Rhaenys Chose Death Over Retreat

Rhaenys returned to the fight at Rook's Rest because she had already decided she would not leave it. That is the claim the evidence supports and the show refuses to state. After her initial exchange with Vhagar, she had a viable withdrawal path and a justifiable reason to take it. She had downed the king. Her tactical position was as strong as it would ever be. She turned back anyway, and the question the theory presses is not whether she miscalculated but what she already knew.

Aemond's deliberate restraint sharpens this reading to its hardest point. He held Vhagar back while Aegon faced Meleys alone, spending his brother as bait rather than pressing the advantage. Rhaenys, who had survived the initial engagement against a dragon that outweighs Meleys significantly, and who had done it through precision while her opponents relied on indiscriminate dragonfire, read that sky better than anyone in it. She understood she was being drawn into a trap. She flew into it.

The Dragonpit choice is what makes her decision at Rook's Rest legible. When she spared Aegon's family in that earlier moment, the show framed it as restraint. What it may have actually been is the error she spent the rest of her life carrying. Rook's Rest was not a correction of that moment. It was her answer to it. She had once withheld the fire. She did not withhold it again. The Battle of Rook's Rest was decided not by Aemond's cruelty or Aegon's recklessness but by Rhaenys's refusal, fully informed and tactically lucid, to survive a war she no longer believed she was supposed to win.