#this is why “mud brown” sheepstealer is >>>

[greenbloods]

dont have enough to write meta on this but it's interesting how dragons are constantly characterized in terms of metals. golden syrax and sunfyre, silverwing, vermithor the bronze fury, tessarion of the cobalt scale. melisandre says she will wake dragons from stone. daenerys' three headed crown that represents her dragons "being wrought in the shape of a three-headed dragon with the "coils yellow gold, the wings silver, the heads carved from jade, ivory, and onyx." men are meat and dragons are fire made flesh. but theres something strange and iron in their character too, isnt there?

[tatticstudio55]

A dragon alone in the world is a terrible thing

I thought it would be interesting to write about the dragons who fought and/or died and/or were featured in the Dance of Dragons. Covering them all would take forever, so I’ll go with the main (“main” in my opinion, that is), those who fought the most “peculiar” battles and those with the strongest symbolism attached to it: Vhagar, Sunfyre, Caraxes; Dragonstone’s three wild dragons, Sheepstealer, Grey Ghost and the Cannibal; and the dragons from the battle at Tumbleton, the “Blue Queen” Tessarion, Seasmoke, Vermithor and Silverwing.

 VHAGAR

During the Dance, Vhagar became the closest thing to what I’d call an all out “monster”, shredding havoc indiscriminately all across the riverlands. Fire and Blood doesn’t usually present dragons as a constant source of terror for lords and peasants alike, or, you know, the Smaug kind who’d gorge on maidens at the full moon, but Vhagar made the exception.

When her corpse was dragged from the water years after her final battle with Caraxes, Aemond’s “armored bones” were “still chained to the saddle” and Visenya’s sword, Dark Sister, still “thrust hilt-deep through his [blind] eye socket” (F&B, 502). Prince, sword and dragon all re emerged in a tightly bound, single package. We know that dragons bond with their riders, but what about swords? Wasn’t Visenya Vhagar’s first rider? How curious is it that Dark Sister remained with Vhagar’s bones at the bottom of the lake – even after having “fought” against her?

Speaking of curiosities, Aemond’s demise atop Vhagar is reminiscent of “one of the more curious incidents of the Dance of the Dragons”:

Legend has it that during the Age of Heroes, Serwyn of the Mirror Shield slew the dragon Urrax by crouching behind a shield so polished that the beast saw only his own reflection. By this ruse, the hero crept close enough to drive a spear through the dragon’s eye, earning the name by which we know him still. (F&B, 476)

Compare this with the onslaught of Caraxes and Daemon on Vhagar and Aemond:

The hour was late, the sun was close to setting, and the lake was calm, its surface glimmering like a sheet of beaten copper. Up and up she soared, searching for Caraxes as Alys Rivers watched from atop Kingspyre Tower in Harrenhal below.

The attack came sudden as a thunderbolt. Caraxes dove down upon Vhagar with a piercing shriek that was heard a dozen miles away, cloaked by the glare of the setting sun on Prince Aemond’s blind side. (F&B, 500)

Here as callback to the mirror shield, we have the “sheet of beaten copper” and the sun shielding Daemon from Aemond’s sight. The lake is the mirror, the sun the shield, and Vhagar is faced with her own deadly “reflection” Dark Sister.  When they all crash in the lake, Vhagar sink to the bottom of the metaphorical “mirror” and reunite with her reflection at last.

 SUNFYRE

As far as I recall, Sunfyre fought three dragons during the dance: Meleys, Grey Ghost and Moondancer. All three died, but each battle left Sunfyre with severe injuries he’d never recover from. Sunfyre was described as the most beautiful dragon the seven kingdoms had ever seen, a bright gold color with pale pink wings. That changed after the battle with Meleys, where he “had one wing half-torn from his body” (F&B, 435). His third and last fight left him so battered, broken and bloodied that queen Rhaenyra, when she saw him, supposedly said “Whose work is this? We must thank him” (F&B, 545). He was mounted by Aegon II Targaryen.

Sunfyre is often given “solar” attributes. His flames were so bright that they blinded Moondancer; “a blast of golden flames so bright it lit the yard below like a second sun” (F&B, 544). The fight against Baela and Moondancer broke Aegon’s legs and Sunfyre’s wings for good, for he was never able to fly after that (strong association with Icarus here). Sunfyre’s early splendor represent what’s ultimately the uselessness of a beautiful outer shell. The fact that Aegon was separated from him during most of the Dance (severely burned after the battle at Rook’s Rest, Aegon would remain at King’s Landing, drugged on milk of the poppy, until Rhaenyra took the city, while Sunfyre remained at Rook’s Rest to recover) pinpoint as well the idea of an “empty dragon”.

His fight with Meleys, just like Vhagar’s fight against Caraxes, is a fight against blood: Meleys was a bright scarlet dragon and Caraxes was nicknamed the “blood wyrm”. Both fights were drowned in the sun. At Rook’s Rest, the armor of Rhaenys Targaryen (Meleys’s rider) “flashed in the sun” (F&B, 434) and “the dragons met violently a thousand feet above the field of battle, as balls of fire burst and blossomed, so bright that men swore later that the sky was full of suns” (F&B, 434). Compare this to Sunfyre’s fight against Grey Ghost, which was spotted by sailors at sunset and described as “grey and gold they was, flashing in the sun” (F&B, 489), and the following fight against Moondancer, which happened at night. Both had “moon vs sun” undertones, and all three battles happened on a very specific sky background:

Rook’s Rest happened in the daylight, sun against sun.

The battle above the Dragonmont happened at sunset, the setting sun against the rising moon.

The battle above Dragonstone happened “amidst the darkness that comes before the dawn” (F&B, 544), the rising sun against the setting moon.

(By that logic, the one battle Sunfyre shouldn’t have won was the one at sunset, against Grey Ghost. Thus, it might explain why the two Toms randomly decided to go on a hunt for Grey Ghost’s killer (F&B, p. 489), symbolically, at least… for the “sun” would’ve transgressed a fundamental law by killing the “moon” at sunset.)

 CARAXES

Of all the dragons of the Dance, Caraxes is the one with the strongest association to blood. He’s called the “Blood Wyrm” for his bloodish colors, partakes in many battles on the Stepstones even before the beginning of the Dance, fights against Vhagar beneath a “blood-red sky” (F&B, 502) and, before dying, crawls out of an – almost literal – lake of blood:

Caraxes lived long enough to crawl back onto the land. Gutted, with one wing torn from his body and the waters of the lake smoking about him, the Blood Wyrm found the strength to drag himself onto the lakeshore, expiring beneath the walls of Harrenhal. Vhagar’s carcass plunged to the lake floor, the hot blood from the gaping wound in her neck bringing the water to a boil over her last resting place. – F&B, 502.

It might also be noted that upon her parting with Caraxes’ rider Daemon Targaryen, Nettles’ clothes are “stained with blood” (F&B, 499). Thereafter, Daemon rides to Harrenhal and there waits, alone with Caraxes, for his nephew Aemond, marking each passing day with a slash on the heart tree in Harrenhal’s godswood.

Thirteen marks can be seen upon that weirwood still; old wounds, deep and dark, yet the lords who have ruled Harrenhal since Daemon’s day say they bleed afresh every spring. – F&B, 499

Which is very Robinson Crusoe, btw, a tale about a man slowly loosing touch with his humanity. Robinson marks the trees to keep count of the passing of time and anchor himself to the last bits of his human self – the self that’s self-aware and time-aware. The weirwood’s wounds “bleeding afresh every spring”, might not be as negative as it seems, then, for it’s a reminder of enduring humanity, even in a place as cursed as Harrenhal. The man vs beast conflict is furthermore underlined by the duality between the Blood Wyrm (the “beast”) and the “blood tree” (the “man”), with Daemon Targaryen in the middle. Sure enough, Caraxes’ characterization paints him as very beasty: “Blood Wyrm” essentially refers to “bloodworm”, if you ask me, something that crawls and suck blood. But then… one of Daemon’s mistress was nicknamed the “White Worm” (Lady Misery), which creates an interesting paradox, for a bloodworm is still a symbol of life when compared to a bloodless worm. And, here and there, Caraxes has his ambiguous moments: he “gave a scream that shattered every window in Jonquil’ Tower” (F&B, 499) when Nettles and Sheepstealer fled from Maidenpool. Even his crawling from a pool of blood in the end had the undertones of a newborn crawling out of the womb. Caraxes was a beast, that is certain, but also, in an odd way, a symbol of life.

 The wild dragons: Sheepstealer, Grey Ghost, the Cannibal

Sheepstealer won the Dance of Dragons. Fight me.

Thematically, he’s Sunfyre’s complete opposite. The later was dubbed the most beautiful dragon who ever existed. Sheepstealer was probably the ugliest. Sunfyre also had the worst ending possible for a dragon, if you ask me. No dying in battle for him, no sir. He spent the last months of his life unable to fly, surely unable to even fend for himself, and dying in the stink of infected wounds. Completely undignified for a dragon. Sheepstealer? He returned to the wild with its wild rider Nettles, uninjured and as sane as a dragon can be. For all we know, he might even still be alive in asoiaf, hiding in the mountains around the Vale. Wouldn’t that be cool? The last scene with Nettles and Sheepstealer actually reminded me a bit of Dany and Drogon in the Great Grass Sea (and we know Sheepstealer wasn’t the only one who was fond of sheep…), with both women in rags and clinging to their dragons’ necks. No whips: dragons fare best when left wilds. Sheepstealer’s brown scales marks him as a creature of mud, earth and mountain, rather than one of air, sun or moon. On that he’s similar to Grey Ghost, another wild dragon who mingled with smoother elements such as fog, water, mist, smoke and dusk:

Grey Ghost dwelt in a smoking vent high on the eastern side of the Dragonmont, preferred fish, and was most oft glimpsed flying low over the narrow sea, snatching prey from the waters. A pale grey-white beast, the color of morning mist, he was a notably shy dragon who avoided men and their works for years at a time. – F&B, 443.

I like this. It’s poetic. It’s elusive like magic itself. Strangely, Sunfyre, an injured dragon, manages the unprecedented by catching and killing him, whereas this had proved impossible for men and the Cannibal. You could probably write a very long meta on all the possible significations behind Grey Ghost’s death. I know I already proposed one in a previous post, and now I’m about to propose another: Grey Ghost is a (symbolic) dragon “soul”. Sunfyre, on the other hand, is an empty dragon “shell”. He hunts and eats Grey Ghost because… a shell wants to fill itself of a soul? Among other interpretations?

And speaking of dragons eating other dragons, there’s the last of the wilds, the Cannibal:

The largest and oldest of the wild dragons was the Cannibal, so named because he had been known to feed on the carcasses of dead dragons, and descend upon the hatcheries of Dragonstone to gorge himself on newborn hatchlings and eggs. Coal black, with baleful green eyes, the Cannibal had made his lair on Dragonstone even before the coming of the Targaryens, some smallfolk claimed. – F&B, 443-444

The Cannibal’s old age reflects the very primal nature of his behavior. If he was there before the Targaryens, what did he eat? Were there other dragons around? (Probably not. One dragon or two may slip under the radar but if they were more it would’ve been known.) I’ll speculate that the Cannibal’s diet was once in parts composed of his own eggs, drawing a callback to the myth of Kronos, the titan who ate his own children to prevent that they’d overthrow him one day. The myth of Kronos doesn’t apply only to the Cannibal, but to the bulk of subtext and symbolism behind the Dance of Dragons as well: both greens and blacks aimed for the sole supremacy over dragons, and both ended up killing them all in the process. The Cannibal himself is “coal black, with baleful green eyes”, both green and black, both dragon and dragon slayer. Moreover, he doesn’t really have a name. The book doesn’t say “Sheepstealer, Grey Ghost and Cannibal”, but “Sheepstealer, Grey Ghost and the Cannibal”, meaning, on a deeper level, that any dragon could become “the Cannibal”. (As Sunfyre did.)

 The dragons from the battle at Tumbleton: Tessarion, Seasmoke, Vermithor and Silverwing

History calls the struggle between King Aegon II and his half-sister Rhaenyra the Dance of the Dragons, but only at Tumbleton did the dragons ever truly dance. Tessarion and Seasmoke were young dragons, nimbler in the air than their older kin. Time and time again they rushed one another, only to have one or the other veer away at the last instant. Soaring like eagles, stooping like hawks, they circled, snapping and roaring, spitting fire, but never closing. Once, the Blue Queen vanished into a bank of cloud, only to reappear an instant later, diving on Seasmoke from behind to scorch his tail with a burst of cobalt flame. Meanwhile, Seasmoke rolled and banked and looped. One instant he would be below his foe, and suddenly he would twist in the sky and come around behind her. Higher and higher the two dragons flew, as hundreds watched from the roofs of Tumbleton. One such said afterward that the flight of Tessarion and Seasmoke seemed more mating dance than battle. Perhaps it was. (F&B, 532.)

I’m calling it right now. If ever there’s a “Dance of Dragons” between Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, it will be a dance of this kind. No joke. Seasmoke fights on the Black side and Tessarion on the Green, but Tessarion is on Vermithor at once when the latter attack Seasmoke. She’s referred to as the “Blue Queen” (Daenerys’s eponymous color from season two till season four) and Seasmoke is mounted by Addam Velaryon, born Hull, who was “determined to prove that not all bastards need be turncloaks” (F&B, 529). Need I say more? And Vermithor and Silverwing… that was just plain heart wrenching:

Silverwing, Good Queen Alysanne’s mount in days of old, had taken to the sky as the carnage began, circling the battlefield for hours, soaring on the hot winds rising from the fires below. Only after dark did she descend, to land beside her slain cousins. Later, singers would tell of how she thrice lifted Vermithor’s wing with her nose, as if to make him fly again, but this is most like a fable. (F&B, 536)

I don’t think it was a fable. What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart. But we’ll finish this with a few words on Vermithor the “bronze fury” and Silverwing, the two most gendered dragons in my opinion. Bronze, I assume (though I’m not an expert on this), can be used to make armors. Silver is used in clothing and jewelry. Vermithor died in battle and Silverwing remained behind like a wailing widow. They came in a pair and always fought on the same side: when Hard Hugh Hammer (on Vermithor) turned his cloak and joined the Green side, his sidekick Ulf White (on Silverwing) did the same. After Vermithor’s death, Silverwing retreated “on a small, stony isle in the middle of Red Lake” (F&B, 557) and rejected every man who’d try to claim her. 

At Tumbleton, Seasmoke and Vermithor were the only ones to die directly in battle. Tessarion was put down mercifully a few hours later (Silverwing was the only one to survive at all):

Tessarion, the Blue Queen, lasted until sunset. Thrice she tried to regain the sky, and thrice failed. By late afternoon, she seemed to be in pain, so Lord Blackwood summoned his best archer, a longbowman known as Billy Burley, who took up a position a hundred yards away (beyond the range of the dying dragon’s fires) and sent three shafts into her eye as she lay helpless on the ground. – F&B, 534

@oadara I’m tagging you here because of the Tessarion/Daenerys parallels, and because you’re the expert when it comes to Daenerys and the number three.

The females lasted longer that their male (mate?) counterparts. Vermithor and Seasmoke were the main “aggressors” in the fight and it seemed like Tessarion intended to protect or help one of them out, presumably Seasmoke:

Vermithor’s size and weight were too much for Seasmoke to contend with, Lord Blackwood told Grand Maester Munkun many years later, and he would surely have torn the silver-grey dragon to pieces… if Tessarion had not fallen from the sky at that very moment to join the fight. – F&B, 533

As for Silverwing, she didn’t partake in the fight at all, so that’s a lot of gender-related tropes behaviours. Now, I don’t think it was Martin’s (or Archmaester Gyldayn) intent to turn Tumbleton into a dragon style Romeo and Juliet. Tumbleton was the last major battle of the Dance and I think he wanted to humanize the dragons, while also underlying the absurdity of the battle itself: Hard Hugh Hammer had already died when Vermithor was attacked with bolts and spears (which mean that he was attacked for nothing, being now riderless). If Vermithor hadn’t been attacked, he wouldn’t have turned on Seasmoke. Vermithor, Seasmoke and Tessarion might’ve survived the battle. And remember, the Blacks won that battle. They could’ve finished Tessarion anytime after (she really wasn’t in good shape). Instead, apparently, they left her alone as she was trying to fly again, and only killed her when she started showing signs of pain. 

I saw what you did there Martin.