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. “You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. “You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” 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. This is a terrific foreshadowing of what happens not only in her final chapter, but in her very next chapter. 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. 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 no magically significant mentions of dragons in Dany’s first chapter, but there is a lot of discussion of the Targaryen identity as dragons. This chapter sets the table for Dany’s magical experiences in this volume. 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. 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. She seems to bond with or incubate the dragon eggs throughout this volume. 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. Throughout the volume, she thinks of and discusses dragons and what it means to be a “dragon” many times. So, if you haven’t read that series, Check ’em out! A Game of Thrones: The Last Dragon Awakens the Last Dragonsĭany has 8 chapters in AGoT. After all, we are considering the magical bond between human and beast. While dragons certainly are not direwolves, I find that some of the motifs from that series transfer quite readily. This work is a follow up to my “Direwolves of Winterfell” series and builds on that work. We’ll also contrast it with her relationship to the other dragons. 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 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.

I have tried to look for these clues, specifically in Dany’s story. However, I have noticed through my re-reads that he does leave clues and patterns if you watch for them. George is telling us that he will never fully explain his magic, because he wants to preserve the mystery around it. And I try to keep the magic magical - something mysterious and dark and dangerous, and something never completely understood. You can have too much magic in fantasy very easily, and then it overwhelms everything and you lose all sense of realism. 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 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, if only partially.įantasy needs magic in it, but I try to control the magic very strictly. This is a transformative dream for Dany, so much so that the handmaidens immediately noticed. Recall again, that the magic is amplified by physical touch. To me, this is clear evidence for a telepathic bond to Drogon at this moment. Dany feels heat coming off his egg when she touches it, and for an instant, she feels like she’s dreaming again. Recall our prior discussion of physical contact amplifying the bond. 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.

We can identify the dragon to be Drogon because this time we get a physical description.

Viserys wake the dragon