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- Overview
- Biology
- Training and riding
- History
- Known dragons
- Quotes
- Behind the scenes
- In the books
"Dragons are intelligent, more intelligent than men according to some maesters. They have affection for their friends and fury for their enemies."
―Tyrion Lannister
Dragons are massive, flying reptiles that can breathe fire. They are rumored to have a strong connection to magic, which seems to be proven true when magic begins to return to the world after the birth of the first three in over two hundred years. Dragons possess awesome and devastating power, capable of laying waste to armies and burning entire cities to ashes. Men who were able to tame and ride dragons as beasts of war used them in battle and to forge vast empires across the continents of Essos and Westeros. The greatest of these empires was the Valyrian Freehold forged by the Valyrian dragonlords.
Aegon I Targaryen and his sisters used the last three surviving dragons in the world to conquer and unify the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. For generations, the dragon-kings ruled over much of Westeros - but the dragons eventually died out after nearly a century and a half, and the species was subsequently considered to be extinct.
At the same time that the War of the Five Kings began in Westeros, Daenerys Targaryen was in possession of three petrified dragon eggs. They were given to her as a wedding gift, beautiful to look upon and valuable beyond comprehension, but otherwise useless. However, in a shocking display of old magic, Daenerys miraculously hatched the eggs and for the first time in 148 years, dragons filled the skies.
The bones and leather of dragons were harvested by Valyrians to construct their weapons.
Overview
Dragons have long serpentine bodies, with proportionately long necks and tails. Their bodies have four limbs: two short back legs and two large wings as forelimbs, a body-plan similar to a bat. In later generations, after the dragons went extinct, physical descriptions of dragons became so confused in memory that artwork sometimes depicted them as having six limbs - two wings growing out of their backs in addition to four legs - but this is inaccurate, at least in Westerosian legend. The teeth and claws of adult dragons are as long and sharp as swords. Dragons are covered in scales, as well as spines that run down their backs from head to tail. Particularly large ridges of horns frame the edges of their faces, running along the back of the skull and along the jawline, which grow bigger as they mature. Adult dragons possess two sets of frills that run along the backs of their necks and spine, two along the sides of their necks and another two centered closer to the backbone, for a total of four frills. These are formed from webbing that grows between longer spines. When dragons are agitated (or simply excited), they raise and flare these frills - similar to how a furry animal like a cat will raise the hackles on its back when agitated (or a feathered animal such as a goose will puff up its feathers), in an attempt to appear bigger so as to intimidate its enemies. Dragons are also shown to have a variety of calls, from shrieking roars to low growls or hisses. They can even squeal. Dragons are obligate carnivores, with diets consisting entirely of meat. Dragons need to roast their prey with their fire-breath before consuming it - the only animals apart from humans who prefer cooked meat. Dragons can eat almost any kind of meat, anything from sheep to fish. Historical dragons ridden as beasts of war were known to eat fallen horses and even men on the battlefield. Fully grown dragons could swallow a live horse whole.
Color variations
The scale color of dragons is highly variable, and historical dragons ranged in color from black to silver, red, gold, and even blue. Some dragons were one solid color throughout, but more often, they tend to have one primary color for most of their body, with highlights in a secondary color along their spinal crests, horns, and wing membranes. Confirmed markings observed so far include: •Black with red markings •Green with bronze markings •Cream with gold markings
Fire-breath
Probably the most famous attribute of dragons is their ability to breathe fire. Dragon flame can turn flesh to ash, melt steel, and crack stone. Older dragons can produce a more intense flame for longer durations. The bodies of dragons are also very resistant to fire, particularly their own flames, which will not damage their own mouths as they expel them. Some believe that in many ways dragons are fire, fire given form as flesh: it is said that "fire cannot kill a dragon". Dragons seem to produce their fire-breath by expelling chemicals out of two tubes either side of their mouths: when these volatile substances combine, they undergo an intense reaction which bursts into a directed jet of fire. Later in the series, this idea seemed to be abandoned. There are several shots where fire is seen emanating from the dragons' throats not out of the tubes in their mouths. During the Battle of Winterfell, flames leak from the neck of the undead Viserion after he suffers injuries from his brother Rhaegal.
Dragons cannot be truly "tamed", but they can be bonded with and trained. Humble Valyrian shepherds were the first to control them using magic, and rode dragons for millennia. Aegon I Targaryen and his sister-wives, who descended from Old Valyria, used the last three dragons in the world to conquer and unify the Seven Kingdoms.
Dragons are fairly intelligent animals, and like a horse or a dog, they can be trained by their rider to respond to basic voice commands. Tyrion Lannister claims that dragons are intelligent, much more so than most people and will quickly recognize friend from foe. If they are not trained they will quickly lay waste to anything around them. The key to training dragons is making sure they are well-fed, a dragon with a full stomach is more obedient.
Since they cannot be truly tamed, dragons can be very dangerous even to their riders. However, they can form very strong bonds with their riders and will show affection and trust towards them. They will even nuzzle their riders, hoping to be petted.
Daenerys Targaryen has trained her three dragons to respond to vocal commands in her mother tongue of High Valyrian. She often uses the command "Dracarys", to which her dragons respond by instantly breathing fire and burning anything in their path.
Background
The first known dragons were mentioned to have their lairs in the Fourteen Flames, a chain of volcanoes across the neck of the Valyrian peninsula. The Valyrians, then peaceful shepherds, tamed the dragons with magic, even learned how to master and ride them as beasts of war. Thus they began expanding their influence from the Peninsula to the rest of their continent forming the Valyrian Freehold. The dragons gave the decisive victory in the Ghiscari wars during which the Old Ghis is burned to ashes by dragonfire, and the ever-expanding Freehold replaced the Ghiscari Empire as the dominant culture of Essos. The Rhoynar under Nymeria fled to Dorne having no chance against the Valyrian dragons. Four hundred years before the War of the Five Kings, the entire Valyrian empire was destroyed in a single day, during a cataclysmic volcanic eruption known as the Doom of Valyria. Most dragons, still lairing in the volcanoes, were killed outright. One Valyrian noble family, the Targaryens, survived the Doom on the distant island outpost of Dragonstone in the Narrow Sea - along with the last surviving Valyrian dragons. The last surviving dragons in the world were possessed by House Targaryen, the last Valyrians after the Cataclysm, who used them to conquer and unify the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros three hundred years before the War of the Five Kings. Most of the Targaryen dragons died in a civil war known as Dance of the Dragons about a century and a half later, and after that, the only dragons the Targaryens had were the size of cats. Soon after the civil war ended, the last Targaryen dragons died, and the species was considered to be extinct throughout the world.
Game of Thrones: Season 1
In the series, the dragon species is established as having been extinct for many years. The only thing left of the race are petrified dragon eggs, which are used as decoration, and the bones which are used for weapon crafting. According to one legend, dragons originated from a second moon that hatched when it drifted too close to the sun. This is mostly dismissed as a simple myth. They remain the sigil of House Targaryen, who were known to have a special affinity with the creatures. Even Daenerys Targaryen who knows nothing of her true heritage feels a connection with the relics of the ancient animals. She appears to feel a connection with the eggs; causing her to develop a curiosity about the race and the possibility that there may still be living dragons. Daenerys is given three petrified dragon eggs as a gift for her wedding to Khal Drogo. The three eggs are black, green, and gold. Daenerys begins caring for the eggs as they become richer in color. She keeps them in a chest surrounded by candles, day and night as she is drawn to them. Arya stumbles upon the massive skull of one of the Targaryen dragons while chasing a cat in the vaults. She hides in the mouth of the skull and overhears the plotting of Illyrio and Varys. Daenerys continues to experiment with her eggs. She briefly places one of the eggs into a fire pit in an attempt to hatch it, but the egg remains unhatched. She removes the egg from the fire with her bare hands, but remains unhurt. Daenerys Targaryen places the eggs on the funeral pyre of her husband after smothering him with a pillow. She also straps the witch Mirri Maz Duur to the pyre. She then lights the pyre, and walks into it, with all her followers believing her to have burned alive. In the morning, however, she is found with three dragons, a green dragon in her arms, a black dragon clinging on her shoulder and a white-peach colored dragon clinging on her leg. A moment later, the black dragon screeches and flaps his wings.
Game of Thrones: Season 2
Daenerys tries unsuccessfully to feed her dragons raw meat, unsure of what she is doing wrong. Later, in Qarth, she realizes that they will only eat cooked meat. She coaxes them into recognizing the Valyrian command, "Dracarys," to breathe fire, so they can cook their own food. During her stay in Qarth, word of the dragons' return begins to travel to other parts of Essos; the rumors are eventually picked up by Varys, who mentions them to Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion is more concerned with the impending Battle of the Blackwater than with newly hatched dragons on the other side of the world. The dragons are later stolen by the warlocks of Qarth and hidden in the House of the Undying. The warlocks and Xaro Xhoan Daxos carry out a coup to seize control of the city in the wake of the theft. Pyat Pree invites Daenerys to come to the House of the Undying and be reunited with her 'babies'. Once Daenerys is inside the citadel she is enthralled by two specific illusions: the Iron Throne room with a destroyed roof and snow falling in and the illusion of her dead husband and child. The sound of the crying dragons pulls Daenerys out of the temptation to stay in either illusion. Continuing her search for her dragons she finds them all chained beside each other, and they scream with excitement when she nears them. Daenerys goes to them, only to find herself chained as well. With her arms stretched to either side of her she becomes a captive. However with a bit of a twisted smile, Daenerys speaks the High Valyrian word for fire, and Drogon first answers her call, but isn't very effective by himself. However, both Rhaegal and Viserion then join in, setting Pyat Pree ablaze.
Daenerys Targaryen's dragons
•Drogon, named after Khal Drogo, black with red markings. Larger and more aggressive than his siblings, he is also the personal mount of Daenerys Targaryen. Also known as the winged shadow by common folk when Daenerys resided in Meereen. Went missing following the Assassination of Daenerys Targaryen. He is the last known dragon in the world. •{Rhaegal}, named after Rhaegar Targaryen, green with bronze markings. Daenerys allowed Jon Snow to mount him. He was killed by Euron Greyjoy after being shot multiple times with a scorpion in the Battle at Dragonstone. •{Viserion}, named after Viserys Targaryen, creamy white with gold markings. He was killed by the Night King after being pierced in the neck by an ice spear and then reanimated as his Wight mount. He was later destroyed by Arya Stark during the Battle of Winterfell after her killing of his dragonrider - severing the magical connection between them.
"Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor. [Translation: A dragon is not a slave.]"
―Daenerys Targaryen to Kraznys mo Nakloz, much to the shock of the latter.
"They're dragons, Khaleesi, they can never be tamed. Not even by their mother."
―Jorah Mormont to Daenerys
"The dragons Aegon used to conquer Westeros ranged over hundreds of miles. Then Daenerys's ancestors started chaining them up in pens. A few generations later, the last dragons were no larger than cats."
―Tyrion Lannister about the rise and fall of the Targaryen dragons
The dragons in the TV series are CGI creations, though in Season 2 - when they were about the size of small cats - the actors did use prop-dragon puppets on-set, to make sure that their eye-lines matched.
Supervising sound editor Tim Kimmel explained in a Season 4 interview what went into creating the dragon scream sound effects and other vocalizations: "Each dragon has multiple animals stacked and put together to create it...[in Season 3] we used the sound of two tortoises mating. There are various birds that get used in there. We sneak some other things in there—last season we had some weird dolphin sounds. I believe there's a pissed-off seal in there somewhere, during some of the angry spots. We sometimes use lions for the growlier stuff."
To create the noise of dragon claws clacking against hard surfaces as they move around, the sound effects team used a combination of beef-rib bones, and also press-on nails hot-glued to gardening gloves. That way, drumming the fingers of the glove against a hard surface sounds more realistic, like a dragon's individual claws hitting a surface.
In Season 5, Drogon is about 40 feet long from snout to tail-tip, and 20 percent bigger than the other two dragons (making them around 32 feet long). In Season 5, several dragon traits were copied from different real-life animals: Komodo dragons, iguanas, horned lizards, and crocodiles. The dragons' physical motions were derived from eagles and bats while, for their takeoff into flight, pelicans were used as a reference. Joe Bauer stated that in Season 6, the dragons will double in size yet again - which would make Drogon roughly 80 feet long, and the other two around 64 feet long.
In Season 5, to give the actors a better prop to react to, instead of just dangling a tennis ball and pretending it was breathing fire, the special effects team took the extra step of custom-building a fire-breathing crane. They began with a Technodolly, a motion-controlled crane with a 15-foot high arm that moves in different directions while its base rolls along a track, with a telescopic arm that usually holds a camera. The crew then took the camera out, and in its place mounted a flamethrower that could shoot as far as fifty feet. The crane was then programmed with Drogon's movements, so it could repeat the same sequence over and over again for multiple takes of the same shot. Thus the stunt team, actors, and directors always knew exactly where the dragon and its fire was supposed to be. After filming finished, digital artists then added Drogon's body around the real flames in the shot. A second method they used in Season 5 was the "SimulCam" system: a basic animation of the dragon would be saved on the camera monitor and imposed over what it was pointed at, so the cameramen and directors could always see where a dragon was supposed to be moving in any given shot.
The design and look of the dragons was motivated by the dragons in the SF movie Reign of Fire (2002).
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 English and Scottish heraldry, 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) are tetrapods (animals with 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 - which would be a biological imposibility. 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, according to septon Barth and maester Aemon (A Feast for Crows, Samwell IV), 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 Barth's speculation that dragons can switch sex as nonsense, and also 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.
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.
Oct 25, 2022 · 18 Images. Let’s begin with the most notorious Targaryen dragon of them all … Balerion the Black Dread. The largest and eldest of all the Targaryen dragons, Balerion was flown by Aegon the...
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May 5, 2021 · House of the Dragons photos reveal our first look at a Westeros legend. It’s also our best look yet at Matt Smith’s terrible Targaryen wig. by Alex Welch. May 5, 2021. HBO is returning to the...
