Dragons documented in the histories — from Balerion the Black Dread, who carried the Conqueror over the Field of Fire, through the wyrms that burned each other from the sky in the Dance, to the three that woke on a Dothraki pyre three centuries later. Colours, riders, and ends, drawn from the record and not the songs.
The three that took a continent, and the pale dragon that failed to hold it.
the Black Dread
Black scales, black fire, black wings — a shadow with a mouth
FateOutlived every dragon of the Conquest and three of his riders, only to die of old age at Dragonstone in 94 AC. No sword ever slew the Black Dread; time alone brought him down.
The last living thing to have looked upon Valyria before the Doom. Aegon rode him over the Field of Fire, and every dragon since is measured against his shadow.
Greenish bronze, as the later heralds paint her — the histories dwell more on her roar than her hue
FateDied over the Gods Eye in 130 AC, locked in mutual ruin with Caraxes. The two came down together into the lake, and Aemond and Daemon with them.
The longest-lived of the Conquest three, she passed through four riders across more than a century. By the Dance she was a monster from an older age set loose on a younger one.
Silver, by the later account, with eyes of molten gold — the chronicles are surer of her eyes than her scales
FateFell at the Hellholt in 10 AC when a scorpion bolt took her in the eye. Dragon and rider were lost together, though the maesters quarrel yet over how Rhaenys truly died.
Her death in the First Dornish War taught the realm a lesson kings preferred to forget: that a dragon is not proof against a well-aimed bolt and a patient man.
Pale as milk, with wings the colour of a winter morning
FateSlain beneath the Gods Eye in 43 AC by Balerion and Maegor, and the young pretender Aegon with her. Proof, the maesters note, that a smaller dragon is still a dead dragon before a larger.
The first dragon of the Targaryen line to die dragon against dragon, a full century before the Dance made such deaths a fashion.
The civil war that burned the dragons out of the world, one wyrm at a time.
the Blood Wyrm
Dark red, lean and serpentine, with a long sinuous neck — an ugly, wicked-looking beast
FateThe Blood Wyrm took Vhagar down over the Gods Eye in 130 AC and died of the wounds soon after — the last blow of the last true duel between dragons.
Daemon's mount rode with the Rogue Prince through the Stepstones and the Dance both. Fierce as his rider and half as reckless, which was reckless enough.
Yellow scales, bright as a new-minted golden dragon
FatePulled from the sky and butchered by the mob during the fall of King's Landing in 130 AC. Her queen would follow her within days.
Rhaenyra's dragon since she was a girl of seven. A cautionary tale, the maesters say, on what becomes of a war-beast raised as a pet.
the Red Queen
Scarlet scales like beaten copper, with wings of rose and pink
FateCaught and killed above Rook's Rest in 129 AC by Sunfyre and Vhagar together — the first great dragon to die in the Dance, and a warning none who lived heeded.
The Red Queen bore two princesses across her long life. That two dragons and an ambush were needed to bring her down flattered no one but her.
the Golden
Golden scales that flashed in the sun, with membranes of pale pink
FateGrievously burned at Rook's Rest and again over Dragonstone, the golden dragon lingered on crippled and died of his hurts in 130 AC.
Aegon II's mount was as vain and ill-starred as his rider. The two of them ended the war maimed, poisoned, and unmourned by half the realm.
Pale blue, with markings and horns of silver
FatePerished in the storming of the Dragonpit in 130 AC, breaking her chains to bring the great dome down upon herself and hundreds of her killers.
She served two Targaryen queens generations apart. Her last act — collapsing the Dragonpit — killed more men than most dragons manage in a war.
the Bronze Fury
Bronze scales with tan wings, weathered like an old shield
FateRoused after a lifetime's slumber to burn at Tumbleton, Vermithor died at Second Tumbleton in 130 AC, locked in a three-way battle with Seasmoke and Tessarion.
The Old King's own mount, given over to a bastard sellsword at the Sowing. That such a beast could be claimed by a baseborn man unsettled lords more than any battle.
Pale silver scales with wings tinged the blue of a clear sky
FateOne of the few dragons to outlive the Dance. She flew wild about the Gods Eye for years afterward, and where at last she ended no maester can say.
Good Queen Alysanne's mount, later claimed by Ulf the Sot. Of a peaceable temper by nature; it took a drunkard and a civil war to teach her killing.
Green, in the reckoning of most heralds, though the histories leave his colour vague
FateLost at the Battle of the Gullet in 130 AC; the histories say he went down into the sea, and his young rider with him.
Jacaerys flew him on the errand that raised the North and the Vale for his mother. The tale that Vermax left a clutch of eggs at Winterfell the maesters file under rumour.
Pale and young-scaled — the record fixes no firm colour, only his smallness
FateTorn apart above Storm's End in 129 AC by Vhagar, in a chase neither dragon's rider fully meant to press home — the death that lit the whole war.
Lucerys was sent as an envoy, not a warrior. Arrax's death turned an errand of peace into the first blood of the Dance, and there was no calling it back.
Uncredited in the histories — a young dragon of the Dragonpit, colour unrecorded
FateDied chained in his cell during the storming of the Dragonpit in 130 AC, fighting to the last — and those who came to kill him did not all come out again.
Joffrey Velaryon died trying to reach him; the boy never made it to the pit. Tyraxes sold his life dearer than any of the caged dragons that fell that night.
the Blue Queen
Cobalt blue, with claws, crest, and wing-bones of hammered copper
FateThe Blue Queen fell at the second battle of Tumbleton in 130 AC, one of three dragons to die in that single dreadful day.
Daeron the Daring's mount, and the loveliest thing on either side of the war. Tumbleton proved that beauty and youth were no armour against a general melee of dragons.
Pale silver-grey, the colour of mist over water
FateDied over Tumbleton in 130 AC, locked with Tessarion and Vermithor — a dragon that had outlived one rider and been claimed by another, gone at the last.
Riderless for years after Laenor left the field of life, Seasmoke chose a new rider himself in the bastard Addam of Hull — a rare thing, and a redeeming one.
Pale green, with scales, horns, and crest of pearl and silver
FateYoung and swift, she met old broken Sunfyre above Dragonstone in 130 AC and died game — her rider survived the fall, if barely.
That a dragon a fraction of Sunfyre's size nearly finished him is the wonder of it. Baela flew Moondancer straight at the invader and cost him what little was left of his wings.
Pale and storm-grey, if the name is any guide — the histories leave it unfixed
FateCarried his boy-prince clear of the Gullet in 130 AC, riddled with crossbow bolts and burning, and died of it soon after reaching Dragonstone.
Aegon the Younger's first dragon, lost when the prince was scarcely ten. The horror of that flight, the maesters believe, is why the boy would never willingly mount a dragon again.
Pale pink scales edged in black, fresh from the shell
FateHatched too late for the war she was born into, she lived on past the Dance — one of the last handful of dragons to see the century out.
The twin of the boy-king Aegon III's dread of dragons, Rhaena kept and cherished her dragon. Morning is where the dwindling age of dragons made its last small stand.
Muddy brown, the drab colour of dirt and old iron — the ugliest dragon of the age
FateVanished into the Mountains of the Moon with the girl Nettles in 130 AC. No raven ever brought word of dragon or girl again.
Wild on Dragonstone for a century until a lowborn girl won him with a daily offered sheep. The pairing scandalised princes and outlived them — no small revenge.
White and pale grey, the colour of morning mist — seldom seen and never caught
FateFound half-devoured on Dragonstone in 130 AC, killed and eaten by the Cannibal. Dragons, the maesters remind us, are not gentle even to their own.
The most retiring of the three wild dragons of Dragonstone, and the only one a would-be rider tried and failed to tame. His end came not from man but from another dragon's hunger.
Coal black, greenish about the eyes and crest — blacker even than Balerion, some swore
FateNever tamed and never slain, so far as any record shows. He flew from Dragonstone during the Dance and passed out of all report thereafter.
Every man who sought to claim the Cannibal died for the trying. That he simply left, uncaught and unaccounted, unsettles the maesters more than a clean death ever could.
Unrecorded — a young unclaimed dragon of the Dragonpit
FateButchered in his cell during the storming of the Dragonpit in 130 AC — a chained dragon killed by a mob that had learned, that night, that dragons could die.
Named for death in the old tongue, and fitting it. Kept caged and unclaimed, Morghul never flew free a day in his life and never had the chance.
Unrecorded — a young unclaimed dragon of the Dragonpit
FateKilled in the Dragonpit in 130 AC when a woodsman drove an axe between her eyes — an ignoble end the singers pass over in silence.
That a common man with a common axe could fell a dragon at all is the true horror of the Dragonpit's fall. Shrykos died proving dragons were only flesh.
After the Dance the fire guttered, until only a sickly hatchling remained.
Green and sickly, stunted and misshapen — a shadow of the fire that made a dynasty
FateDied at Dragonstone in 153 AC, a stunted, sickly thing — and with her the age of dragons ended for the better part of a century and a half.
The dwindling had many causes and one certain end. Whether the dragons shrank in captivity, sickened, or were quietly helped along, the maesters argue still; the fact of the empty skies they do not.
Three hundred years of empty skies, ended on a funeral pyre — the novels' own tale.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
A rough reckoning against Balerion the Black Dread, the largest wyrm the world has known. Dragons never stop growing, so these measures mix beasts at different ages — a maester's estimate, not a surveyor's chain.
The great burnings and turnings where these dragons made their mark.
What a dragon leaves behind, and what the histories preserve — petrified eggs, the hatcheries of Dragonstone, dragonbone, and other remnants of the dragonlords' age.
The stone cradle
Most dragon eggs that outlive their mothers are cold, hard things, their scales gone to coloured stone. The maesters keep them as jewels and curiosities and hold, sensibly enough, that a stone egg will never quicken. Yet the lore is less settled than the Citadel would like: old accounts tell of eggs that lay lifeless for a lifetime and woke at last in the right fire, and no archmaester has ever proven where the true boundary lies.
Sources Fire & Blood · The World of Ice & Fire
Where the eggs were kept
Beneath the smoking mountain the Targaryens kept their eggs in warm, sulphurous chambers, and by custom laid a cradle-egg beside each newborn prince or princess so that child and dragon might grow together. The practice bound the blood of the dragon to its beasts from the first cry — though it was never a certain magic. Some eggs hatched and some stayed stone, and the maesters could never say why one child's egg woke while another's slept.
Sources Fire & Blood · The World of Ice & Fire
What remains
Dragonbone is black, for the fire is in it, and though light it is stronger than the finest steel; a bow of dragonbone outranges any made of wood or horn. That the bones endure at all, and can be worked and shot and carried, is a small proof against the old fancy that dragons were spirits or fire made solid — whatever else they were, they were flesh enough to leave bones behind.
Sources The World of Ice & Fire · Fire & Blood
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The maesters distrust the word, but the beasts will not be explained without it. What the lore hedges at: fire made flesh, the rider's bond, why a caged dragon shrinks, and the old tie between dragons and sorcery.
The boldest answer to what a dragon is came from Septon Barth, whose Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns argued that the beasts were no natural creatures but the work of Valyrian sorcery — flesh bred to fire, lesser wyrms wrought upward into dragons by arts the Freehold never wrote down. The Citadel scorned the book, and archmaesters after him dismissed it as unnatural fancy. Yet none has offered a better account, and the guess has an uncomfortable way of fitting what little is known.
Sources The World of Ice & Fire · Fire & Blood
The histories show a dragon bonded to one rider at a time, though a long-lived dragon may accept successive riders after an earlier rider dies — Balerion and Vhagar each bore several. No living rider is securely recorded as keeping two dragons at once, and reaching for a mount already bound to another could end in fire. The Targaryens claimed the bond by blood, yet blood never guaranteed acceptance. Whatever forges the bond, it reads closer to a perilous accord than a taming.
Sources Fire & Blood · The World of Ice & Fire
The dragons the Targaryens chained and stabled beneath the Dragonpit never grew to the bulk of their free-flying forebears, and the maesters read a hard lesson in it: a dragon penned is a dragon stunted, its growth bound as surely as its wings. Some took the slow dwindling of the last Targaryen dragons — smaller with each generation, until the final clutch bred sickly things that died young — as the same truth writ across a dynasty. Whether cage, inbreeding, or some fading in the beasts themselves was to blame, the archmaesters never agreed.
Sources The World of Ice & Fire · Fire & Blood
The oldest tales bind the dragons to sorcery itself, as though the two rose and guttered together: while dragons flew, the spells of the world were said to keep their power, and as the last of them dwindled to nothing the arts of shadow and fire are said to have faded with them. The maesters, who mistrust magic on principle, mistrust the correlation too. Still, the pattern is old and stubborn — and should dragons ever wake into the world again, the wiser sort of scholar would not wager that the old powers stayed sleeping.
Sources The World of Ice & Fire · Fire & Blood
The histories name close to thirty dragons across three centuries — the Conquest's Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes; notable dragons of the Dance of the Dragons; the last dragon that died in 153 AC; and Daenerys Targaryen's three, Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion. Many more hatchlings and unhatched eggs go unnamed.
Balerion the Black Dread, the mount of Aegon the Conqueror. His teeth were as long as swords and his jaws wide enough to swallow an aurochs whole; his fire fused the stones of Harrenhal. No larger dragon is recorded, and he died of old age in 94 AC, never bested in battle.
Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion — named for Khal Drogo, her brother Rhaegar, and her brother Viserys. All three hatched from petrified eggs on Khal Drogo's funeral pyre in 298 AC, the first dragons born in more than a century. Drogon, black-and-red, is the largest and fiercest of the three.
The Dance of the Dragons (129–131 AC) killed most of the Targaryen dragons, dragon against dragon and mob against beast. The handful that survived dwindled and sickened in the years after, until the last dragon — a stunted, cat-sized thing — died at Dragonstone in 153 AC, leaving the skies empty for nearly a century and a half.