wild — no year is recorded, only that he was already ancient and enormous by the Dance's start
Died
unrecorded — flew from Dragonstone during the war's last year and passed out of all report thereafter
Size
The oldest and largest of Dragonstone's wild dragons, and by every account the most feared — coal black and greenish about the eyes and crest, blacker even than Balerion, some swore.
Temperament
Solitary and predatory by nature, feeding as readily on other dragons as on livestock — a beast that treated the rest of dragonkind as prey rather than kin, which made him unique even among a species not known for its gentleness.
The Cannibal was never anyone's dragon, and the histories suggest he preferred it that way. Larger and older than either of Dragonstone's other two wild dragons, black scaled and greenish about the eyes and crest, he lived apart from the tame stock in habits as much as temperament — feeding, by grim report, on the carcasses of dead dragons, unhatched eggs, and hatchlings too small to defend themselves, a diet that gave him his name and made every rider on the mountain give him a wide berth. He killed the gentler wild dragon Grey Ghost outright during the Dance, devouring him whole in what the maesters record as simply the Cannibal being the Cannibal.
More than one desperate claimant tried him at the Sowing regardless, drawn by the scale of the prize and unwilling to believe the warnings; every one of them died for the attempt, and no rider ever sat astride him for so much as a moment. What makes the Cannibal a genuine puzzle rather than merely a monster is his ending — or the lack of one. Sometime during the war's last convulsions he simply took wing from Dragonstone and was gone, neither hunted down nor claimed nor found dead in any wreck the histories record. Every other great dragon of the Dance has a grave, a killer, or at minimum a last confirmed sighting; the Cannibal has none of the three, and the Citadel finds that absence considerably more unsettling than a clean death would have been.
The fate of The Cannibal
This carries how the dragon's story ends in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
Never tamed, never slain, and never accounted for after he flew from Dragonstone in the war's final year — the one great dragon of the Dance whose ending is neither death nor triumph but simply an absence the Citadel has never been able to close.
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.
SourcesFire & Blood
Who was The Cannibal?
The Cannibal was never anyone's dragon, and the histories suggest he preferred it that way. Larger and older than either of Dragonstone's other two wild dragons, black scaled and greenish about the eyes and crest, he lived apart from the tame stock in habits as much as temperament — feeding, by grim report, on the carcasses of dead dragons, unhatched eggs, and hatchlings too small to defend themselves, a diet that gave him his name and made every rider on the mountain give him a wide berth. He killed the gentler wild dragon Grey Ghost outright during the Dance, devouring him whole in what the maesters record as simply the Cannibal being the Cannibal.
Is The Cannibal 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.