c. 36 AC, hatched from an egg laid in the cradle of the infant Princess Alysanne
Died
unknown — last seen flying wild about the Gods Eye after 130 AC, and never accounted for again
Size
Large and long-lived, a little short of Vermithor's bulk but formidable all the same by the time the Dance called on her — gentle by dragon standards, which is to say only recently and reluctantly taught to kill.
Temperament
The mildest-tempered of the great Conquest-era dragons still flying by the Dance, by most accounts — Good Queen Alysanne's chosen mount for decades of pleasure flights rather than war, a peaceableness that a drunkard rider and a civil war eventually, and unkindly, overrode.
Silverwing belonged, for most of her long life, to the gentlest use any dragon in this chronicle was ever put to. Alysanne Targaryen flew her the length of the realm on errands of policy and simple delight rather than conquest, most famously north to the Wall in 58 AC — a flight the Night's Watch remembers rather more fondly than most dragon visits the North has received. Riderless after the Old Queen's death, Silverwing spent decades much as Vermithor did: quiet, unclaimed, and left alone at Dragonstone by anyone with the sense to leave a dragon that size in peace.
The Sowing ended her peace along with everyone else's. Silverwing was claimed by Ulf White, a common soldier better remembered by his epithet than his service, and flown by him into a war she had never been trained for by a rider the histories treat with open contempt for his drunkenness and poor discipline. She survived him and the war both, which is more than most Dance-era dragons of her age managed — the chronicle's last sighting places her flying wild about the Gods Eye sometime after 130 AC, and after that, nothing. Where she went, or how she ended, no raven ever brought word, and the maesters have long since stopped expecting one.
The fate of Silverwing
This carries how the dragon's story ends in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
Outlived her second rider and, so far as any surviving record shows, the Dance itself — one of the very few adult dragons of that war to simply fly on afterward, into a silence the Citadel has never been able to fill with a firm ending.
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 & Blood
Who was Silverwing?
Silverwing belonged, for most of her long life, to the gentlest use any dragon in this chronicle was ever put to. Alysanne Targaryen flew her the length of the realm on errands of policy and simple delight rather than conquest, most famously north to the Wall in 58 AC — a flight the Night's Watch remembers rather more fondly than most dragon visits the North has received. Riderless after the Old Queen's death, Silverwing spent decades much as Vermithor did: quiet, unclaimed, and left alone at Dragonstone by anyone with the sense to leave a dragon that size in peace.
Is Silverwing 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.