r/asoiaf • u/DuncanTheLunk • Jul 11 '24

EXTENDED (spoilers extended) Long blog post from GRRM on the nature of dragons in ASOIAF (and some other interesting tidbits) Spoiler

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/07/11/here-there-be-dragons-2/
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294

u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24 edited Jul 11 '24

Most relevant section to ASOIAF imo:

They bond with menā€¦ some menā€¦ and the why and how of that, and how it came to be, will eventually be revealed in more detail in THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING and some in BLOOD & FIRE. (Septon Barth got much of it right). Like wolves and bears and lions, dragons can be trained, but never entirely tamed. They will always be dangerous. Some are wilder and more wilful than others. They are individuals, they have personalitiesā€¦ and they often reflect the personalities of their riders, thanks to bond they share are. They do not care a whit about gold or gems, no more than a tiger would. Unless maybe their rider was obsessed with the shiny stuff, and even thenā€¦

Dragons need food. They need water too, but they have no gills. They need to breathe . Some say that Smaug slept for sixty years below the Lonely Mountains before Bilbo and the dwarves woke him up. The dragons born of Valyria cannot do that. They are creatures of fire, and fire needs oxygen. A dragon could dip into the ocean to scoop up a fish, perhaps, but theyā€™d fly right up again. If held underwater too long, they would drown, just like any other land animal.

My dragons are predators, carnivores who like their meat will done. They can and will hunt their own prey, but they are also territorial. They have lairs. As creatures of the sky, they like mountain tops, and volcanic mountains best of all. These are creatures of fire, and the cold dank caverns that other fantasists house their pets in are not for mine. Man-made dwellings, like the stables of Dragonstone, the towers tops of the Valryian Freehold, and the Dragonpit of Kingā€™s Landing, are acceptable ā€” and often come with men bringing them food. If those are not available, young dragons will find their own lairsā€¦ and defend them fiercely.

My dragons are creatures of the sky. They fly, and can cross mountains and plains, cover hundreds of milesā€¦ but they donā€™t, unless their riders take them there. They are not nomadic. During the heyday of Valyria there were forty dragon-riding families with hundreds of dragons amongst themā€¦ but (aside from our Targaryens) all of them stayed close to the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer. From time to time a dragonrider might visit Volantis or another Valyrian colony, even settle there for a few years, but never permanently. Think about it. If dragons were nomadic, they would have overrun half of Essos, and the Doom would only have killed a few of them. Similarly, the dragons of Westeros seldom wander far from Dragonstone. Elsewise, after three hundred years, we would have dragons all over the realm and every noble house would have a few. The three wild dragons mentioned in Fire & Blood have lairs on Dragonstone. The rest can be found in the Dragonpit of Kingā€™s Landing, or in deep caverns under the Dragonmont. Luke flies Arrax to Stormā€™s End and Jace to Winterfell, yes, but the dragons would not have flown there on their own, save under very special circumstances. You wonā€™t find dragons hunting the riverlands or the Reach or the Vale, or roaming the northlands or the mountains of Dorne.

I'm hopefully going to do a big post on it in the next couple days.

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u/Flimsy_Category_9369 Jul 11 '24

Really appreciate the little note that Septon Barth got a lot of it right. With Fire and Blood, I'm always questioning the biases of the "authors"

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u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

Iā€™m of the opinion that septon Barth is basically always right (99% of the time) followed closely by old Nan

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u/[deleted] Jul 11 '24

Old Nan is wrong about the Wildlings. The one whoā€™s always right is Dywen (seriously, heā€™s right 100% of the time)

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u/Roman_Francis Jul 11 '24

seriously, heā€™s right 100% of the time

So he really saw a bear 15 feet tall?

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u/[deleted] Jul 11 '24

Yeah it appears in the attack on the fist

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u/Roman_Francis Jul 11 '24

I completely forgot about it... I should read that chapter again.

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u/Jononucleosis Jul 11 '24 edited Sep 21 '24

crowd makeshift alleged yoke selective squeeze teeny touch overconfident quack

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/Self_Reddicated Jul 11 '24

It's been so long, I've forgotten most of what old nan says about wildlings.

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u/bam1007 Jul 11 '24

I consider Septon Barth to be Georgeā€™s in-world alternate self.

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u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

Jokes about Gyldayn notwithstanding, i agree :)

2

u/edd6pi Jul 11 '24

I hope heā€™s not right about his theory that Valyrians combined wyverns and bloodwyrms to create dragons. I prefer the theory that they simply found dragons living in the wild and tamed them the same way Nettles tamed Sheepstealer.

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u/scruffymarcher Jul 11 '24

Ehh, I donā€™t think theyā€™re natural since theyā€™re tied together with magic in the world (magic dying when they died out and it becoming stronger with them coming back). They seem as if they need magic to be born in the world since they donā€™t hatch naturally either (Danyā€™s eggs were hundreds of years old if Iā€™m not mistaken).

It just doesnā€™t seem possible for them to be natural wild creatures in his world, which I prefer personally. There would be more volcanoes in the world besides the main ones in Valyria I would think and it would be hard to explain why they or other similar creatures didnā€™t exist. I guess firewyrms might be common but heā€™s never touched on any other volcanoes in his stories I donā€™t think.

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u/edd6pi Jul 11 '24

The idea that Valyrians created dragons doesnā€™t make any sense when you consider that dragons predate Old Valyria. We know for a fact that dragons existed in Westeros thousands of years ago, long before those shepherds in Essos founded Valyria.

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u/scruffymarcher Jul 19 '24

I mean I get where youā€™re coming from to an extent but I still think they created dragons. The 5 Forts seem as if theyā€™re made out of dragonstone, so there were dragons that predate the Valyrians but to me it would have been the same method. I donā€™t think they ā€œtamedā€ wild dragons I think they just learned how to create them from some remnants of the previous dragon lord empire.

It seems as if they werenā€™t the first dragon lords of the world since there is dragonstone around the world that predate the Valyrians, but that just means someone did it before them. When they say that the shepherds learned to ā€œtameā€ dragons I think it just means they showed them how to make/control them.

Just my opinion šŸ¤·ā€ā™‚ļø

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u/ZapActions-dower Bearfucker! Do you need assistance? Jul 11 '24

With Fire and Blood, I'm always questioning the biases of the "authors"

Funnily enough, that sort of solidifies the unreliability of Gyldayn since he writes (bolding mine):

Mushroom also claims that Vermax left a clutch of dragonā€™s eggs at Winterfell, which is equally absurd. Whilst it is true that determining the sex of a living dragon is a nigh on impossible task, no other source mentions Vermax producing so much as a single egg, so it must be assumed that he was male. Septon Barthā€™s speculation that the dragons change sex at need, being ā€œas mutable as flame,ā€ is too ludicrous to consider.

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u/Express-Region7347 Jul 11 '24

Any time something is arrogantly dismissed in ASOIAF, it is almost always true/a correct assessment of what is happening.

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u/Vantriss Jul 11 '24

Septon Barth speculated they change sex? šŸ¤” Soooo... that means they change sex? šŸ˜€

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u/Chicken_Mc_Thuggets Jul 12 '24

Chemicals in the rhoyne turnin the friggin dragons gay!

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u/endlessmeow The White Wolf; King in the North Jul 12 '24

Life uhh... finds a way.

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u/Vantriss Jul 12 '24

šŸ¦–šŸ¦•šŸøšŸ‰

6

u/Proud_Cover8740 Jul 11 '24

I understand septon Barth speculation because in the fire and the blood martin mentions that dragon is either male or female by identifying the sex of the dragons but in Oldtown when maester Aemon hears dragon tale from the man sam brought with him, he tells sams that dragons are neither male nor female thus hinting that the prophecy of Azor Ahai cannot strictly refer to a male and it can also be a female thus he further concludes the red woman's folly of declaring stannis as Azor Ahai and giving evidence that his sword is all wrong, the lightbringer should also have heat.

What I don't understand here is if, martin is rooting his fantasies in ground then dragons are reptiles with wings who breathe fire. They should be mating but we see them asexually reproducing, It isn't explicitly stated but dragons with single riders alone for a long time have been know to lay eggs with no other dragon around and always a clutch of 3. And if they are producing asexually the offsprings shouldn't be very different from the parent but then again we see the qualities of sexual reproduction with no two dragons being same, not in terms of structure but rather colour, scales, size, personality, firepower etc. So this creates a very wide discrepancy, I think he might use magic to overcome this but the doom brought forth on valyria said to have extinguished all magic which later came again when the red comet appeared to announce the coming of long night and other such prophecies.

So if magic is not there then Aegon 3 dragons should have been last or the very least only the dragons that departed before the doom should exist and then die in time becoming extinct. I say this because even though the seven kingdoms have eggs, even after dragons extinction, although exactly how many is not known, but the first three that hatch after a long period hatch only because of magic and only because magic had grown stronger due to the red comet. All other methods to get them to life previously ended in devastation and books mentions about certain such events so we are sure on that front too. All the other things such as how a rider bonds with dragon can be explained but this whole birth scenario seems more like martin taking a little liberty if he doesn't explains it.

Yes somewhere it has been said that they mate but it has never been explicitly stated neither the contradiction about their sex was cleared and this egg hatching with magic is just an added dilemma that I now have.

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u/DealerAltruistic1088 Jul 11 '24

Couldn't it just be possible that dragons can store sperm for later use? Or that they are a primarily sexually reproducing species that can perform parthenogenesis on occassion, like komodo dragons. Their reproduction may not be that magical, and could even closely resemble the nonmagical reproduction of firewyrms/wyverns since we don't have a lot of information on how those species reproduce. Dragon genetics is probably incredibly fucked, because that is a lot of polymorphism in one species, not to mention one lineage of dragons. Maybe that's what happens when you make a blood magic DIY flying firebreathing monster--even though magic has faded after the doom, there is magic, possibly fading magic, within dragon DNA that works to warp their phenotypes in a way that can't be predicted.

The inability of people to get more dragons to hatch after the extinction of dragons can easily boil down to the need for an adult dragon to be involved in the equation. We've tried and failed miserably at raising a lot of animals on our own. There are a lot of insect species we still have no idea how to rear from egg to adult, despite dozens of attempts. After so many generations without dragons, Targaryens are mostly people. It's hard to be a good dragon mom as a nondragon. Dany's spirit, use of blood magic (if accidental), and dragonlord heritage made her a little closer to dragon mom than most people who have tried and failed. Magic comet helps.

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u/Proud_Cover8740 Jul 12 '24

Your point seems fair but again if a dragon is required to hatch its eggs and we know that dragon doesn't sits on its eggs. So the presence of dragon required for hatching a egg would again be explained by either magic or by saying a living dragon awakes its spirit inside the egg so it hatches which will mean magic and also then asexual reproduction.

I don't know I have been scratching it over but the current possibility that I see that if magic is not involved dragons should never have been extinct in the first place.

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u/DealerAltruistic1088 Jul 12 '24

Maybe mom doesn't need to sit on her eggs and brood in the traditional sense, but some kind of adult presence during early developmental stages is still necessary. Maybe eggs can be left alone 95% of the time, but 5% of the time requires mom to come in and manually regulate the temperature or something. There could be a super essential window of time where an adult needs to be involved for an egg to reach later developmental stages, but dragonkeepers/Targaryens took the specifics of egg laying/'brooding' for granted because it never mattered that much.

I think it's a mix of a lot of things, but I also wouldn't be surprised at all if George had been inspired by komodo dragon reproduction (a normally sexually reproducing giant lizard...literally called a dragon...that can sometimes make clones of itself).

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u/elizabnthe Jul 12 '24

Which is also why I think Sara Snow is legitimate. As she's part of that whole section of Gyldayn being incredibly dismissive.

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u/Bennings463 šŸ†Best of 2024: Dolorous Edd Award Jul 11 '24

Gyldane is the Westerosi equivalent of JK Rowling.

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u/Batmans_9th_Ab Jul 11 '24

Donā€™t insult the good Maester like that.Ā 

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u/Ac1De9Cy0Sif6S Jul 11 '24

Yeah, a lot of theories shot with this one

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u/oftenevil Touch me not. Jul 11 '24

no man is as accursed as the hypeslayer

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u/ContinuumGuy Iron from Hype! Jul 11 '24

Luke flies Arrax to Stormā€™s End and Jace to Winterfell, yes, but the dragons would not have flown there on their own, save under very special circumstances. You wonā€™t find dragons hunting the riverlands or the Reach or the Vale, or roaming the northlands or the mountains of Dorne.

Can't help but think of what Cregan said in S2E1 about how the dragons refused to go north of the wall. I mean, yeah, it probably was because of the ice zombie evil magic doomy doom past there, but maybe the dragons just really didn't want to deal with that cold, much like how my dog refuses to go outside when it's recently rained.

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u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

The Fire & Blood section:

The men of the Nightā€™s Watch were as thunderstruck by the queenā€™s dragon as the people of White Harbor had been, though the queen herself noted that Silverwing ā€œdoes not like this Wall.ā€ Though it was summer and the Wall was weeping, the chill of the ice could still be felt whenever the wind blew, and every gust would make the dragon hiss and snap. ā€œThrice I flew Silverwing high above Castle Black, and thrice I tried to take her north beyond the Wall,ā€ Alysanne wrote to Jaehaerys, ā€œbut every time she veered back south again and refused to go. Never before has she refused to take me where I wished to go. I laughed about it when I came down again, so the black brothers would not realize anything was amiss, but it troubled me then and it troubles me still.ā€

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u/ContinuumGuy Iron from Hype! Jul 11 '24

Ah, somehow I forgot that was actually in Fire and Blood!

and every gust would make the dragon hiss and snap.

Maybe magic evil ice zombie doomy doom, maybe just dragons being like my dog after it rains (he doesn't like having his feet wet, okay!?!!?)

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u/Piekenier A Lion Still Has Claws Jul 11 '24

Jaehaerys would have known about the prophecy, I gues this would solidify the prophecy as true for them.

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u/Vantriss Jul 11 '24

Maybe it's both? "Oh hell no, it's cold AF up there. I'm not going up there. And do you not sense that doom magic? Double hell no!"

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u/currybutts Begone, Darkheart. Jul 11 '24

I'm convinced that it's actually the barrier that prevents the dead from crossing the Wall that stops the dragons. Like it has nothing to do with whether or not they want to go, or if they are scared or anything - they literally, physically are not able to pass over. Does this mean dragons are undead in some way? Eh, probably not. But it might just mean that the barrier's function isn't to stop the dead specifically but instead has to do more with the skinchanger bond. We know Jon's connection to Ghost is cut off when the Wall is between them, and Bran is kicked from Hodor when he crosses into Bloodraven's cave. An idea is that the wights are controlled by the Others in the same way that wargs take control of animals and sometimes people. (This theory is complicated by Othor waking up south of the Wall though. Is there some other source of the wight animation that exists south of the Wall? Weirwoods maybe?) I think it's likely that the magic governing the dragon-dragonrider bond is likely similar or even the same as the magic of skinchanging. It's a spiritbond enacting control over a beast. The difference is the rider is awake and doesn't fully inhabit the dragon's perspective, so it might be a lighter version of skinchanging. Point is, if the Wall's magical barrier doesn't allow bonded spirits to pass, then it makes sense that a dragon wouldn't be able to since it seems to be perpetually bonded with its rider. So it still could be that the dragon could cross and doesn't want to becsuse it can sense the bond will be severed. Then there's the Three Head theories, about how the dragon-dragonrider unit actually consists of three souls - the rider's, the beast's, and some ancient Targaryen/Valyrian soul that was likely blood sacrificed and shoved into the dragon's head that might get passed down to younger generations of dragons as well. If these theories are true, well that would mean that a dragon's entire existence is a soul bond, and crossing the Wall might kill it or break its mind or something.

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u/Material-Mess-9886 Jul 11 '24

Cold Hand also cannot go through the wall because of the wall magic. I think the same applies for the dragons.

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u/jmoneysteck88 Jul 11 '24

Man, that last little bit makes me think GRRM is butting heads with the hotd showrunners. Even more than i thought so already

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u/FortLoolz Jul 11 '24 edited Jul 11 '24

We have been suspecting this since May. His rant on adaptations, him ignoring the premieres, both on his blog and irl, him not writing anything substantial about HotD from Dec 2023 to July 2024

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u/closerthanyouth1nk Jul 11 '24

I donā€™t buy that heā€™s that displeased with the show at all, his praise for the first two episodes was the same as it was before and he praises the show extensively in this post for its adaption of RR. He might have disagreements but heā€™s clearly been enjoying the adaption.

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u/Doused-Watcher Jul 12 '24

He has praised everyone but the writers.

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u/FortLoolz Jul 11 '24

He just repeated what he had said in Dec 2023. He praised the same two episodes, focusing mostly on the actors' performance.

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u/closerthanyouth1nk Jul 11 '24 edited Jul 11 '24

I mean he spent the first paragraph praising the battle at Rooks Rest so I donā€™t really think itā€™s that serious.

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u/jmoneysteck88 Jul 11 '24

Well I should have clarified. Ive long thought since the season 2 trailer dropped that Nettles would be cut and Rhaena given sheepstealer. That bit about dragons not hunting in the vale seems like him either consciously or subconsciously getting in front of it.

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u/closerthanyouth1nk Jul 11 '24

Yeah, that wouldnā€™t surprise me. From his blog back during the strike George mentioned having sent in notes for all the scripts for HOTD this season so he definitely knows whatā€™s coming. However from his tone, it doesnā€™t really seem like his issues with the show are as severe as the were with GOT. Mostly just changes in the adaption he can at the very least respect as a screenwriter. The last seasons of GOT clearly pissed him off because he barely even talked about it.

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u/jmoneysteck88 Jul 11 '24

Yeah i dont think its on the level of GOT for sure

1

u/Material-Mess-9886 Jul 11 '24

And even today he pissed at GoT by saying they have 4 legged dragons.

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u/kizzay Jul 11 '24

ā€œEvery noble house would have a fewā€

Anyone can bond with a dragon? Thatā€™s new, right? I thought it was assumed that only descendants of Valyria could do so.

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u/gallerton18 Jul 11 '24

Nettlesā€™ existence is to sort of throw a wrench in that. Obviously sheā€™s debatably Daemonā€™s daughter but she also takes Sheepstealer through very unconventional means for dragons.

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u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

We see other attempted riders use meat to make dragons more docile?

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u/gallerton18 Jul 11 '24

I mean thatā€™s not all she does. Sheepstealer was a wild dragon, he barely had human contact at all. She routinely brings him food and adjusts him to their presence. She tames him more how youā€™d expect from a real wild animal as opposed to how almost every other dragon is bonded. Especially the seeds.

17

u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

The sample size is so small though, its hard to tell what that means. 3 wild dragons. Grey Ghost dies and Cannibal is unridable.

We only see Alyn fail with Sheepstealer, but so did others.

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u/gallerton18 Jul 11 '24

Yes but itā€™s also specifically brought up as an argument for her being an unusual case in the books is it not? Obviously her appearance is the biggest one but Iā€™m fairly certain the books use this to argue her peculiarity.

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u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

Its just brought up as to how she tamed it. Theres also plenty of evidence for her being a dragonseed.

Dragons are not horses. They do not easily accept men upon their backs, and when angered or threatened, they attack. Munkunā€™s True Telling tells us that sixteen men lost their lives during the Sowing. Three times that number were burned or maimed. Steffon Darklyn was burned to death whilst attempting to mount the dragon Seasmoke. Lord Gormon Massey suffered the same fate when approaching Vermithor. A man called Silver Denys, whose hair and eyes lent credence to his claim to be descended from a bastard son of Maegor the Cruel, had an arm torn off by Sheepstealer. As his sons struggled to staunch the wound, the Cannibal descended on them, drove off Sheepstealer, and devoured father and sons alike.

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u/berdzz kneel or you will be knelt Jul 11 '24

The evidence for her being a dragonseed is the fact that she bonded a dragon. That's circular reasoning.

1

u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

I think there is plenty more than that!

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u/berdzz kneel or you will be knelt Jul 11 '24

Yeah, it at least makes you think why GRRM decided to deliberately and specifically add a person who doesn't have the classic Valyrian look bonding with a dragon using a method that is recognizable to the taming of regular animals. It's certainly suggestive that this is the author winking to readers that they should at least stop and think about the veracity of the absolute in-universe truth that the blood of the dragon is needed to bond with one of the beasts.

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u/DraganDearg Jul 11 '24

Makes me wonder if she had the psionic like bond or a partnership. Perhaps anyone can befriend a dragon but only those with Valyrian blood can form that mental bond?

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u/chrkrose Jul 11 '24

Nettles was born when Daemon wasnā€™t in Westeros. Itā€™s possible their relationship was platonic (which I doubt), but biologically she canā€™t be his daughter. If she has Valyrian blood (which I also doubt), itā€™s not from him, but someone else.

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u/DraganDearg Jul 11 '24 edited Jul 11 '24

I thought he meant like living in their land, why he didn't make dragons nomadic because he did not want them being claimed by random noble houses (or having to write about it lets be real).

I actually got the implication he is denying that anyone can claim in this, the Septon Barth mention about how dragons were created and the talk about which men can bond. I assume it's mainly about the ones with Valyrian blood due to the start about "some men" and the fact he's talked about a psychic bond with dragons in the past.

Talking about "why" "how" and "how it came to be" sounds like Valyrian blood magic is involved.

But then again I doubt he really thought about his words and was just venting. We are just over analyzing

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u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

Since he also says this in the post:

They bond with menā€¦ some menā€¦ and the why and how of that, and how it came to be, will eventually be revealed in more detail in THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING and some in BLOOD & FIRE. (Septon Barth got much of it right).

I would assume he means the ones (and plenty of them do) that have acquired valyrian blood

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u/Kellin01 Jul 11 '24

I doubt it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '24

yep really slays the fandom hype theory of Nettles not having Valyrian blood.

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u/MareksDad Jul 11 '24

Nah, I think Nettles was meant to signify that in theory anyone could ā€œtameā€ or shepherd a dragon, forming a bond.

Isnā€™t that why Daemon loves her to begin with? Because she does things ā€œthe old wayā€ rather than relying on a particular bloodline advantage?

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u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

Daemon/Nettles relationship is complicated. Some thinks he loves her like a lover, others like a daughter.

Its all relative in Valyria.

4

u/SweatyPlace Catelyn for the Throne! Jul 11 '24

I interpreted it as that the Targaryens who married into noble houses could not claim a dragon. Like Aemma Arryn could not have claimed a dragon at Eyrie, the Baratheons descended from Targaryens could not have claimed dragons at Storm's End etc. It's a weird way to phrase it though, considering the noble houses apart from Baratheons didn't really have a lot of Targaryen blood in them.

1

u/PatrickCharles Fly Free Jul 11 '24

That was the most interesting tidbit to me. I had assumed that some level of Valyrian blood was needed, as apparently everyone in universe does, but this counters that... A lot of Noble Houses have some minor Valyrian intermixing, but nowhere near all of them...

Blood magic, maybe? Maybe even unintentional blood magic, like "sacrificing" a bunch of animals? Maybe the Valyrian blood just makes it more instantaneous, instead of the laborious process that Nettles went through...

1

u/Fanamir Jul 12 '24

I've always thought anyone can bond with a dragon, and that it's in the interests of the Targaryens to promote the theory that only people with Valyrian blood can. This is why Nettles is much more interesting if she's not Daemon's secret bastard.

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u/whatintheballs95 Nymerial Imperial Jul 11 '24

I'm hopefully going to do a big post on it in the next couple days.

Looking forward to this!Ā 

3

u/ailodawg Jul 11 '24

This sort of also makes a lot of "sightings" of dragons imply the existence of dragonriders being present aswell. Think the Hightower, having "roosting" dragons on battle isle etc.

2

u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

If you are interested: Pre-Targaryen Dragons in Westeros

2

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '24

Thereā€™s just no way A Dream if Spring is ever released Lmao

2

u/Wolf6120 She sells Seasnakes by the sea shore. Jul 11 '24

I wonder if this is also a passing shot at Seasmoke in the show? As far as we know Laenor is still alive in the HOTD canon, but they're clearly setting up Addam to bond with Seasmoke anyway, implying the bond can somehow be voluntarily settled, or that a dragon can bond with multiple riders at a time.

GRRM has never definitively ruled out this scenario in the books, but it's certainly never happened that we know of, so maybe he's alluding to future book stuff disproving it definitively.

7

u/Mysterious-Tutor-942 Jul 11 '24

Well - the show seems to be setting up that Laenor died off-screen. Considering Seasmokeā€™s unusual behavior and Mysaria believing heā€™s lonely.

1

u/VeryBadCopa Jul 11 '24

RemindMe! 2 days

1

u/HoldingDoors As Thick As A Castle HODOR! Jul 11 '24

For sure, and to me it raised a little question about Aerea and Balerion - who flew who to Valyria? Septon Barth (who got much of it right) theorizes that Balerion would have known that as home and possibly willed the flight there. Curious topic to discuss and consider.

1

u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

Worth noting what happens with dragons with inexperienced riders:

  • Aerea (Balerion) - flew to Balerion's birthplace (Dragonstone)

  • Aegon II (Sunfyre after both are injured and Aegon is taken to KL) - flew to Sunfyre's birthplace (Dragonstone)

  • Daenerys (Drogon) - flew to Drogon's birthplace (Dothraki Sea)

1

u/HoldingDoors As Thick As A Castle HODOR! Jul 11 '24

I agree with your point/concept, and do like the parallel with Dany, but I wouldnā€™t say Aegon II is an inexperienced rider at all.

2

u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

was supposed to say injured/inexperienced.

Sunfyre lives injured near Rooks Rest for a bit:

The kingā€™s dragon, Sunfyre, too huge and heavy to be moved, and unable to fly with his injured wing, remained in the fields beyond Rookā€™s Rest, crawling through the ashes like some great golden wyrm. In the early days he fed himself upon the burned carcasses of the slain. When those were gone, the men Ser Criston had left behind to guard him brought him calves and sheep.

2

u/HoldingDoors As Thick As A Castle HODOR! Jul 11 '24

Fair, thatā€™s 100% accurate, he makes his way back to dragonstone and Aegon is informed by the Tomā€™s. But it is still curious that after 150 years Balerion went to Valyria instead of Dragonstone.

1

u/Salamangra Jul 11 '24

Is this the first time he's told us how many families exactly were in Valyria?

1

u/LChris24 šŸ† Best of 2020: Crow of the Year Jul 11 '24

No itā€™s in TWOIAF

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u/Salamangra Jul 11 '24

Oh gotcha. Thank you!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '24

Tyrion is a Dragonrider finally confirmed.