@blightgames asked:
hello! i've got a quick question about dragon riders. i've never read fire and blood (and don't plan on doing so) and i'm due for a reread on the main series, but i've been seeing some posts about dragons "bonding" with their riders and they don't match what i remember. basically i'm wondering if there's any actual canon basis for the claims dragons and riders can sense each other's moods/feel each other/etc.
Hey! So F&B doesn't give an absolutely definitive answer on this due to GRRM's conceit about making it an in-world history book written by a skeptic maester, and is thus without internal narrative or many credulous mentions of magic. However, there are a bunch of lines that can be understood to imply a very strong emotional connection between a dragon and their rider. So here we go:
“It may well be that dragons somehow sense, and echo, the moods of their riders,” Septon Barth wrote, “for Dreamfyre came down out of the clouds like a raging storm that day, and Vermithor and Silverwing rose up and roared at her coming, suchwise that all of us who saw and heard were fearful that the dragons were about to fly at one another with flame and claw, and tear each other apart as Balerion once did to Quicksilver by the Gods Eye.” The dragons did not, in the end, fight, though there was much hissing and snapping as Rhaena flung herself off Dreamfyre and stormed into Maegor’s Holdfast, shouting for her brother and her sister.
Even for a son of House Targaryen, there are always dangers in approaching a dragon, particularly an old, bad-tempered dragon who has recently lost her rider.
How the prince and his bastard girl spent their last night beneath Lord Mooton’s roof is not recorded, but as dawn broke they appeared together in the yard, and Prince Daemon helped Nettles saddle Sheepstealer one last time. [...] No word of farewell was spoken betwixt man and maid, but as Sheepstealer beat his leathery brown wings and climbed into the dawn sky, Caraxes raised his head and gave a scream that shattered every window in Jonquil’s Tower.
Helaena Targaryen, sister, wife, and queen to King Aegon II and mother of his children, threw herself from her window in Maegor’s Holdfast to die impaled upon the iron spikes that lined the dry moat below. [...] At the moment of her death, across the city atop the Hill of Rhaenys, her dragon, Dreamfyre, rose suddenly with a roar that shook the Dragonpit, snapping two of the chains that bound her.
We shall not pretend to any understanding of the bond between dragon and dragonrider; wiser heads have pondered that mystery for centuries.
Rhaenyra herself wrapped her arms about her last living son, Aegon the Younger, clutching him fiercely to her bosom. Nor would she loose her hold upon him…until that dread moment when Syrax fell.
Silverwing and Vermithor [once dragons of the married Alysanne and Jaehaerys] oft coiled about one another in the fields south of Tumbleton...
Who can know the heart of a dragon? Was it simple bloodlust that drove the Blue Queen to attack? Did the she-dragon come to help one of the combatants? If so, which? Some will claim that the bond between a dragon and dragonrider runs so deep that the beast shares his master’s loves and hates.
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.
And there Aegon might have remained, hidden yet harmless, dulling his pain with wine and hiding his burn scars beneath a heavy cloak, had Sunfyre not made his way to Dragonstone. We may ask what drew him back to the Dragonmont, for many have. Was the wounded dragon, with his half-healed broken wing, driven by some primal instinct to return to his birthplace, the smoking mountain where he had emerged from his egg? Or did he somehow sense the presence of King Aegon on the island, across long leagues and stormy seas, and fly there to rejoin his rider? Septon Eustace goes so far as to suggest that Sunfyre sensed Aegon’s desperate need. But who can presume to know the heart of a dragon?
Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't also cover the mentions of emotional connection between Dany and her dragons, seen in the main books:
It was no more than a few moments [of pleasure] until her legs twisted and her breasts heaved and her whole body shuddered. She screamed then. Or perhaps that was Drogon. —ASOS, Daenerys II
Drogon raised his head, blood dripping from his teeth. The hero leapt onto his back and drove the iron spearpoint down at the base of the dragon's long scaled neck. Dany and Drogon screamed as one. —ADWD, Daenerys IX
Hope that helps!
