Full spoilers for House Of The Dragon Season 3 through Episode 8, “The Treasons of Tumbleton,” follow. A clearly marked section later in this article discusses Ulf White’s story in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood.

Quick answer: Ulf betrays Rhaenyra because becoming Silverwing’s rider convinces him that he deserves status and respect, while Rhaenyra and Daemon continue treating him like a lowborn man who should be grateful simply to serve them. Ormund Hightower exploits that resentment by promising Ulf recognition and Driftmark.

But the Season 3 finale complicates the answer. Ulf does not really betray Rhaenyra in order to become loyal to Ormund. Once Ormund beats and humiliates him at Tumbleton, Ulf realizes that the Greens see him exactly the same way the Blacks did: they want Silverwing, not Ulf.

So Ulf attacks Rhaenyra’s army, then turns Silverwing on Ormund too. By the end of Tumbleton, his allegiance is essentially his own.

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Why Does Ulf Turn Against Rhaenyra?

Ulf’s betrayal does not happen because of one argument or sudden change of heart. Season 3 gradually shows him discovering that claiming Silverwing changed his power without changing how the people above him see him.

Before becoming a dragonrider, Ulf was an ordinary man who liked drinking, telling stories, and claiming a questionable connection to House Targaryen. Then Silverwing accepted him, and suddenly one of the largest dragons in Westeros answered to a man almost nobody important had previously cared about.

That changes Ulf’s understanding of himself.

Rhaenyra gives him a place in her war, but Ulf increasingly believes that riding Silverwing should mean much more than becoming another soldier who happens to have an enormous dragon. He wants status, wealth, freedom, and recognition. Most of all, he wants the ruling class to acknowledge that his old social position no longer makes sense when he possesses power most noblemen could never dream of having.

Rhaenyra’s court never really solves that problem.

Why Does Daemon Humiliate Ulf?

Daemon sees Ulf as undisciplined, unreliable, and increasingly dangerous. From his perspective, that assessment is not entirely wrong. Ulf drinks too much, enjoys the privileges of his new position, pushes against orders, and often behaves as though claiming Silverwing means nobody can tell him what to do.

So Daemon tries to put him back in his place.

The problem is that “his place” is exactly what Ulf is rebelling against. Every public insult reinforces the idea that the nobles surrounding Rhaenyra still see the same embarrassing commoner they saw before Silverwing chose him.

Ulf sees the contradiction very clearly. They expect him to risk his life because he possesses extraordinary power while simultaneously demanding that he accept humiliation from people whose authority largely comes from the circumstances of their birth.

Daemon believes he is disciplining a soldier.

Ulf believes Daemon is proving that the Blacks want his dragon but will never respect its rider.

What Does Ormund Hightower Offer Ulf?

Ormund recognizes the opening and offers Ulf exactly what Rhaenyra’s court has failed to provide emotionally: recognition.

He promises status, freedom, and even Driftmark if Ulf turns against Rhaenyra. Whether Ormund could realistically hand Driftmark to him is almost beside the point. Corlys Velaryon is still alive, Alyn has been named his successor, and Ormund does not possess some unquestioned legal power to distribute one of the wealthiest seats in Westeros.

What matters is what the promise communicates.

Ormund is telling Ulf that Silverwing has changed his value.

That is the argument Ulf desperately wants somebody powerful to make. Rhaenyra effectively expects him to be thankful for everything she has already given him. Ormund tells him he should be asking why somebody with a dragon as powerful as Silverwing has not been given more.

It is an incredibly effective recruitment pitch because Ormund understands the grievance underneath Ulf’s behavior.

Does Ormund Actually Respect Ulf?

No.

That becomes the entire point of Ulf’s finale story.

Ormund initially appears to understand Ulf better than Rhaenyra because he recognizes that respect and status matter to him. But Ormund is still exploiting the same basic relationship. He needs Silverwing, and Ulf is the human being attached to her.

The illusion falls apart once the Battle of Tumbleton begins.

Ulf is drunk and missing while both armies have built plans around what Silverwing might do. Ormund eventually finds him passed out and responds by dragging him out, insulting him, and beating him publicly.

Suddenly the difference between Rhaenyra’s side and Ormund’s side disappears.

Ormund promised that Ulf would finally be treated like a man whose dragon had transformed his station. The moment Ulf becomes inconvenient, Ormund reminds him that he still sees a drunken bastard who should obey his betters.

That is when the betrayal becomes something much more interesting than switching teams.

What Does Ulf Do At The Battle Of Tumbleton?

Ulf eventually reaches Silverwing and enters the battle at exactly the moment Daemon’s forces appear to be breaking through Tumbleton.

At first, Ulf confirms the betrayal everyone has been expecting. Silverwing attacks the Black forces, completely changing the balance of the battle and helping destroy Rhaenyra’s attempt to take the town.

But Ulf does not stop there.

When he sees Ormund below during his fight with Roddy the Ruin, Ulf turns Silverwing’s fire toward him. Ormund realizes too late that the dragonrider he thought he had recruited is no longer interested in following his orders either.

Silverwing’s fire engulfs Ormund and Roddy together.

Ulf has now attacked both sides.

Why Does Ulf Kill Ormund Hightower?

Because Ormund makes the same mistake that helped drive Ulf away from Rhaenyra.

He believes that needing Silverwing gives him the right to control Ulf.

Ormund’s recruitment works only as long as Ulf believes the Greens genuinely see him differently. Once Ormund humiliates and beats him, that bargain is exposed as another version of the same hierarchy Ulf already resented.

So when Ulf looks down at Ormund from Silverwing, there is no great political conversion taking place. He is not choosing Rhaenyra again or suddenly deciding that Team Black was right all along.

He is settling a personal account.

The sequence essentially becomes Ulf saying “fuck you too” to everybody who thinks controlling his dragon means controlling him.

Is Ulf Team Green After Tumbleton?

Not in any meaningful emotional sense.

Ulf helps the Greens win the field because his attack on Rhaenyra’s army is one of the main reasons Daemon eventually withdraws. If we are drawing a military map immediately after the battle, Ulf has unquestionably done enormous damage to Team Black.

But Tumbleton makes it very difficult to describe him as a loyal Green.

He kills Ormund, the man who recruited him. He burns through Tumbleton without behaving like someone carefully executing a Green battle plan. And the entire sequence emphasizes how little interest Ulf now has in accepting another noble’s authority simply because that noble offers him something.

He has discovered the thing both sides should have understood from the beginning: Silverwing gives him enough power to become his own political problem.

Did Rhaenyra Cause Ulf’s Betrayal?

Ulf is responsible for his own choices, but Rhaenyra and Daemon absolutely help create the conditions that make betrayal possible.

Their central mistake is believing that access to power should automatically create gratitude.

From Rhaenyra’s perspective, Ulf received more than he could ever reasonably have expected. He went from obscurity to riding a legendary dragon and participating in the queen’s war. She expects him to understand the privilege of his position and behave accordingly.

Ulf sees that relationship differently because he does not believe Rhaenyra gave him Silverwing.

Silverwing chose him.

That means his status no longer feels like a gift from the crown. It feels like something the dragon proved about him independently of the crown.

Once Ulf starts thinking that way, every order becomes negotiable. Every insult becomes intolerable. And every noble who wants to remind him of his birth begins looking like someone trying to deny the reality of the power sitting underneath him.

Why Is Silverwing So Important To Ulf?

Silverwing does more than give Ulf military power. She completely reorganizes his understanding of who he is.

Before Silverwing, Ulf could tell stories about being related to the Targaryens, but those stories did not materially change his life. After Silverwing accepts him, he has physical proof that there is something about him the old social order failed to recognize.

That is intoxicating.

A dragon also makes Ulf unusually difficult to punish. A lord can strip another lord of a title. A queen can dismiss a councilor. A commander can execute a disobedient soldier.

Taking Silverwing away from Ulf is something else entirely.

Rhaenyra did not hand him a sword that can simply be confiscated. She helped create an independent dragonrider whose military power now rivals that of major noble houses.

That is why his resentment is so dangerous.

Why Ulf’s Betrayal Matters To Rhaenyra

Ulf exposes the flaw inside Rhaenyra’s dragonseed strategy.

Finding new riders solved an immediate military problem. Rhaenyra suddenly had access to more dragon power than almost anybody else in Westeros, giving her what looked like an overwhelming advantage against the Greens.

But each new rider also became another human center of power.

Rhaenyra sometimes treats the dragons as though they have simply been added to her military inventory. They have not. Vermithor comes with Hugh. Silverwing comes with Ulf. Seasmoke comes with Addam. Those people have families, grievances, ambitions, fears, and their own ideas about what riding a dragon should entitle them to receive.

Tumbleton reveals what happens when the rider’s interests and the crown’s interests stop being the same thing.

The dragon remains powerful.

The queen simply loses control of where that power is pointed.

Why Does Ulf’s Betrayal Matter To The Battle Of Tumbleton?

Before Ulf appears, Daemon and the Blacks are making real progress. Caraxes destroys the main gate, the Winter Wolves breach the defenses, and Roddy the Ruin reaches Ormund inside the city.

Silverwing changes the battle.

Ulf’s attack turns one of Rhaenyra’s greatest supposed advantages against her own army, creating enough chaos that the original Black plan effectively collapses. Corlys eventually convinces Daemon that continuing the battle no longer serves its objective.

The Blacks retreat.

That means Ulf helps create a Green tactical victory even though he also kills the Green commander responsible for recruiting him.

It is one of the reasons Tumbleton is such a mess to describe in terms of simple winners and losers. Ulf changes the outcome without actually becoming a stable asset for the people who benefit from that outcome.

Read our full breakdown in Who Won The First Battle of Tumbleton?

Why Does Ulf Kill Ormund And Roddy The Ruin?

Ormund is the target. Roddy is caught in the fire.

Roddy the Ruin has reached Ormund and the two men are locked in a brutal fight when Ulf sees them from Silverwing. Roddy has spent the battle searching for exactly this kind of death, while Ormund is desperately trying to survive the collapse of everything he built.

Ulf sends Silverwing’s fire toward Ormund, killing both men.

The moment works because it pays off three stories at once. Roddy gets the spectacular battlefield death he wanted, Ormund dies because he mistreated the dragonrider he believed he had successfully manipulated, and Ulf demonstrates that joining one faction never meant surrendering his anger to it.

For more on the Northern commander caught in the blast, read our Roddy the Ruin explainer.

Does Ulf Betray Rhaenyra In Fire & Blood?

Yes. Major Fire & Blood spoilers for the First Battle of Tumbleton begin here.

In George R.R. Martin’s history, Ulf White and Hugh Hammer become known as the Two Betrayers because both dragonseeds turn against Rhaenyra during the First Battle of Tumbleton.

Ulf rides Silverwing and Hugh rides Vermithor. Instead of defending the Black position, they turn their dragons against Rhaenyra’s forces and help produce a devastating Green victory.

Fire & Blood provides several possible explanations for the betrayal rather than one definitive psychological answer. Wealth, titles, land, ambition, and the realization that possessing enormous dragons gives Hugh and Ulf extraordinary bargaining power all factor into the historical accounts.

The television series makes Ulf’s motivation much more personal.

How Does House Of The Dragon Change The Two Betrayers?

The biggest change is that House Of The Dragon separates Hugh and Ulf.

Ulf still becomes a betrayer, but Hugh does not simply follow the same path at Tumbleton. Hugh’s television story is built around Kat and his increasingly complicated relationship with the crown. He goes to Tumbleton because his wife is there and eventually finds her dead.

Ulf’s story is about status.

That separation gives the two dragonseeds distinct emotional lives instead of having both characters arrive at the same famous historical event for essentially interchangeable reasons.

It also makes Ulf’s turn less about choosing the Greens and more about discovering what Silverwing allows him to refuse.

So Why Did Ulf Betray Rhaenyra?

Ulf betrays Rhaenyra because claiming Silverwing changes what he thinks he deserves, while Rhaenyra and Daemon continue treating him like someone whose status exists only because they allow it.

Ormund sees the resentment and tells Ulf what he desperately wants to hear: Silverwing really has changed who he is, and a man with that kind of power deserves land, status, and respect.

Then Ormund proves that he does not actually believe it either.

That is the final turn in Ulf’s story. He doesn’t simply replace one master with another. At Tumbleton, he realizes both factions have been making variations of the same bargain: we will tell you that you matter as long as your dragon does what we need.

Ulf finally rejects the bargain.

Rhaenyra thought claiming Silverwing gave her another dragon. Ormund thought Ulf’s resentment gave him that dragon instead.

Tumbleton proves they were both wrong.

Silverwing gave Ulf the ability to decide for himself who gets burned.