Thousands of years ago, Valyrians stumbled on the first dragon eggs in the mountains of the Fourteen Fires. I cannot imagine that shepherds could hatch dragon eggs and bind such creatures to their will, but whatever aid they must have had is lost to history. Every educated person knows how the dragonlords then conquered most of the known world. Breaking the ancient Ghiscari Empire , enslaving a continent, building roads and bridges that still stand today, though the art that made them is lost.
An empire of marvels and misery. And now what is left of Valyria? A smoking wasteland. In time, Aegon Targaryen and his sisters brought their three dragons , who had escaped the Doom , to Westeros , perhaps thinking to regain his people's lost glory. And so he did. On the Field of Fire , he proved that armies were no match for dragons. At Harrenhal , he proved that mighty castles weren't either. His first act? To order his dragon, Balerion the Black Dread, to melt the swords of his beaten foes into his new Iron Throne.
For over a hundred years, the Targaryen dragons cemented their breeders' hold on the Seven Kingdoms , if not each other.
When Targaryen fought Targaryen in the civil war called the Dance of the Dragons , an angry mob stormed the Dragonpit , that huge, now-ruined vault where Targaryens stabled their beasts. Thousands died, but through sheer numbers and madness, five of the Targaryen dragons lay dead by the morning, which was perhaps too many. Thereafter, each generation of dragons grew smaller than its parents'.
Their skulls used to line the throne room of the Red Keep in order of birth. The oldest, Balerion, could swallow an ox whole. The last skull was barely the size of a dog's. Dragons, the sigil of House Targaryen , are large scaled reptilian and avian predators native to the volcanoes of Old Valyria. Introduced to Westeros by Aegon I Targaryen during the Wars of Conquest, they were a traditional sight in the royal stables for centuries. They are said to have unlimited growth potential, growing as large as suits their living environment or enclosure.
Formerly believed to be extinct, three dragons were hatched by Daenerys in the Dothraki Sea. Following their supposed extinction during the reign of Aegon III, the skulls of the Targaryen dragons were mounted in the throne room, a grim reminder of the Valyrian power of old.
The Targaryen dynasty had 19 confirmed dragons during their rule, and they were named after the deities of the Valyrian pantheon. Daenaryes has named her three dragons after the three people closest to her: Rhaegal and Viserion for her late brothers and Drogon for her late husband.
They remain the sigil of House Targaryen , who were known to have a special affinity with the creatures. Even Daenerys Targaryen who knows nothing of her true heritage feels a connection with the relics of the ancient animals. She appears to feel a connection with the eggs; causing her to develop a curiosity about the race and the possibility that there may still be living dragons. Daenerys is given three petrified dragon eggs as a gift for her wedding to Khal Drogo.
The three eggs are black, green, and gold. Daenerys begins caring for the eggs as they become richer in color. She keeps them in a chest surrounded by candles, day and night as she is drawn to them. Arya stumbles upon the massive skull of one of the Targaryen dragons while chasing a cat in the vaults.
She hides in the mouth of the skull and overhears the plotting of Illyrio and Varys. Daenerys continues to experiment with her eggs. She briefly places one of the eggs into a fire pit in an attempt to hatch it, but the egg remains unhatched. She removes the egg from the fire with her bare hands, but remains unhurt. Daenerys Targaryen places the eggs on the funeral pyre of her husband after smothering him with a pillow. She also straps the witch Mirri Maz Duur to the pyre. She then lights the pyre, and walks into it, with all her followers believing her to have burned alive.
In the morning, however, she is found with three dragons, a green dragon in her arms, a black dragon clinging on her shoulder and a white-peach colored dragon clinging on her leg. A moment later, the black dragon screeches and flaps his wings. Daenerys tries to feed Drogon raw meat. Daenerys tries unsuccessfully to feed her dragons raw meat, unsure of what she is doing wrong. She coaxes them into recognizing the Valyrian command, " Dracarys ," to breathe fire, so they can cook their own food.
During her stay in Qarth, word of the dragons' return begins to travel to other parts of Essos; the rumors are eventually picked up by Varys , who mentions them to Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion is more concerned with the impending Battle of the Blackwater than with newly hatched dragons on the other side of the world.
The dragons are later stolen by the warlocks of Qarth and hidden in the House of the Undying. Pyat Pree invites Daenerys to come to the House of the Undying and be reunited with her 'babies'. Dany's dragons breathe fire in " Valar Morghulis. Once Daenerys is inside the citadel she is enthralled by two specific illusions: the Iron Throne room with a destroyed roof and snow falling in and the illusion of her dead husband and child. The sound of the crying dragons pulls Daenerys out of the temptation to stay in either illusion.
Continuing her search for her dragons she finds them all chained beside each other, and they scream with excitement when she nears them. Daenerys goes to them, only to find herself chained as well. With her arms stretched to either side of her she becomes a captive. However with a bit of a twisted smile, Daenerys speaks the High Valyrian word for fire, and Drogon first answers her call, but isn't very effective by himself.
However, both Rhaegal and Viserion then join in, setting Pyat Pree ablaze. Daenerys arrives with her dragons in Slaver's Bay , hoping to acquire an army of Unsullied. With nothing else to pay the slave-masters, she offers them her largest dragon, Drogon, in exchange for all eight thousand of their Unsullied soldiers.
Revealing to everyone that she speaks Valyrian fluently, she orders her new army to slay all of the slave-masters within the city. Daenerys then commands Drogon to attack Kraznys; the slave master is consumed in a powerful jet of Drogon's fire-breath. Drogon and the other dragons then provide air support for the Unsullied as they sack Astapor , burning more of the slave-masters and their personal guards.
Afterwards, Daenerys's new army triumphantly leaves Astapor marching in formation, with her three dragons flying above. When Daenerys besieges Yunkai next, she keeps her three dragons in her tent when she receives the Yunkish ambassador Razdal mo Eraz , in order to intimidate him. At one point she casually throws a piece of meat to them and they playfully fight over it, much to Razdal's consternation. Daenerys ultimately rejects Razdal's offer to leave Yunkai alone in exchange for a gift of gold, but chooses to keep the gold anyway.
When Razdal's slaves attempt to retrieve it the dragons scare them away. After Razdal threatens Daenerys the dragons grew more agitated; Daenerys points out that he had threatened their "mother", and while she had promised him safe passage as an ambassador, her dragons did not.
Razdal leaves in frustration. Daenerys ultimately decides not to risk endangering her young dragons again by deploying them against Yunkai, but sends in an infiltration mission consisting of Daario Naharis , Jorah Mormont, and the Unsullied commander Grey Worm. After fighting their way through the city they free the slaves and start a general uprising.
During her journey to Meereen , Daenerys's dragons have grown larger than they were before, feasting on a dead sheep. While scuffling over the carcass, Daenerys attempted to calm Drogon down, but the black dragon snapped at his mother due to his state in a feeding frenzy.
Jorah then reminded Daenerys that dragons can never be tamed, not even by their own mother. After Daenerys claimed Meereen as its queen, Drogon continues to hunt for their food independently, burning and killing livestock of farmers that live around the Meereenese region.
Daenerys visits Rhaegal and Viserion after not seeing them for weeks. She soon sees they have grown larger and more aggressive than they were before. Realizing that her own children have turned against her, Daenerys has no choice but to keep her distance from them.
Despite being injured, the black dragon managed to kill many Sons of the Harpy by tearing some with his teeth, crushing others under his feet and burning the rest with his flames. Daenerys then mounts him, speaks a single word to him " valahd " and he takes flight, making Daenerys the first dragonrider in over a century.
Grey Worm reports the dragons aren't eating, Tyrion proclaims it's because Dragons don't do well in captivity. He talks of their intelligence and how the Targaryens raised and locked up their dragons, leading to their extinction. He and Varys visit the dragons, claiming he's a friend of their mother, and releases them from their collars. When the Red Priestess Kinvara comes to Meereen from Volantis , she notes to Tyrion and Varys that Daenerys's dragons are gifts from the Lord of Light , and they can burn the sins for those who have lack of faith in the Targaryen queen.
While Daenerys's khalasar are riding to Meereen, she reunites with Drogon, who has grown about double in size. Afterward, Drogon flies Daenerys back to Meereen, which is being attacked by the Masters. When Daenerys refuses to surrender Meereen to the Masters, Drogon lands right by her side before allowing her to ride on his back. After the pair take flight, Rhaegal and Viserion break out of the Great Pyramid to join their mother and brother in burning a few of the Masters' ships with dragon fire.
After the Second Siege of Meereen was won and the war over the Liberation of Slaver's Bay ended, the three Dragons fly west alongside Daenerys's newly acquired armada towards Westeros. Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion fly ahead of their mother as she lands on Dragonstone.
They investigate the island as Daenerys enters and secures the castle. After meeting with the lords of Westeros, Queen Cersei ventures into the vaults with Qyburn to see his "solution" for dealing with Daenerys's dragons. They pass several smaller dragon skulls before reaching the largest skull in the vaults, that of Balerion the Black Dread King Aegon the Conqueror's dragon.
Qyburn directs Cersei to a ballista named a "scorpion" and reassures her that they can hurt dragons having heard about the spears that pierced Drogon's hide in Meereen. Cersei tests the ballista on the skull of Balerion and is pleased when the bolt pierces the massive, hard skull. For the first time, Daenerys rides the full-grown Drogon into battle at the Battle of the Goldroad.
Also, Qyburn's scorpion is used for the first time, by Bronn , and is proven to pierce the hide of a dragon. However, Bronn only manages to shoot Drogon's shoulder, and doesn't do enough significant damage to mortally wound him. The dragons accompany Daenerys as they attempt to rescue Jon Snow and his group from the White Walkers and the army of the dead at the Wight Hunt beyond the Wall. However, not long after Daenerys's and Drogon's arrival, the Night King is given an ice spear by one of his Walker lieutenants.
The Night King hurls it at Viserion, piercing straight through his neck in a fiery and bloody blast, fatally wounding him. The helpless dragon shrieks in agony as he drops like a stone, crashing through the frozen lake and sinking beneath the surface. Later, the White Walkers have their wights haul Viserion's body out of the frozen lake, after which the Night King reanimates the corpse of the fallen dragon.
Drogon and Rhaegal accompany their mother on their journey to Winterfell. Their presence both awe and terrify the Northmen. Rhaegal allows Jon to ride him as they fly together alongside Daenerys and Drogon. When the army of the dead arrives at Winterfell, Jon and Daenerys fly the dragons and order them to burn as many wights as possible in the Battle of Winterfell. They then give chase before battling the Night King and the undead Viserion.
Both dragons sustain injuries throughout the battle, but they manage to survive. With the Night King and his army destroyed, the dragons fly back to Dragonstone as Daenerys resume her campaign to take the Iron Throne. Upon arriving on the island, Euron and his Iron Fleet ambush them with scorpion bolts, hitting Rhaegal three times before killing him.
This leaves Drogon as the only known living dragon in the world. This induces King's Landing to surrender, allowing Daenerys to win her war. However, she proceeds to burn the city and its populace from atop of Drogon, turning King's Landing into a massive inferno. When Drogon realizes Daenerys is dead, he bellows in grief and rage and faces Jon. Jon prepares to die by Drogon's flames but instead, Drogon proceeds to burn the Iron Throne until it is nothing but a puddle of molten slag.
Later in the episode, when Drogon's whereabouts are questioned, a newly elected King Bran Stark says that he will try to find Drogon. This list is not from the books, none of them were ever mentioned again, and several of the names were inside jokes from the writers. The Targaryens did collect skulls of dragons that were in some cases thousands of years old, not ones that they possessed since they came to Westeros, so it's possible that these existed at some point or another in Valyria's five thousand year history.
His list included Vermithrax an inside joke referring to the dragon in the film Dragonslayer , Ghiscar , Valryon , Essovius , and Archonei. Some other mythical creatures, whose existence is unproven, have "dragon" in their name but are unrelated to real dragons - such as Sea dragons and Ice dragons.
The dragons in the TV series are CGI creations, though in Season 2 - when they were about the size of small cats - the actors did use prop-dragon puppets on-set, to make sure that their eye-lines matched. Supervising sound editor Tim Kimmel explained in a Season 4 interview what went into creating the dragon scream sound effects and other vocalizations: "Each dragon has multiple animals stacked and put together to create it There are various birds that get used in there.
We sneak some other things in there—last season we had some weird dolphin sounds. I believe there's a pissed-off seal in there somewhere, during some of the angry spots. We sometimes use lions for the growlier stuff.
The real-life prop dragon eggs. One was given to George R. Martin as a wedding gift. To create the noise of dragon claws clacking against hard surfaces as they move around, the sound effects team used a combination of beef-rib bones, and also press-on nails hot-glued to gardening gloves.
That way, drumming the fingers of the glove against a hard surface sounds more realistic, like a dragon's individual claws hitting a surface. In Season 5, Drogon is about 40 feet long from snout to tail-tip, and 20 percent bigger than the other two dragons making them around 32 feet long.
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