298 AC, hatched from a petrified egg on Khal Drogo's funeral pyre outside Vaes Dothrak
Died
not recorded — his fate stands unresolved in the published novels
The smallest and gentlest of the three dragons Daenerys Targaryen hatched from petrified eggs on Khal Drogo's funeral pyre outside Vaes Dothrak — his part in the story is still being written in the published novels.
Viserion in the novels
This carries how the dragon looks, behaves, and is described in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
Size
The smallest of the three by most tellings, cream and pale gold with horns and wing-bones the colour of hammered gold — no less a dragon for it, but consistently the one his mother worries over most.
Temperament
The gentlest-tempered of Daenerys's three by her own account, more inclined to shy from a fight than pick one — which makes his chaining beneath Meereen, for a violence he is not clearly shown to have committed, one of the more quietly unjust turns the novels have dealt any of the three.
Viserion carries the name of Viserys Targaryen, the brother who paid for a crown of molten gold and got a worse death than he bargained for, and something of that ill luck seems to have followed the dragon as well, however undeserved. Of the three hatched on Khal Drogo's pyre, he is consistently the softest-tempered in his mother's own observation — quicker to startle, slower to bare his teeth, the dragon Daenerys herself is shown treating with the most open affection of the three.
That gentleness did not spare him. Blamed alongside Rhaegal for a death neither dragon is convincingly shown to have caused, Viserion was chained in the dark below Meereen and left there when Daenerys's own path carried her away from the city — starving, by the novels' own bleak suggestion, without the one rider who might have done something about it. As with his brothers, the Citadel treats his ending as unwritten rather than unknown, and declines to guess at what the next published chapter of his story might hold.
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 fate of Viserion
This carries how the dragon's story ends in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
Chained beneath Meereen with Rhaegal, and by the last word the novels offer, held there still, starving in his mother's absence — a fate the chronicle records as it stands and no further.
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.
SourcesA Game of ThronesA Dance with Dragons
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Riders
Who was Viserion?
The smallest and gentlest of the three dragons Daenerys Targaryen hatched from petrified eggs on Khal Drogo's funeral pyre outside Vaes Dothrak — his part in the story is still being written in the published novels.
Is Viserion 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.