George R.R. Martin in https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/07/11/here-there-be-dragons-2/
...I wanted my dragons to be as real and believable as such a creature could ever be. I designed my dragons with a lot of care. They fly and breathe fire, yes, those traits seemed essential to me. They have two legs (not four, never four) and two wings.
LARGE wings.
A lot of fantasy dragons have these itty bitty wings that would never get such a creature off the ground. And only two legs; the wings are the forelegs. Four-legged dragons exist only in heraldry. No animal that has ever lived on Earth has six limbs. Birds have two legs and two wings, bats the same, ditto pteranodons and other flying dinosaurs, etc.
Valyrian dragons differ in other ways from the likes of Smaug and Toothless and Vermithrax as well.
My dragons do not talk. They are relatively intelligent, but they are still beasts.
They bond with men… some men… and the why and how of that, and how it came to be, will eventually be revealed in more detail in THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING and some in BLOOD & FIRE. (Septon Barth got much of it right). Like wolves and bears and lions, dragons can be trained, but never entirely tamed. They will always be dangerous. Some are wilder and more wilful than others. They are individuals, they have personalities… and they often reflect the personalities of their riders, thanks to bond they share are. They do not care a whit about gold or gems, no more than a tiger would. Unless maybe their rider was obsessed with the shiny stuff, and even then…
Dragons need food. They need water too, but they have no gills. They need to breathe . Some say that Smaug slept for sixty years below the Lonely Mountains before Bilbo and the dwarves woke him up. The dragons born of Valyria cannot do that. They are creatures of fire, and fire needs oxygen. A dragon could dip into the ocean to scoop up a fish, perhaps, but they’d fly right up again. If held underwater too long, they would drown, just like any other land animal.
My dragons are predators, carnivores who like their meat will done. They can and will hunt their own prey, but they are also territorial. They have lairs. As creatures of the sky, they like mountain tops, and volcanic mountains best of all. These are creatures of fire, and the cold dank caverns that other fantasists house their pets in are not for mine. Man-made dwellings, like the stables of Dragonstone, the towers tops of the Valryian Freehold, and the Dragonpit of King’s Landing, are acceptable — and often come with men bringing them food. If those are not available, young dragons will find their own lairs… and defend them fiercely.
My dragons are creatures of the sky. They fly, and can cross mountains and plains, cover hundreds of miles… but they don’t, unless their riders take them there. They are not nomadic. During the heyday of Valyria there were forty dragon-riding families with hundreds of dragons amongst them… but (aside from our Targaryens) all of them stayed close to the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer. From time to time a dragonrider might visit Volantis or another Valyrian colony, even settle there for a few years, but never permanently. Think about it. If dragons were nomadic, they would have overrun half of Essos, and the Doom would only have killed a few of them. Similarly, the dragons of Westeros seldom wander far from Dragonstone. Elsewise, after three hundred years, we would have dragons all over the realm and every noble house would have a few. The three wild dragons mentioned in Fire & Blood have lairs on Dragonstone. The rest can be found in the Dragonpit of King’s Landing, or in deep caverns under the Dragonmont. Luke flies Arrax to Storm’s End and Jace to Winterfell, yes, but the dragons would not have flown there on their own, save under very special circumstances. You won’t find dragons hunting the riverlands or the Reach or the Vale, or roaming the northlands or the mountains of Dorne.
George R.R. Martin in https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/07/11/here-there-be-dragons-2/
I'm also hoping to see a different interpretation of the dragons than we saw in Game of Thrones, particularly in their colors. I often describe the dragons by their colors—red, blue, green, and their crests and the bones of their wings are often different colors, too. We kind of lost that in Game of Thrones, with Dany's three dragons. One is supposed to be black, one is green and one is white, with secondary colors. But when you saw them in the show, they were all kind of similar to each other. One was black, I guess the other was green, but it was a very dark green, almost like black, and the white one wasn't really very white. I think that we're going to do better with this new show.
Of course, dragons don't exist. But they're very common in legends of many societies, and the animals they're closest to in the real world are probably dinosaurs or lizards. Dinosaurs are usually pictured as being green. But now scientists are saying they could have had very bright colorful skins. Lizards, they can be very bright colors. And I would like all of the dragons to be distinct, so that when you see a dragon fly in, you know at once, that's Caraxes, that's Vhagar, that's Syrax.
- George R.R. Martin in Interview Portion of The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of the Targaryen Dynasty, Volume One
Does the color of a dragon say a lot about its character?
No. No, it's just the color of the dragon's scales, any more than the color of a human being's skin, doesn't say anything about the character. But if you look in nature, which was my idea when describing these, dragons are basically reptiles. They're lizards. If you go online and look at lizards and snakes, they're incredibly brightly colored. Some of them are striped. Some of them really stand out. I mean, a coral snake with its banding. And especially in this show, because we have so many dragons, I wanted the audience, as well as the characters in the show, to be able to recognize which dragon it was when it flies overhead. And the color is one of the ways we do that.
- George R.R. Martin in https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxdxhy0tOgoxy_5YYTPQ2Tkp5N5glIEkl9?si=RhoJYqf4x7TvMJp4
DRAGONKEEPER ELDER (in Valyrian) and DRAGONKEEPER TRANSLATOR: You must hold mastery over your dragon, my young Princes. As Prince Aegon has with Sunfyre. Once they're fully bound to you, they will refuse to take instruction from any other.
- House of the Dragon Season 1 Episode 6 "The Princess and the Queen"
LAENA: It's been 8 years sweetling. Half of them never do, you know?
RHAENA: What?
LAENA: Hatch.
...
LAENA: There is more than one way to bind yourself to a dragon. I was without one until i was 15 years old, and now I ride Vhagar, the largest in the world.
You have a harder road. Baela's dragon was born to her. But if you wish to be a rider, you must claim that right.
- House of the Dragon Season 1 Episode 6 "The Princess and the Queen"
RHAENYRA: I need you to be the mother to them that I cannot. Guard them as a dragon guards her eggs.
- House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 3 "The Burning Mill"
JASPER: Their herds of livestock struggle to keep pace with the dragons' relentless appetites, Vhagar's in particular.
- House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 "The Red Dragon and the Gold"
JACE: There is Rhaena.
RHAENYRA: Who nearly lost her life in her last attempt. I would not risk it again.
- House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 5 "Regent"
RHAENYRA: And I see now to do that, I need more dragonriders, for Vermithor and Silverwing, and for Seasmoke, who I believe misses his bond.
STEFFON: But there are no more in you family, your grace. Your youngest sons are babes.
There is Princess Rhaena.
CORLYS: She has attempted it, alas. But the dragons here would not take her as a rider.
- House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 6 "Smallfolk"
RHAENYRA: You undertsand you peril, Ser Steffon? I do not compel you to do this, it has never been attempted before. To claim a dragon you must also be prepared to die.
- House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 6 "Smallfolk"
RHAENA: There is a large dragon in the Vale.
JEYNE: Rumor of it began shortly after the war. Ranging more broadly for food, my maesters surmise. It is large, and formidable, but alas, wild.
RHAENA: Alas.
- House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 6 "Smallfolk"
Tyrion curled up in his fur with his back against the trunk, took a sip of the wine, and began to read about the properties of dragonbone. Dragonbone is black because of its high iron content, the book told him. It is strong as steel, yet lighter and far more flexible, and of course utterly impervious to fire. Dragonbone bows are greatly prized by the Dothraki, and small wonder. An archer so armed can outrange any wooden bow.
- Book 1: A Game of Thrones
He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even frightening. He had not thought to find them beautiful. Yet they were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone seemed to shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed. He’d thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger skulls and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him. The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond. The flame of the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far greater fires. When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn that the beast’s empty eye sockets had watched him go.
There were nineteen skulls. The oldest was more than three thousand years old; the youngest a mere century and a half. The most recent were also the smallest; a matched pair no bigger than mastiff’s skulls, and oddly misshapen, all that remained of the last two hatchlings born on Dragonstone. They were the last of the Targaryen dragons, perhaps the last dragons anywhere, and they had not lived very long.
From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great monsters of song and story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen and his sisters had unleashed on the Seven Kingdoms of old.
- Book 1: A Game of Thrones
The dragons were no larger than the scrawny cats she had once seen skulking along the walls of Magister Illyrio’s estate in Pentos . . . until they unfolded their wings. Their span was three times their length, each wing a delicate fan of translucent skin, gorgeously colored, stretched taut between long thin bones. When you looked hard, you could see that most of their body was neck, tail, and wing. Such little things, she thought as she fed them by hand, or rather, tried to feed them, for the dragons would not eat. They would hiss and spit at each bloody morsel of horsemeat, steam rising from their nostrils, yet they would not take the food . . . until Dany recalled something Viserys had told her when they were children.
Only dragons and men eat cooked meat, he had said.
When she had her handmaids char the horsemeat black, the dragons ripped at it eagerly, their heads striking like snakes. So long as the meat was seared, they gulped down several times their own weight every day, and at last began to grow larger and stronger. Dany marveled at the smoothness of their scales, and the heat that poured off them, so palpable that on cold nights their whole bodies seemed to steam.
Each evenfall as the khalasar set out, she would choose a dragon to ride upon her shoulder. Irri and Jhiqui carried the others in a cage of woven wood slung between their mounts, and rode close behind her, so Dany was never out of their sight. It was the only way to keep them quiescent.
- Book 2: A Clash of Kings
The Targaryens of old had ridden upon dragonback when they went to war. She tried to imagine what it would feel like, to straddle a dragon’s neck and soar high into the air.
- Book 2: A Clash of Kings
Last of the three seekers to depart was Quaithe the shadowbinder. From her Dany received only a warning. “Beware,” the woman in the red lacquer mask said.
“Of whom?”
“Of all. They shall come day and night to see the wonder that has been born again into the world, and when they see they shall lust. For dragons are fire made flesh, and fire is power.”
When Quaithe too was gone, Ser Jorah said, “She speaks truly, my queen . . . though I like her no more than the others.”
- Book 2: A Clash of Kings
Her dragons were hungry, so she chopped up a snake and charred the pieces over a brazier. They are growing, she realized as she watched them snap and squabble over the blackened flesh. They must weigh twice what they had in Vaes Tolorro. Even so, it would be years before they were large enough to take to war. And they must be trained as well, or they will lay my kingdom waste. For all her Targaryen blood, Dany had not the least idea of how to train a dragon.
- Book 2: A Clash of Kings
Dragons always preferred to attack from above, Dany had learned. Should either get between the other and the sun, he would fold his wings and dive screaming, and they would tumble from the sky locked together in a tangled scaly ball, jaws snapping and tails lashing. The first time they had done it, she feared that they meant to kill each other, but it was only sport. No sooner would they splash into the sea than they would break apart and rise again, shrieking and hissing, the salt water steaming off them as their wings clawed at the air. Drogon was aloft as well, though not in sight; he would be miles ahead, or miles behind, hunting.
- Book 3: Storm of Swords
He was always hungry, her Drogon. Hungry and growing fast. Another year, or perhaps two, and he may be large enough to ride. Then I shall have no need of ships to cross the great salt sea.
But that time was not yet come. Rhaegal and Viserion were the size of small dogs, Drogon only a little larger, and any dog would have out-weighed them; they were all wings and neck and tail, lighter than they looked.
- Book 3: Storm of Swords
He was always hungry, her Drogon. Hungry and growing fast. Another year, or perhaps two, and he may be large enough to ride. Then I shall have no need of ships to cross the great salt sea.
But that time was not yet come. Rhaegal and Viserion were the size of small dogs, Drogon only a little larger, and any dog would have out-weighed them; they were all wings and neck and tail, lighter than they looked.
- Book 3: Storm of Swords
“We are the ones who are lost, ser. Drogon has no taste for this wet creeping, no more than I do.” Bolder than the other two, her black dragon had been the first to try his wings above the water, the first to flutter from ship to ship, the first to lose himself in a passing cloud . . . and the first to kill. The flying fish no sooner broke the surface of the water than they were enveloped in a lance of flame, snatched up, and swallowed. “How big will he grow?” Dany asked curiously. “Do you know?”
“In the Seven Kingdoms, there are tales of dragons who grew so huge that they could pluck giant krakens from the seas.”
Dany laughed. “That would be a wondrous sight to see.”
“It is only a tale, Khaleesi,” said her exile knight. “They talk of wise old dragons living a thousand years as well.”
“Well, how long does a dragon live?” She looked up as Viserion swooped low over the ship, his wings beating slowly and stirring the limp sails.
Ser Jorah shrugged. “A dragon’s natural span of days is many times as long as a man’s, or so the songs would have us believe . . . but the dragons the Seven Kingdoms knew best were those of House Targaryen. They were bred for war, and in war they died. It is no easy thing to slay a dragon, but it can be done.”
The squire Whitebeard, standing by the figurehead with one lean hand curled about his tall hardwood staff, turned toward them and said, “Balerion the Black Dread was two hundred years old when he died during the reign of Jaehaerys the Conciliator. He was so large he could swallow an aurochs whole. A dragon never stops growing, Your Grace, so long as he has food and freedom.” His name was Arstan, but Strong Belwas had named him Whitebeard for his pale whiskers, and most everyone called him that now. He was taller than Ser Jorah, though not so muscular; his eyes were a pale blue, his long beard as white as snow and as fine as silk.
“Freedom?” asked Dany, curious. “What do you mean?”
“In King’s Landing, your ancestors raised an immense domed castle for their dragons. The Dragonpit, it is called. It still stands atop the Hill of Rhaenys, though all in ruins now. That was where the royal dragons dwelt in days of yore, and a cavernous dwelling it was, with iron doors so wide that thirty knights could ride through them abreast. Yet even so, it was noted that none of the pit dragons ever reached the size of their ancestors. The maesters say it was because of the walls around them, and the great dome above their heads.”
“If walls could keep us small, peasants would all be tiny and kings as large as giants,” said Ser Jorah. “I’ve seen huge men born in hovels, and dwarfs who dwelt in castles.”
“Men are men,” Whitebeard replied. “Dragons are dragons.”
- Book 3: A Storm of Swords
Written by George R.R. Martin in collaboration with Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson
In such fragments of Barth's Unnatural History as remain, the septon appears to have considered various legends examining the origins of dragons and how they came to be controlled by the Valyrians. The Valyrians themselves claimed that dragons sprang forth as the children of the Fourteen Flames, while in Qarth the tales state that there was once a second moon in the sky. One day this moon was scalded by the sun and cracked like an egg, and a million dragons poured forth. In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts-all impossibly ancient-claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all of our learning fails us. These Asshai'i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals.
Yet if men in the Shadow had tamed dragons first, why did they not conquer as the Valyrians did? It seems likelier that the Valyrian tale is the truest. But there were dragons in Westeros, once, long before the Targaryens came, as our own legends and histories tell us. If dragons did first spring from the Fourteen Flames, they must have been spread across much of the known world before they were tamed. And, in fact, there is evidence for this, as dragon bones have been found as far north as Ib, and even in the jungles of Sothoryos. But the Valyrians harnessed and subjugated them as no one else could.
- The World of Ice and Fire "The Rise of Valyria"
The Targaryen dragons, bred and trained to battle, had flown through storms of spears and arrows on many occasions, and suffered little harm. The scales of a full-grown dragon were harder than steel, and even those arrows that struck home seldom penetrated enough to do more than enrage the great beasts. But as Meraxes banked above the Hellholt, a defender atop the castle’s highest tower triggered a scorpion, and a yard-long iron bolt caught the queen’s dragon in the right eye. Meraxes did not die at once, but came crashing to earth in mortal agony, destroying the tower and a large section of the Hellholt’s curtain wall in her death throes.
- Fire and Blood "Reign of the Dragon: The Wars of King Aegon I"
The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew, a boy a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. The blood of the dragon must remain pure, the wisdom went. Some of the sorcerer princes also took more than one wife when it pleased them, though this was less common than incestuous marriage. In Valyria before the Doom, wise men wrote, a thousand gods were honored, but none were feared, so few dared to speak against these customs.
- Fire and Blood "The Sons of the Dragon"
...such preparations were thrown into disarray by the sudden and unexpected arrival of Rhaena Targaryen from Dragonstone. “It may well be that dragons somehow sense, and echo, the moods of their riders,” Septon Barth wrote, “for Dreamfyre came down out of the clouds like a raging storm that day, and Vermithor and Silverwing rose up and roared at her coming, suchwise that all of us who saw and heard were fearful that the dragons were about to fly at one another with flame and claw, and tear each other apart as Balerion once did to Quicksilver by the Gods Eye.”
The dragons did not, in the end, fight, though there was much hissing and snapping as Rhaena flung herself off Dreamfyre and stormed into Maegor’s Holdfast, shouting for her brother and her sister. The source of her fury was soon known.
- Fire and Blood "Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"
Septon Barth did not concur. Dragons were not vagabond by nature, he pointed out. More oft than not, they find a sheltered spot, a cave or ruined castle or mountaintop, and nest there, going forth to hunt and thence returning. Once free of his rider, Balerion would surely have returned to his lair. It was his own surmise that, given the lack of any sightings of Balerion in Westeros, Princess Aerea had likely flown him east across the narrow sea, to the vast fields of Essos. The queen concurred. “If the girl were dead, I would know it. She is still alive. I feel it.”
- Fire and Blood "Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Their Triumphs and Tragedies"
(Whilst it is true that determining the sex of a living dragon is a nigh on impossible task, no other source mentions Vermax producing so much as a single egg, so it must be assumed that he was male. Septon Barth’s speculation that the dragons change sex at need, being “as mutable as flame,” is too ludicrous to consider.)
- Fire and Blood "The Dying of the Dragons: A Son for a Son"
A dragon’s scales are largely (though not entirely) impervious to flame; they protect the more vulnerable flesh and musculature beneath. As a dragon ages, its scales thicken and grow harder, affording even more protection, even as its flames burn hotter and fiercer (where the flames of a hatchling can set straw aflame, the flames of Balerion or Vhagar in the fullness of their power could and did melt steel and stone). When two dragons meet in mortal combat, therefore, they will oft employ weapons other than their flame: claws black as iron, long as swords, and sharp as razors, jaws so powerful they can crunch through even a knight’s steel plate, tails like whips whose lashing blows have been known to smash wagons to splinters, break the spine of heavy destriers, and send men flying fifty feet in the air.
- Fire and Blood "The Dying of the Dragons: :) "
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