne himself at one point, but it certainly doesn’t go his way. Remains to be seen if that will also happen with Hugh the blacksmith when Fire and Blood gets adapted more across the House of the Dragon seasons.