Monsters of Ice and Fire: Daenerys’ Children and the Medieval European Dragon
To what extent do the dragons on Game of Thrones resemble dragons from European tradition? We take a deep dive into the origins of Daenerys’ children.
We all know what a dragon is, right? And we surely all know what a monster is. So I trust we can keep this a one-paragraph kind of affair, right? End credits!
I kid. Dragons are ubiquitous in pop culture, but it’s well worth our time to look at their long history and where George R.R. Martin’s dragons fit in it.
Dragons are everywhere. There are dragons in Western fairy tales, in European heraldry, in Mesopotamian, Central Asian and Central American mythology, in the Chinese zodiac, in Japanese folklore and even in nature, after a fashion. While Central American and East Asian dragons are very interesting, I can’t speak about them with much authority, and they don’t seem very closely related to Martin’s dragons. I will therefore concentrate on the European version of the dragon.
It’s Complicated
Let’s start with one of the most important versions of the European Medieval dragon: the dragon of the heroic epos of the High Middle Ages. Probably the best-known high medieval dragon is Fafnir, from the German epic poem the Nibelungenlied. Fafnir also appears in the Poetic Edda, the Fáfnismál and the Völsunga saga, which is nice, because we don’t get much information about him from the Nibelungenlied.
Fafnir is far from a traditional dragon, and doesn’t start life as a dragon at all. Instead, he is a dwarf (or, more properly, a dvergr or a svartálfr, since we do not really know if what we think of as dwarfs today comes sufficiently close to how we are meant to imagine dwarfs like Fafnir) turned into a dragon as the result of his greed. In addition to that, Fafnir the dwarf wears the Œgishjálmr, or the “helm of terror,” which magically makes him appear even more terrible than he does in his dragon form.
Fafnir as depicted on a plank from Hylestad stave church. Image by John Erling Blad.
It is easy to see the differences between Fafnir and Martin’s dragons, who might be creatures of fire – and possibly of ice – but are also very much actual animals who procreate and grow and die as themselves, without ever turning into dwarfs, or humans, or anything else.
Looking at medieval bestiaries, things become more complicated and confusing. Scholar Konrad von Megenberg writes in the 14th century that dragons have small mouths, but that their bite is venomous. He considers the dragon a slange, not a wuormi — a snake rather than a worm, basically. He also rehashes a very old story involving a snake or dragon that tries to strangle an elephant,ii the dragon being something like the elephant’s eternal foe, a place it is forced to share with the rhinoceros.iii
But Konrad’s dragon may be more than just a large snake. He also writes about an animal named drachen kopff, which translates as “dragon’s head.” This animal has the body of a dragon and the head of virgin woman, although how you figure out the virginity of a head, I have no idea. In any case, a creature with the dragon’s body and a woman’s head is, like Fafnir, a hybrid. To be specific, the drachen kopff is a kind of chimera, in the sense that it incorporates traits of multiple different animals. This is a typical aspect of monsters in general and dragons specifically, as we will see.
The “drachen kopff”. Cod. Pal. germ. 300, Das Buch der Natur, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg.
The above picture is interesting because the creature looks very much like what we think of as a dragon today, even going as far as breathing fire, although it’s missing wings.
Other texts seem equally unsure as to what dragons actually are. Albert the Great, one of the most important thinkers of the 13th century, has something to say about dragons in a comment on Aristotle’s Τῶν περὶ τὰ ζῷα ἱστοριῶν. (Writing a comment on an authoritative work instead of producing something original was characteristic of the time.) Albert repeats the story of the eternal enmity between dragons and elephants,iv but gives us more detail, listing many creatures de genere draconum,v or “of the dragonkind.” These include sea dragons, for example.vi However, in direct contradiction of Konrad, Albert says that dragons mordent per vulnus, non per venenum: They kill by wounding the prey with their bite, rather than with their venom (and not with fire). Albert’s dragon, at least in a later print, has wings, and four legs to go with them.
Arthurian Legend
Sight unseen, many might assume that the dragons in A Song of Ice and Fire most closely resemble the dragons found in Arthurian legend. One of its great dragonslayers is Tristan (played by Mads Mikkelsen as a proto-Mongolian headgear aficionado in a 2004 movie). When Tristan first meets the unnamed dragon in Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan, it is called a serpande and leide vâlant,vii even before the term trache (“dragon”) appears for the first time.viii As you might have guessed, serpande is derived from Latin serpens and is equivalent to the English term “serpent.” Leide vâlant means something like “hateful monster” or even “hateful devil”. Later, the dragon is called a mortsame slange, or “murderous snake.”
We get some actual description of this dragon. Gottfried tells us that the dragon strikes fear in everyone’s heart but Tristan’s.ix The dragon is egeslîch and ougen ungemach, which means “fearsome” and most likely “ugly” — but not simply ugly; unsettlingly ugly. It’s hard to be sure since it is figurative speech. We also learn that the dragon is of a size that allows Tristan to pierce its heart with a strike of his lance into its maw. Gottfried than compares the dragon to an army. He writes:
"er vuorte mit im an den kampfbeidiu rouch unde tampfund andere stiurean slegen unde an viure,an zenen unde an griffen:die wären gesliffen,sêre scharpf unde wahs,noch wahser danne ein scharsahs.x(He [i.e. the dragon] brought with him into battleBoth smoke and steamAnd other supportConsisting of blows and fire,Of teeth and claws,Which were sharpened,Very sharp and pointy,Even sharper than a razor.)"
Tristan fighting the dragon in a fifteenth Century print of the story.
We can see in the image above that this dragon is not really a snake in the modern sense since it has claws. Again, it has fiery breath, which we also find in Martin’s dragons. Sadly, we are not told how many legs it has, but we can assume it has four, since wings aren’t mentioned at any point, nor does the dragon ever fly. Instead, emphasis is put on its razor-sharp claws.
Limbs Count
How many limbs does a dragon have? George R.R. Martin is reportedly of the opinion that four-legged dragons with additional wings are biological nonsense,xi hence why his dragons have two legs and two wings. However, some have opined that Martin’s dragons should probably be called wyverns instead of dragons, the most commonly understood difference being that wynerns have two legs in addition to wings while dragons have four legs.xii I don’t think there is a clear-cut right or wrong answer to this question, but let’s look deeper.
There is no such thing as a medieval wyvern. That word (along with the concept) simply did not exist then. What did exist were several versions of the word vipera, one of the terms from which “wyvern” would later develop. But a vipera is no wyvern. The term could as easily denominate a viper in the modern sense. The wyvern only came about in the context of heraldry, and has only later been popularized in fantasy, especially in Dungeons & Dragons, where it appeared as early as 1974.
These wyverns, however, do not have as much in common with Martin’s dragons as it might seem at first glance. Heraldic wyverns are much more avian, their stance and talons resembling those of birds of prey. With their long curling tails, they are also more snake–like than Martin’s dragons, which look and behave more like airplane-sized bats, and also lack the characteristic pointed tail a wyvern typically has.
Martin agrees that his dragons are not wyverns. There are actual wyverns in the world of Ice and Fire, but they are only kin to dragons, and cannot breath fire. Wyverns are nevertheless very important. You could even say that the wyvern is one of the roots of the overall concept of the dragon.
Wyverns are defined by their importance in heraldry. While there are non-wyvern dragons in heraldry, the original heraldic dragon is the wyvern, although it was not so named at the time. Much like the eagle, the dragon found its place in medieval European heraldry during Late Antiquity and the so-called Dark Ages, more precisely the Migration Period.
Depiction of a captured Dacian draco. Image by Christian Chirita.
The Roman cavalry had already taken the draco as the standard of their cohorts in the second century AD — they picked it up from the Scythians, a nomadic tribe from the Eurasian steppes who had mastered the art of mounted warfare. Beginning during the Migration Period, many Germanic tribes and peoples would adopt the draco. The nomadic cavalries of the East fought with infantry-focused armies all over continental Europe, and inspired them to embrace cavalries themselves. It’s easy to imagine these wild foreign hordes on their horses seeming monstrous to the Germanic tribes of that time. Those cavalries more often than not bore the draco, a wyvern-like or even snake-like symbol, sometimes with a head resembling a wolf, sometimes already breathing fire. We can clearly see the dragon’s hybrid, chimeric nature here once more.
Early Modern “Science”
In Conrad Gessner’s and Conrad Forer’s Thierbuch — the German version of Gessner’s Historia animalium, a zoological encyclopedia written around the middle of the 16th century — we see something very similar to this draco under the name Track.xiii You can see the images below: we get a winged snake that looks like the draco, as well as a horned wyvern that more closely resembles a snake with two legs and two wings than a fantasy wyvern.
Three dragons as seen in Forer’s translation of Gessner’s Historia animalium and some Latin versions.
Forer’s text says:
"Diser namen Track kompt bey den Griechen von dem scharpffen gesicht her und wirt offt von den schlangen in gemein verstanden. Insonderheit aber sol man die yenigen schlangen, so groß und schwer von leib, all ander grösse halb übertreffen, Tracken heissen.xiv(This name “dragon” derives from their sharp face [i.e. their intense stare?] in Greek and is often understood as encompassing all snakes. More specifically we may call those snakes which are of a big and heavy body and surpass all others in size dragons.)"
This is a strange notion for us modern readers. It seems like, in European medieval and early modern minds, there was a continuum that included what we today would call snakes, dragons, wyverns, other reptiles and amphibians with an elongated shape, and sometimes even worms, with the actual dragon being the most rare and special. How do we square this conception of dragons with the idea of dragon hybrids from earlier?
The answer has something to do with monstrosity. We are actually talking about two (at least) different traditions that have influenced each other over time. There is the dragon of the stories and the “dragon” of science — Martin’s Drogon on the one hand and the draco volans, or common flying dragon, on the other.
A male Draco volans in Singapore. Image by Sharp Photography.
But in the Middle Ages, there were no clear boundaries separating these two ideas. A zoologist of the 21st century would not watch Game of Thrones or play Spyro the Dragon to learn about the reptiles they want to study. But during the Middle Ages (and probably even later), that’s basically what happened. There was one big inventory of knowledge consisting of bits and pieces from all kinds of places, including Greek philosophy, Roman natural history, epic poems, oral stories and much more. Instead of making clear distinctions between these categories, as we do today, the tendency of Medieval and Renaissance authors is to include everything connected to the term “dragon” in the definition of the term. This was, after all, the age of the genius universalis, of polyhistors and polymaths, people who dabbled in everything we would today call “science” in the broadest sense, including the humanities. There were fewer disciplines, and the boundaries separating them were much less strict than they would become.
The Meta Monster
As a result, the monstrous traits we have seen with different instances of dragons above not only persist, but are continuously reintroduced and intermixed with other traits actually found in nature. Dragons throughout history become a kind of shape-shifting meta monster. In contrast to more specific monsters like the basilisk, the idea of the dragon is unstable within certain limits.
One potentially monstrous trait that seems to be largely missing from European dragon lore is human or even superhuman intelligence – Fafnir could count as an exception, but only because he is a dwarf turned dragon and therefore as intelligent as your standard dwarf. The monstrosity here lies in the dragon’s undeniable superiority, resulting from a combination of enormous strength and advanced cognitive capabilities, and from the contrast between that intelligence and a predatory, bestial appearance.
We don’t have to look far to find modern examples of highly intelligent dragons who are otherwise firmly rooted in the European tradition. We see it in J.R.R. Tolkien’s dragons, such as Smaug from The Hobbit and especially the ancient, magic-savvy Glaurung from The Simarillion. We also see it in the works of fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin with dragons like Kalessin; in Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story with Fuchur or Falkor; and in many more. While it is hard to pinpoint exactly how this idea has entered European thought, it’s certain that: 1) It has been a characteristic trait of East Asian dragons for a very long time and; 2) Tolkien has played a major role in making this a thing in western fantasy.
If you’ve stuck around this long, you will probably have noticed that Martin’s dragons do not share many of the truly monstrous aspects we have found in historical dragons. Martin’s dragons are: 1) not uncannily ugly; 2) not actually something else, like a dwarf; 3) not chimeras and; 4) not highly intelligent (at least not to the point where they can speak).
So what is monstrous about Martin’s dragons, if anything? They can certainly be frightening and dangerous, but by and large, they are mostly depicted as animals, albeit very big, very tough, very powerful ones. For dragons, they are remarkably biologically feasible. They sport the right number of limbs, they behave like intelligent animals, they move like animals — like giant bats, to be specific — and they don’t exude venom. The one thing not completely biologically feasible about them is their fire, but that fire is something they share with a variety of other dragons. Facing a dragon in Martin’s world is basically the same thing as facing a wild lion, just turned up to eleven.
Are Martin’s dragon not monstrous at all, then? Yes and no. By themselves they do not seem properly monstrous to me. What does seem monstrous is the state of the World of Ice and Fire as a whole. It’s a world thrown out of balance, with unnaturally long seasons of often unpredictable length that seem monstrous to us and would seem a whole lot more monstrous to medieval people — the only reason it doesn’t appear so to the people of Westeros and Essos is because they have grown accustomed to it. Nobody alive can remember anything else. There don’t even seem to be records of a time when the seasons were anything other than the way they are, but they does not seem to be the natural state of the planet. At least that’s how I understand it when Martin says that the seasons are caused by “magic.”xv
Another monstrous thing that might be connected to this is the return of magic. Imagine for a moment how unbelievable, how unsettling, how scary it must be, to have grown up in a world where magic does not exist – even if an unclear amount of people may think it exists anyway – and then to see actual, indisputable magic happen in front of your own eyes! It is not so much that these dragons are monstrous. It is rather that they — and I’m talking about Dany’s dragons specifically here — are the heralds of a great monstrosity, the return of magic, and they are the symbol of another great monstrosity, the twisted state of the world. It is a world of Ice and Fire, after all, and those dragons make up a big part of that fire and maybe some part of that ice, but let’s leave the discussion of ice dragons for another day.
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i Konrad von Megenburg (Pfeiffer): Das Buch der Natur, p. 268.
ii Ibid. Cf. Pliny: Naturalis historia, VIII, 32.
iii Cf. Pliny: Naturalis historia, VIII, 71.
iv Albertus: De animalibus, II, fol. 367r.
v Albertus: De animalibus, II, fol. 416v-420v.
vi Albertus: De animalibus, II, fol. 409v.
vii Gottfried von Straßburg: Tristan, v. 8903, 8905.
viii Gottfried von Straßburg: Tristan, v. 8941.
ix Gottfried von Straßburg: Tristan, v. 8953-8964.
x Gottfried von Straßburg: Tristan, v. 9017-9024
xi westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Month/2007/02
xii Cf. George R. R. Martin: A Clash of Kings, Prologue.
xiii Gessner/Forer: Thierbuch, fol. 35r
xiv Ibid.