The fifth in a series about the dragons featured in the Game of Thrones. This issue focuses on Dragons in the Books: George R.R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire.
BIOLOGY
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, dragons are described as four-limbed creatures, with two legs and two wing-arms. In European tradition, this creature was more often called a wyvern, and "dragons" were distinguished as six-limbed creatures, with four regular legs and a pair of wings sprouting out of their back. George R.R. Martin relied on both science and folklore when constructing his dragons, and as he and other fantasy authors have pointed out, in terms of real-life physics, it would be far more difficult for a six-limbed dragon to actually fly than a four-limbed dragon. Also, since all known terrestrial vertebrates (i.e. animals with backbones) have only four limbs, it makes more evolutionary sense to have the dragon's front limbs modified into wings - as with birds, bats and prehistoric pterosaurs - instead of evolving an entirely new set of limbs from nowhere.
In the books, the bones of dragons are black due to their high iron content. In the TV series, the skull Arya Stark sees beneath the Red Keep is shown to be white, through the dragonbone handle on her dagger is black. Dragon bone is especially favored for making bows, as it is stronger and more flexible than wood, making the arrows fly much farther. Dragon bone is also fireproof, giving it another advantage over wooden bows.
Dragons, like certain species of reptiles, amphibians, and fish, have no fixed biological sex; they can shift between male and female to meet the reproductive needs of the species. For example, only the five dragons possessed by House Targaryen survived the Doom of Valyria: if they were all originally female, some would have shifted into males so they could continue to breed with each other. While some real-life animals (mostly fish, certain frogs) are capable of shifting from one sex to the other, it is always a one-way and irreversible process. In contrast, dragons can switch sex back and forth over the course of their lives ("as mutable as flame"). Dragons in "male" or "female" state are visually indistinguishable, apparently possessing no external sex organs. The knowledge that dragons can shift sex was lost after the Doom of Valyria, however: during the first half of the Targaryen dynasty's rule over Westeros while they still had dragons, people apparently just assumed a dragon was male unless it was observed laying eggs, after which they assumed it was always female. In Fire & Blood, Archmaester Gyldayn dismisses the possibility that Vermax secretly laid a clutch of eggs at Winterfell, simply because it was never observed laying eggs before or since, so it was assumed that Vermax was always male. Dragons which frequently laid eggs were assumed to be "she-dragons" and sometimes called "queens" ("Meleys the Red Queen" and "Tessarion the Blue Queen"). Dragons considered female / confirmed egg-layers included Vhagar, Dreamfyre, Silverwing, Meleys, Syrax, and Tessarion.
GROWTH
According to Valyrian records, dragons hatch small - about the size of an average cat – growing larger as they age and as their appetites expand; physically, a dragon never stops growing as long as it remains fed, and it was said that Balerion the Black Dread, Aegon the Conqueror's dragon, was so huge by the time he died that he could swallow an aurochs whole. Dragons can have extremely long lifespans, but Barristan Selmy states that it isn’t known for certain how long the average dragon lives before dying of natural causes. This is largely because dragons were originally trained and used as weapons of war, and thus usually died of violent unnatural causes. Balerion may well have been the only Targaryen dragon that grew to healthy adulthood and simply died from old age.
FEEDING
Something of a joke throughout the novels is that dragons seem to prefer sheep as their main food (though they will eat any animal smaller than themselves if they are hungry enough) - apparently a reference to the myth of St. George and the Dragon. The ancient Valyrians who first trained and rode dragons were shepherds, and as such fed sheep to their mounts. At Meereen, Daenerys's dragons often attack the flocks of local shepherds: In an effort placate Drogon after he breaks loose, various animals are assembled in local fighting pits to try to keep him well-fed enough so that he won't attack any more humans: one pen is filled with bulls, and another filled with a wide variety of exotic animals from across the world (lions, tigers, bears, etc.) which were meant to fight in the pits - but even with this wide selection of potential meals, Drogon still prefers to go after the pen filled with sheep. This may be a reference to the real-life myth of St. George and the dragon: villages being attacked by a dragon placated the beast for a time by leaving it fresh sheep as tribute (though eventually they ran out of sheep, and had to start sacrificing young maidens).
VULNERABILITIES
Aside from their ability to breathe fire, dragons were ferociously strong. They were, however, vulnerable to sustained arrow fire from the ground, to poison, and to attacks from other dragons. According to Tyrion – who has read books on the subject – a dragon's eyes are its only real weak spot (not the throat or underbelly as old wives' tales claim), and that the only certain way to kill a dragon is to pierce its eyes deep enough to puncture the brain behind them: Meraxes, Rhaenys Targaryen's dragon, was killed in precisely this manner during a conflict with the Dornish. Only other dragons are strong enough to pierce a dragon's scales, with tooth and claw.
The bottom line is that while dragons were extremely powerful, they were not outright invincible. Also, given their rarity and the large effort/expense in training them, they were not simply deployed in battle on a whim: Even Aegon the Conqueror was reluctant to commit all of his dragons to a single battle, for fear that they might be overwhelmed by greater numbers. Thus, Aegon took a calculated risk when he unleashed all three of his dragons for the first and only time at the Field of Fire, the battle which secured his conquest.
INTELLIGENCE
Dragons are very intelligent creatures - at times seeming to approach human levels of intelligence and emotion - but they never specifically display it: Dragons can't physically talk, and although they can understand voice commands from humans, this is no more than what a dog or a horse can do. Rather, dragons appear to have some sort of higher, unnatural level of intelligence; they seem to be more in tune with the workings of the universe (i.e. "magic" or "fate" or "nature") than humans are, and possess a sense of mental awareness that humans do not. Somehow, they are often able to sense when the human rider they are bonded with needs them - something hinted at in the Season 5 episode "The Dance of Dragons", when Drogon arrives seemingly out of nowhere to rescue Daenerys.
TRAINING
While the specific methods used in training them are not widely known at the time of the novels (such information was nearly all lost in the Doom of Valyria), it has long been believed that only those who possess Valyrian blood (such as the Targaryens) can bond with and ride dragons. This may be for the simple reason that the Valyrians were the first to accomplish this feat, and dragons do seem to be inherently friendlier around people with at least some Valyrian blood. This may also be a reason for the dragonlords' infamous tradition of incestuous marriage; if their Valyrian blood became too diluted by marrying and reproducing with outsiders, their control over their dragons would become less stable.
The dragonlords of Old Valyria were known to control their mounts with whips, binding spells, and sorcerous horns. Euron Greyjoy claims to have such a horn, which he calls "Dragonbinder". He has given it to his brother Victarion for "binding" Daenerys's dragons, but it has not been put to test yet.
HISTORY
The Valyrians first discovered dragons nesting in the warmth of the Fourteen Fires – a chain of volcanoes on the Valyrian Peninsula – but it is not known for certain where dragons originated. The World of Ice & Fire sourcebook mentions that cultures throughout the known world each have their own legends regarding the origins of dragons. Also, ancient dragon bones have been found in such far-flung places as the island of Ib and on the continent of Sothoryos, where the Valyrians never established a significant foothold. Other than Valyria itself, the only plausible origin site for dragons within the known world is Asshai and the surrounding Shadow Lands; dragon bones and petrified dragon eggs are frequently found there, and the inhabitants claim that dragons existed in the region since before Valyria was founded (Asshai also claims to be the oldest city in the world, but no one can confirm or deny this). The question is further complicated by the fact that multiple "species" of dragons exist - or are said to exist - in different regions of the known world, and there is no evidence to confirm or deny that these species are in any way related to each other: large flying reptiles known as wyverns are known to exist on Sothoryos; myths and legends speak of ice dragons in far northerly reaches of the Shivering Sea; and the deepest regions of the Sunset Sea are said to be home to enormous sea dragons, such as Nagga in the stories of the ironborn. There is also the possibility that dragons did not originate in any currently explored region of the known world. Whatever the case, the Valyrians were the first people whose interaction with dragons can be historically confirmed, and they succeeded in harnessing the power of dragons as no one else had or ever did. During the conquest of the Rhoynar, the Valyrian Freehold commanded at least 300 dragons and their riders. It is not known how many dragons the Freehold possessed in its final years, but the only ones known to have survived the Doom of Valyria were those belonging to House Targaryen, who later used them to conquer the Seven Kingdoms.
The Targaryens kept dragons in Westeros for approximately 150 years, roughly half of their dynasty. After the dragons died, their preserved skulls were put on display in the Red Keep. Tyrion states that there are nineteen skulls in all, which for a time led to the misconception that there were only ever nineteen Targaryen dragons - however, Tyrion also says that the oldest skull is three thousand years old: The oldest Targaryen dragon was Balerion, who hatched over four hundred years ago and died after living for about two centuries. Thus the nineteen skulls were never an accurate count of all the Targaryen dragons, and the Targaryens apparently acquired several skulls from Essos. According to information from Martin's other writings, there were at least 24 Targaryen dragons throughout the dynasty's history (and possibly a few more).
This article uses material from the “Dragon” article on the Game of Thrones wiki at Fandom and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.
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