the Dance

Moondancer

Riders
Baela Targaryen
Born
c. 122 AC — no closer year survives
Died
130 AC, over Dragonstone, in a duel with the crippled Sunfyre
Size
Slight and young throughout the whole of the war — barely larger than a warhorse by most descriptions, smaller than any other dragon that drew blood in the Dance's pitched battles.
Temperament
Bold well past what her size should have allowed, by every account of her last fight — a young dragon flown by a rider with more nerve than sense, which very nearly cost them both everything.

Moondancer belonged to Baela Targaryen, Daemon's daughter by Laena Velaryon and twin sister to Rhaena — a girl who claimed her dragon young and flew her, by every account, with more daring than a beast her size strictly warranted. Where the war's other notable dragons were measured in decades and tons, Moondancer was neither large nor old when the Dance called on her, and for most of the war she saw scouting and courier work rather than the set-piece dragon battles that killed her larger kin.

Her one true battle was also her last, and it was fought against odds that should have killed her outright. When Aegon II flew the crippled, still-healing Sunfyre to Dragonstone to deliver a captured Rhaenyra to a death of his own devising, Baela flung Moondancer at the golden dragon in a fury no one had ordered and few expected a dragon her size to survive. She could not kill him — Sunfyre was grievously wounded but still many times her mass — yet she tore at him badly enough to worsen injuries he never fully recovered from, and it was that mauling, layered atop Rook's Rest, that is generally credited with finishing what Meleys had started months before. Moondancer went down in the fight; Baela, thrown clear, lived to see the war's end. That a dragon a fraction of Sunfyre's size could hurt him at all remained, long after, one of the Dance's stranger footnotes.

The fate of Moondancer

This carries how the dragon's story ends in the published novels. Read on only 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.

SourcesFire & Blood

Who was Moondancer?

Moondancer belonged to Baela Targaryen, Daemon's daughter by Laena Velaryon and twin sister to Rhaena — a girl who claimed her dragon young and flew her, by every account, with more daring than a beast her size strictly warranted. Where the war's other notable dragons were measured in decades and tons, Moondancer was neither large nor old when the Dance called on her, and for most of the war she saw scouting and courier work rather than the set-piece dragon battles that killed her larger kin.

Is Moondancer 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.