Consider This SSM
Fantasy needs magic in it, but I try to control the magic very strictly. You can have too much magic in fantasy very easily, and then it overwhelms everything and you lose all sense of realism. And I try to keep the magic magical — something mysterious and dark and dangerous, and something never completely understood.
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2017/08/22/fantasy-needs-magic
George is telling us that he will never fully explain his magic, because he wants to preserve the mystery around it. However, I have noticed through my re-reads that he does leave clues and patterns if you watch for them. I have tried to look for these clues, specifically in Dany’s story. We’ll also be pulling from time to time parallels from the other chapters, especially from our direwolf analyses and from the world-building materials, TWoIaF, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and Fire & Blood.
While I don’t believe I can truly understand GRRM’s magic in ASoIaF, this essay will try to explain my mental image of the magic of Dany’s bond to Drogon, and, to some extent, how it works. We’ll also contrast it with her relationship to the other dragons. This work is a follow up to my “Direwolves of Winterfell” series and builds on that work. While dragons certainly are not direwolves, I find that some of the motifs from that series transfer quite readily. After all, we are considering the magical bond between human and beast. So, if you haven’t read that series, Check ’em out!
A Game of Thrones: The Last Dragon Awakens the Last Dragons
Dany has 8 chapters in AGoT. Throughout the volume, she thinks of and discusses dragons and what it means to be a “dragon” many times. She has seemingly prophetic dreams that bring to mind her ancestors, like Daenys the Dreamer, starting around the time she receives the gift of dragon eggs at her wedding, she also seems to have magical dreams about dragons in a way different from any others in the story. She seems to bond with or incubate the dragon eggs throughout this volume. In the culmination of this, the hatching, she wakes dragons from stone, something Melisandre is still trying to do, perhaps completely unaware that the prophecy has already been fulfilled. However, looking more closely at the text, I’m convinced that Dany woke the dragons inside the eggs long before they hatched, starting with Drogon.
AGoT – Daenerys I
This chapter sets the table for Dany’s magical experiences in this volume. There are no magically significant mentions of dragons in Dany’s first chapter, but there is a lot of discussion of the Targaryen identity as dragons. There is one mention of smallfolk in Westeros sewing dragon banners, one of the dragon’s skulls in the red keep, and one direct reference House Targaryen as the house of the dragon. There are also 8 mentions of Viserys claiming to be a dragon or “waking the dragon”, which Dany equates with the act of angering Viserys. This is a terrific foreshadowing of what happens not only in her final chapter, but in her very next chapter. Most of these mentions also serve to show that Viserys is a cruel man, who rules Dany with fear, and showing how he deems himself superior to others.
Viserys called it “waking the dragon.”
“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”
“You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers.”
The mantra of “waking the dragon,” of course, is also foreshadowing of Dany actually waking dragons from stone, the prophecy for which George ironically introduces early in the book that follows Dany fulfilling it. There are also two specific mentions of their house “blood.” The first mention gives us a giant clue as to the importance of that blood.
They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany’s head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. “Ours is the house of the dragon,” he would say. “The fire is in our blood.”
The fire is in their blood!!! Well, it’s in her blood, at least. We are shown that she has an unnatural, or at least an exceptionally strong resistance to heat here. As we learn later, this is a magical trait in some Targaryens. To me, the most important part of that passage is that their “blood of the dragon,” their “kingsblood,” is to some extent a genetic trait that they maintain through inbreeding. The direct mention of kingsblood that follows shows how Dany has expected to wed Viserys to keep their blood pure, even as she is prepared to meet a different bridegroom. The contradiction serves as a mystery, why is Viserys allowing this?
The old woman washed her long, silver-pale hair and gently combed out the snags, all in silence. The girl scrubbed her back and her feet and told her how lucky she was. “Drogo is so rich that even his slaves wear golden collars. A hundred thousand men ride in his khalasar, and his palace in Vaes Dothrak has two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver.” There was more like that, so much more, what a handsome man the khal was, so tall and fierce, fearless in battle, the best rider ever to mount a horse, a demon archer. Daenerys said nothing. She had always assumed that she would wed Viserys when she came of age. For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told her a thousand times; theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. Dragons did not mate with the beasts of the field, and Targaryens did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men. Yet now Viserys schemed to sell her to a stranger, a barbarian.
Even as Viserys seemingly breaks this rule, this passage tells us that when high-born marriages are discussed and arranged in this world, the potential for kingsblood in the match is hugely important. In the passage that follows, with kingsblood in mind, we see a second mention of Aegon, this time comparing him to her betrothed, Drogo. In the same instance, Dany feels fear again. Fear seems a constant in her life to this point. This time, Drogo’s ferocity is the cause.
“You see how long it is?” Viserys said. “When Dothraki are defeated in combat, they cut off their braids in disgrace, so the world will know their shame. Khal Drogo has never lost a fight. He is Aegon the Dragonlord come again, and you will be his queen.”
Dany looked at Khal Drogo. His face was hard and cruel, his eyes as cold and dark as onyx. Her brother hurt her sometimes, when she woke the dragon, but he did not frighten her the way this man frightened her. “I don’t want to be his queen,” she heard herself say in a small, thin voice. “Please, please, Viserys, I don’t want to, I want to go home.”
AGoT – Daenerys I
Is this a hint by our author that Drogo might also have magical blood? I think it likely, even if Viserys’s elitism or racism doesn’t allow him to embrace his own words; he only thinks of them as savages that he is trying to use for his crown, very transactional. This fits, I guess, when you are sellling your sister as a slave. Back to Drogo, we were told earlier that Aegon’s blood was something that had to be preserved and left undiluted. Then, while Viserys schemes to allow this blood to be diluted with Drogo’s blood, Drogo is metaphorically compared to Aegon.
It tells me that Drogo is exceptional. And, we learn, he has an ego. I would say that he likely feels he has “kingsblood” as well. Others in this fandom (thx “Between 2 wierwoods) have made the case that Dothraki were a part of a migration away from the Great Empire of the Dawn, something I find likely. As we learn later (it is implied that he wants this), he is making a match that will fulfill a Dothraki prophecy of “the stallion who mounts the world” (thx Preston Jacobs).” This is a clear parallel to how Rheagar earlier wanted to fulfill a prophecy by combining his line with another great house that suggests kingsblood, the Starks, even after doing the same with House Nymeros-Martell.So, to recap, this chapter foreshadows waking dragons and Dany’s fire magic, and it introduces the concept of kingsblood which explains why she has this magic.
AGoT – Daenerys II
I believe that the foreshadowing of “waking the dragon” pays off early in the next chapter, in Daenerys’s first dragon dream. Viserys and the way he terrorized Dany and others (Jorah) seems to set it off. Dany’s last rebellious thought of her brother not being a dragon here may also play some small role.
The dream itself starts with her fear of Viserys and the metaphor about his anger. She clams up and “whimpers.” Up to that point, this seems to be a normal dream. The act of whimpering, though changes the whole dynamic. I image it to be a silent prayer, a telepathic call for help. What if that prayer is answered, not by a god, but by a dragon?
Yet that night she dreamt of one [[a dragon]]. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid …
… until the day of her wedding came at last.
AGoT – Daenerys II
I hypothesize that the prayer is answered in the “hideous ripping sound” and fire of Drogon’s consciousness coming to life in the stone of his petrified egg. Somehow he heard her projected whimper, heard her prayer. I think it possible that she established her bond to Drogon in this instant. As we saw with our study of Jon and Bran, it was instantaneous for them with Summer and Ghost as well. We learn in The Princess and the Queen that the bond between the dragon and the rider is mutually exclusive, much like the warg bond the Starks have with their direwolves.
“Wolves and women wed for life,” Haggon often said. “You take one, that’s a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you’re part of him. Both of you will change.”
A Dance With Dragons – Prologue
And Dany is changed after this dream, most noticeably in her ride on the Silver mare. Her dream also scares her upon waking, but she takes courage from her identity as a dragon hereafter, which is a contradiction. I’d like to think that the bond to the dragon helps her to muster that courage and to shed some of her fear later.
Tyrion and Jon dream of dragons as well, perhaps a hint by our author that they, too, have blood of the dragon. However, their dreams are not described like this, where the dragons are direct participants, interacting with the dreamer. I think the reason Dany’s dreams are different is the presence of the dragon’s eggs. Recall that Egg, Aemon, and their brothers also had dragon dreams. They, too, had cradle eggs, so I hypothesize that their dragons dreams were more like Dany’s. Aemon’s insistence that “I remember dragons” hints at the clarity of actual dragons being in the dreams. I hypothesize that the dragons interact with them through a psychic bond to the dragon in its egg, similar to, but not the same as wolf dreams. The wolves can be dominated once the warg masters the power. With Targeryens at least, I don’t think that dragons can be mastered by their riders (old Valyria may have been different). I think the dragons must choose to work with their rider.
I tie the eggs back to the dream because I find is reasonable to think the eggs were being stored at Drogo’s mance, where Dany was sleeping, the night of this dream. Perhaps they were even being stored in the same room, or in an adjoining closet or adjacent room. I believe that Dany is interacting with pre-hatched Drogon. We’ll come to the reason I think this dream was of Drogon in the next chapter. After Summerhall, it was thought that all the Targaryen dragon eggs were lost, and that the 3 presented to Dany here probably did come from Asshai… until Fire and Blood was published. There we learn that these are presumably the Targaryen dragon eggs recovered from Braavos, who bought them from Alyssa Farman, after she stole them from Queen Rhaena’s seat on Dragonstone during the time of Jaehaerys I.
Magister Illyrio murmured a command, and four burly slaves hurried forward, bearing between them a great cedar chest bound in bronze. When she opened it, she found piles of the finest velvets and damasks the Free Cities could produce … and resting on top, nestled in the soft cloth, three huge eggs. Dany gasped. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, each different than the others, patterned in such rich colors that at first she thought they were crusted with jewels, and so large it took both of her hands to hold one. She lifted it delicately, expecting that it would be made of some fine porcelain or delicate enamel, or even blown glass, but it was much heavier than that, as if it were all of solid stone. The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers, they shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold. The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls. “What are they?” she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder.
“Dragon’s eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai,” said Magister Illyrio. “The eons have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty.”
“I shall treasure them always.” Dany had heard tales of such eggs, but she had never seen one, nor thought to see one. It was a truly magnificent gift, though she knew that Illyrio could afford to be lavish. He had collected a fortune in horses and slaves for his part in selling her to Khal Drogo.
Dany thinks “I am the blood of the dragon” in three instances later this chapter to ward off fear. The third time she thinks it thrice, as if it is a mantra, followed by the “The dragon was never afraid.” In the scene when she rides the Silver filly, she’s mentioned as “praying,” something I had earlier compared to telepathic bond communication. (Thx Preston Jacobs)
Praying that she would not fall off and disgrace herself, she gave the filly the lightest and most timid touch with her knees.
AGoT – Daenerys II
And for the first time in hours, she forgot to be afraid. Or perhaps it was for the first time ever.
It must be noted that she might also be establishing a shinchanger bond with the filly as well, but in the context of the other 3 instances I mentioned earlier, her dragon identity is certainly linked to her shedding her fear here.
Notably, her fear returns not long after the ride, when Viserys threatens to “wake the dragon.” We see later that “waking the dragon” seems to take on a double meaning, whereby the eggs are thought of by Dany or are integral to the scenes where the phrase is used, continuing the foreshadowing of their hatching. This is evolutionary, though, as she still consciously fears “waking the dragon” until Viserys’s death, or at least until she breaks free of his power.
AGoT – Daenerys III
The first mention of dragons in this chapter follows Dany’s darkest moment. She has saddle sores, is chafed, raw and bloody, with blisters from the reigns, and she is getting the equivalent of marital rape from Drogo every night. She has no emotional support, and decides she wants to end her life rather than going on like that. Such was her mindset when she has her second dragon dream. We can identify the dragon to be Drogon because this time we get a physical description. I presume it to be the same dragon as the first dream because it is described as “the dragon,” not “a dragon.” Drogon’s egg is mentioned in the passage, as well, to make sure that we connect him to the dream.
Recall our direwolf theme of physical contact amplifying the bond. By some magic, Dany feels heat coming off the egg when she touches it, and for an instant, she feels like she’s dreaming again. To me, this is clear evidence for a telepathic bond to Drogon at this moment. Recall again, that the magic is amplified by physical touch. This is a transformative dream for Dany, so much so that her handmaidens immediately noticed. This is significant; the dragon symbolically heals her mind and body, burning away her fear and pain, and making her “new and fierce.” Whether you believe that it was just a psychological healing, a physiological healing by fire magic, or some combination of these combined with the normal healing and development of callous from blisters due to the passage of time, we know for certain that after the dream she feels better, so she was at least healed emotionally by the dream.
Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.
And the next day, strangely, she did not seem to hurt quite so much. It was as if the gods had heard her and taken pity. Even her handmaids noticed the change. “Khaleesi,” Jhiqui said, “what is wrong? Are you sick?”
“I was,” she answered, standing over the dragon’s eggs that Illyrio had given her when she wed. She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shell. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers … or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously.
From that hour onward, each day was easier than the one before it. Her legs grew stronger; her blisters burst and her hands grew callused; her soft thighs toughened, supple as leather.
Prayer is again associated with the telepathic bond. While the dream didn’t specifically start with a prayer, a prayer is implied because as the passage continues, she thinks that her healing was “as if the gods had heard her.” Again, I believe that it was Drogon who heard her prayer. The author is being very tricky, in my opinion, by confounding the concept of prayer and psychic communication. Or, perhaps, being raised catholic, he is associating the magic to what his imaginative young self originally thought or hoped prayer might amount to.
Note that there is another interpretation of the dream, that the gods or some entity (Preston Jacobs suggests that Quaithe is involved in Dany even this early) is meddling in her mind much like the three-eyed crow with Bran. Whether or not that is happening also, I firmly believe that this dream can be directly attributed to Drogon and their bond.
After the dream, Dany has her first confrontation with Viserys and he has his “sorefoot king” punishment, further indicating her shedding of fear. She discusses “waking the dragon” with Jorah, and dragon banners being sewn in Westeros, setting Dany’s mind to question a lot Viserys’s teachings. Jorah mentions that “Rhaegar was the last dragon.” If nothing else, this should be a reminder of their kingsblood. With that introspective frame of mind, she sees her eggs again as they make camp and further bonds with Drogon’s egg.
As she let the door flap close behind her, Dany saw a finger of dusty red light reach out to touch her dragon’s eggs across the tent. For an instant a thousand droplets of scarlet flame swam before her eyes. She blinked, and they were gone.
Stone, she told herself. They are only stone, even Illyrio said so, the dragons are all dead. She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. “The sun,” Dany whispered. “The sun warmed them as they rode.”
Again, it is Drogon’s egg she touches here. It may not be that the others would be warm yet, as she has likely not interacted with them enough to wake them. While she tells herself “they are only stone,” she clearly is beginning to think they are much more than that. The concept of her feeling heat emanating from the egg is something we’ll return to late in the volume. At this point we can at least be sure that she is taking some strength from Drogon inside.
Next, she has a bath and discusses dragons and eggs and moons and a lot of symbolic stuff with her handmaidens.
Dany’s skin was flushed and pink when she climbed from the tub. Jhiqui laid her down to oil her body and scrape the dirt from her pores. Afterward Irri sprinkled her with spiceflower and cinnamon. While Doreah brushed her hair until it shone like spun silver, she thought about the moon, and eggs, and dragons.
AGoT – Daenerys III
It serves to reinforce the importance of her blossoming magical bond to the egg. She goes on to continue her emotional transformation, asserting some level sexual control in her relationship with Drogo, though I won’t cover that, as there is not mention of dragons or eggs.
AGoT – Daenerys IV
Amidst mentions of dragons and dragon symbols in this chapter, Dany has her second confrontation with Viserys, hitting him with the dragon clothing she’d made for him. Embedded in this is a lot of boasts by Viserys about being a dragon, which reminds us of the kingsblood in the story. Dany also worries about waking the dragon, which leads to her striking him. As if in answer to the idea of waking the dragon, she retires to her chamber and establishes a bond with a second egg, Rheagal’s, waking it.
Last chapter, I discussed how I think that the dream with Drogon had emotional and potentially physiological healing magic associated with it. I lean toward interpreting that the end of the second paragraph in the passage that follows to be literal, not figurative. I think she is drawing magical strength from the dragon (or the inverse, it is lending or channeling the energy to her).
“I’m not hungry,” Dany said sadly. She was suddenly very tired. “Share the food among yourselves, and send some to Ser Jorah, if you would.” After a moment she added, “Please, bring me one of the dragon’s eggs.”
Irri fetched the egg with the deep green shell, bronze flecks shining amid its scales as she turned it in her small hands. Dany curled up on her side, pulling the sandsilk cloak across her and cradling the egg in the hollow between her swollen belly and small, tender breasts. She liked to hold them. They were so beautiful, and sometimes just being close to them made her feel stronger, braver, as if somehow she were drawing strength from the stone dragons locked inside.
She was lying there, holding the egg, when she felt the child move within her … as if he were reaching out, brother to brother, blood to blood. “You are the dragon,” Dany whispered to him, “the true dragon. I know it. I know it.” And she smiled, and went to sleep dreaming of home.
AGoT – Daenerys IV
The bond she established with Rheagal’s egg cannot be the same as the mutually exclusive bond of a rider a nd mount as is her bond with Drogon. With Rheagal, her bond would be that of mother to child. In fact, I read this passage as her incubating the egg just as a mother hen sits upon her eggs (recall Jorah’s later joke of Illyrio sitting on them himself). Then as she feels Rheago kick, it seems that the babe may have felt Rheagal awaken in the shell.
While we know that it goes nowhere, could this be an indication that Rhaego may have been starting a bond with Rheagal, to be his eventual rider? I find it a nice touch that GRRM made sure to connect the appropriate dragon to the boy. Even though this is only show canon (so far), I do wonder if that’s also specifically why Jon, Rhaegar’s son, rode Rhaegal, too.
AGoT – Daenerys V
This is the chapter where Dany eats the heart, resulting in Rhaego being proclaimed “the stallion who mounts the world.” There is a lot of dragon metaphor in this chapter, but not a lot of magical evidence.
I am of the opinion that a large part of why Drogo wanted to marry Dany was to produce an heir that had a shot at becoming “the stallion who mounts the world.” I know that it’s never explicitly stated in the text, but I think it’s a defensible theory.
I see some pretty good evidence for that at the end of this chapter. The 3 main pieces of evidence are:
Drogo’s (lack of) staying power – 3 thrusts.
His utterance of “the stallion who mounts the world” just after the moment of his pleasure.
His smile of satisfaction once it’s clear she’s going to finish the whole heart.
It also ties back to Dany I and what Ilyrio said:
“She has had her blood. She is old enough for the khal,” Illyrio told him, not for the first time. “Look at her. That silver-gold hair, those purple eyes … she is the blood of old Valyria, no doubt, no doubt … and highborn, daughter of the old king, sister to the new, she cannot fail to entrance our Drogo.” When he released her hand, Daenerys found herself trembling.
“I suppose,” her brother said doubtfully. “The savages have queer tastes. Boys, horses, sheep …”
Viserys clearly never understood why Drogo wanted her, but Ilyrio seems confident that Dany, the blood of old Valyria, is exactly what the khal wants. Could someone (Illyrio himself, mayhaps?) have convinced Drogo that combining his optimal Dothraki genes and Dany’s dragon rider – old Valyrian genes would result in this Stallion who mounts the world?
At the feast afterward, Rheagar is mentioned again as the last dragon, reminding us of Dany’s kingsblood and foreshadowing the return of dragons. Compounding the kingsblood reference, she also calls herself the “blood of the dragon” to work up the courage to eat the heart. The dragon’s eggs come up several times in relation to Viserys wanting them and Dany being willing to give them to him. Viserys compares himself to dragons as well several times, before the end, where Dany believes he was wrong:
He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.
– AGoT – Daenerys V
This is a stark reminder that resistance to heat only goes so far. Still, that she named the dragon from the final egg after Viserys indicates that he may have had a future as it’s rider.
AGoT – Daenerys VI
In this chapter, Dany is attacked by the wine seller, learns about Robert’s bounty on her head, and has a failed attempt at hatching the dragon’s eggs. Before the attempt on her life, at the market she contemplates that she could live in Vaes Dothrak if not for her legacy as blood of the dragon thinking that for her, a dragon, it wasn’t enough to be mother of Rhaego, the stallion who mounts the world; it seems that she is taking up responsibility for Viserys’s cause. This is the first we see of ambition in her; prior, it has all been about survival.
After the attack, she briefly thinks in terms of fear again, recalling the fear of Viserys mantra of “waking the dragon,” but now it is fear for the babe. Her motherly instincts drive her to think of the babe as blood of the dragon as well. The mantra again helps her to shed her fear, which she transforms into wrath, deciding that Robert has woken her dragon, which drives her to try to hatch the eggs, a seemingly instinctual act.
For a moment, we think that it might work, as Drogon’s egg “drinks the heat,” but it is a false alarm.
“No. He cannot have my son.” She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself … and her eyes went to the dragon’s eggs resting in their nest of dark velvet. The shifting lamplight lined their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade and scarlet and gold swam in the air around them, like courtiers around a king.
Was it madness that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, “Ser Jorah, light the brazier.”
He bowed. “As you command.”
When the coals were afire, Dany sent Ser Jorah from her. She had to be alone to do what she must do. This is madness, she told herself as she lifted the black-and-scarlet egg from the velvet. It will only crack and burn, and it’s so beautiful, Ser Jorah will call me a fool if I ruin it, and yet, and yet …
Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst the burning coals. The black scales seemed to glow as they drank the heat. Flames licked against the stone with small red tongues. Dany placed the other two eggs beside the black one in the fire. As she stepped back from the brazier, the breath trembled in her throat.
She watched until the coals had turned to ashes. Drifting sparks floated up and out of the smokehole. Heat shimmered in waves around the dragon’s eggs. And that was all.
Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, Ser Jorah had said. Dany gazed at her eggs sadly. What had she expected? A thousand thousand years ago they had been alive, but now they were only pretty rocks. They could not make a dragon. A dragon was air and fire. Living flesh, not dead stone.
AGoT – Daenerys VI
I do wonder if she might have had a chance right then to hatch Drogon’s egg or even Rhaegal’s. We must consider that she hadn’t yet incubated Viserion’s egg. Either way, the disappointment at her failure is sobering to her. She seems resigned that it was a false hope to hatch the eggs.
AGoT Dany VII
The eggs do not come up in this chapter, but she does think of herself as blood of the dragon twice, first to try to have courage to accept the violence surrounding her in the town of the lamb men, but very soon after she uses the phrase again to give herself the courage to try to do something positive for the conquered women. This compassion is a great indicator of her personality. She takes up the task with the fierceness of a dragon, even threatening Drogo’s bloodrider Kotho with “the dragon feeds on horse and sheep alike,” to which…
Khal Drogo smiled. “See how fierce she grows!” he said. “It is my son inside her, the stallion who mounts the world, filling her with his fire. Ride slowly, Qotho … if the mother does not burn you where you sit, the son will trample you into the mud. And you, Mago, hold your tongue and find another lamb to mount. These belong to my khaleesi.” He started to reach out a hand to Daenerys, but as he lifted his arm Drogo grimaced in sudden pain and turned his head.
AGoT Dany VII
It is interesting that Drogo points out the fierceness she has adopted. It is possible that he is right about Rhaego filling her with fire, certainly her protective motherly instinct was roused last chapter, but in my opinion her growing bond to the soon-to-be hatched Drogon is an equally likely explanation for the fierceness.
Unfortunately her courage yields a reckless act, where she allows Mirri Maz Duur (MMD), a likely enemy, to heal Drogo. I’ve argued before that even if MMD’s cure for Drogo would have been effective if he followed her instructions, she surely did not expect he would follow them. If she’d had his best interests at heart, she would have prescribed something faster acting and less prone to mistreatment. The hairless men with their hot knives were surely a better remedy in this case. Dany erred. Either way, I don’t see that MMD had the Khal’s best interests in mind.
AGoT Dany VIII
She calls herself “blood of the dragon” three times in this chapter, first as she confronts Drogo’s bloodriders about the fallout over Drogo’s health, then twice to give herself the courage to allow Mirri Maz Duur to perform the blood magic to try to save Drogo.
FWIW, the YouTuber Glidus has a fun tinfoil theory that discusses the topic of the Dragon hatching and discusses a lot of the events of this and the next couple Dany chapters. I’ll not go deep into the blood magic of what happened in the tent with MMD in this essay. However, suffice to say, I do think that there was a bit of shadow binding going on in that tent. Thus, I agree with Glidus’s idea in that I think that a small bit (a shadow) of the dragons’ namesakes, Viserys, Drogo, and Rhaego, did make in into MMD at this point and then into the dragons during the hatching.
AGoT – Danaerys IX
The first third of this chapter is a dream that is part inner thoughts, part prophetic, part meddling by Quaithe, and part dragon dream. During the dream, the mantra “You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” is repeated in full or in part nine times (just in case we hadn’t noticed that this dream was about waking dragons).
It is also about the Targaryen identity as dragons. Ser Jorah calling Rheagar “the last dragon” comes up near the beginning and end showing his death and foreshadowing Dany proving him not to be the last. Viserys and his self-identification as a dragon has a paragraph as well.
Around the middle of the dream there is a scene that includes strange people that are likely her forebears. Initially, we assume them to be Valyrians, but wonder about their multicolored eyes. Thus far in the story we are only told about violet or lilac eyes with Valyrians (corresponding to the Amethyst), although we do learn that there are blue-eyed Targaryens, which might relate to the tourmaline colored eyes in the vision. The Opal and Jade are almost certainly allusions to the grey eyes of the Starks and the Green of the Lannisters. I cover this more in my “Kingsblood” series, check it out!
When the World of Ice and Fire was published, we appear to get a bit more on these ancestors of Dany. They seem to be of the Great Empire of the Dawn, which details several different rulers associated with the eye colors seen here, plus a few more. One eye color suggested there is Onyx, from the Onyx Emperor. I previously suggested that Drogo might have the ability to skinchange, that he is special, like Aegon the conqueror. LML and his “Between 2 Weirwoods” cast suggested that the Dothraki may trace their lineage to the Onyx Emperor. One might also suggest that the lineage of the Valyrians and of House Dayne are tied to the Amethyst Empress, that Starks are related to the Opal Emperor, and that Lannister’s might have blood ties to the Jade Emperor.
Back to the scene, these ancestors encourage her to push forward, and then a dragon (we get no coloring) joins the dream. Dany becomes the dragon as her flesh tears. The vision that follows that scene is illustrative of the great power of a dragon.
Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. “Faster,” they cried, “faster, faster.” She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever they touched. “Faster!” the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.
“… wake the dragon …”
The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door.
It almost seems that Dany is being enticed or tempted by this dragon power, bringing to mind the biblical temptation of Jesus by Satan. Given this, and that Lucifer means Lightbringer, I see a comparison here between her and Azor Ahai, and I also can’t help but worry if this is indicative of malevolent or at least misguided influence from Quaithe in the dream.
However, we also see evidence of a bond to the dragon. “She could smell home” is an indication of heightened senses, which is also is what happens to Jon when Ghost and he become very closely bonded later in the story. In that bond, Jon is smelling with Ghost’s senses. Could Dany be doing the same here, her mind mingling with the dragon (probably Drogon) and she is sensing the world in the way a dragon would, in this dream? There is also, of course, the more obvious evidence of a dragon bond, that she flew!
After opening the door, she sees the second vision of Rheagar, where he wears the armor he dies in. She lifts the visor of his helm and sees his own. Symbolically, this is her “taking the helm” of her legacy as a dragon.
And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.
You also gotta love the clear Star Wars reference. Yet it is a very ASOIAF twist on the trope, not a clear parallel to Luke. Further, mixed with the suggestion that she is taking up Rhaegar’s cause is also the potential that she follows Rhaegar in failure and death.
To close the dream sequence, we get the odd statement that follows:
After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.
The pain is relatively straightforward; she’s gone through a very tough physically and emotionally taxing ordeal, and on top of that, she gave birth.
The fire within her has multiple meanings. It is clearly the ambition she had before, but now stoked by this dream, an ambition to take her place as the last dragon and to hatch her dragons. It also represents the fire of dragons. I believe this metaphor to be an allusion to the bond she now shares with pre-hatched Drogon and the other two dragons. It represents the healing nature of that bond, which we talked of in her third chapter, fire magic that is lending her strength throughout this ordeal. Perhaps it even suggests that Drogon’s consciousness took part in the flight from earlier in the dream. Even if that is not the case, I have reason to think that Drogon is witness to everything that happens in Dany’s mind since his awakening in her first dragon dream.
The last phrase, “the whisperings of stars,” means very little to us at first. However, when read against later volumes, especially The World of Ice and Fire, we see this as a likely allusion to the ancient church of starry wisdom, of which Quaithe is likely a member. That church is also tied to the infamous Bloodstone Emperor, so its works must be regarded as questionable.
The likely conclusion here is that some of this dream was meddled with by Quaithe or some other power associated with this church. It also seems that Dany learned something of ancient wisdom in this interaction with the stars after the dream ends in a way that the author chooses to hide from the reader to preserve the mystery. In my opinion, she subliminally learns about how to hatch the dragons. She may think they are her own ideas, but Quaithe or her church might have had a hand in planting them. Finally, given the identity of the Bloodstone emperor as a bloodmage and Quaithe’s identity as a shadow binder, this certainly has a “dark magic” component to it.
After the dream, Dany wakes a few time with dragons consciously in her thoughts, tries to crawl to the eggs, asks for a dragon egg, and finds that Viserion’s egg has been placed in her arms as she slept. This scene is the incubation of the final egg of the trio. I do wonder if GRRM specifically had MMD be the one she told to bring her egg, and if MMD had some magical way of knowing which egg still needed incubation.
“Yes?” the maegi asked. “What is it you wish, Khaleesi?”
“Bring me … egg … dragon’s egg … please …” Her lashes turned to lead, and she was too weary to hold them up.
When she woke the third time, a shaft of golden sunlight was pouring through the smoke hole of the tent, and her arms were wrapped around a dragon’s egg. It was the pale one, its scales the color of butter cream, veined with whorls of gold and bronze, and Dany could feel the heat of it. Beneath her bedsilks, a fine sheen of perspiration covered her bare skin. Dragondew, she thought. Her fingers trailed lightly across the surface of the shell, tracing the wisps of gold, and deep in the stone she felt something twist and stretch in response. It did not frighten her. All her fear was gone, burned away.
It seems to come to life at the moment she traces it with her fingers. As if to confirm that they are all three incubated at this point, she interacts with the other two not long after. Then, Jorah confirms that he cannot feel the same heat that Dany feels emanating from them. Recall the “fire within her” from the dream; Jorah clearly doesn’t have it.
Ser Jorah and Mirri Maz Duur entered a few moments later, and found Dany standing over the other dragon’s eggs, the two still in their chest. It seemed to her that they felt as hot as the one she had slept with, which was passing strange. “Ser Jorah, come here,” she said. She took his hand and placed it on the black egg with the scarlet swirls. “What do you feel?”
“Shell, hard as rock.” The knight was wary. “Scales.”
“Heat?”
“No. Cold stone.” He took his hand away. “Princess, are you well? Should you be up, weak as you are?”
– AGoT – Dany IX
Having accomplished this final incubation, armed with hidden knowledge from the dream, and having interacted with MMD later in the chapter, she is now ready to enact a better plan for hatching the dragons than her prior aborted attempt.
Note also that Jorah expects her to be extremely weak at this point, bedridden. As we said before though, her dragon magic seems to have healing power. She is not weak anymore. She is strong and ready to face MMD and the anguish it will bring.
Hello and welcome to the Bard’s Truth, with your host, The Green Bard. This is Dany’s Dragon Bonds, Volume I Part 3, The Last Dragon Awakens the Last Dragons, where we conclude our analysis of Dany and her dragons in A Game of Thrones.
AGoT – Daenerys X
The beginning of the chapter when she hatches the dragons has a ton of foreshadowing of the hatching, while the tension that she may be planning to commit suicide increases.
Yet in hindsight we know that after facing MMD, her determination and strength do not wane. In enacting her plan she solicits oaths of fealty from her khas and from Ser Jorah. She tells Jorah that she is going to make him a dragon-forged Valyrian steel sword. One might think she meant that she was going to acquire one for him. I think it more likely that she planned to forge it herself, and this was foreshadowing of the dragon’s hatching later in the chapter. We shall see whether this oath will have consequence in the next volumes.
She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, and turned to the last of her champions. “Ser Jorah Mormont,” she said, “first and greatest of my knights, I have no bride gift to give you, but I swear to you, one day you shall have from my hands a longsword like none the world has ever seen, dragon-forged and made of Valyrian steel. And I would ask for your oath as well.”
As she builds the pyre and invokes the eggs, Jorah, thinking that she means to commit suicide on the pyre, protests and says to sell them in Asshai. Again she disagrees, adding to the tension. Clearly she’s decided she was meant to hatch them, but he (and we) didn’t know that.
“Oil,” she commanded, and they brought forth the jars and poured them over the pyre, soaking the silks and the brush and the bundles of dry grass, until the oil trickled from beneath the logs and the air was rich with fragrance. “Bring my eggs,” Dany commanded her handmaids. Something in her voice made them run.
Ser Jorah took her arm. “My queen, Drogo will have no use for dragon’s eggs in the night lands. Better to sell them in Asshai. Sell one and we can buy a ship to take us back to the Free Cities. Sell all three and you will be a wealthy woman all your days.”
“They were not given to me to sell,” Dany told him.
Note that the value of the eggs is important to Jorah, who is a noble-become-pauper. The value of the live dragons also turns out to be a continuing motif going into the future volumes as well.
Next, the placement of the eggs around Drogo suggests that he is symbolically the sacrifice that Dany already made to hatch the dragons. Dany’s loss and anguish come from Drogo’s death.
She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her sun-and-stars. The black beside his heart, under his arm. The green beside his head, his braid coiled around it. The cream-and-gold down between his legs. When she kissed him for the last time, Dany could taste the sweetness of the oil on his lips.
Before the pyre is lit, night falls and the comet appears in the sky, just as the even-star might on earth. Dany’s interpretation of the sign has mixed fire and blood signals, suggesting that the ritual that follows is a mixture of fire and blood magic.
Jhogo spied it first. “There,” he said in a hushed voice. Dany looked and saw it, low in the east. The first star was a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon’s tail. She could not have asked for a stronger sign.
Even as Drogo is the symbolic sacrifice for Dany, Mirri Maz Duur is the death that pays for life. As the pyre is burnt Mirri Maz Duur first chants and ululates, which progresses to screaming in the passage that follows. Her death is blood magic in itself, but the actions she is taking here adds to what I am going to guess is “stray magic” here. Whether she is trying to help to hatch the dragons or to save herself doesn’t really matter, in my opinion, she is adding to the overall magical conflagration. She is mentioned as having fallen silent (suggesting her death) at the end of the passage, so I don’t think she was the one that successfully hatched the dragons.
That credit goes to Dany. In this next passage, we get a last mention of her kingsblood and identity as “blood of the dragon.” At the end of the passage, she embraces that identity, symbolically wedding the fire.
She could smell the odor of burning flesh, no different than horseflesh roasting in a firepit. The pyre roared in the deepening dusk like some great beast, drowning out the fainter sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s screaming and sending up long tongues of flame to lick at the belly of the night. As the smoke grew thicker, the Dothraki backed away, coughing. Huge orange gouts of fire unfurled their banners in that hellish wind, the logs hissing and cracking, glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark like so many newborn fireflies. The heat beat at the air with great red wings, driving the Dothraki back, driving off even Mormont, but Dany stood her ground. She was the blood of the dragon, and the fire was in her.
She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not been hot enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she thought. Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child, but children grow, and children learn.
In this wedding, she is also giving herself to the fire, and this act, part sacrifice and part faith, enables the miracle that follows. Her pre-established bond to the dragons in their eggs is also part of how the fire is in her. She is creating a symbiotic circle with the dragons whereby the three of them amplify each other’s magic, protecting her flesh and giving life to their own, for dragons are fire made flesh. I like to imagine that the heat is rejected by Dany’s body and absorbed into the dragons in this moment, catalysis for their hatching, catharsis for Dany.
This release, this symbolic sacrifice of herself continues into the next passage where she thinks “only the fire mattered.” With MMD gone and stray magic flowing around, Dany sees visions in the flames, including Drogo’s mount taking his soul to the night lands, to the stars, another thing that ties the Dothraki back to the Great empire of the Dawn and the credo that it spawned, the church of starry wisdom. I can see him “ride the wind.”
Another step, and Dany could feel the heat of the sand on the soles of her feet, even through her sandals. Sweat ran down her thighs and between her breasts and in rivulets over her cheeks, where tears had once run. Ser Jorah was shouting behind her, but he did not matter anymore, only the fire mattered. The flames were so beautiful, the loveliest things she had ever seen, each one a sorcerer robed in yellow and orange and scarlet, swirling long smoky cloaks. She saw crimson firelions and great yellow serpents and unicorns made of pale blue flame; she saw fish and foxes and monsters, wolves and bright birds and flowering trees, each more beautiful than the last. She saw a horse, a great grey stallion limbed in smoke, its flowing mane a nimbus of blue flame. Yes, my love, my sun-and-stars, yes, mount now, ride now.
Her vest had begun to smolder, so Dany shrugged it off and let it fall to the ground. The painted leather burst into sudden flame as she skipped closer to the fire, her breasts bare to the blaze, streams of milk flowing from her red and swollen nipples. Now, she thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal Drogo before her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He smiled, and the whip snaked down at the pyre, hissing.
Note how Dany’s breasts are flowing with milk, symbolizing her role as a mother of these dragons, at least that she is mother to Rheagal and Viserion. Dany’s motherhood, her fertility, is a major part of the magic of the hatching of these dragons.
We also see how Drogo’s whip symbolically strikes Viserion’s egg, which hatches with a crack in the very next line. Her grief over her lost love and over her son, the blood sacrifice of MMD, and her own self sacrifice to the flames, her embracing of the fire inside her, her kingsblood, her identity as an exceptional Targaryen female, ALL THIS drives the magic that makes her the mother of dragons in this instant.
She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder.
Only death can pay for life.
Only death can pay for life, indeed. Drogo rides to the night lands with a crack of the whip that births the first of Dany’s children, Viserion.
What is probably Rheagal hatches next. As it happens, Dany further embraces the fire, and we see her exult in it, owning it. Here she calls herself mother of dragons for the first time. She also calls herself daughter of dragons, invoking her heritage, her kingsblood. Then, calling herself bride of fire shows her embrace of the fire magic intrinsic to that identity. With this on her mind, she steps forward, deeper into the conflagration, unburnt and the final miracle happens, the hatching of Drogon.
And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children.
The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.
Drogon, is not just her child though. He is the dragon she will eventually ride, her partner. She already established a deep bond to him in her first dragons dreams. Since that moment, his mind as been mingling with hers; he’s been able to feel her every thought, see all she’s seen, and hear all she’s heard.
If she symbolically wedded the fire here, the culmination of that fire being made flesh is Drogon. Drogon follows in a line of exceptional black and red dragons, such as Balerion, the black dread. He was the only one of the three that could reached out to Dany telepathically in her dreams. All three eggs are old ones; it’s been 200+ years since Allyssa Farman took these eggs from another special Targaryen female, queen Rhaena Targaryen, who hatched Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s cradle eggs, and who’s daughter rode Balerion into old Valyria. But, if Drogon had been able to reach out telepathically, to listen during that entire period, he could be considered an old soul. Dany will need to work hard to exert control over Drogon as we learn in later volumes.
The close of this volume comes next, where Dany is found with her 3 dragons among the ashes and embers. She was unhurt, unburnt. The 2 that are her wholly children are suckling at her breasts, taking life from her even as their magic had helped shield her from being burnt. Drogon, her eventual mount, is curled around her head, signifying the mind-meld between them. The cleansing fire magic that he provided her in the Dothraki sea was certainly in effect here in keeping her unburnt.
To further signify Drogon’s difference from the others we see how he looks at Jorah with eyes red as coals. I was unsure before starting this essay, but just as Ghost is a special, red-eyed direwolf, I believe that Drogon is special dragon, potentially the equivalent of a greenseer of dragonkind. We’ll watch for evidence of this in future volumes. Let’s also not forget that Jorah is the first man those red eyes regarded.
When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away … yet she was unhurt.
The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.
Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.
The oaths her Dotraki khas swear after the miracle take on new meaning. “Blood of my blood,” once a strange tradition of strange people, now signifies Dany’s kingsblood and their own bond to the magic queen, their mother of dragons. This might be another reason to believe that Valyrians and Dothraki can trace their lineage to the Great Empire of the Dawn, just as I believe this for the first men and the Starks.
In the final paragraph of the chapter, Drogon again demonstrates his unique place among the three. dragons, hissing and blowing smoke first, potentially mirroring Dany as she rises, exalting in the adoration of her khalasar. The other 2 follow his lead.
As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.
– AGoT – Dany X
Dany is fundamentally transformed by this magical ritual. Her life will never be the same. She has earned the adoration of her people, and now has three dragons, one which will be her mount and perhaps her equal, and two who are her children. As we move into the next volumes, we’ll continue to see the differences between Dany’s dragons and especially how Dany’s bond to Drogon continues to develop. The magic intrinsic to her kingsblood will continue to play a huge role, I have no doubt.
Now that the dragons are hatched, they will continue to be bonded to Dany in one way or another as the story progresses. I continue to analyze this in Dany’s Dragon Bonds, Volume II, covering ACoK.
The Green Bard 