in Old Valyria, before the Doom — no closer year survives in any record the Citadel holds
Died
94 AC, at Dragonstone, of nothing more dramatic than old age
Size
The largest dragon of which any record survives, so vast in his final years that Maegor is said to have needed a wooden platform and a crew of men merely to saddle him; every dragon born after is measured, consciously or not, against the size of his shadow.
Temperament
Sullen and short with everyone but the man currently astride him, by every surviving account — where Vhagar and Meraxes could be flown for pleasure by riders who trusted them, Balerion is remembered as tolerated rather than loved, a beast that answered command more readily than affection.
Balerion had already outlived a civilization by the time Aegon Targaryen climbed onto his back. Hatched in the Valyrian Freehold before the Doom swallowed it whole, he crossed the narrow sea with the last of the dragonlords and became, within a generation, the single most decisive weapon in Westerosi history — the beast that burned the Field of Fire into legend and made three kingdoms' worth of resistance evaporate into an offer of terms. Maegor rode him afterward in a rather different spirit, using the Black Dread less to win battles than to end arguments before they started; a black shape circling a rebellious lord's walls tended to settle matters that swords could not.
His last known rider fared worst of all. Aerea Targaryen fled her uncle's court on Balerion's back and returned, by Fire & Blood's telling, wasted and screaming from something within her that no maester could name or cure — whether the dragon himself was to blame, or merely the means of her flight, the chronicle does not pretend to know, and treats the tale accordingly as a mystery rather than a verdict. Balerion flew on without her, unridden and unbothered, until Viserys I took him up as a young man and let him live out his final years in relative peace. When he died at Dragonstone in 94 AC, he was, so far as anyone could reckon, the last living creature to have looked upon Valyria before the Doom took it — a fact the maesters record with more awe than they generally permit themselves.
The fate of Balerion
This carries how the dragon's story ends in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
Outlasted the Doom that killed his kin, outlasted Aegon the Conqueror who first flew him into Westerosi legend, and outlasted two more riders after that, dying in his own time in his own lair — a death no other dragon of note has managed since.
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.
In the timeline
SourcesFire & BloodThe World of Ice & Fire
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Battles fought
Who was Balerion?
Balerion had already outlived a civilization by the time Aegon Targaryen climbed onto his back. Hatched in the Valyrian Freehold before the Doom swallowed it whole, he crossed the narrow sea with the last of the dragonlords and became, within a generation, the single most decisive weapon in Westerosi history — the beast that burned the Field of Fire into legend and made three kingdoms' worth of resistance evaporate into an offer of terms. Maegor rode him afterward in a rather different spirit, using the Black Dread less to win battles than to end arguments before they started; a black shape circling a rebellious lord's walls tended to settle matters that swords could not.
Is Balerion from the books or the show?
Book canon. This entry follows George R. R. Martin's novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.