Military historian confirms that Rhaegal’s death was pretty silly

Game of Thrones does a lot of things well — compelling characters, beautiful music, fantastic visuals — but when it comes to the military history part of the program, it’s always been a little off. How in the world did Stannis not know the Tyrell army was fixing to ambush him during the Battle of Blackwater? Ditto Ramsay and the Knights of the Vale at the Battle of the Bastards, etc.

Scouting in general seems to be a problem for these people. The Ringer talked about it to Kelly DeVries, a professor at Loyola University Maryland who specializes in medieval warfare. “Very few ambushes ever happened in the Middle Ages like that, because you had scouts out knowing where everybody was,” DeVries said. “When William the Conqueror lands on England, I mean, he immediately knows the position of everybody, because he’s able to get that information from people through various means. We’ve got tons of spies and scouts and everything. But these sides seem to be woefully ignorant of each other.”

This issue reached its zenith in the latest episode of the show, “The Last of the Starks,” when Euron Greyjoy ambushed Daenerys Targaryen as she was flying with her dragons back to Dragonstone. Euron had outfitted the ships in his fleet with a number of deadly ballisti (which is the plural of ballista so far as The Ringer is concerned)) designed by Qyburn, and took down Rhaegal in three shots. That Daenerys didn’t at least see them coming from her vantage point way up in the air…well, it stretched believability a wee bit too far.

Then there’s the matter of whether Euron could have even hit a dragon with a ballista from that far away with that level of accuracy. Obviously there’s no corollary to real-life history, but DeVries thinks not. “The ballisti that we know of, the larger ones—they might’ve had that distance, they certainly would not have had that accuracy,” he said. “To be able to hit three [times], even on a large dragon, would’ve been rather difficult.”

"It’s hard to aim a crossbow and it would’ve been hard aiming a large ballista like that, certainly because the shot would have to be so powerfully delivered that with the kickback you couldn’t really judge where the crossbow bolt would end up."

I suppose you could argue that Qyburn designed these scorpions to battle dragons, which weren’t a problem in actual medieval times, but still…something doesn’t sit right.

Really quick, tell me what you think of my alternate rewrite: Team Dany is aware that Euron may be out there, and she sees his fleet from a while away. She decides to engage, swoops down to commence the burninating, and then, when she’s close enough, everyone on Euron’s ships reveal that they have Qyburn’s new ballisti hidden under a bunch of tarps, fire away, and land a lucky shot through Rhaegal’s neck.

I know, I know, everyone’s a screenwriter these days, but sometimes my mind goes places.

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Anyway, DeVries thinks that, by and large, the show does crossbows and the like pretty well. “The archery choices in Game of Thrones all the way along the line have been better compared to medieval arms and armor than anything else has been,” he said. He also thinks it would have been possible for Qyburn and his team to mass produce those new ballisti, so long as he had the proper help. But when it comes to the battles…

"It’s nice, cinematic stuff, there’s no question. I wouldn’t want an actual show about the Middle Ages—it’d be boring. They didn’t have zombies in the Middle Ages; they didn’t have dragons in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were pretty boring for most of its time. If you wanted to film a [Middle Ages] siege, you’d stick your cameras in there for a year until a side gave in. Game of Thrones is cinematic. Very heroic, but pretty stupid, when it comes to military engagement."

Brace for more when Daenerys tries to take King’s Landing on Sunday.

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